Forbes Daily Briefing

In the course of producing Forbes Top Lawyers, the yearlong research often reveals insights into the state of the legal profession. With this, our third-annual list, the trend was inescapable: The world’s leading law firms are in a race to position themselves for the future—and talent is becoming their most powerful competitive advantage.

As the industry consolidates and rivalries intensify, firms are audaciously raiding rivals for marquee partners who can give them an edge. For star partners with the cachet, client relationships and “halo effect,” the ceiling seems limitless, including guaranteed compensation packages widely reported in the $20 to $40 million range, stratospheric signing bonuses and lavish equity shares—all at unprecedented levels. A decade ago, compensation packages for top rainmakers typically topped out at $10 million.

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Free tuition guarantees have now been extended by 21 private schools that rank in the top 50 on Forbes’ list of America’s Top 500 Colleges. While the schools like to brag about the share of U.S. families that would qualify for free tuition under their guarantees–some say as high as 85%—their actual students bodies skew wealthy. That means many don’t qualify for any institutional aid at all, let alone free tuition. Even at generous Princeton, which brags that 25% of its incoming freshman class last year was eligible to receive federal Pell grants for low income families, an even greater 31% of that class got no financial aid at all. At some of the schools on our list, more than half of families have been paying full freight in recent years. 

The elite schools with free tuition guarantees are listed below in alphabetical order, along with details and links to their offers, which are often only extended to U.S. (not foreign) students. Tuition and fees and total cost of attendance are for the current, 2026-2027 school year. Those prices, as well as details of the schools’ free offers are taken from their web sites. Admission rates are from the government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and are for the 2024-2025 school year, the latest available. Below the list, you can read more about the information applicants need to submit to benefit from the free offers and about other colleges that make free offers and aren’t on our list.

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Talk of a “K-shaped economy” took off during the pandemic recovery. Economist Peter Atwater popularized the term in the spring of 2020 to describe an economy in which higher-income households and asset owners bounced back while lower-paid workers and struggling businesses fell further behind.

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President Donald Trump said he has told “people” he supports a ban on diesel exports as the country faces record prices for the fuel used for trucking and agricultural equipment amid the ongoing war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war, aligning himself with Republicans largely representing agricultural states hoping to ease prices for farmers.

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Over just five days earlier this month, a Chinese-speaking hacker deployed AI agents to launch cyberattacks on as many as 100 organizations, stealing hundreds of thousands of credit card details. The hacker used Chinese models DeepSeek and Kimi as well as an older version of Anthropic’s Claude to automate their attacks, which cost just $8,000 in total.

It’s one of “the most severe abuses of AI for exploitation seen so far,” says Eyal Sela, a cybersecurity researcher and director of threat intelligence at Gambit Security, who discovered the attack.

“The human being is directing almost fully autonomous AI models, which are strong enough by now to do very sophisticated cyberattacks quickly with close to zero preparation and very high rate of success,” Sela says. Though the number of successful breaches out of the 100 companies is unclear, the hacker gained access to at least 30 websites between September 10 and 15, according to Gambit’s research.

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The long-feared college enrollment cliff—a product of the decline in U.S. births that began in 2008—is finally arriving. Yet many of America’s top public universities face a different challenge: The number of students who want to attend them is rising.

Last spring, undergraduate enrollment at four-year public colleges was up 1.5% from a year earlier, to 5.4 million, while undergraduate enrollment at private not-for-profit colleges was a hair down at 2.4 million. Total applications to public colleges are also growing faster.

It’s no mystery why. Over the past decade, adjusted for inflation, in-state tuition at four-year public universities has declined by 7%, compared to a 2% increase at private non-profit ones, according to the College Board. It calculates that tuition and fees for four-year public colleges last year averaged $11,950 for in-state students and $31,880 for those coming from out of state, versus $45,000 at private nonprofit colleges. (Keep in mind, those are list prices, which is why certain elite private colleges offering generous financial aid can end up being cheaper for middle-class students than out-of-state public schools.)

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2026/09/10/forbes-top-25-public-colleges/

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The White House launched “Trump TV” on Monday, revealing a 24/7 platform streaming old Trump administration events after President Donald Trump revoked White House press credentials from reporters with CNN, MS NOW and Politico.

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On the Ohio campaign trail, Democrat Amy Acton has turned her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy’s fortune into a line of attack. She calls the Republican nominee her “self-funding billionaire” opponent, contrasting his private-jet travel with her old Jeep and arguing that he is out of touch with families squeezed by rising costs. Ramaswamy has leaned into it. “I believe in celebrating success,” he said after winning May’s Republican primary. “I was not born a billionaire. I was not born a millionaire. I was not born an anything-aire.”

He now has more to celebrate with. Ramaswamy is worth an estimated $2.3 billion, up from $1.8 billion a year ago and up from just $1 billion in March 2025. If elected in November, the 41-year-old businessman-turned-politician would become America’s second-richest governor and third-wealthiest elected official in the U.S., behind only President Donald Trump (now worth $7 billion), and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune worth $4.2 billion.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2026/09/20/ohio-governor-ramaswamy-would-be-americas-third-richest-elected-official/

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State attorneys general have reached a settlement with Paramount Skydance in their lawsuit over Paramount’s planned merger with Warner Bros., multiple outlets report, likely paving the way for the deal to go through—even as critics have warned the reported settlement terms do not adequately address concerns about the Hollywood giants joining forces.

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In a dystopian world ravaged by alien war, a boy who has been bullied at school discovers an ancient book left by the parents he never knew. It turns him into a vampire. And that’s only the first 10 minutes of My Vampire System, the most popular audio drama on Pocket FM, with more than 1.5 billion plays since it debuted four years ago. The story continues for another 4,192 plot-packed and cliffhanger-filled episodes. But if you want to listen to all of them, you’d better to get out your wallet.

An India-based audio entertainment company, Pocket makes its money almost entirely through microtransactions, charging users on a per-episode basis after an initial 30 minutes free each day. Theoretically, a user could listen to My Vampire System entirely for free, if they used their full allotment every single day for four years straight—or they could purchase Pocket “coins” and unlock episodes costing anywhere from just a few pennies to more than $3 each, depending on packages, promotions and episode demand. With no subscription or all-access options, some users pay several hundred, perhaps even more than a thousand dollars for the complete story. And they have—Forbes estimates the series has grossed nearly $90 million in total.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/09/21/states-settle-paramount-warner-bros-lawsuit-report-says-paving-way-for-merger-to-go-through/

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