Sexting Scandal and ‘Fair Game’ for Cal Cunningham Sees Questions Over Further Issues

North Carolina Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham has evidently avoided answering questions about whether further claims of extremarital affairs might arise in future. Questions posed to the candidate emerged during a conference call when it was suggested that his personal life had become "fair game" given his own comments about his personal life, for which he said he had already taken responsibility. Polls have consistently given Cunningham a lead over the Republican incumbent, Thom Tillis, in the race for U.S. Senate. As The Atlantic reported , he was supposed to be the boring candidate but the news about an allegedly intimate relationship have proved anything but so far as the news media and electorate are concerned. Cunningham is a former state senator and an Army veteran, and the former Kilpatrick Stockton attorney received a bronze star for service in Iraq as LawFuel previously reported. The Atlantic noted that Cunningham "isn’t an especially notable personality, and he hasn’t taken any especially notable policy stands. But running against Tillis, who is not especially popular, especially well known, or especially charismatic himself, that seemed like it might be enough. Then came the sexting scandal." And there began the bad press for Cal Cunningham. “Let me be clear, I’ve taken responsibility for the hurt I’ve caused in my personal life," Cunningham said. "I’ve apologized for it, and I know that this campaign, our campaign is about things that are much bigger and more important than just me.” “North Carolinians are looking for somebody who is going to take on the monumental challenges ahead of us,” he said with reference to the COVID-19 battle. But reporters were intent on asking about his need to be clearer on issues relating to women who might come forward regarding allegations of relationships with him and the distraction it would cause him if elected. Cunningham was reportedly asked four times about whether more allegations could surface in the future after it was disclosed that he was under investigation by the US Army Reserve about the allegations. Cunningham agreed earlier that a series of sexual text messages he exchanged with a woman who is not his wife with both parties identified online as the wife of an army veteran. “I am deeply sorry for the hurt I have caused in my personal life and I also apologize to all of you. And I hope each of you watching at home accept this sincere apology and that we will continue to work together to change the direction of our country and strengthen our state,” Cunningham said. The text messages and interviews offered a view if Cunningham that is at odds with the image of a devoted family man as has been painted of the candidate. The conservative website, NationalFile.com, published text messages between Cunningham and Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist from California, that suggested a personal relationship. The Associated Press report of the texts, which are between Guzman Todd and a friend, provide a specific timeline about their recent relationship, as well as details that describe intimate encounters which was more than one involving mere texting. In a series of interviews late Monday as well as in the text messages, Guzman Todd described two in-person encounters with Cunningham. One was in March in Los Angeles that she said did not include intimate contact, and a second was in July in North Carolina, where she said they were intimate. “A few months back, I displayed a lapse in judgment by engaging in a relationship with Cal Cunningham during a period of marital separation,” Guzman Todd said. “The relationship spanned several months and consisted primarily of a series of text exchanges and an in-person encounter.” She did not elaborate, but her text messages described the intimacy. Is This The Billable Hour’s Last Stand? Anthropic’s Top Lawyer Thinks So The legal profession has survived recessions, regulatory upheavals and the occasional partner meltdown. But the next threat to BigLaw’s favourite revenue model may come from something far less dramatic. A machine that reads faster than any associate and which could spell the end of the infamous 'billable hour', which has been touted as being in its end time for some time. 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Built on top of large language models, its platform targets the work that eats most of a junior lawyer’s life: research, document review, contract drafting and due diligence. The company claims tens of thousands of legal professionals using the product daily, across some 800 customers in more than 50 markets, including heavy‑hitting firms like Bird & Bird, Cleary Gottlieb, White & Case, Linklaters, Goodwin, Dentons and advisers such as Deloitte. Big Law’s Trump Reprieve Lasts Less Than 24 Hours — The U-Turn That Changed Everything It has been a year — twelve months of watching the most powerful law firms on the planet twist in the wind at the pleasure of a sitting president. And just when it looked like the drama had finally resolved itself, Washington reminded everyone that in this administration, nothing is ever quite over. On Monday, the Trump administration quietly announced it was abandoning its executive orders against Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — four firms that had the nerve, and the litigation chops, to fight back. All four had beaten the orders in the lower courts. Is This The Death of Lockstep Pay for BigLaw? For decades, BigLaw partnership compensation had the reassuring predictability of a Swiss watch. Progress through lockstep. Accumulate seniority. Collect your reward. Repeat. That model isn't dead. But the announcement in February 2026 that Freshfields, the world's 13th largest firm by gross revenue, and an institution that maintained an all-equity partnership for its entire existence, was introducing a nonequity partner tier while simultaneously stretching its lockstep to reward higher earners at the top of the pay scale, made something abundantly clear. The Pay Reset is Now Freshfields isn't alone. Cravath created a salaried partner tier in November 2023, and that move gave other highly-ranked firms permission to follow suit — Paul Weiss, WilmerHale, Cleary, Skadden, Debevoise, and Sullivan & Cromwell have all introduced nonequity tiers in the two years since. Macfarlanes’ Curious New York Move: A Manhattan Office With No U.S. Law Macfarlanes Opens Manhattan Office – With a Deliberately Limited MissionMacfarlanes is joining the steady procession of London… Read more : Macfarlanes’ Curious New York Move: A Manhattan Office With No U.S. Law Personal Injury Law Powerhouses – The Overlooked Business Geniuses Crushing Big Law Snobbery alert: while Big Law partners chase prestige, lockstep compensation, and sky-high billable-hour targets, those flashy “billboard lawyers” at personal injury firms like Morgan & Morgan are quietly running the smartest, most scalable legal businesses in America. And the data proves it. Morgan & Morgan isn’t just big (as LawFuel has previously reported) it’s the largest personal injury firm in the country, with over 1,000 attorneys (ranking 42nd overall on the 2025 NLJ 500 and 34th on the Law360 400), offices in every state, and more than $30 billion recovered for 700,000+ clients. Law Firm Marketing in 2026: What Stopped Working and What Replaced It Let's be honest with each other for a moment. You didn't go to law school to become a content creator. You went because you're sharp, you like solving problems, and — let's be real — the billing rates don't exactly hurt. But here you are in 2026, staring down a marketing landscape that looks absolutely nothing like it did three years ago, while some LinkedIn bro in a blazer-and-jeans combo tells you to "post consistently or die." You're not dying because you're bad at marketing. You're struggling because the rulebook got shredded and nobody sent you the memo. Here's what's actually happening: clients are asking ChatGPT "what happens to the house if we divorce?" before they ever type your name into Google. Your lovingly crafted blog post — the one your firm spent four hours approving — is sitting underneath an AI summary that answers the question completely and sends precisely zero traffic your way. And the referral you were counting on last month? That client quietly asked an AI about you first. It didn't go well. The numbers bear this out, and they're not comfortable reading. AI Overviews are slashing organic click-through rates by somewhere between 58 and 61 percent the moment they appear on a results page (Seer Interactive, September 2025; Ahrefs, December 2025).

Sexting Scandal and ‘Fair Game’ for Cal Cunningham Sees Questions Over Further Issues

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