Author: TSA Press

Throughout the Biglaw COVID-19 cost-cutting measures it’s been clear that the most severe move — one most firms try to avoid — is layoffs. Unfortunately, not every firm is able to avoid letting folks go during the global pandemic.

As reported by Daily Business Review, Am Law 200 firm Greenspoon Marder has confirmed that, in anticipation of revenue shortfalls, they’ve instituted firmwide pay cuts and laid off employees. According to reports, 40 staff members and 5 attorneys have been let go.

Firm co-founders Gerry Greenspoon and Michael Marder had this to say about the cuts:

“There is no question that our firm, like every other firm in the country, will experience a loss of previously projected revenue as a result of this unmatched global business slowdown,” said Marder and Greenspoon. “As a result, our firm has decided to implement various cost-cutting measures in order to preemptively parallel this unexpected impact upon revenue with currently anticipated costs and expenses. It is our sincere and honest hope that many of these reductions will be temporary.”

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).

Five years ago, an executive at Goldman Sachs’ London operation was feeling in a bit of a rut. Unable to get noticed. Spinning his wheels. Then, fortuitously, he learned that his native Ghana was on the lookout for a company to build and operate a power plant there, which power plant one of his clients would very much like to build and operate.

Of course, if said executive were able to win such deals honestly, well, he probably wouldn’t have been so desperate to win this one. And he was desperate: Desperate enough to not only allegedly facilitate some $4.5 million in bribes to Ghanaian officials through a Ghanaian intermediary, but also to allegedly pay $66,000 in bribes out of his own pocket.

The COVID-19 austerity measures that are tearing their way through Biglaw have claimed another firm. This time it is Crowell & Moring, who made $401,074,000 in gross revenue in 2018, making the firm 95th on the Am Law 100 ranking.

So here’s the scoop: there will be salary cuts at the firm, with the top echelons of the firm taking the biggest hit. Equity partners will take a 25 percent compensation cut, income partners will see their paycheck cut by 20 percent, associates and counsel are seeing a 15 percent cut, and staff who make $100,000+, which the firm estimates is about a third of staff members, will see cuts in the range of 5 to 20 percent.

Philip T. Inglima, chair of Crowell & Moring, had the following statement on the austerity measures:

Crowell & Moring is in very good financial health, with a balanced array of practices and revenue streams. Over the past month, we swiftly transitioned our people to an almost entirely remote work environment, as we continued meeting our clients’ needs, including those that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are taking prudent and responsible steps to keep our firm strong as we, and our clients, navigate the economic uncertainty and challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to aggressively managing all expenses that we can forgo or defer, we will postpone distributions and adjust partner draw levels for the months ahead in 2020. We also will institute tiered compensation reductions for all non-partner attorneys, as well as a segment of our professional and administrative team, for the balance of the year. These adjustments avoid any lay-offs and mean that two-thirds of our staff are spared any reduction in compensation.

We are positioning our firm to meet our current and anticipated financial and operational needs and to keep our team intact. We look forward to returning to our prior compensation practices as soon as possible.

These proactive steps are consistent with what every business must do during this unprecedented time: contain costs and expand cash resources to weather the storm. By taking these actions now, we are confident that we will be able to continue providing outstanding service to our clients and to support our people. We will get through this challenging time together.

Points to Inglima for coming right out and saying the cuts should be enough to avoid layoffs. It’s awful when firms realize their first round of austerity measures weren’t enough to save jobs. Here’s hoping Crowell can avoid layoffs.

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).

If you thought working at a Biglaw firm during a pandemic was difficult because it’s forced the majority of the office into a work-from-home environment, imagine working at a Biglaw megafirm that merged just weeks before the crisis began. It’s an uncertain time for everyone, but there’s even more uncertainty when a newly combined firm is just starting to get its footing when disaster strikes.

This is what’s happening at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, the firm that was formed after Faegre Baker Daniels finalized its merger with Drinker Biddle & Reath on February 1. If you recall, the prospective Am Law 50 firm with more than 1,300 lawyers was one of the very first to close its doors over coronavirus concerns.

How is Faegre Drinker proceeding amid all of the salary cuts, furloughs, and layoffs that have come about at peer firms due to the global health crisis? The firm’s partners are reportedly taking a rather “sizable” hit for the team:

Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath has deferred its equity partner distributions by one-third for the second quarter in an effort to be “prudent and conservative” during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the firm said.

It is also monitoring the expenses generated by its workforce of more than 1,300 lawyers, consultants and professionals located across 22 offices, said co-chairs Andrew Kassner and Tom Froehle.

“It’s inevitable if it impacts our clients, it’ll impact the law firms. Everything has to be on the table as we plan going forward over the second quarter and third quarter and beyond,” Kassner said. He initially described it as being a cut in partner distributions, but then emphasized the firm was deferring those distributions: “It’s just a deferral. It’s all a matter of timing.”

Best of luck to Faegre Drinker in the months ahead. It sounds like the firm is doing right by its employees, which will hopefully lead to its success in the future.

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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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.

On April 8, I celebrated my abstinence-based, 13 years in long-term recovery from alcohol, cocaine, and bulimia (Yes, males develop eating disorders).

I reflect with mixed feelings as it also falls on what would be the 94th birthday of my father whose passing 18 months ago is still fairly raw and painful.

Of course, my recovery anniversary will always fall on his birthday, and there will always be tears for that, but his passing seems to hit especially hard as I sit at home with millions of others in the heart of the trauma, uncertainly, and anxiety wrapped around the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think that some of my angst also correlates to suddenly being hyperaware of my mortality, churning toward 60 and on the cusp of the COVID-19 “high-risk” age demographic. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was 18? Where the hell did the years ago? The irony is that I can’t remember many of them in the haze of drugs and alcohol.

I do remember my father’s role in my recovery. The memory of walking over to his place fresh off my second trip to a local psychiatric hospital after a drug- and alcohol-induced blackout is one that remains vivid and sometimes rebroadcasts in high definition in my dreams.

That morning, early April 2007, I stood at his door, ashamed, guilty, and broken. He had no idea that I struggled with drugs and alcohol. I justified my silence so as not to be a burden him in his golden years.

I lurked outside his apartment door for five minutes, crying and almost going home. I finally knocked. He answered the door, and as usual, was ecstatic to see his middle son. As usual, he offered me something to eat. As usual, he asked if I needed any money. It didn’t matter what my financial status was. He asked.

That morning, I only wanted his love, which I received every moment of every day from the time I was born.

We sat on his couch. He knew something was wrong. I began crying again. Over the course of an hour, I unloaded decades of pain. Things I kept from him because I loved him. Because I did not want to burden him. Because I did not want to see his disappointment in me. I did not want to see his pain over my failures in life. That’s what I told myself.

He held me. He cried with me. Then he said the one thing that defined everything he had taught his sons growing up.

“Brian, I love you. Move in with me, and we will get through this together.”

I lived with him for a week while I attended my 12-step meetings and shuttled between his place and mine to take care of my pets.

My father, Norton, of the greatest generation. My father gave me the greatest gift. The gift of a father talking to his son and letting him know he is loved. My father, without knowing it, allowed me to take another step in recovery, beginning the process of self-love and allowing myself to accept it.

I hope he is smiling down at my milestone and as soon as the stay-at -home order is lifted, I will head on over to his resting place, his new home, and tell him about it. Ironically, it is also, walking distance.

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Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

As more and more Biglaw firms announce their COVID-19 austerity measures, it’s tempting to lump all cost-cutting together but there are important distinctions to be had. There is a big difference in asking a secretary to take a 10 percent pay cut as your first move, versus furloughing wide swaths of staff, versus slashing partner compensation. The latest firm to announce cuts is making sure the top of the firm is being cut from first.

Husch Blackwell, a firm knocking on the Am Law 100’s door (they come in at the 101st spot), is also making cost-cutting measures to keep cash a-flowin’ during these rough economic times. But unlike other firms that have taken an across the board approach to the cuts, at least for now, those at the top of the law firm food chain are the ones impacted. Equity partner draws were cut by 15 percent and all managing directors and c-level executives had their salaries cut by 10 percent.

A firm spokesperson confirmed the cuts and said, “Like all companies, we continue to monitor the pandemic’s impact on our business and that of our clients.”

At least the firm seems to be making the cuts from the top first. You can read the full firmwide email announcing the cuts on the next page.

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.

---

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).

Biglaw firms continue to roll out cost-cutting measures, and much like the social distancing and isolation that have become part and parcel of our everyday lives due to the coronavirus pandemic, there seems to be no end in sight. From salary cuts to furloughs to layoffs, law firms across the country are doing their damndest to keep their heads above water amid the economic upheaval that’s been brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak.

We’ve received word that yet another Am Law 100 firm is trying to save on cash by having employees share in its financial pain. Ogletree currently places at #73 in the latest Am Law 100 ranking, and sources tell us that the firm decided to cut both salaries and workweek hours for its staff, with some going as far to say their salaries have been halved. We’ve also been told that while the firm has approved special COVID pay for some, when that runs out, they’ll be on unpaid leave (with paid benefits through May 31). It sounds like this is just a polite way of saying these employees have been furloughed. Here’s an excerpt from a memo we received:

A rather distraught source had this to say about what’s happening at the firm:

In my department, I’m working only two days a week and pulling from a firm-funded COVID leave fund to make up my pay. But once that runs out next week, I have to use Paid Time or Sick Leave. There is no guarantee that I will even be able to work the two days I am now by the end of the month. I have been told I will have to apply for unemployment at that point.

On top of the matters affecting staff members at the firm, Ogletree has canceled its 2020 summer associate program. The 36 law students who were supposed to work at the firm this summer will not receive any of the compensation that they were relying upon, and sources tell us that unlike other firms, Ogletree has not guaranteed future employment — only hope of such offers “when we emerge from the crisis.”

Last, but not least, sources claim the firm has allegedly laid off attorneys in one of its Texas offices. We are unable to confirm these reports at this time.

We reached out to the firm several times for comment, but have yet to hear back.

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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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.

Remember last month when Jerry Falwell, Jr. was all over Fox insisting that he was going to bring students back to Liberty for in-person classes during a pandemic?

Turns out … not so much. Apparently Falwell invited the student body to return from spring break (with their germs!) on March 20 for a “modified” schedule of on-campus learning. And by “modified,” he meant they were welcome to sit in their dorm rooms and use the WiFi to “attend” class, which transitioned to an all-online format on March 23.

Liberty purported to continue offering residential and to-go meal services, although it sent multiple conflicting emails to students both “encouraging you to stay home” while simultaneously not endorsing “any particular action” with respect to campus housing. So if students wanted to hunker down in Lynchburg and Zoom from their dorm rooms while subsisting on takeout from the dining hall, they were theoretically free to do it.

In reality, the only way Liberty could colorably maintain student safety was if the vast majority of enrollees stayed home with their families, effectively subsidizing the handful of students who took the school up on its “offer” to socially distance in the abandoned dorms. Which is exactly what happened, of course.

But Jerry Falwell is a generous man, so he decided to make it right with the kids. If they declared their intention not to return to the dorms by March 28, he would offer them a $1,000 housing credit toward next year’s fees for any student who chooses to return. Heck, graduating seniors could even take the $1,000 off their bills for spring. Sound good?

Well, apparently NOT. Which is why his school just got hit with a class action lawsuit filed by students who claim the school ripped them off for tuition and fees. Because the $1,000 housing credit did nothing to offset the meal plan, health insurance, student activity fees for shuttered gyms and libraries, parking charges, or various course fees associated with its Divinity, Osteopathic Medicine and (ABA accredited) Law Schools.

The case, captioned Student A v. Liberty University, Inc. was filed anonymously in the U.S. District Court for Western District of Virginia by a student who claims a colorable fear of retaliation should their identity be revealed.

Plaintiff is concerned about negative treatment from the University that could come in the form of negative treatment in the classroom or possibly even expulsion. Liberty’s President, Mr. Falwell, has already shown his willingness to use social media, for which he has a large following, to criticize and invite scorn upon anyone who criticizes him, Liberty, or Liberty’s actions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Liberty’s Senior Vice President of Communications contacted one student, and involved that student’s employer, who spoke out against the University and, in the student’s words, “chided” him for his comments. Liberty has further shown its willingness to retaliate against anyone who criticizes Liberty’s COVID-19 response by seeking and obtaining arrest warrants against members of the media who participated in stories critical of Liberty.

Case in point, here’s the esteemed Mr. Falwell calling the parent of three Liberty students a “dummy.”

The suit claims breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and conversion, accusing the school of pretextually keeping the dorms “open” as flimsy cover to pocket students’ meal and residential fees.

Liberty University is, in a very real sense, profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping its campus and campus services “open” as a pretext to retain Plaintiffs and the other Class members’ room, board, and campus fees, despite no longer having to incur the full cost of providing those services, all the while putting students’ finances and health at risk.

It also alleges that the school may be eligible for up to $15 million in stimulus funds, and is thus double dipping to profit off the pandemic. Which is a scurrilous allegation to level at a pious moral beacon who threatens expulsion for students caught drinking alcohol and then falsely accused a photographer of doctoring multiple images that showed him drinking in a crowded nightclub!

AHEM.

Student A v. Liberty University, Inc. [Complaint via Buzzfeed]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Mercifully, most of my work these days is in business litigation, environmental litigation, and appeals. But as a young lawyer, I cut my teeth in family law. My first solo trial was actually a divorce case. In those days, I developed a useful little canned speech. I still pull it out in the occasional family law case that I take on as a favor to someone or as pro bono work when presented with a particularly compelling sob story. Feel free to steal this if it helps your practice:

Client: How can [he/she] get up on the stand and just lie like that? I thought there were perjury laws. I thought being under oath meant something. This is not what I expected the court system to be like.

Me: You know how often I hear this from my clients after court about the other party lying under oath? Every single time. And believe it or not, [he/she] is over there talking to [his/her] lawyer right now and saying the exact same thing about you.

Client: What do you mean? I told the truth!

Me: When two people witness an event, each remembers it differently, and the memories actually change over time. You have the version you remember, there is the version [he/she] remembers, and then if there had been a video camera in the room, that would be a totally different third version. Both of you are probably telling the truth in your own minds. If you want to waste your time talking to law enforcement about a perjury prosecution, go for it, but you don’t want to pay me to be involved in that. Don’t worry though, I made [him/her] look like an idiot on cross-examination, and that’s what matters for our purposes.

That made sense to people. Witnesses in family law cases take the oath, but prosecutions for breaking it seemed about as real to me as Leprechauns.

Every once in a while, though, you catch the glimmer of a rainbow on the horizon, and think maybe, just for a second, there’s a Leprechaun sitting at the end of it. Almost a year ago, while NASA astronaut Anne McClain was floating around on the International Space Station and going through a bitter divorce, her estranged wife Summer Worden accused her of wrongfully accessing Worden’s bank account online from space. Like in every family law case, these accusations got blown way out of proportion, and Worden filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission accusing McClain of identity theft. Worden’s family also got involved for some reason (rarely a good idea in marital dissolutions — the family is usually more vindictive and less stable than the principal) and lodged a similar complaint with NASA’s Office of Inspector General.

This drama got a lot of press. The New York Times touted it as perhaps “the first allegation of criminal wrongdoing in space.” But it turns out this was all just the regular, old, ground kind of crime.

An indictment unsealed last week revealed that Worden has been charged with two counts of making false statements to federal authorities, and is facing up to five years in prison on each of the counts as well as a fine of up to $250,000. Specifically, Worden stands accused of lying about when she opened the account that she claimed McClain wrongfully accessed and about when she reset her login credentials (McClain claimed all along that she was simply accessing a shared account to make sure the couple’s finances were in order using the same login credentials she had used during their entire relationship). Worden also allegedly made a false statement to NASA’s Office of Inspector General while being interviewed.

So, there doesn’t seem to be a space crime here, but this case is remarkable for another reason: someone is actually getting charged for lying in a family law case. Are the alleged lies any worse or any more egregious than those that arise in every family law case ever? Absolutely not. But when you escalate your family squabble into outer space by involving two federal agencies, well, you’re kind of asking for it.

This astronaut-adjacent federal indictment notwithstanding, criminal consequences for lying in a family law case are extremely rare. Still, you shouldn’t be willing to bet five years of your life (or, you know, the well-being of your children) that your self-serving recollection of reality is indisputably the right one. Because it never is.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

You ever feel like you’re trapped in a dystopian version of Groundhog’s Day? Every day — hell, even the weekends — has blurred together in a kind of awful sameness. Only the smallest details change which is how you know time is, in fact, passing, no matter how slow it seems.

Your friendly Above the Law editor feels that as well. Every day we report on more Biglaw firms that find it necessary to cut something — layoffs, furloughs, and associate salary cuts — and it’s what passes for Biglaw normal these days. Only the names of the firms seem to change, which is how you know just how massive COVID-19 austerity measures have been in the industry.

Anyway, the latest firm to announce salary cuts is Hinshaw & Culbertson. The firm notched $208,549,000 in 2018 gross revenue which makes them 140 on the Am Law 200. Hinshaw has decided to cut salaries by 15 percent across the firm, for all employees making more than $55,000. This measure is to begin on April 30, 2020, and is to continue through August, subject to “constant review.”  They’ve also halted retirement savings plan matching. Plus mid-year reviews and salary adjustments, which include promotions of senior associates to partner, have been delayed, likely until January 2021.

You can read the firmwide email announcing the cuts on the next page.

We reached out to the firm for comment, but have yet to hear back.

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).