Zimbabwe freezes Chinese firm’s account over currency manipulation – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya

.

The southern African nation reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar last June, ending a decade of dollarisation, but this resulted in runaway inflation, which economists say reached 520% in December.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya, in a statement late on Friday, singled out unlisted China Nanchang as a currency manipulator.

Mangudya said the RBZ financial intelligence unit (FIU) had identified Nanchang as a company that had used millions of Zimbabwe dollars to buy greenbacks on the black market, weakening the local unit.

Nanchang is the major contractor for the construction of a dam that is set to supply water to Zimbabwe’s drought-hit second biggest city Bulawayo, among other government contracts.

“The FIU has ordered the freezing of the identified account pending further analysis and is undertaking ongoing surveillance to identify more culprits involved in the parallel market transactions,” Mangudya said.

The central bank did not say if the account was held with RBZ or with another bank.

A spokesman for Nanchang could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Zimbabwe dollar was trading at 25 to the U.S. dollar on the black market on Saturday compared to 22 last week. On the official market, the local currency was pegged at 17.

Last year, the central bank temporarily froze accounts belonging to four companies over the same charges.

A weakening currency along with shortages of cash, foreign exchange, fuel and electricity are among symptoms of Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis confronting President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Post published in: Featured

Zimbabwe urged to prioritise children as record poverty causes food shortages – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Children in Mafomoti village, in Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district, wait while their mothers prepare their only meal of the day. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

Poverty has reached unprecedented levels in Zimbabwe, with more than 70% of Zimbabwean children in rural areas living in poverty, a UN study has found.

The report, compiled by Unicef and the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, shows high levels of privation in rural areas, where 76.3% of children live in abject poverty. Statistics seen by the Guardian suggest that almost half of these children do not have enough of the right food to eat.

Humanitarian organisations have warned that if nothing is done to address food security issues in Zimbabwe, child poverty will escalate further.

“In rural areas, all land use areas have [a] high prevalence of poor children, but communal and resettlement areas are slightly worse; urban areas in rural provinces also have high rates of child poverty,” said the report’s authors.

Child poverty is more prevalent in Mashonaland Central, Manicaland and Matabeleland North.

Laylee Moshiri, a Unicef representative in Zimbabwe, urged the country’s government to monitor child poverty.

“Unicef calls on the government of Zimbabwe to recognise child poverty as a national policy priority and protect children from its most devastating effects throughout its reform agenda,” said Moshiri.

“We hope that our support for the country’s efforts to assess and report on … monetary and multidimensional child poverty measurements will inform a national policy framework for poverty reduction that has children at its centre, as part of the 2030 agenda.”

 A woman pours food aid into a sack at a distribution point for Mafomoti primary school in Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

Zimbabwe is facing one of the most severe droughts in its history. About 5.5 million people in rural Zimbabwe face starvation.

According to Reuters, Zimbabwe’s agriculture minister, Perrance Shiri, said this week that the country has less than 100,000 tonnes of grain in its strategic reserves. The grain reserve has a 500,000-tonne capacity, but has been run down after a poor harvest. Zimbabwe consumes 80,000 tonnes of maize every month.

The World Food Programme says it needs a further $200m (£152m) to meet hunger needs in the country.

The report’s authors called on the country to adopt policies such as feeding programmes and food aid.

With households fast running out of food, most children of school age are in danger of starvation. Schoolchildren often faint during class, according to humanitarian organisations, heightening calls for food aid in schools.

Zimbabwe has a young population, with 48% of people under the age of 18.

Poverty remains a predominantly rural problem, said the report’s authors, who estimated that about 20% of urban children live in poverty.

The World Bank estimates that extreme poverty in Zimbabwe has risen over the past year, from 29% in 2018 to 34% in 2019, an increase from 4.7 to 5.7 million people. The bank predicts levels will continue to rise in 2020.

The surge in poverty has been attributed to acute food shortages as a result of the current economic crisis and the crippling effects of the El Niño-induced drought on agricultural productivity.

Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, last year warned that Zimbabwe was on the verge of manmade starvation, adding that children would be the most affected as guardians fail to provide a balanced diet.

She said the drought had also affected children’s health, with nearly 90% of Zimbabwean infants experiencing malnutrition and stunted growth.

Zimbabwe’s farmers lament: ‘The taxes are just too much’ – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Zimbabwe’s agricultural minister told officials this week that the country has only 100,000 tonnes of maize left in its strategic reserves – enough to last just over a month [File: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters]

Chegutu, Zimbabwe – Dressed in torn, baggy safari shorts, a khaki shirt, gumboots and a sun hat, 55-year-old farmer Joseph Mupakare sits on a hand-made wooden stool at his farm in Chegutu in Zimbabwe‘s Mashonaland West province, staring at the barren blue sky.

Mupakare’s livelihood – like most Zimbabweans – has been roiled by the vagaries of a rapidly deteriorating economy. Annualised inflation in the troubled Southern African nation is believed to have topped 500 percent last year.

But as someone who makes their living tilling the land, Mupakare’s financial pain has been exacerbated by a deluge of crushing taxes and levies.

“The taxes are just too much,” Mupakare told Al Jazeera.

That pressure is not simply borne by farmers. Once considered Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe is suffering from a food crisis one of its worst droughts in recent history.

The 2019 maize harvest was roughly half of the previous year’s. This week, the country’s agricultural minister told officials that Zimbabwe has only 100,000 tonnes of maize left in its strategic reserves – enough to last just over a month.

The World Food Programme, which plans to assist more than four million Zimbabweans this year, is predicting another dismal harvest in April.

Colonial legacy compounded by new levies

Zimbabwe’s farmers are grappling with a legacy of colonial-era laws, compounded by national and local taxes that have been levied since the country declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1980.

“Farmers just have too many taxes imposed on them,” said Edward Dune, chief executive of the Zimbabwe National Farmers Union (ZNFU).

“There is the rural development tax which is paid to the local government authorities, the tobacco levy on the tobacco farmer and the livestock levy,” he told Al Jazeera.

There is also a 10 percent withholding tax on produce.

The experience of tobacco farmers lays bare just how onerous the tax burden has become.

Tobacco is among the country’s most valuable export commodities, earning $933m in 2016. But those who choose to farm the crop, including Mukapare, must run a gauntlet of taxes that erode their already slim profit margins.

There is 0.75 percent government tax on all tobacco delivered to auction, and a 0.8 percent levy charged by the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board for the gross value of tobacco sold at the auction. The Ministry of Agriculture also deducts $0.875 per kilogramme from the gross value of tobacco sold at the auction.

Before their crops even get to market though, tobacco farmers must play compliance levies for sustainable land management, including afforestaion (planting new forests) and reforestation taxes.

“I owe local authorities around 400 Zimbabwe dollars ($20 at black market exchange rates) for various taxes and levies and the government, as well,” Mukapare said.

Livestock producers also face punishing taxes.

A study conducted by the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) found that while the country’s cattle is competitively priced for the region, compliance levies on Zimbabwe’s livestock farmers make it an uncompetitive enterprise.

“For all commodities produced in Zimbabwe, the cost of compliance is just huge,” ZFU president Paul Zakaria told Al Jazeera. “We have done a cost of compliance in the beef industry and they are not making money because of the cost of compliance.”

All of which bodes poorly for an agro-based economy like Zimbabwe’s.

“The sad thing is that farmers pay these taxes but they do not see any benefit in doing so,” economist and founder of Bullion Group, Persistence Gwanyanya, told Al Jazeera. “These taxes should bring tangible benefits to farmers but unfortunately they are not.”

The hyperinflation factor

If farmers fail to pay taxes, they could face penalties ranging from fines to jail time. But paying the myriad levies has become even tougher as the country wrestles with a severe economic crisis and the government scrambles to fill depleting coffers.

“On one hand, there is the government trying to raise taxes to finance operations and on the other hand, raising costs of production for the farmer,” Agricultural economist Mandivamba Rukuni told Al Jazeera.

Government missteps have also contributed to the higher agricultural production costs, said Rukuni.

“Government has lost control of the country’s agro-chemical industry and now relies on imports for the industry,” he noted.

The twin burden of economic crisis and drought has already led many farmers to leave their fields fallow this season.

As hyperinflation has eroded the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, prices for inputs, including seeds and fertilizer, have soared. That’s left many small farmers in a nation of smallholders unable to close the gap between increasingly costly agricultural supplies and their now-worthless savings.

In addition to tobacco, Mupakare said he will plant more than 20 hectares (49 acres) of maize when conditions are good. But they are far from ideal.

A 50-kilogramme bag (110 lbs) of compound D fertiliser costs 400 Zimbabwean dollars ($20). Mupakare says he needs at least nine bags per hectare, plus around five bags of fertilizer that currently sell for 450 Zimbabwean dollars ($22.50) each. Add in the cost of seeds and that works out to 5,250 Zimbabwean dollars (US$262.50) to plant just one hectare of maize.

The Zimbabwean government has made low-cost loans available to farmers, but Mupakare says stringent conditions that require him to pledge his farm as collateral, plus the weather, make the risk of foreclosure too great.

“The weather is looking like it’s going to be a drought. When I fail to repay the loan they will go after the security,” he said. “I am not planting any crops this season.”

Zimbabwe VP scolded for using soldiers in divorce dispute – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Constantino Chiwenga  (Photo by Jekesai NJIKIZANA / AFP)Constantino Chiwenga

The ruling is the latest twist in a case that has gripped the southern African nation with allegations of black magic, attempted murder and drug addiction. The case has provided a glimpse of the luxurious lives of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite as the rest of the country grapples with economic collapse, hyperinflation and hunger.

The wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, Marry, had approached the court seeking custody of the children and access to the house, a farm and vehicles. She said they were taken from her by Chiwenga when she was detained for more than three weeks on accusations of trying to kill him and money laundering.

After his wife was released from prison on bail earlier this month, Chiwenga refused to give her custody of the children and vehicles, and used soldiers to block her from entering their house in a wealthy suburb of the capital, Harare.

“It is unacceptable and anathema to the constitutional values of this jurisdiction that the military may be used to settle a matrimonial dispute,” said Judge Christopher Dube-Banda.

“This is frightening. What happened to the applicant (Marry) must be a cause of fear and concern to all law-abiding citizens,” he said. He ordered Chiwenga to return the children as well as three Mercedes-Benz vehicles and a Lexus to his estranged wife “forthwith.” He also said soldiers should not block Marry from accessing their home and farm.

Chiwenga, who as army commander led a coup against former president Robert Mugabe in 2017, separated from his wife, a former model, after he returned from four months of medical treatment in China in December.

He claimed his wife tried to kill him while he was on a hospital bed in neighboring South Africa before he was airlifted to China. He described her in court papers as “violent” and a drug addict who used black magic.

On her part, Marry accused her husband of being a “dangerous” man who “can summon the army when it suits him … to deal with perceived opponents” and suffering from “acute paranoia brought about by his poor health” and “his being under heavy doses of drugs, including un-prescribed opiates.”

The divorce case has not started, but even in its preliminary stages the bitter wrangle has “gone a long way to expose the depth of moral decay that has pervaded our national leaders,” the privately owned The Standard newspaper said.

“The divorce case presents our national leaders as completely out of touch with the reality that the citizens of this country are among the poorest in the region and the continent,” the weekly newspaper said in an editorial this week.

Post published in: Featured

Every Judge Has Limits — See Also

Posted on by TSA Press

News Media Aren’t Biased. You Are.

Posted on by TSA Press

It’s not exactly news that public sentiment toward the news has been abysmally low these past few years, with a September Gallup poll showing only 41% of Americans trust the media. Along with that mistrust, there’s the perception that journalists and the organizations that employ us are politically biased.

Although numerous academic studies and think pieces have sought to determine where that mistrust and perception of bias come from, I have a simpler answer: We’re not the ones who are biased – you are.

Of course, I use “you” in the proverbial sense. But after many social media battles with people on the left and the right who regard news media – especially of the mainstream variety – as irredeemable garbage, I’ve come to the conclusion that such low opinions of our profession and industry stem not from anything we are collectively doing wrong. Rather, they’re almost entirely a symptom of political polarization, mistrust in traditional institutions and ignorance about how we actually do our jobs.

That would seem to be why, at least in my experience, negative generalizations about news media and accusations of bias and untrustworthiness seem most frequent among those who dwell in the further reaches of the political left and right. It’s also why such politically motivated detractors flock to openly partisan or “adversarial” outlets and writers who affirm their worldviews while irresponsibly pandering to their cynicism toward mainstream media.

Of course, left- and right-wing journo haters have given me explanations of their own. From the left, I’m told that the failure of most mainstream outlets to discredit the case for the war in Iraq is why mainstream media suck. Those on the right cite a handful of discredited reports about the Trump administration to make the same case. In other words, we’re at once both “enemies of the people” in a conspiracy against the Republican party and corporate shills for centrist Democrats serving as pen-wielding foot soldiers of American imperialism. Schrodinger’s cat would be impressed.

Of course, our profession has seen some monumental screw-ups. The failure around the Iraq war is a black mark to this day. And the infamous campus rape story in the Rolling Stone was bad enough to warrant a devastating autopsy in Columbia Journalism Review. More recently, the pile-on against 16-year-old Nick Sandmann after he smirked at a Native American man in a short video – followed by subsequent video showing things were not as simple as they appeared – is still cited by right-wingers looking to ridicule us.

But does that really explain – let alone justify – the ill will toward us? After all, it’s estimated that nearly a quarter of 1 million people die each year in the U.S. from medical errors, yet a Pew Research poll in September showed nearly three-quarters of Americans had an overall positive view of physicians. And despite catastrophes like the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, 66% of respondents in a Gallup poll gave engineers their thumbs-up.

As for alleged partisan bias, a frequent charge is that it is evident in the stories choose to cover, also known as gatekeeper bias. Yet, a recent study pending publication in the journal Science Advances found that while journalists are indeed more likely to have liberal political views, a correspondence experiment – the kind used to detect racial and gender bias in hiring decisions – that offered journalists news stories about conservative and liberal political candidates found no liberal or conservative bias in which stories they chose to pick up.

So what gives? I have a possible answer: It’s not that we’re biased or lack credibility, but rather that people – especially those with stronger left- or right-wing views – resent that the news we report isn’t always what they want to hear. Left wingers want us to say how evil corporations and American foreign policy are, not read about quarterly earnings or troop deployments, courtesy of the view from nowhere. Right wingers are sick and tired of bad news about the Trump administration and want us to sing hymns of praise to him instead.

To give one example of what I’m talking about – and what inspired this piece – I recently had a Twitter spat with a left-winger who was of the view that the mainstream media are “garbage,” based on their failure to stop the Iraq war and their reporting on Russiagate, which many on the far left – and the right – have long dismissed as mostly or entirely a hoax.

All that reporting on Russiagate, my interlocutor charged, “stole energy” from more important stories like climate change. And, he thought to mention, the Afghanistan Papers showed how that war was a mess from the start.

I reminded him that it was a mainstream news outlet, namely the former Knight-Ridder, that reported early on that the U.N. had found no WMDs in Iraq. It was another member of the mainstream media, The Washington Post, that broke the Afghanistan Papers story. And as for Russiagate “stealing” energy, I informed him that it didn’t because news organizations had other reporters covering other stories at the same time, including on climate change. I guess he just didn’t see them.

That gets to another reason I think there’s so much mistrust and why the customer, in this particular case, is not right: Most people simply don’t understand how journalism and news media work. They don’t know where reporting and editing end and where punditry and op-eds begin, often conflating the two. They don’t know how different reporters cover different beats, how news value is assessed and how stories are assigned, instead subscribing to spooky conspiracy theories about the “MSM” deliberately concealing information or even getting things wrong on purpose.

In a way, that’s on us – we don’t usually take the time to educate the public about how we actually do our jobs. But the same is true of people in other lines of work. Most people literally don’t know how the sausage is made, yet they still eat it. And the newsgathering process was no more transparent when trust in journalists was at an all-time high than it is today.

The ultimate issue, then, is political polarization and generalized mistrust of institutions – the same forces that are causing dysfunction in Congress and driving people to risk their own and their children’s health by foregoing vaccinations.

Political polarization and institutional mistrust are intertwined, but highly complex problems that I won’t pretend to know how to solve. Private equity and hedge fund companies buying out newspapers and laying off staff – which lead to gaps in coverage, sloppier work and entire geographic areas becoming “news deserts” – represent a far greater existential threat to news media and its crucial role in a healthy democracy than people being mean on Twitter or even President Trump calling any report he doesn’t like “fake news.”

Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to our readers or take complaints seriously. And it goes without saying that we should strive to be as accurate, thorough, fair and ethical as humanly or super-humanly possible, making sure to correct mistakes when they happen. But all in all, I think it’s safe to say that on a macro level, we’re doing what we ought to be doing.

A Look At The Heartbreaking Double Consciousness Needed To Lawyer While Black

Posted on by TSA Press

I briefly closed my eyes. In that split second, I considered my comfortable home life. My lucrative law practice. I imagined [my daughter] Tempest growing up and pursuing her dreams. I remembered that the odds were stacked against her. Her life would be full of potholes. She could be suspended from school for being disruptive. The school might even call the cops on her for speaking out of turn. That means her life could be sent into a tailspin—forced interaction with the criminal system for the rest of her life if she didn’t color within her own lines, quiet and obedient. Do I really want to be teaching my daughter to be silent and stay hidden? Yes. For her safety. No. Because we have to speak up. But what is life if you’re just surviving?

—An excerpt from the short story ‘Not Built for Us’ by Yvette Butler, winner of the ABA Journal’s seventh annual Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.

Parents Sue Principal Who Expelled Girl Over Rainbow Birthday Cake

Posted on by TSA Press

If there are rakes left to step on in Kentucky, the principal at Whitefield Academy will find them. Dr. Bruce Jacobson, head of the private Christian school in Louisville, found himself at the center of a firestorm three weeks ago when he expelled a student because her mother posted a photo on Facebook of her daughter celebrating her 15th birthday with a rainbow cake.

And she was wearing a rainbow sweater!

“The WA Administration has been made aware of a recent picture, posted on social media, which demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy’s beliefs,” Jacobson wrote in an email on January 6, the day before the child was scheduled to come back from Christmas vacation. “We made it clear that any further promotion, celebration or any other action and attitudes counter to Whitefield’s philosophy will not be tolerated. As a result, we regret to inform you that [the child] is being dismissed from the school, effective immediately.”

But Dr. Jacobson couldn’t leave it there. After the child’s mother Kimberly Alford went to the media, Jacobson released confidential information about the child’s disciplinary record and her sexual orientation to the press.

“In fact, she has unfortunately violated our student code of conduct numerous times over the past two years,” the school told the Washington Post in an email. “In the fall, we met with the student to give her a final chance to begin to adhere to our code of conduct. Unfortunately, she did not live up to the agreement, and therefore, has been expelled.”

Then Rod Dreher, senior editor at the American Conservative, did some digging into the sexual-identity of a 15-year-old girl and decided to publish it in an article entitled “Rainbow Cake Girl: The True Story.” Which is in itself a statement about American conservatism in 2020.

My understanding is that [the child] had a long, specific list of repeated infractions — bullying, disrespecting teachers, vaping in school (as Alford acknowledges), and so forth. Part of what she has allegedly done is promoting LGBT consciousness in the school, including aggression on that front. I’m trying to be delicate here, but I can tell you that she has transgressed against other students on this front, to promote bisexuality. For example, she allegedly drew rainbows and wrote slogans like “bi pride” on other kids’ papers, and gave at least two different girls the impression that she was sexually harassing them.

He then posted several images from the child’s private Instagram account. Because Rod Dreher is a creep.

He is also a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by the child’s parents yesterday in Jefferson County Circuit Court. They allege breach of contract, since the school released the child’s personal records and failed to follow its own escalating disciplinary policy, which allows for “an opportunity for mercy and grace through contrition,” rather than summary expulsion because the some nosy assh*le screengrabs a photo which confirms the school’s suspicion that the child is gay.

The suit alleges defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy by the school and American Conservative, as well as by Jacobson and Dreher personally. It further alleges that the child’s disciplinary record consists of cutting lunch once and getting caught with a Juul, after which she was referred to the school counselor who treated the child’s nicotine habit with a book entitled “Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, And Who God Has Always Been.” Which must have been very helpful.

The child’s parents are seeking a jury trial. And while private schools have wide latitude to discriminate against gay kids and defamation is difficult to prove, outing a 15-year-old girl in the national media might not endear the defendants to a jury in liberal Louisville.

It’s gonna be ugly.

Alford, et al. v. Whitefield Academy [via WRDB]
Rainbow Cake Girl: The True Story [American Conservative]
Christian school expels teen after she posed with rainbow birthday cake, mother says [WaPo]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Data Security And Your Lateral Job Search

Posted on by TSA Press

LinkedIn, Facebook, text messages, emails, smartphones, laptops and more, have made attorneys more accessible than ever. For recruiters, easy access facilitates quicker communication. For law firms, all these innovations are sources of potential data leaks.

Thirty years ago, confidential files were physical, and you would have to break into a secure site to steal its contents. Today, most confidential information is stored electronically and many firms have adopted cloak-and-dagger protocols to monitor employee communication, whereabouts, and behavior to prevent data leaks by identifying risky or clandestine behavior. Reportedly, 80% of Am Law 100 firms have experienced a data breach. These breaches span from stolen phones to phishing scams to firewalls breaches.

Law firms are popular targets for data thieves, as a secondary source of information to gather confidential documents on their major corporate clients. Law firms are often slower to adapt to modern technology. In the past, firms have modest security protocols compared to corporations and thus offer an easier avenue of access. The growth of data privacy practices indicates that law firms are starting to take the risks more seriously.

To combat these breaches, law firms have several contingencies and programs in place. Among the oldest and most widely used is email monitoring. Nothing that you type from your work email is truly 100% confidential. Law firms can access your emails at any time. So should you be wary of your firm discovering your emailed plans for making a lateral move?

According to a former high-level IT employee at two Am Law 200 firms, the answer is, not really. According to them, email inspection is not passive. To review an attorney’s emails, the firm would have to go through HR and would only do so when there was ample evidence of a crime or wrongdoing.

Does this mean that your inbox is 100% completely safe from prying eyes? In short, no. The former employee mused that a firm that was hemorrhaging laterals and was in danger of collapsing might forego their established policy to try to stem the flow of lateral movement. Other instances that have upended standard protocol are internal leaks — such as memo leaks to Above The Law — in which case the IT department would sift through all employees’ emails to find the culprit(s). Every printer also embeds a hidden tracking code onto the pages you are printing, making any publicly shared printout, possibly identifiable.

It is important to note that these policies vary by firm. Some have more laissez-faire policies while others have adopted more totalitarian measures.

Additionally, the proliferation of employee monitoring software has made it easier for firms to identify suspicious activity. The caveat here is the same tools that can detect potential data security threats, can also be used to monitor an employee’s likelihood of leaving. New employee monitoring tools can monitor everything you do on your computer. If you’re not responding to your coworker’s IM’s, or are taking longer than usual, this (in tandem with other key indicators) may tip them off that you’re looking to move. Other indicators can include things like regularly updating your LinkedIn profile.

There are many missteps that attorneys make that tips off their firm to an impending lateral move. The most common mistake attorneys make has nothing to do with emailing or web browsing. According to the former IT employee, many firms use programs to monitor several things including library checkouts.

The most telling pattern of behavior is when attorneys check out an unusually large amount of documents (usually in excess of 50) in one day that were marked as read-only, with no edits. In this case, the firm is painfully aware that the attorney is copying their library in preparation for a lateral move.

While firms have all these tools available for monitoring and detection, if you feel apprehensive about conducting a lateral search while at work, your fears are exaggerated. Not all law firm policies are made equal, but most are used to address suspicious activity, not lateral defections. Firms very rarely retaliate against an impending lateral move. As attorney mobility increases year after year and the idea of the lifer attorney is largely lost, firms see lateral attrition as a cost of doing business rather than a personal affront.

In general, use common sense when conducting a lateral search. It’s never good to tip your hand before you play your cards. Use personal accounts and devices to answer emails and calls when possible, but an initial email back to a recruiter providing your personal email is not likely to be flagged as suspicious. That being said, the safest way to start a conversation is to go old school and use your phone.

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.