Author: TSA Press

Reed Smith partner Eric Dubelier’s representation of Concord Management and Consulting, the company owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin that was indicted as part of the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has seemingly devolved into farce. As a recap, Dubelier has already been benchslapped by the sitting judge — and Trump appointee no less — Dabney Friedrich of the District of Columbia for what she called “unprofessional, inappropriate, and ineffective” comments — a move he didn’t take kindly to.

The latest development in the case is no less contentious. At a hearing in the case earlier today Judge Friedrich indicated there was a strong likelihood that Concord Management failed to comply with the government’s subpoena. As reported by Courthouse News, Dubelier’s reaction was more akin to an emotional outburst:

Accusing the judge of taking a tone that suggests that the defense counsel is engaged in something “sneaky,” Dubelier pounded his fist on the lectern.

“I am not! I am not!” the lawyer said, his voice shaking.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Jed’s concerns about Concord’s compliance preceded Dubelier’s emotional response, when he said, “We are starting to have some concerns about whether Concord is participating in this case.” To which Dubelier had a predictably forceful response, “It’s bogus… It’s a ridiculous argument.”

Friedrich’s response was described as “calmly wav[ing] off Dubelier’s accusations” of favoritism.

In the document dispute, Dubelier said that Concord produced all documents in its possession. However, Judge Friedrich said that the assurances of production must come from a Concord employee, as Dubelier, “cannot fill that role here, clearly.”

Jed questioned the adequacy of an affidavit to signal compliance, particularly given the weight of the accusations against Concord, “It gives us pause … that they are just going to write something down and give it to the U.S. government.” Jed urged the court to hold Concord in contempt. In the interim, Friedrich ordered Concord to submit an affidavit from someone at Concord describing the steps it took to search for the requested records by 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

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).

As COVID-19, a novel coronavirus strain that has not been previously identified in humans, spreads around the world, it is often up the office of general counsel to help companies be ready, stay nimble, and continue to thrive during the epidemic. This crisis highlights the increasingly critical role for, and impact of corporate counsel in, the modern world. In my informal survey of about fifty general counsels, here are the top five ways that they are planning to help their companies during a potential coronavirus outbreak.

Interpreting And Implementing The Guidelines

Did your law school prepare you to interpret and implement guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, and other public health institutions? The office of general counsel often leads internal responses to health crises to ensure that everyone is informed, prepared, and productive.

Protecting Contract Assets 

The most important assets and relationships in the company are contractual. They form the skeleton of any successful enterprise. And interpreting them is key to that success. For example, including a force majeure clause, a contract provision that allows a party to suspend or terminate the performance of its obligations under certain circumstances, has become the new normal in contractual agreements. Interpreting this largely dormant provision in your contract can make a huge difference in a company’s profits, reputation, and critical business relationships.

Revamping Internal Policies

Offices of general counsel are being tasked with proposing various coronavirus-related policies. These range from office etiquette policies to travel policies and a variety of others. Communicating these with clarity in a way that is legal, fair, and ethical across the board is no small challenge.

Assuring Work-Arrangement Readiness

Helping employees navigate confusing and uncertain times is also critical. For example, the coronavirus epidemic has acutely raised the issue of proper remote-working arrangement readiness. Does your company have proper policies in place? Does it have the proper technology to facilitate a consistent productive working day where teammates working from home are accountable and feel connected across the globe?

Updating The Business Continuity Plans

It is essential to have business continuity or systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company. They enable ongoing operations before and during execution of disaster recovery. If your business has a significant global presence, chances are your company has had to actively think through how to mitigate an impact. The office of general counsel often leads, or at a minimum support, this critical endeavor.

The rise of the modern general counsel movement is here to stay. In-house lawyers are uniquely positioned to lead companies through coronavirus and another unexpected challenges. Their ability to navigate novel and unusual obstacles, provide correct and consistent guidance, and make sure that the company is prepared are only some of the ways the robust office of general counsel is increasingly indispensable to every company.

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw, an organization dedicated to preparing women in-house attorneys to become general counsels and legal leaders, and WISE to help female law firm partners become rainmakers. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack. 

It looked like the foot traffic at this year’s ABA TECHSHOW was down. That’s not a scientific assessment by any means, but walking an exhibit hall floor, you remember every congested corner and can just feel when things aren’t quite as crowded as before. Some folks mused that the show might be in decline, but officials explained that attendance was actually up this year. What could possibly be going on?

Historically, Legalweek and ABA TECHSHOW provided a technology one-two winter conference punch. Legalweek brings the legal technology circuit to New York City to show to a mostly Biglaw audience, and TECHSHOW brings everyone to Chicago to talk “Small Law.” It’s not a perfect division of labor, but it’s the philosophical division that shapes each program.

So why did it feel smaller with attendance actually up? Part of it could  definitely be chalked up to folks attending the show’s excellent programming — and a quick aside here to acknowledge the diverse faculty put together by the show — and skipping out on the exhibit hall. That does make the whole affair feel a little less crowded when people are divided into a number of ballrooms and not crammed into one hall.

But that doesn’t explain all of it. It seems, at least from my cursory review, that the reason the byways of the exhibit hall felt less crowded is that the balance of attendance has shifted a bit in favor of vendors and exhibitors. While sitting around the podcasting mics, I heard a note of concern. “If the clients aren’t massively outnumbering the vendors, doesn’t that spell doom?” some mused.

Not only doesn’t that spell doom, it actually speaks to the evolution of the legal technology space and TECHSHOW deserves credit for evolving along with it. There’s a superficial view of legal tech that assumes it’s all about the vendors selling to the lawyers and while that’s certainly the ultimate goal in this business, the horizontal sales may be just as important.

For the last several years, we’ve all agreed that “consolidation” is the watchword of the space. Companies merge, platforms integrate, new entrepreneurs pop up, and the cycle repeats. For a startup legal tech provider with a killer app focused on a tiny corner of the practice, it’s as important to impress the heavy-hitters flush with private equity funds as it is a divorce lawyer from Peoria.

Even companies not looking to get bought could use some networking. Not to deploy the corporate speak, but there are synergies out there. Can this client intake bot be a boon to that CRM platform? Can the tech underneath this MedMal tool become a soft-IP solution? Technically this anecdote was from Legalweek, but Opus 2 told me that even though they focus on litigation and dispute resolution, they’ve gotten inquiries from other areas about adapting the underlying tech for transactional work. That’s the sort of result that can come from connecting with peers.

Someone worried out loud that a show moving in the direction of more exhibitors becomes a “vendor echo chamber” — except they didn’t say “echo chamber” and absolutely referenced another form of communal recreation. I responded, “I’m not sure the legal tech space doesn’t need those.” Sometimes it’s critical to providing the best product to the consumer that people pull themselves away from their own work and see what everyone else is doing.

I can’t count the number of times over the last few years that I’ve had a sad meetup with someone promising a product to deliver some “first-of-its-kind” capability when I could already think of three vendors who provided that last year. Figuring out where everyone else is can be the first step to serving the client.

Whether or not TECHSHOW invited this — and it could just have happened slowly without any conscious philosophical change — it’s to the show’s credit to recognize that it doesn’t need to judge its success by having throngs of lawyers outnumbering exhibitors 10 to 1. There’s an opportunity to provide value to attendees coming at the show from all different angles.

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.

It’s a bummer. I mean, we have put a ton of time into it. We spent most of our winter break writing the briefs for the tournament. We had already begun practicing, researching more, we already knew which teams we were ready to face… we were ready to go so it was a real bummer that we didn’t get to take our trip to Rome and didn’t get to compete in the tournament.

— Jim Scales, a second-year law student at the University of Notre Dame Law School, expressing his disappointment that the International Moot Court Competition on Religious Freedom that was supposed to be held in Rome, Italy, this week was canceled due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

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.

We’re only two months into 2020, but already it feels like there’s a cottage industry surrounding judges accused of wildly inappropriate behavior. The latest story is about Broome County, New York Judge Richard Miller II who works in family court. In a recent decision, the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct has recommended that Miller be fired for a “pattern of inappropriate behavior.”

As has become de rigueur when talking about judicial misconduct cases, included in the “inappropriate” behavior is harassing and sexist comments. As reported by ABA Journal:

Miller also made “extremely inappropriate and sexist remarks” to the deputy chief clerk, the commission said. The deputy chief clerk testified that after a luncheon, where employees brought dishes to share, the judge told her that he liked her food and that “if I knew you could also cook, I would have gone for the widow.” He said he was also a widow, according to the commission.

In another incident, the deputy chief clerk said she was hot and needed to use a fan. The judge, who was in her office, told her that “it’s nice to know I still have that effect on you.” He later commented on her appearance in a third incident, telling her “you look really hot in that outfit,” and that she “should always wear that outfit.”

When confronted with complaints about his behavior, the commission reports Miller was under the mistaken impression it was the burden of those to whom he made inappropriate comments to tell him the comments were inappropriate as opposed to on him to, you know, not make sexist comments:

“Compounding his misconduct, respondent appears to be under the misapprehension that the women he denigrated and to whom he made the sexist comments had an obligation to tell him that they did not approve of his comments,” according to the commission. “To the contrary, it was incumbent upon respondent to not make sexist comments to a court employee. Similarly, it was also his responsibility to avoid behaving discourteously toward court employees.”

Plus, the commission found that Miller asked his secretary do work unrelated to her official duties and he failed to disclose personal income on tax returns and court records.

When deciding to recommend termination for Miller, as opposed to a censure, because Miller had been censured before, in 2002, the commission said, “Under these circumstances, if respondent were to be censured again and allowed to remain on the bench, we believe public confidence in the courts and the judicial disciplinary process would be undermined.”

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).