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After months of demanding transparency from President Donald Trump on his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti convinced a federal judge to block the news media from covering his testimony about his law firm’s bankruptcy, the Los Angeles Times reported. Eagan Avenatti, his Newport Beach, Calif., firm, has defaulted on millions of dollars in debt and fallen years behind in paying its payroll taxes. Avenatti was subpoenaed by former employee Jason Frank to testify in bankruptcy court. Frank is trying to collect on a $10-million judgment he won against the firm. Hon. Catherine Bauer granted Avenatti’s request to bar the media from covering his court testimony. He argued that his firm’s finances and client roster should not be exposed despite a voluminous public case file that already chronicles its troubles in great detail. Avenatti also asked to seal the transcript of his testimony, but the judge made no immediate decision on the request. Judge Bauer refused to allow attorneys for The Times and other news organizations to argue that Avenatti’s testimony must take place in open court. Hon. Scott C. Clarkson declined to overturn her order at an emergency hearing after hearing objections from an attorney for The Times, ABC and CNN. Judge Clarkson said that the media organizations could file further challenges to the closure with Judge Bauer. For Avenatti, a fixture on cable news since he began representing Daniels nearly five months ago, the demand for secrecy was a notable change in posture. For weeks, he has been demanding that President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen “come clean” and release tapes and documents involving the payment of $130,000 to Daniels in return for her silence about an alleged one-night stand with Trump in 2006.

The American Bar Association House of Delegates, which determines association-wide policy, will review proposals at the ABA’s upcoming Annual Meeting in August to update model rules governing lawyer/client communications and to change rules and procedures affecting how the ABA accredits the nation’s 204 law schools, according to an ABA press release. The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility is asking the House to approve amendments to the following ABA Model Rules: 7.1: Communications Concerning a Lawyer’s Services; 7.2: Advertising; 7.3: Solicitation of Clients; 7.4: Communication of Fields of Practice and Specialization; and 7.5: Firm Names and Letterheads. The changes in the ABA Model Rules, which serve as recommended guidelines to state regulators, would streamline and simplify the rules and still adhere to constitutional limitations on restricting commercial speech; protect the public; and permit lawyers to use technologies to inform consumers accurately and efficiently about the availability of legal services. For law schools, the most significant proposed change affects the standard requiring a “valid and reliable test” for prospective law students. While a test, such as the LSAT, would no longer be required, language would establish that a school whose admissions policy and practices are called into question is presumptively out of compliance with the standards if it does not require a valid and reliable admissions test as part of its admission policy.