Author: TSA Press

I’ve very rarely had a male candidate accept the offer terms as they were given. Men will negotiate every point of an offer, while women a lot of times will take whatever the offer is at face value.

—Shannan Rahman, managing partner at The Partners Group, told Law.com how negotiation effects the compensation of men versus women. She also noted that men tend to overstate the value of their book of business, while women tend to undervalue it, “It’s as if men are giving the number of what they want their book to be or what it could be, instead of what is actually there.”

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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 student loan industry is a wretched hive of scum and villainy and it’s spent the last couple of decades systematically molding a legal regime to protect the pound of flesh it extracts from students. While the Bankruptcy Code theoretically exists to allow people to rebuild from crushing financial pressures, one of the primary sources of debt in the country is functionally walled off from the bankruptcy process. “If student loan debt is the main reason you’re filing for bankruptcy, your lawyer should tell you not to expect it will be discharged,” Dan Austin points out in a quote that any impoverished law grad can easily find.

But while the hurdles have become so daunting that most debtors don’t even try to get student loans discharged, the fact of the matter is that the law does allow it under the 1987 Brunner test and Chief Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris of the Southern District of New York just dusted off Brunner and discharged $220,000 in student loan debt for Cardozo Law School grad and Navy vet Jared Rosenberg.

The Chief offered harsh words for the powers-that-be that have whittled Brunner down to a long-forgotten myth of fair bankruptcy relief:

Morris said she was applying the so-called Brunner test for discharge of student debt as it was originally intended. Since the test was created in a 1987 decision, cases interpreting it have set out “punitive standards” and “retributive dicta,” she said. Those harsh cases “have become a quasi-standard of mythic proportions, so much so that most people (bankruptcy professionals, as well as lay individuals) believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” she said.

“This court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.”

One hopes this is the dawn of a new day that doesn’t afford student debt magical protections under bankruptcy law. But, if history is any guide, an appeal will swiftly follow. In a world where the Department of Education openly ignores court orders to keep student debt dollars following, the lenders will find a way to strike back.

Law grad wins discharge of his student debt in opinion criticizing ‘punitive standards’ [ABA Journal]

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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.

Women’s health startup Advantia Health has landed a $45 million investment that it will use to expand its provider network, bolster its technology offerings and open a flagship clinic in the nation’s capital.

Based in Arlington, VA, the company also is gearing up to sign a value-based contract for pregnancy-related services, its co-founder and CEO, Sean Glass, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for us to do lot better,” Glass said, noting the high costs of pregnancy and the high rate of C-sections in the U.S.

The funding is from BlueMountain Capital Management LLC. The firm, a subsidiary of insurer Assured Guaranty Ltd., has experience in moving companies to value-based contracting, Glass noted.

“That is one of the things that was attractive about BlueMountain,” he said.

For its part, BlueMountain was drawn to Advantia beacuse of its focus on integrating care and technology.

“The market for comprehensive women’s healthcare continues to grow, and we believe that Advantia is at the center of innovation and value that is defining the future of care,” said Ameya Agge, managing director at BlueMountain, in a statement. Agge is joining Advantia’s board.

Advantia was founded in 2014 by Glass and his father, an anesthesiologist. They wanted to design a customer-centric healthcare product focused on the doctor-patient relationship, explained Glass, whose background is in technology and venture capital. They settled on women’s health because women use a significant portion of care and often are a family’s medical decision-makers, whether it involves their children or their aging parents.

The company’s first move was to acquire an OB/GYN practice in Silver Spring, MD, Glass said. It has since grown to 50 offices in Illinois, Maryland, Missouri and Virginia, mostly through acquisitions but also through some organic growth. Advantia employs 200 physicians and allied health professionals and more than 200 lactation consultants, Glass said.

The acquired practices typically retain their names, Glass said, since patients often know them — and search for them online — by their doctors. But this year, Advantia plans to unveil its own branded clinic in Washington, DC. The retail-focused practice will offer OB/GYN care, primary care, behavioral health and wellness services, including nutrition and acupuncture, Glass said. The clinic’s opening is slated for the fourth quarter.

The company also has been incorporating technology into its approach. Last year the company bought the tech startup Pacify, which provides post-partum support via telemedicine. Many women call on the service for lactation consulting.

“We use it with our practices to improve experience and outcomes for our moms,” said Glass. But Pacify’s services also are available to other customers, including insurers and health systems, he added.

A partnership with a women’s health technology company also is in the works. Glass said he expects to announce the details in the next month or so.

Other companies also have targeted women’s health, a fast-growing segment of health care. The tech market alone for women-focused health products is expected to reach sales of $50 billion in the U.S. by 2025, according to Absolute Markets Insights.

Some firms are focused on specific areas, such as Genneve, which addresses menopause. A New York-based company, Progyny, offers employer-based fertility benefits. In the wearables space, there are companies like Willow, which makes connected, wearable breast pumps.

On the direct-care side, companies like Advantia are building out networks of women’s health clinics, ramping up the use of technology and promising a more comprehensive approach to care.

One of the largest such networks is Axia Women’s Health, which operates more than 100 clinics in Indiana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Another firm, Women’s Health USA, backed by Sverica Capital Management offers practice management solutions for OB/GYNs who want to remain independent. Large health systems also have been consolidating OB/GYN and women’s health practices.

Providers in women’s health are not just competing for patients. They also are competing for practitioners. The country is facing a shortage of up to 9,000 obstetricians and gynecologists this year, according to the American Journal of Managed Care, citing figures from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Glass believes Advantia can stand out based on its customer focus, its interest in value-based care and its proprietary technology. Those factors also help the company recruit OB/GYNs who might not be interested in joining a larger health system, Glass said.

“Our mission orientation is toward women’s health,” Glass said. “Hospitals can be mission-driven but it may not be women’s health.”

Advantia also has been investing in building relationships with residency programs and developing its recruiting platform, Glass added.

Photo: asnidamarwani, Getty Images

As was reported here yesterday, the London-based contract-management company Juro announced a $5 million Series A investment round led by the U.S. investment banking firm Union Square Ventures. What does the investment mean for the company’s expansion in the U.S. market?

In a conversation yesterday, I put that question to Richard Mabey, CEO of Juro and cofounder together with Riga-based Pavel Kovalevich, the company’s chief product officer.

Juro already has customers who are headquartered in the United States, Mabey said. “Even though our business is based in Europe, we’ve seen demand coming from the U.S.,” he said.

During 2020, expect to see Juro expand “gently” within the U.S., Mabey said. He expects to open a U.S. office this year and have employees here.

That said, the thrust of the company’s sales efforts and expansion plans will remain focused on Europe. “We will continue to double down on selling into the E.U. broadly,” he said.

Noting that some European companies that receive U.S. investments are forced to flip their sales towards the U.S., “that is not our plan,” Mabey said, adding that USV supports that strategy.

Founded in 2016, Juro currently has 20 employees in London and Riga. By year end, Mabey expects the headcount to be around 55, with “a handful” in the U.S.

Much of this new investment will go to further development and refinement of the product. “In an area where there’s been so much failure to execute well, then quality of execution is absolutely a priority,” he said.

(Juro is transparent about its product roadmap, posting it publicly for anyone to see.)

Contracts As Data

In a market crowded with contract management, review and automation products, Juro seeks to stand apart by its focus on turning contracts into machine-readable data. Its proprietary editor automatically tags key terms and provisions as data and captures all amendments and approvals in an audit trail.

Inspired by his experience as an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Mabey wanted to figure out why contract management continued to have so many pain points. The problem, he decided, was not one of efficiency, but of design.

“Whenever you’re creating unstructured, static Word documents and PDFs, it is deeply problematic,” he said. “You have to go back and manually tag the data to make it useful. That’s work you can avoid.”

Juro’s approach, he said, was to create a new format for legal documents, one that is “super easy” to use and that makes the data “structured from the get-go.”

So much of current contracts technology is focused on unpacking unstructured data — going through individual contracts or collections of contracts and using sophisticated technology to structure and extract data.

“Core to our mission,” Mabey said, “is to convince the legal community that there’s a better way to do this.”

Connecticut has joined the ranks of states that have formed task forces in recent years to examine potential changes to regulation of the legal industry.

Connecticut Bar Association President Ndidi Moses said the creation of her organization’s State of the Legal Profession Task Force was driven by the access-to-justice gap, as well as the challenges lawyers face in the current system.

“The legal industry needs to take a hard and fast look at how we are operating,” Moses said. “I feel like there is a way for everyone to win. It is just a matter of being more creative.”

Various task force subcommittees will examine alternative business models, how technology can be leveraged to advance the legal profession and ethics rules.

Additionally, the task force will review reforms law schools may need to implement to properly prepare future lawyers.

“If you want to make changes that will last and be effective, you have to start at the law-school level,” Moses said.

Jayne Reardon, a member of the Connecticut task force’s advisory committee, said the focus on law schools and the skill set aspiring lawyers will need differentiated the state’s panel from some of the other task forces nationwide.

She praised the consideration of such issues, noting the time and financial investment required of law students.

“If they are not being trained in the skills that are going to be needed tomorrow, then that is not a good investment,” said Reardon, who is a member of Illinois’ Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation.

The Connecticut task force held a kickoff meeting in December and is aiming to produce a report by 2021.

Moses said the panel is certainly keeping an eye on the work of task forces across the country, such as those in Illinois, California, Utah and Arizona.

But she emphasized that the task force’s objective is developing solutions that will work in her state.

The goal is to make sure we do what is right for Connecticut,” Moses said.

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Lyle Moran is a freelance writer in San Diego who handles both journalism and content writing projects. He previously reported for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Diego Daily Transcript, Associated Press, and Lowell Sun. He can be reached at lmoransun@gmail.com and found on Twitter @lylemoran.

Five years after leaving the Federal Reserve, when Ben Bernanke thoughtfully strokes his beard and surveys his former domain, sure, he sees some issues come the next recession. Thanks to his avid slashing and his successors’ rather ginger approach to raising them, there’s not a lot of room to move down with interest rates (unless you want to go less than zero, which frankly Bernanke doesn’t think is all that horrible an idea). But even if Jay Powell or whoever succeeds him don’t have as much room for maneuver as he did, there are still plenty of tricks in the old Bernanke playbook to save us from economic annihilation.

The managing partner of an elite Biglaw firm once told me, “you have no idea how many resumes I get from Kirkland partners… people are desperate to get out of there.” We’d been talking about a piece I was working on about the rise of the “non-equity partner,” a cynical faux partnership tier allowing firms to better market their special counsel and slap golden handcuffs on senior attorneys that might balk at being forced to accept a title demotion to move anywhere else.

Roy Strom at Bloomberg Law conducted a decade-spanning review of Kirkland’s non-equity partnership ranks and there’s a lot to crunch in this article, but it comes to a clear conclusion: they really are desperate to get out.

Among the 84 lawyers in [Former Kirkland partner Matthew] Topic’s 2012 class of those promoted to non-share partner, fewer than 40% remain at the firm and only 14% are publicly identifiable as equity partners, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. Bloomberg Law compiled 10 years of data on Kirkland non-share partners. Among the 2009 class, only about 20% remain at the firm.

Topic managed to build a small practice out of his pro bono work. He was responsible for the FOIA fight that led to the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video. Most non-equity partners who leave Kirkland end up in some role that still requires putting on a brave face in public about the firm that still sends referrals. Privately, former Kirkland attorneys told Strom a different story:

Ultimately, [one unnamed former Kirkland attorney] lasted about four years as a non-share partner. In the meantime, he said he was billing close to $2 million a year and making, at most, $500,000.

“I was a money maker for them,” said the partner, who declined to be named to protect relationships with the firm.

That’s not an uncommon tale. Strom’s post notes that non-equity partners at Kirkland are bringing in roughly $2 million more than they’re getting paid. As leveraged assets go, that’s about as good as a firm can get. Equity partners are averaging a take home ten times as much with an annual take of around $5 million. Even the most junior equity partners are making almost $2 million.

Unfortunately, the Kirkland model may be taking over Biglaw. The ranks of one-tier, lockstep firms shrinks every year. Cleary just had the high-profile defection/firing of partners seeking a bigger slice of the pie. Old school partnership models are disappearing like Elves departing to the West at the end of Lord of the Rings and similarly leaving a less magical world. The old model brings an air of collegiality to the practice, a sense that every partner is pulling the same direction because everyone benefits from the firm’s success. Partners aren’t going rogue and hoarding their private book of business and fighting internal conflict turf wars. That’s the price the firm pays to be able to award the spoils to those making the most rain and part of that model is keeping the equity spoils tightly guarded.

And because it’s a strategy that’s working — and working at Kirkland better than anywhere else — it’s going to continue to spread. And Kirkland’s legion of “partners in name only” are going to continue taking their titles and moving elsewhere.

How Kirkland ‘Partners in Name Only’ Live in Limbo [Bloomberg Law]

Earlier: Repeat After Me, ‘Partnership Without Equity Is Not A Partnership’
Major Lateral Moves: It’s ‘Open Season On Cleary Partners’

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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.

Disclaimer: For someone who has a severe drinking problem, the sudden stoppage of alcohol intake can cause serious health issues. Please consult a qualified addiction physician before doing so.

What do you feel like the morning after a couple of drinks? Have you ever considered trying a month without booze as a social experiment and note the changes, if any? This is the perfect month to do it. It is “Dry January.”

Imbibers across the country are checking out what it feels like to abstain from drinking alcohol for thirty one days. While it’s always a good idea to evaluate alcohol intake and how it impacts your life, you can be part of ever-growing, sober curious movement, if just for a few weeks.

We are already well into the month but there is still time to give Dry January a try. Thirty one days sound daunting? Two weeks works as well.

It’s not about being an “alcoholic.” It’s not about addiction — it is about merely evaluating lifestyle. We need to move away from associating abstinence from alcohol as something that means problem drinking.

For me, it’s admittedly a dry lifetime by choice. It started as my awareness of a severe drinking problem. Today however, it’s a lifestyle. I do not consider myself an “alcoholic.” The term, while important as a tool of self-awareness starting out, no longer has meaning to me as a self-label. As a lifestyle choice, here are the benefits, I have found:

• I enjoy a higher quality level of sleep. Even when I was not getting hammered, a couple of drinks became a sleep aid, and it was never a deep sleep. I woke up with that pressure in the head that comes with a lack of real rest.

• The mornings are lovely without the distraction of even a minor hangover or just the “blechs” that a couple of glasses of wine can bring. I am more alert mentally acute. This allows me to  get right into the day rather than “ease” into it.

• My eating habits are more balanced. Even a few drinks would invariably lead to choices more towards more “impulsive munchie” food choices. Don’t get me wrong, I am big believer in “eat to live” not “live to eat” but I also believe in balanced options and alcohol skewed that for me.

• My morning energy level is much better and overall more balanced throughout the day. That does not mean I don’t get the “sleepies’ like everyone else but without the low level, alcohol disruption, I can get my workout in more consistently. I am more focused in the work I do.

• Without question, my personal relationships have improved. Even a low-level hangover can make a person irritable, causing conflict that would not otherwise be there.

This month or any month, consider a timed reset on your relationship with alcohol. No judgment. No stigma. If you decide it’s not for you, have one for me.

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

Last September, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) resigned his House seat and announced that he’d be pleading guilty to securities fraud and lying to a federal agent.

Collins famously raced out of a White House picnic to call his son and shout, “SELL!” after getting word that the drug he’d hoped would cure AIDS and cancer and MS and probably athlete’s foot, too, had failed its clinical trial.  Which is what those spoilsports at the SEC refer to as “classic insider trading.” Collins went on to win re-election in 2018 despite having an 11-count federal indictment hanging over his head, and proclaimed his innocence and intention to run again in 2020 right up until September 30, 2019, when he finally tapped out.

The U.S. Probation Office is recommending a year and a day in custody for the former politician, which is a significant downward departure from the 46 to 57 months laid out in his plea agreement. But Collins has a better offer — how about no jail time at all! And he compiled a whole 58-page motion with 10 attachments full of letters all attesting to what a good, kind, honest man he is and telling U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick that this living saint deserves to serve any sentence on home confinement at his new house in Florida.

Collins even went so far as to send a mass email to all his supporters — and former supporters, apparently — pleading with them to send letters to the court pleading for leniency on his behalf. This may have been something of a tactical error, however as evidenced by the 88 pages of letters Judge Broderick entered into the docket yesterday. While House Speaker John Boehner may think his former colleague is entitled to leniency, but it appears Mr. Collins’ former constituents have other ideas.

In advocating for a stiff [and] severe sentence for Mr. Collins, including substantial jail time, I can only say this: if this man does not serve an extended period in jail, something is seriously wrong with our judicial system. There’s no one for whom a lengthy period of incarceration is more appropriate. — David Wiles

Ouch.

It is my opinion that he shows no remorse but his actions show only the desire to escape responsibility for his actions. My hope is that the maximum sentence would fit the crimes and damage done. — Harry E. Winnicki

Perhaps that email request was a tactical error.

Mr. Collins violated the rules of conduct for a member of congress. Mr. Collins assured his fellow members of congress, (lied to them), that he always followed ethical rules in his investments. Mr. Collins defamed Louise Slaughter, a fellow member of congress. These actions reveal that Mr. Collins is not remorseful for his actions. — William C. Fine

That would be a reference to Rep. Louise Slaughter, whom Collins described as a “despicable human being” who filed “fabricated allegations” of insider trading against him with the House Ethics Committee out of blinding hatred for Donald Trump. It appears that his former constituent James Renfrew also remembers that, after Slaughter’s death in 2018, “Mr. Collins, vindictively, was the only member of Congress from New York who voted against naming the local post office in her memory. He owes Ms. Slaughter’s family an enormous apology!” That, too, might possibly have been a tactical error.

During his lazy years winning our gerrymandered, 27th congressional district, Mr. Collins made no effort to visit or otherwise personally stay in contact with his constituents. He has used his political power to misrepresent and swindle. Mr. Collins has demonstrated distaste for the rule of law. He’s selfish, profiteering for himself and his family has been on full display diss honoring the Congress. Though his lawyers may plead for leniency, I hope you give him the full measure of his convictions. — Hal Bauer, PhD (PS: Collins stole our trust in the federal government.)

And speaking of profiteering, The Buffalo News reported Monday that Collins appears to have liquidated all the donations from his 2020 campaign account and transferred them to … himself.

On Dec. 20, Collins transferred $146,393.71 out of the campaign committee he’s been using in recent years and sent it to his 1998 campaign committee. That same day, he repaid himself $146,393.71 out of that 1998 campaign committee — 22 years after he loaned that committee hundreds of thousands of dollars to wage his race against [then-Rep. John J.] LaFalce.

Told about Collins’ move, LaFalce seemed less than impressed.

But will Judge Broderick be impressed? Or will he heed the recommendation of Cynthia Lankenau, DVM, “to help Mr. Collins clearly see his [serious]  wrongdoing and sentence him to the maximum amount allowable under the statute”? Tune in on January 17 to find out.

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

Troutman Sanders and Pepper Hamilton have voted to merge, creating a 23 office, 1100 attorney Am Law 50 firm they’re calling Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders. The deal will take effect on April 1.

The merger, which we’ve been tracking for awhile, is actually one of the rare Biglaw mergers that makes a lot of sense. The two firms don’t overlap all that much with only 3 redundant offices to be sorted out and while Troutman was roughly 40 slots ahead of Pepper Hamilton in Am Law’s ratings, the firm’s RPL numbers were in the same ballpark, greasing the wheels for the merger.

When we last discussed the mechanics of a dying law firm, we talked a lot about how overaggressive mergers often kick off the countdown to a firm’s demise. Looking into the next decade, mergers are going to continue to ramp up and the demarcation between the firms that make it and the firms that don’t — putting aside the elite Am Law 25 or so — is likely to be whose mergers make the most sense. Troutman and Pepper think they’ve hit the sweet spot.

Troutman Sanders, Pepper Hamilton Vote to Seal Merger Deal [American Lawyer]

Earlier: Pepper Hamilton And Troutman Sanders Planning To Merge
In Memoriam… To All The Law Firms We Lost Last Decade

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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.