The REAL program (Reaching Excellence As Leaders), which helps keep juvenile offenders from returning to the system, is in danger of closing when a grant from the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth expires June 30. Over the past three years, the program has helped more than 300 young people, with 85 percent not reoffending after graduation. The Justice Policy Institute listed Tennessee as one of the top five states in the nation for reducing juvenile confinement. WKRN has the story.

A federal appeals court has thrown out nearly $94 million worth of Medicare and Medicaid fraud cases won by U.S. Attorney Jerry Martin’s office in Nashville, possibly restricting how federal prosecutors can pursue health-care fraud cases in the future, the Tennessean reports. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on Monday reversed an $11.1 million judgment against a Georgia medical company with three local clinics accused by federal prosecutors of Medicare fraud. The reversal comes just months after an $82.6 million judgment against three other local companies was also dismissed.

A Fayette County grand jury has indicted Tennessee Walking Horse trainer Jackie McConnell and two co-defendants on 38 counts of animal cruelty for illegally soring and torturing horses, the Chattanoogan reports. The indictments followed an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States in 2011. McConnell is already serving three years of probation and has been fined $75,000 for federal felony convictions.

Georgia legislators passed a resolution authorizing the state’s attorney general to sue Tennessee if it does not voluntarily give up a 1.5-square-mile parcel of land along the Nickajack Reservoir in order to access water from the Tennessee River. The debate over the land has been an issue since 1818 when surveyors incorrectly mapped out the border between the states and placed it too far south, according to Georgia lawmakers. The Tennessean has the story.

Vanderbilt Law School professor Ingrid Wuerth has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute, an indepent non-profit organization made up of lawyers, judges and law professors. Wuerth directs Vanderbilt’s International Legal Studies Program and is a leading scholar of foreign relations and international law. She was recently named as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a German Academic Exchange Council Fellow, permitting her to work extensively in Berlin, Germany. Wuerth also serves as a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law and has held a variety of leadership positions within the American Society of International Law.

DLA Piper, one of the world’s biggest law firms, is being sued for overbilling in a case the New York Times notes will not help the public’s opinion of the legal profession. According to a Slate.com article in the Crossville Chronicle, lawyers unfairly earned a bad reputation beginning in the Middle Ages. The perception that lawyers were greedy opportunists continued through the Renaissance and into the early modern age. By the 18th and 19th centuries, lawyers were commonly disparaged in joke books and compared to the devil in literature and drama. 

Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens and Cannada PLLC continues its expansion in Nashville by moving into a new space at The Pinnacle Building at Symphony Place. The office is located on the 15th and 16th floors of the city’s newest skyscraper and boasts more than 46,000 square feet of space according to the Tennessean. The firm currently has 44 attorneys, but the new office features space for 70 offices and a capacity to expand to 110.

The Center for Public Integrity released a report stating that 185 federal district and appeals court judges — 11 percent of all federal judges —  have attended at least one seminar during the last four and a half years at which foundation or corporations paid for air fare, hotel stays and meals. According to the National Law Journal, the report has restoked the decades-long debate within legal circles about federal judges who accept all-expenses-paid trips for educational seminars and draws connections between them and the corporate sponsors, including those who later appeared before them in court.

A new bill poised for a state Senate vote on Monday would shift voting power for the U.S. Senate primaries from citizens to state lawmakers, Knoxnews reports. The measure’s main sponsor,  Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plans, said the bill is aimed at returning the state closer to the system used before 1913, when state lawmakers directly appointed U.S. senators. That system was replaced with direct election by the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling that properties of Christ Church Pentecostal in South Nashville were not eligible for full tax-exempt status. The Church owns a gym and activities center, café and bookstore, and a lower court had ruled they did not qualiffy for full tax-exempt status because they were not used purely and exclusively for religious purposes, the Nashville City Paper reports. The Court of Appeals ruled the bookstore/café was “nothing short of a retail establishment housed within the walls of the Community Life Center, complete with paid staff, inventory control, retail pricing, and a wide array of merchandise for sale to the general public.”