Author: TSA Press

Earlier this month Brant Bishop left his practice at Wilkinson Walsh. The litigator, who also spent 18 years as a partner at Kirkland, is not leaving for another lateral opportunity, but just because he want to spend more time with his family — he has a wife and five kids — saying, “I didn’t leave to go anywhere else except to go home.”

As Bishop told Law.com, even when he was on vacation or otherwise away from the office, the demands of his practice — and the constant stream of emails — continued.

“Someone once said the law is a jealous mistress, and I think there’s some truth to that when you’re practicing at a very high level,” Bishop said.

There wasn’t any particular bad experience that prompted Bishop’s decision. It was just the constant grind of elite legal work that made him hit pause on his career:

Bishop said there wasn’t a particular case or client or management responsibility—or a point in his personal life—that prompted his departure. Instead, he chalked up his decision to the inability to stop his work from encroaching on his personal time with his family, as well as the “nature of what we do.”

“It was very difficult to truly be away from the demands of running the firm, doing the management of the firm and doing cases,” Bishop said.

Bishop, who is 50 years old, says he might consider a reentry into the legal field someday:

“I may be too young to be permanently retired, so I don’t know if I’m retired in the sense that I’m not going to find something else to do at some point,” said the 50-year-old Bishop. “But for now the plan is to not really have much of a plan other than to spend time with family and keep my eyes open.”

But right now his focus is on family trips to Europe and Africa. And unlike family time when he was a big time partner, he won’t be constantly checking his email during the trip.

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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 solar farm will be located at Sable Chemicals’ site outside Kwekwe, in the central part of the country, and will generate power for its ammonium nitrate manufacturing facility.

40MW of the electricity generated from the project will contribute to the national grid at Sherwood Substation, 5km away from the solar plant.

Chipfumbu said “The project will see the construction of a 1 km 88kV power line from the site to interconnect into the redundant 88kV power line connecting Sable Chemicals Substation to Sherwood substation.”

“Evacuating in the national grid will go a long way as, currently the country is in desperate need of new power generation capacity and solar offers a cheap scalable solution,” he added.

The companies have also expressed hopes that the capacity of the solar plant will later be expanded to more than 150 MW. As the project feasibility study is ongoing, its construction is expected to be completed in August 2021.

The news comes at a time when the country has experienced severe power shortages highly influenced by Eksom, the South African energy company, also running out of power due to critically constrained generation capacity.

For the past 20 years, Zimbabwe has struggled to generate enough electricity to meet demands, and has had to turn to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia to top up supplies.

The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority’s generation capacity last measured in 2016 showed that the country produced only 845 MW, against a projected national demand of 2,200 MW and an installed capacity of approximately 1,940 MW, and there is hope that the new solar facility will help ease these pressures.

The existing power issue is prompting countries in the area towards new kinds of power generation.

Post published in: Featured

When tragedy falls, my phone rings. A helicopter flying Kobe Bryant and eight others crashes, and people call me. I am not a first responder, a pastor, or a crisis manager. I am not family or friend. I am just a trusts and estates attorney.

Everyone knows you need a last will and testament regardless of your  familial, marital, or financial situation. Jumpstarting the process, however, is often difficult as we do not want to contemplate our mortality. Disaster, whether a car crash, illness, or crime, is the (im)perfect impetus to take care of our affairs.

The images of fiery aircraft against the beautiful California terrain are enough to make anyone sick, scared, and depressed. The follow-up images of icon Kobe Bryant, hugging his now-deceased 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, are heart-wrenching. The interviews of Matt Mauser who together with his three young children just lost his wife and their mother, Christina, are distressing. We are human, we cannot help but hypothesize as to what would happen if we were in the helicopter, or more likely, the car, the crosswalk, or the hospital. What would our families do if we passed away? Would they have enough money? Would they have enough direction?

Kobe left behind a wife and three daughters. As a professional, his case is excruciating to review as it also involves the death and estate of minors, something no parent should ever have to address. As more details emerge, we will see what kind of estate plan Kobe Bryant established, given his large family and enormous wealth. For his spouse, it is crucial for her to review her own estate plan as she proceeds in life as a single parent. Additionally, Kobe’s estate representative may wish to investigate whether there are any legal causes of action that have arisen from the crash.

A last will and testament dictates who controls your  estate when you die. If you are over the age of 18, it is imperative that you execute a will and testament. If you die without one, your home state will determine who gets your assets based on its laws of intestacy. This means that if you do not have a spouse or children, parents or siblings, more remote relatives may receive. I have witnessed on more than one occasion, the distribution of an estate to distant cousins who had no relationship with the decedent, but received his assets because he died without a last will and testament, and they were his closest relatives according to the probate law.

Additionally, for parents, guardians of children are nominated under a last will and testament. If you do not specify your choice, the local court will decide. Without stating your wishes, a probate judge may select an individual who does not share your parenting values or worse, whom you do not like. You may not think your mother-in-law would make a good guardian, but a judge may disagree. Last wills are also excellent vehicles to deal with estate tax issues, should your assets rise to that level.

To round out an estate plan, a power of attorney and health care proxy must also be executed. A power of attorney appoints an agent to control financial decisions while you are alive but incapacitated. A health care proxy appoints an agent to control medical decisions if you are unable to voice your wishes.

Admittedly illness, incapacity, and death are difficult to talk about. Executing an estate plan must be high on your adulting list alongside annual physical and dental exams and financial planning. The good news is that once you complete estate planning, you likely do not need to repeat the process for a while, although it is important to review it from time and time. Completing an estate plan, which means actually signing the documents, also provides peace of mind, so that when tragedy, close or remote, strikes, there is no need to call me in a panic.

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Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

This was a disaster for Republicans. A total, unmitigated legal and Constitutional disaster.

—Ari Melber, MSNBC host, taking Ken Starr to task over his performance at the impeachment trial yesterday. As Melber noted, Starr’s position was wildly different than his position when he led the impeachment crusade against Bill Clinton, “He was out there shadow-boxing with himself. Constitutionally, we watched Ken Starr punch himself in the face and then walk off the floor.”

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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 David Russekoff moved from the Upper East Side to Greenwich in 2009, he knew his new lakeside lifestyle would present tax complications. After all, the chief investment officer at Perry Capital still worked in Manhattan. And he and the missus were holding on to their summer home on Shelter Island. Still, nothing insurmountable for a guy who took home more than $90 million from 2010 through 2013, nothing the accountants couldn’t figure out: Money earned in New York gets taxed by New York, money earned in Connecticut gets taxed Connecticut. Simple, relatively-speaking.

I understand that not everyone might have the same respect for arguments regarding states’ rights, but I also have to notice “both sides” invoke the principles of federalism quite regularly in two important areas:

1. State Police Power

A state’s police powers represent a fundamental right of state power granted by the Constitution. Traditionally, attempts at federal encroachment to circumvent state police powers has been condemned by legal conservatives. It was the celebrated conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who in Printz v. United States declared the federal government could not require “local police to assist in the enforcement of federal gun control law.” The political “catch,” so to speak, regarding that legal decision is that the same concept can be applied to federal immigration law, and that is how you get sanctuary cities. It is also where you can probably begin to understand how the same state police power can produce both liberal and conservative champions.

Despite past instances of grand defense by both “sides,” however, threats to state police power remain. For example, the federal policy known as “adoption” is a program where federal agencies are allowed to “circumvent state restrictions on asset seizures” by collaborating with state police and prosecutors. The adoption program was abandoned during the last presidency out of a claimed respect for federalism but was reinstituted by the current administration’s Department of Justice. With the observable electoral state push in recent years to reform civil asset forfeiture — to require a conviction before seizure for example, something federal law does not require — the reinstitution of the federal adoption program represents a gross intrusion upon state police power. The residents of those states should expect their nonelected state officers to uphold their laws. When the federal government provides gross incentivization for state officers to circumvent the law, faithfulness to state law, and thus respect to state power, is severely undermined.

This intrusion by the adoption program is made altogether worse by the fact that the feds (along with pretty much everybody else), have a terrible track record of abuse and targeting of innocents when it comes to such property seizures. Publications such as Reason have long “detailed numerous cases of people whose cars, money, and even homes were seized for petty drug crimes or, in some cases, just for having large amounts of cash on hand.” In fact, the state shift toward reforming civil asset forfeiture is driven in part by these records of abuses.

As teased above, another example of federal encroachment on state police power does in fact involve enforcement of federal immigration laws. As Damon Root of Reason explained, the federal government has sued the State of California over the California Values Act of 2017 and has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. However, again because of the Printz precedent, on the merits the federal government should lose. After all, as Root explains:

“The same logic that applied in Printz would seem to apply equally well in U.S. v. California. If it’s unconstitutional for the feds to commandeer the states into enforcing a federal gun control scheme, it’s also unconstitutional for the feds to commandeer the states into enforcing federal immigration policy.”

It remains to be seen whether this Printz doctrine will have another champion to defend it against another federal encroachment.

1. Religious Liberty

I apologize to anyone who may be sick of me discussing this topic. Maybe the reason I continually return to it is because, like others, I am simply a glutton for punishment. But I would also be remiss if I did not include this subject. Because one the most egregious proposed infringements of federal power over the states is happening right now in the Montana Department of Revenue v. Espinoza case. The facts are quite simple, the Supreme Court has held that states have the right to strengthen Establishment Clause liberty with state-specific statutes if they so choose. Moreover, even the petitioners in the Espinoza case acknowledged during oral argument that as a function of this Establishment Clause liberty, states can choose not to fund secular and religious private schools entirely. Now, you and everyone else can read right here and see that this is exactly what the Montana Supreme Court did. In 1972, during its state constitutional convention, public hearings were held in the Montana on the subject of religious liberty. Voices at the time, among whom the religious were most prominent, expressed the desire to avoid state funding of religious schools in Montana as a means to protect against state control over religious education. In accordance with these wishes, the 1972 Montana state constitutional convention adopted a “no aid” provision into its state constitution.

Accordingly, if you are a statutory or constitutional originalist, who respects state sovereignty and legislative authority, the Espinoza case should be a relatively straightforward case of the application of a recognized state liberty. However, what we are seeing from both political and legal voices in describing the Espinoza case is nothing short of incredible. According to some, the Montana Supreme Court is guilty of upholding a bigot-inspired religious discrimination by the state. To this astounding portrayal I am forced to repeat that both parties agree the Montana Supreme Court in its decision treated secular and religious private schools the same. That the record clearly illustrates the Montana State Constitutional Convention of 1972 erased its old Blaine Amendment-type system by starting “all over again.” To characterize what the Montana Supreme Court did in upholding the will of its 1972 state convention as though it is upholding a nineteenth-century Blaine Amendment-inspired form of bigotry should be journalistic/legal malpractice. Yet, during oral argument, members on the U.S. Supreme Court asked questions comparing what Montana was upholding to racial discrimination. The lesson here is that state power will always need a worthy champion.

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Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

There are a lot of times in this life where lawyers find themselves introducing needless complexity to simple human tasks. After a while lawyers become so numb to it that they it doesn’t even register that most people at parties don’t offer a 30-second spiel clarifying that they aren’t acting as a lawyer when someone tries to strike up a conversation. When we say that the law robs you of your humanity we’re not talking about representing Exxon, we’re talking about making your children sign liquidated damages agreements before throwing out their baby toys.

Few zones of humanity see more unnecessary legal meddling than the email footer. Most people conclude emails with a signature, but attorneys need to muck up the flow of the email with disclaimers and clawback edicts and privilege flags that are probably misapplied to the content. It’s not uncommon for the boilerplate below the signature to drag on longer than the email itself.

But this is a new one when it comes to boilerplate:

I DO NOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS EMAIL. I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE CHANGES TO THE CONTENTS, AND MEANINGS, OF THIS EMAIL AT ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE.

That’s from an actual attorney email from a law firm. And we’re not going to single them out, because as lawyers it’s easy to see how someone gets to the point where they write something like this. Someone tried to pull a fast one by misinterpreted some off-the-cuff comment in an email and rather than write it off as almost assuredly an isolated event or rely upon common sense stifling future bad actors, the firm decided to just throw this into the boilerplate and call it good.

But if you’re going to stretch the limits of plain talk, why not go all the way? Just load it up with as much as you want and hope the daunting block of text wards off any inquiry.

“REMEMBER THAT MY ESSENCE CANNOT BE REDUCED TO FIXED FORM RENDERING THIS COMMUNICATION BUT A TRANSIENT MARKER OF A NOW PAST REALITY. IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, SET IT FREE, IF IT COMES BACK TO YOU IT CONTAINED CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND WAS SENT IN ERROR. LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST. IF YOU DON’T STOP TO LOOK AROUND ONCE IN A WHILE, THE CONCLUSIONS REACHED ABOVE MIGHT BE INVALIDATED BY EVOLVING PRECEDENT. ALSO NOT LICENSED IN CONNECTICUT.”

In all seriousness, real people don’t talk this way and while society expects lawyers to communicate a little differently, when the boilerplate starts to strain at the seams of basic human communication, it runs the risk of alienating the clients. Protecting your practice from disingenuous bad actors can’t reach the point where it leaves reasonable clients snickering. Take some time to reevaluate the boilerplate and make sure it mimics how people talk as much as possible.

On the other hand, clients aren’t going to read the boilerplate anyway so who cares?

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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.

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In June last year, authorities in the southern African nation re-introduced the Zimbabwe dollar, ending a decade of dollarisation, in a move that sent inflation soaring to three-digit figures.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government made it illegal to charge customers in U.S. dollars, but many businesses still do. Miners and some companies in the tourism sector were, however, allowed to pay workers in dollars.

The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority said it had discovered that some businesses were charging in foreign currencies and should therefore “remit (the) taxes in foreign currencies”.

This includes value added tax, capital gains, pay-as-you-earn and income tax.

Without dollar or gold reserves, the local currency has continued to weaken against the greenback, but Mnangagwa maintains that there is no going back to dollarisation.

The opposition and some economists say Zimbabwe should abandon the local currency for the dollar to stabilise prices and encourage foreign investment.

Post published in: Featured