Morning Wrap

Settlement: Alston & Bird is close to settling a malpractice suit brought by the bankruptcy trustee for one of its former clients, Friedman's Jewelers Inc., according to the Fulton County Daily Report via Law.com. The firm is represented by, among others, Robert Cary at Williams & Connolly.

Net Cops: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today will unveil an agreement with Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable to block access to sites that peddle child porn, according to The New York Times. The negotiations for the accord arose out of an eight-month undercover sting operation.

Antitrust: Discover Financial Services is suing MasterCard and Visa for more than $6 billion, alleging the two companies used anti-competitive practices to keep banks from issuing Discover cards, The Wall Street Journal reports. The suit, filed four years ago and made public yesterday in New York, follows a Justice Department antitrust suit filed in 1998 against MasterCard and Visa.

Shrinking: Budget shortfalls are forcing state and local authorities to shed legal jobs. The New York Times has this report on public defenders in Georgia while The Recorder says prosecutors in San Francisco are the latest casualties.

Patents: A group of six major tech companies are banding together to form a patent pool ahead of what they foresee as an explosion in demand for broadband wireless services, The Recorder reports via Law.com.