Author: TSA Press

The thing about the uncertainty surrounding the economic upheaval caused by COVID-19, is that things are, well, uncertain. Even the best laid, most thoughtful plans can change, and pretty rapidly at that. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Biglaw firms that have already announced cost-cutting measures are going back for more.

At Husch Blackwell, a firm knocking on the Am Law 100’s door (they come in at the 101st spot), their initial foray into COVID-19 austerity measures were aimed at those at the top of the law firm food chain. The firm previously announced equity partner draws were cut by 15 percent and all managing directors and c-level executives had their salaries cut by 10 percent. Now we’ve learned there are even more cuts at the firm.

For this second round, Husch Blackwell announced a pu pu platter of austerity measures. Income partners are taking a hit to their compensation, and the dreaded layoffs and furlough are coming to both the attorney and staff ranks. From the firm’s statement (available in full on the next page):

Effective May 1, 2020, the firm is instituting a 10 percent holdback of fixed income partner compensation. The holdback is across the board and is equal to or smaller than earlier measures taken that impacted equity partners and senior administrative leaders. The firm is also implementing a series of measures to align its headcount with the downturn in the nation’s economy. These measures include a combination of job terminations, furloughs, salary reductions, transitions to less-than-fulltime status, early retirements, and deferrals. Both lawyers and staff were affected by some or all of these measures, but the total number impacted represents less than 10% of the firm.

The firm also announced modifications to its 2020 Summer Associate Program. The incoming class will be split into two groups, and each group will participate in a five-week program over consecutive five-week periods beginning in mid-June.

Chair Greg Smith had this to say about the cuts:

“This crisis is more prolonged and extensive than early estimates indicated, and while we made every effort to avoid these actions, they have become necessary,” said Husch Blackwell Chairman Greg Smith. “Notably, many of the impacted individuals are on furlough, and this simply because there is very little for them to do while we are in Work-From-Home mode. We are hopeful that they will be recalled to work as soon as it is safe and feasible to do so.”

Above the Law wishes the best to those that suddenly find themselves out of work during this tough time.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

When Robert Ward arrived at the Tampa federal courthouse in January, a guard asked him to remove his belt. It’s a request made thousands of times a day across the country as security breezes people through x-ray machines in an ongoing effort to keep America’s courtrooms safe from smartphones. But Ward may have felt he had the TSA Precheck of court passes, because he allegedly informed the guard that, as an attorney, he didn’t need to take off his belt. The guard disagreed and this, my friends, is where “hijinks ensue.”

Willing to raise the ante on a guard who, at this point was pot committed to get Ward’s belt off whether or not it was required by official policy, Ward completely took off his pants and threw them in the bin because hardcore litigators are always ready to show the world their briefs.

Now… this wouldn’t have been the choice most of us would make, but he definitely assured the court that he wasn’t smuggling anything in. More importantly, he became a trendsetter taking this step months before the rest of the legal profession began working in underwear.

The court didn’t necessarily see it that was and issued a show cause order for Ward to defend his pro hac vice admission after the incident. That was back in February, and Ward responded:

Ward’s April 15 response said he was given permission to remove his pants after court security officers refused to conduct a standard patdown.

“Counsel has thus apologized for any inconvenience that this regrettable event may have caused,” Ward wrote. “No one was prejudiced thereby.”

But it’s cited again in an April 13 filing arguing that Ward should be kicked off the case. Wyndham Vacation Resorts is suing Ward’s client — a Missouri law firm — for allegedly “inducing timeshare owners to default on their payments,” and took this position in opposing the motion of Ward’s pro hac vice sponsors to withdraw for unrelated reasons. It might feel like a below-the-belt attack to remove an attorney and undermine the defense, but if you can’t trust a timeshare operator to be acting with the purest of intentions, then who can you trust?

Wyndham argues Ward has put together “oftentimes incoherent and nonsensical” submissions and pushed discovery misconduct. Ward denies all of this:

“Wyndham over-argues its case and with an inappropriate viciousness that is seldom seen in the federal courts,” Ward wrote.

“It is Wyndham’s purpose to destroy lead counsel’s legal practice and, thus, to serve a ruined attorney, as an object-lesson in futuro, to any younger attorney who would dare to oppose Wyndham’s continuing unethical, unlawful and fraudulent practices in the sale of their so-called ‘timeshares,’” he wrote.

Which is a much more artful way of saying, “liar, liar, pants…”

Lawyer who took off pants at security checkpoint fights bid to be ousted from representing clients [ABA Journal]
Atty Who Depantsed At Court Security Check Fights DQ Bid [Law360]

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The former director of an agency under the Department of Health and Human Resources that is heading efforts to develop vaccines and drugs for Covid-19 says he was ousted over his opposition to the Trump administration’s promotion of two malaria drugs as treatments for the disease.

Rick Bright, who had been in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, or BARDA since 2016, now plans to file a whistleblower complaint about his removal, as director of BARDA and as HHS deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and placement in a more limited position at the National Institutes of Health. In a statement sent via email on behalf of Katz, Marshall & Banks, the law firm representing him, Bright said he believes the move was in response to his questioning of the promotion of hydroxychloroquine and a related drug, chloroquine.

“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the Administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” Bright said in his statement. “While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public. I insisted that these drugs be provided only to hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 while under the supervision of a physician.”

STAT news originally reported on Bright’s departure, and The New York Times reported his statement.

Bright added that he had also resisted efforts to fund “potentially dangerous drugs” promoted by people with political connections.

“Sidelining me in the middle of this pandemic and placing politics and cronyism ahead of science puts lives at risk and stunts national efforts to safely and effectively address this urgent public health crisis,” Bright said in his statement.

The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization last month for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, though it was limited to patients unable to take part in clinical trials, in response to a request by Bright. The EUA followed heavy promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a potential “game changer” by President Donald Trump and similar promotion by supportive media figures. However, that led to runs on the drugs in several areas of the country, making them difficult to obtain for patients with diseases for which they are indicated, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The FDA’s decision has been called a political one that risks undermining faith in the agency, while the publicity-generated interest risks making it harder to recruit patients into trials of other drugs.

Actual clinical data on the drugs has been mixed, at best. While some small studies have indicated a benefit in Covid-19 patients – notwithstanding criticism over their methodology – others have shown no benefit, and others still have indicated they may do more harm than good. A panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health has recommended against use of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azythromycin outside of clinical trials due to the potential for toxicity.

Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images

Once upon a time, before a pandemic drove Biglaw firms to put their summer associate programs online or cancel them outright, it could confidently be said that graduates of certain law schools would assuredly land high-paying jobs at some of the largest law firms in the country. Now that the novel coronavirus has taken hold, things aren’t so certain, but it’s still likely that graduates of the very best law schools will get the very best jobs — even if their official start dates are delayed until January 2021.

Today, we’ve got a recently published, unintentional blast from the past when it comes to employment-related law school rankings.

According to U.S. News, based on the 2018 statistics used in the 2021 Best Law Schools rankings, these are the 10 law schools where graduates were most likely to land full-time jobs lasting at least a year at Biglaw firms with more than 500 lawyers.

Can you guess which T14 schools didn’t make the cut?

Stanford University
Graduates employed in law firms: 53.2%
Portion of these graduates employed full time at large law firms: 90%

University of Virginia
Graduates employed in law firms: 71.4%
Portion of these graduates employed full time at large law firms: 85.7%

Harvard University
Graduates employed in law firms: 63.1%
Portion of these graduates employed full time at large law firms: 84.4%

Northwestern University (Pritzker)
Graduates employed in law firms: 76.2%
Portion of these graduates employed full time at large law firms: 84.1%

New York University
Graduates employed in law firms: 77%
Portion of these graduates employed full time at large law firms: 83.9%

Click here to see the rest of the top 10 and reminisce about the way things used to be.

Will these law schools still be at the top of the list when it comes to students landing Biglaw jobs after graduation? Almost definitely. But will the percentages be as high? We’re not so sure about that, but we suppose we’ll see in a year or two.

10 Law Schools That Lead to Jobs at Big Firms [U.S. News]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

How do you know if law school is worth the six-figure investment? And how do those high costs of legal education impact the diversity of the legal profession?

There’s a lot of discussion and data out there about law school costs and diversity and on this week’s episode of The Jabot podcast, I dig into the details with Kyle McEntee, Executive Director of Law School Transparency. We talk not just about the cost of legal education but about how to make law school more accessible, affordable, and innovative. We also discuss the details of LST’s new report on the structural changes needed to make law schools more diverse and to lower the amount of debts students need to attend.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench. It’s a reminder that even when we aren’t winning, we’re still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

The coronavirus pandemic has always been Excusemas for racists. In addition to Donald Trump going out of his way to whip up racism against East Asian people, it’s provided an excellent excuse to end immigration, which is what this administration wanted from the start. In the past month or so, the Trump administration has closed the Mexican border, even though the United States had far more coronavirus cases at the time than Latin America. It has expelled asylum seekers and immigrant minors without interviews, in direct violation of US and international law. It has suspended visa processing, ended refugee resettlement, postponed citizenship ceremonies, and more.

And this week, it took the next logical step: It will no longer issue green cards, which confer lawful permanent residency, in most cases.

It actually looked worse than that on Monday, when the incompetent clown who has somehow gained control of my country announced (via Twitter, natch) that he was going to end all immigration. But losing guest workers turned out to be unpopular with some of the companies that Trump needs to continue propping up the economy, so he backpedaled on Tuesday and turned it into a ban on green cards.

The details are unclear right now, since Trump tends to spring new immigration policies on the relevant federal agencies without bothering to tell them. In fact, the New York Times said Tuesday that DOJ was still studying whether this plan is even legal. That article said it’s a 60-day suspension of new green cards for every applicant except those who are children or spouses of US citizens. That means green cards will be unavailable to other relatives of citizens; relatives of green card holders; anyone who is applying for a green card through employment; and a handful of other people, including former translators and other workers for the US military whose lives are threatened because they helped us.

Trump says this “will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens,” and if I were a fool, I would believe that. But this has never been about economic competition between immigrants and native-born US citizens, which studies consistently show doesn’t really exist. (The flaming liberals over at the Cato Institute once called it “a wrongheaded idea that just refuses to die.”) When nobody’s listening, Trump welcomes European immigrants, who are in a much better position to compete with American workers than the subsistence farmers of Guatemala. He’s even married a couple, and brought another into the White House despite suspect credentials.

This is about whipping up the far-right voter base with prejudice. And the Supreme Court majority has already shown that it does not care.

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Lorelei Laird is a freelance writer specializing in the law, and the only person you know who still has an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker. Find her at wordofthelaird.com.

A little more than a month ago, Ray Dalio retreated from our increasingly horrible everyday world to his presumably COVID-free gilded survival bunker and cave of contemplation to do some serious thinking about the global pandemic and also keep his 70-year-old corporeal form alive and healthy. And serious thinking and Principle application there was to do, for he who loves to be wrong has certainly been wrong about a lot of things lately, as amply demonstrated by Bridgewater’s flagship hedge fund. Given all of that, and the steady drumbeat of bad news and stupidity bombarding Dalio’s self-quarantine, we’ll be honest that downright giddiness is not what we were expecting when he emerged to deliver his findings on his favorite medium, LinkedIn.

* The prosecutor who resigned over a sentencing memo in the Roger Stone case has joined the DC Attorney General’s Office. Seems like he landed on his feet. [Hill]

* A New Jersey lawyer cannot be readmitted to practice unless he shows that his wife has no access to his accounts, checkbooks, and other financial records. There must be a good story behind this… [ABA Journal]

* A federal judge has dismissed a malicious prosecution claim filed by Jussie Smollett stemming from the attack he allegedly staged to increase his profile. [USA Today]

* A Kentucky lawyer has been charged with making terroristic threats after allegedly threatening Kentucky’s governor. This attorney should brush up on his constitutional law. [Hill]

* Dozens of in-house lawyers are agreeing to pay cuts in order to help their companies deal with issues created by COVID-19. [Bloomberg Law]

* A knife-wielding lawyer allegedly forced a journalist to delete footage of this attorney at a shelter-at-home protest. Guess this lawyer took the law into his own hands… [New York Post]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

The donation consisted of 4 070 N95 and three-ply masks, 33 200 pairs of latex gloves, 200 pairs of goggles, 20 000 alcohol swabs and 10 litres of anti-bacterial soap, altogether valued at ZWL$1 649 804.

Handing over the equipment to ministry officials at the association’s Harare offices, AHFoZ chief executive Shylet Sanyanga said the bulk of the items donated was personal protective equipment, as AHFoZ and its members wanted to contribute to ensuring that health professionals on the frontline were protected against the deadly virus.

She said members of AHFoZ, which is the umbrella body for the country’s medical aid societies, were conscious of the fact that they were in the health business and that the battle against COVID-19 was not for government alone.

It was in the light of this that AHFoZ had mobilised resources to assist in the fight against COVID‑19.

“We know that the task at hand is huge and that this donation might appear small in comparison to the task. However, it is a sincere gesture to demonstrate the commitment of AHFoZ to complementing government’s efforts in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. We will continue to complement these efforts,” she said.

Post published in: Featured