Author: TSA Press

This is a big week for Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the Donald Trump impeachment trial defense team to explain to the country how Nicole Brown’s real killers were secretly withholding Ukraine military aid. But Dershowitz has already achieved his greatest accomplishment — bringing Jon Lovitz back to SNL to allow everyone over 40 to say: “Remember that pathological liar sketch? That was funny… the first time.”

Acting! Genius!

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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.

It should come as no surprise that cloud computing has taken the consumer and business world by storm over the past decade. From Platform-as-a-Service offerings for businesses (Office 365 anyone?) to the availability of Software-as-a-Service to the consumer (such as Dropbox and Evernote, to name a few), the leveraging of these capabilities on the internet is transforming the way we use the internet. That said, it is also transforming the way personal data must be protected against unauthorized access and use. Data (especially personal information) on the cloud is getting rained on by hackers, and protecting against such security breaches requires a strong digital umbrella.

Again, this comes with the digital territory. As microprocessor speeds have increased, so has memory density and speed. With the increase in performance, however, came a decrease in costs relative to performance, creating powerful new architectures leveraged by technology companies (such as cloud computing) to provide easily accessible and highly useful applications to the masses. This perfect storm of performance, access, and capability is helping fuel internet hacking as well. Many saw this coming — an MIT Technology review article from 2009 rightly predicted that as security migrated to the cloud (by necessity), so would the attacks follow (by design).   In essence, the same architectures that are fueling the expansion and acceptance of the cloud are also turbocharging technologies used by hackers. From distributed denial of service attacks to sophisticated ransomware, bad actors are definitely leveraging the cloud. In fact, malware once limited to sophisticated programmers is becoming more easily accessible to those less technically proficient but equally ill-intentioned — one can now, for example, rent “ransomware-in-a-box.” Go figure.

Needless to say, that is causing information security professionals to rethink their approach to cybersecurity, especially those companies that managed service providers (MSPs) and the companies providing data security services to them. That is no more evident than the recent CloudHopper attacks — a hacking “campaign” that was far more extensive than thought. That far-reaching cyberespionage campaign was launched by a hacking group referred to as APT10 (and reportedly tied to Chinese intelligence services). According to TrendMicro, the campaign has affected “organizations in North America, Europe, South America, and Asia — and most recently managed service providers (MSPs) in: United Kingdom (U.K.), United States (U.S.), Japan, Canada, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, South Africa, India, Thailand, South Korea, and Australia.”  How?  The hack inserted itself through phishing emails and then used various tools and techniques to “hop” across the MSP network infrastructure to access and steal valuable data across the entire network. Worse, this occurred over a span of years before being detected.

At a time when the move by more companies (and clients) to cloud platforms seems almost inevitable, your company (or clients) need to adapt their information security needs to this new level of threat. More importantly, your company (or clients) need to not only be aware of this attack vector but be prepared to adapt to this ever-evolving threat landscape. It’s more than just good technological practice — it is becoming essential to limiting legal liability. As I have written before here and here, implementation of a network architecture that does not reasonably address data security exposes a company to not only loss of its own valuable IP and other data assets, but may expose it to fines and third-party claims for data breach. It’s a daunting task, but not insurmountable. Here are a few considerations to think about to help mitigate the risk:

• Balance Efficient Operation With Security Optimization. Provisioning a system for a client and configuring it to work efficiently may be good from a performance perspective, but terrible from a security one. This is even more important when third-party infrastructure is integrated in the platform. Unfortunately, there can be a tension between IT, corporate, and legal when it comes to implementation. When push comes to shove, it is essential for IT and legal/administrative to work together to achieve that balance so that acceptable performance  can be matched to acceptable business and legal risk.
• Network Segmentation Is A Good Thing. The CloudHopper attacks are instructive here — proper segmentation of networks would have helped limit privileges and “stop the hop” along that attack vector in its tracks. By segmenting sensitive information into other virtual servers and further compartmentalizing it, you will make is far more difficult for hackers to get to that information in the first place. Limiting lateral access across the platform services also helps contain potential data security liability.
• Data Encryption Is Your Friend … For Now. It should be self-evident that data encryption provides an extra level of protection that should always be considered when using cloud services. Where available, using it absolutely helps limit data risk exposure and legal liability. Unfortunately, encryption may not always be available for the application or viable from a use/performance perspective. Moreover, the inevitable dawn of quantum computing will limit the viability of current encryption mechanisms because the raw computing power makes brute force hacking of encryption keys within a reasonable time frame possible. If data encryption is available and possible, by all means use it!

I’ve said it before, so I will say it again — the fact that your company (or client) is going to be hit by a cyberattack is not a matter of if, but when. Any information security program is difficult enough for internal networks — cloud computing requires even more diligence and planning to help alleviate potential risk in this evolving threat landscape. So take the time to consider the foregoing carefully, otherwise the digital umbrella simply won’t cover as much as you think, and what’s worse, your company (or client) will pay for it.

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Tom Kulik is an Intellectual Property & Information Technology Partner at the Dallas-based law firm of Scheef & Stone, LLP. In private practice for over 20 years, Tom is a sought-after technology lawyer who uses his industry experience as a former computer systems engineer to creatively counsel and help his clients navigate the complexities of law and technology in their business. News outlets reach out to Tom for his insight, and he has been quoted by national media organizations. Get in touch with Tom on Twitter (@LegalIntangibls) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/technologylawyer), or contact him directly at tom.kulik@solidcounsel.com.

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly had an interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss Iran and Ukraine which made a lot of sense because she was talking to the guy who ostensibly understands American foreign policy and in the last few weeks he nearly started a cataclysmic war with the former while we all learned that all the President’s stooges were trying to assassinate our ambassador to the latter. Any reporter conducting a foreign policy interview that doesn’t touch those countries should be fired immediately.

Except, Pompeo didn’t want to talk about Ukraine, probably because between accepting the interview and the time he sat down with Kelly more evidence came out about the administration’s bumbling efforts and he realized every interview he gave would just be another landmine of potentially damning misstatements. So he told Kelly that he wouldn’t talk about Ukraine, a fact which she reported because she’s a reporter and that’s what reporters do.

Pompeo decided to use State Department letterhead to complain about the reporter because a public tantrum is exactly the dignified use of the office that the Founders intended:

The last dig refers to the most bizarre act of a sitting United States Secretary of State. Apparently in an effort to lash out at Kelly for asking him about his job, he had aides bring him a map without country names and dared Kelly to find Ukraine on the map. Because Kelly has an advanced degree in European Studies from FUCKING CAMBRIDGE, she pointed to Ukraine and Pompeo got even more angry. He now seems to be implying that he thinks she failed to correctly point to Ukraine which terrifyingly suggests that — given the credentials of the two parties involved — the Secretary of State of the United States thinks Bangladesh rests on the Black Sea.

Putting aside how dumb it is to try to best a European Studies expert on European geography, isn’t Ukraine one of the easiest countries to identify? Even the dullest tool in the shed knows the breadbasket of Europe has to be by Russia which is the biggest country on the map already. Everyone’s played Risk and had to jealously guard that 5 Army Europe bonus. Pompeo is, despite all appearances, a lawyer yet he apparently missed the “don’t ask questions you don’t already know the answer to” lesson because this was a downright atrocious flex.

How this story becomes fodder for law firm gossip is that Kelly is married to Williams & Connolly partner Nick Boyle, and Williams & Connolly is the firm where Mike Pompeo worked until 1997. Boyle didn’t overlap with Pompeo, joining the firm in 2001 after Pompeo bolted from legal practice. But it’s safe to say Pompeo isn’t making any friends at his old firm.

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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.

Over the past decade, digital technologies have revolutionized nearly every industry, transforming client relationships, business processes, and individual work functions. This digital transformation has been particularly acute in the world of legal operations. As illustrated in the Annual Law Department Operations Survey, the number one challenge for legal operations professionals is improving business processes in the era of digital transformation.

Legal operations has grown in strategic importance by embracing digital transformation to bring efficiency and innovation to corporate legal processes. One critical area of focus should be information management – enabling users to save, search, and work effectively with the volume of documents, emails, and messages that flow through the legal department. It’s clear from the relatively low effectiveness scores for document management revealed in the survey that traditional products are not meeting the needs of contemporary legal departments. 

Modern document management is the next step in the evolution of work product solutions for legal departments. It delivers an intuitive, consumer-like experience that empowers professionals to work more productively while enabling legal departments to be more efficient, agile, and responsive to the changing business environment. 

This approach is based on adding value in four key areas:

• Value to the user: The core objective is to empower the user by delivering a dramatically better experience. It should mirror consumer applications like Amazon and Google, with intuitive features that work the way users want to work and require minimal training. Modern document management starts with a clean, modern interface, accessible on any device including personal computers, phones, or tablets.
• Value to the information: Modern document management is more than a file repository; it adds smart features and capabilities to enhance the value of information. For example, it anticipates user actions, with smart document previews, suggested filing locations, and personalized search that delivers more accurate results by remembering what you search for most often. It integrates with the tools that legal professionals use including matter management, contract management, and workflow software.
• Value to the organization: Improving the individual user experience while enhancing the value of information delivers profound benefits at the organizational level. Modern document management helps legal organizations become more efficient and productive while delivering better outcomes. Cloud delivery models enhance organizational agility with rapid deployment, automated updates, and the flexibility to add new functionality as needed.
• Comprehensive security: Legal organizations have stringent requirements for securing documents from both internal and external threats. Modern document management delivers comprehensive security, built on established industry best practices, to protect information assets. These protections are augmented by comprehensive governance, security and risk mitigation features including need-to-know security, and ethical walls, to govern information access.

The Swiss may not take money laundering or tax evasion as seriously as some other countries, but insider-trading is another matter, as Kashya Hildebrand will tell you. Now, they don’t take it quite as seriously as the U.S. takes all the things of which John Stumpf stands accused, but someone’s gonna be operating a ski lift or making Ricola or delivering pizza or whatever else it is that Swiss people barred from involvement in banking do to keep themselves busy.

Finma said the former CEO made unlawful profits over several years from trades through his wife’s accounts at other banks, based on sensitive market information. It is confiscating 730,000 Swiss francs and said the CEO can’t be a manager for four years or work as a securities dealer for six years.

Supervisory law was “repeatedly and systematically violated” by the CEO, it said.

The trades also broke internal rules at his bank, the regulator said.

Switzerland Bans Unnamed Former Bank CEO Over Insider Trading [WSJ]

The child and his big brother went into their backyard and threw ground balls to each other to practice fielding.  When the big brother started playing Little League baseball, the two practiced more often. But when the older brother turned 12, and played his last Little League game, the brother gave the sad news: “There’s no reason to practice fielding ground balls anymore.”

Things are worth pursuing only if there’s a goal, of course.

The child sometimes sent away for stuff by mail.

While he waited, he was excited; there was anticipation. And then the package arrived, which was okay. But not nearly as good as the anticipation.

When the child was in high school, he’d practice shooting hoops, and he’d dream about the state championship he’d win one day.

He never did.

As a young man, he dreamed about the person that he’d meet who would change his life. The anticipation carried him through the bad times.

After law school, the young man went to a firm. He argued an appeal that was pretty significant for a person of his age. One of the old-timers at the firm told him, “You just might win this case, and it’s the sort of victory that could launch your career.” He won, but there was no obvious launch.

He published an article in a fairly well-known journal. He dreamed about the business that would come in, making him a leader within the firm. A matter or two came in, but the Earth didn’t shake.

Every once in a while he bought a lottery ticket: “I know that I’m not going to win. But it’s worth a buck to imagine for 24 hours how I’d spend the hundred million if I did.” He never won, of course.

There was a competition to select the next leader of the man’s practice within the firm. He dreamed of how his life would change if only he were picked.

Maybe he got the job; maybe he didn’t.

He reached the firm’s retirement age, and there was no reason to practice fielding ground balls any more.

But wait!  The next trip!  Just imagine how great the week in New Zealand will be!

There’s always room to dream about the destination. There’s hardly any reason to enjoy the trip along the way.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Before there was ever an Amazon, you could buy books. Before there was ever a Starbucks, you could buy coffee. Before there was ever an Uber, you could hire a car. Before there was ever a Netflix, you could watch movies.

What drove these companies’ success was not that they introduced new products. It was that they changed the experience of how you consume products that already existed. They made it so you can get what you want, quickly and easily and in a way that you understand.

As Jack Newton, cofounder and CEO of the practice management company Clio, writes in his new book, The Client-Centered Law Firm: How to Succeed in an Experience-Driven World, “You didn’t get value solely from the product you were buying; you got value from your experience buying the product as well.”

We all get this when it comes to buying new headphones on Amazon or booking a rental on Airbnb. But for some reason, many legal professionals still do not get that this applies to them, as well — to the services they deliver and to the experience they provide in delivering those services.

That is the message Newton convincingly conveys in this book, which is being released Jan. 28 and is available for pre-order now through Amazon or Clio’s website — that there is enormous opportunity for firms to thrive by melding the legal services they already offer with a better client experience. And for firms that want to pursue that opportunity, the book provides a roadmap.

“Companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber aren’t only changing expectations in their respective industries: they’re changing expectations in all industries,” Newton writes. “If you’re used to seeing exactly what you’ll get and what you’ll pay up-front when booking a vacation rental, why would you expect any less when working with a law firm?”

Yet many lawyers are still taxi drivers in an age of rideshare. They stubbornly cling to old ways of doing things and protest when innovators challenge their turf.

This has created an anomalous gap: Clients are not happy with the experience they get from lawyers, and many avoid even using a lawyer for their legal issues, while lawyers spend a lot of time trying to get more clients and are concerned about not having enough.

The solution, Newton argues, is simple and lies in proving a better client experience.

“If lawyers focused on giving clients the simplified experience they wanted, their clients would be happier, more likely to engage with a lawyer, and more likely to encourage others to do so as well,” he writes. “All of this would mean better reviews and more referrals for law firms, improving bottom lines. Law firms need to change their business models to match an environment where experience is king.”

Of course, providing a better client experience is easier said than done. It is one thing for a firm to want to change. It is quite another to figure out how to change and make that change endure.

That is the goal of this book. As Newton describes it, “This book is both a rallying call for a tectonic shift in the legal industry and a handbook for becoming a client-centered law firm.”

The book is organized in three parts:

• Part 1 is that rallying cry — an overview of how and why the legal market is changing and why it matters for firms to adopt a client-centered approach.
• Part 2 is definitional — discussing what it means for a firm to be client-centered and how a firm cultivates a client-centered mindset.
• Part 3 is the blueprint — a manual for designing processes, shifting culture, getting internal buy-in, and measuring success.

For firms that become client-centered, the opportunity is enormous, Newton argues. While estimates put the size of the U.S. legal market at $437 billion, that does not take into account the estimated 77% of people in the U.S. who, according to estimates from the World Justice Project, did not get help for their legal issues in 2018. While the causes of this are many and complex, it is at least partly due to poor product-market fit.

“If innovative legal practitioners can create a better product-market fit between the services lawyers offer and how consumers want (or need) to buy them — for example, by making services more efficient and affordable — they’ll gain more clients and grow their firms like never before,” Newton argues.

Who is Jack Newton and what qualifies him to write a book such as this? As cofounder and CEO of Clio over the past dozen years, he has built an enormously successful practice management company, one that last year raised a jaw-dropping $250 million funding round — one of the largest investments ever for a legal technology company.

Clio is also home to the annual Legal Trends Report, a data-driven analysis of what fuels law firm growth and success, how clients find lawyers, and how legal services are delivered. In this book, Newton regularly taps into this rich resource to substantiate his arguments.

On top of all that, he is someone who has come to know the legal profession well and many lawyers and firms on a first-hand basis. Throughout this book, he is able to provide real stories of real firms that illustrate his points. He cites, for example, the Tacoma, Wash., firm Palace Law’s creation of a chatbot to help assess worker-compensation claims.

The most significant lesson of this book is that becoming client-centered is not about simply adopting some flashy idea that makes a big splash. It is about embracing change as a constant and ongoing state, about what Newton describes as setting in motion a flywheel within your firm that generates a perpetual process of growth.

“If you commit to staying open to change, and keep putting effort in to iterate on the way your firm operates, your flywheel will only spin faster and faster, and you’ll succeed in the modern era of law firms,” Newton writes.

Becoming client-centered is a state of mind, as much as anything – how you think about your clients, your services, your firm, and yourself – and one that is crucial, he argues, to avoiding becoming a dinosaur.

“Provide a better experience by paying attention to what your legal clients truly need, and you’ll generate more revenue, outperform your competitors, and earn more positive referrals,” Newton says. “Ignore what your clients want, and your firm may go the way of Blockbuster.”

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Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

If you’ve got to wait until January to learn about your bonus, the least the firm can do is toss you a little extra to make it worth the wait.

Latham & Watkins is a January bonus player who understands the pain of waiting while your peers at other firms celebrate holiday bonuses. So again this year, Latham is offering a sliding scale of bonuses that top the market base for most associates.

Here are the median and top bonuses by class year announced in the Latham memo. Bonus payments kick in at a 1900-hour minimum:

Comparing these numbers to last year, there’s definitely a bump for the big revenue firm. Taking the median bonuses of each year:

	2019 Median	2020 Median
1st	$15,000	$15,000
2nd	$25,000	$25,875
3rd	$52,500	$53,000
4th	$68,500	$71,500
5th	$85,000	$88,500
6th	$97,500	$100,000
7th	$107,500	$116,000

Last year, the table included one more class year at $110,000. They appear to be sucked up into the 7th year plus class this time around. Otherwise, the firm is showing off another strong year of growth.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

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

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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.

* Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, is now representing herself after her lawyers quit for lack of payment. [Fox Business]

* President Trump’s impeachment lawyers began their defense over the weekend, and the impeachment trial is scheduled to resume today. [Washington Post]

* Jon Lovitz played Alan Dershowitz on SNL this past weekend. Seems like SNL could find someone who looks a little more like Dershowitz… [Daily Beast]

* A gamer has lost a lawsuit claiming human rights abuses for being muted on a popular online game. [Vice]

* The Supreme Court of Canada just heard a case about whether corporations have protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Can’t wait for that argument to be made in the States. [The Conversation]

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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.

INTERNATIONAL – Farai Mapondera sits at a Shell filling station about 500 yards from the Beitbridge border post that separates South Africa and Zimbabwe. 

It’s 3 p.m. and 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit) so he’s slouched against his battered Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, waiting for the sun to set before he tackles a crossing plagued by delays, corruption and chaos.

 

Beitbridge is one of Africa’s busiest land border crossings. 

About 25,000 people and 500 heavy trucks cross every 24 hours and, in summer, the temperatures are searing. 

Mapondera is a runner, or malaicha, a slang term meaning “deliverer of goods.” Twice a week he transports items between South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, and Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

 

But delays at the border and breakdowns can reduce his trips to as few as three a month. If it’ll fit in his van or on the over-loaded trailer he tows, he’ll take it. The trailer towers over the Sprinter and it looks precariously balanced, tied down with bits of rope and netting. The 1,200 kilometer (745 miles) journey takes him about 24 hours — if he’s lucky.

 

“If there are delays you can spend a whole 24 hours trying to cross” the border, Mapondera said. “The roads in Zimbabwe are terrible, so punctures are common, also breakdowns, so sometimes it can take much longer.”

 

The malaicha exist because Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has destroyed much of the normal infrastructure of trade and foreign currency is scarce. That, and a drought, have made it even more difficult to acquire basic consumer goods.

 

While it’s impossible to put a value on the goods runners move across Africa because they avoid duties and taxes, they are organized and efficient. They even have a website and an app. They’re used by rich and poor to bring in goods at the lowest possible price and will deliver to your door anything from a freezer to a mobile phone — and even an envelope stuffed with cash.

 

Three Border Crossings

Parked next to Mapondera, Josiah Banda is underneath an old Iveco van, tying the exhaust to the chassis with wire. He’s on his way to Blantyre, Malawi’s economic capital that’s another 1,200 kilometers northeast, and he faces two more border crossings.

 

“It’s hard to say who are worse,” Banda says, rubbing his soot-covered hands on his trousers. “South African immigration can make you move from one queue to another for no reason. They’re very rude.”

 

Driving in Zimbabwe isn’t too bad, but once you hit Mozambique you’re expected to pay bribes at the border and to police along the road, he said.

 

“In Malawi, people complain that everything is expensive; well, this is why everything costs so much.”