Author: TSA Press

Zimbabwe’s economy is likely to shrink by 13% in 2020, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has predicted, as the southern African country faces a third consecutive year of drought.

Agriculture is the backbone of Zimbabwe’s economy but poor rains in the past two years, as well as forecasts of another drought in 2020, have left the country with little hope of economic revival this year.

The prediction will further compound Zimbabwe’s woes. The country is facing severe cash, fuel, medicine and power shortages.

The UK-based EIU, which analyses financial markets and country risk profiles, said Zimbabwe will be among its worst performers in 2020. The southern African state will be second last and Venezuela, whose economy is expected to contract by 20, 5%, at the bottom.

Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) listed Zimbabwe among the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that will dominate global hunger hotspots in the first half of 2020.

As a result of 2019’s drought Zimbabwe’s cash-strapped government will spend more money importing food this year, piling greater misery on its battered  economy.

The WFP listed Zimbabwe among the 15 global hotspots that face hunger in 2020, while the country has also been grouped among three other crisis-ridden nations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Escalating hunger needs in Sub-Saharan Africa dominate a World Food Programme analysis of global hunger hotspots in the first half of 2020 with millions of people requiring life-saving food assistance in Zimbabwe, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel region in the coming months,” WFP executive director David Beasley said last week.

Beasley said the effects of Zimbabwe’s drought will be exacerbated by the ailing economy, which faced its worst meltdown in a decade last year.

“The WFP report notes that amid an imploding economy, the situation in Zimbabwe is increasingly precarious as the country enters the peak of its ‘lean season’ when food is at its most scarce and the number of hungry people has reached its highest point in a decade. The WFP is planning assistance for more than 4-million people in Zimbabwe as concerns grow that the impact of a regional drought could drag yet more countries down in the first months of the year,” he said.

The bodies of the two rangers were taken to the capital, Harare, for examinations, said Tinashe Farawo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority on Tuesday.

In an earlier tweet, Farawo said one of the park rangers “had multiple stab wounds and had hands tied behind the back.”

The two rangers had arrested four Zambian men for poaching and on Dec. 31 were transporting them by boat to Kariba town to be charged and jailed. But the four suspects overpowered the rangers and threw them into Lake Kariba, said Farawo. The rangers’ bodies were discovered after a week-long search.

Authorities are searching for the suspected poachers, he said.

The rangers had caught the poachers in Matusadona National Park, home to lions, leopards, elephants and hyena on the shores of Lake Kariba, one of the world’s largest man-made lakes. The park is popular with tourists who go on walking safaris and boating on the lake.

The rangers had detained the poachers overnight before attempting to take them by boat to Kariba town.

Although the parks agency has recorded “a significant decrease” in poaching in the wildlife rich southern African country, cases of armed contact between poachers and rangers have been on the rise in the Kariba area, where Zimbabwe borders Zambia to the north, said Farawo. The two countries share the lake as well as the magnificent Victoria Falls along the Zambezi River.

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It’s no secret that public interest attorneys make less than their private sector counterparts. According to a NALP press release, median pay in 2018 ranged from $48,000 for a new lawyer to $69,400 for a lawyer with 11 to 15 years of experience. In 2004, the median was $34,000 for a new lawyer and $51,900 for an experienced one.

In exchange for the lower pay, they get a better quality of life and the feeling of knowing that they are having a positive effect in their communities. Also, their federal student loans get favorable treatment. They qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which means that only a small portion of their monthly income must be used to pay back their student loans for 10 years. If their law school has an LRAP program, they will usually pay that monthly PSLF amount for them. Afterward, the remaining balance is forgiven with no cancellation of debt income for tax purposes.

Even with these benefits, their salary is usually not enough to cover basic living expenses, particularly in major cities where housing costs are astronomical. Many of those lawyers have to work second jobs to make ends meet. They typically turn to flexible gig-economy jobs, such as being Uber drivers.

Public interest lawyer salaries are low because money is tight. Most public service organizations primarily rely on public donations to fund their operations. Unfortunately, not many people donate to legal aid organizations mainly because there are countless other charitable organizations and causes to choose from, and people tend to donate to the organizations they are closest to. So the people who donate to legal aid organizations are typically the same people year after year. And public donations are susceptible to the current economy. If the economy is bad, the donations dry up as well.

Since the election of President Trump, there has been a surge in donations to civil rights and humanitarian organizations. The ACLU received $120 million in online donations, up from $3 million to $5 million in previous years. The ACLU has stated that the extra funds will be used to hire more staff, primarily lawyers. Other organizations deemed to be hostile to the Trump administration and Trump’s policies have also seen an increase in funding, such as Planned Parenthood, the Anti-Defamation League, and the National Immigration Law Center.

Many of these organizations are capitalizing on the angry, energized liberal voter base by promising to fight Trump with the help of their donations.

But have these organizations been sharing their newfound wealth with those who need it most? I looked at some of the organizations’ annual financial statements using Guidestar.org. Many organizations that have received increased funding have indeed used that money to increase salaries. But they do not show whether the money was used to hire attorneys. Nor could I determine the average staff attorney salary.

What I am seeing is that in 2018, public interest attorneys are paid $48,000 for a new lawyer up to $69,400 for a lawyer with 11 to 15 years of experience.

I will leave it to others with more investigatory resources to see if these nonprofit organizations are either paying their legal staff a living wage or trying to get away with paying as little as possible. But here’s my humble suggestion: If a public interest organization is getting a surge in donations from people who want to resist President Trump’s policies in the courts, use that money to pay your staff attorneys a living wage.

A wage that will allow attorneys to live in a safe neighborhood. A wage that will not force them to be a Lyft driver on Saturday night picking up drunk, rich kids in Midtown or Beverly Hills. A wage that will not tempt your current staff to look for better paying jobs after a few years. A wage that will allow them to pay down a fair amount of their student loans so taxpayers won’t pay the remaining balance and 10 years of unpaid, accrued interest when their loans are eventually forgiven.

Working as a public interest lawyer is a labor of love and commitment. But that commitment can be cloudy when they are not getting enough sleep because they are moonlighting to pay for food and rent. If a public interest organization dedicated to fighting President Trump’s policies is not using its newfound wealth to pay their lawyers a competitive wage, they are doing a grave disservice to their donor base.

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Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at sachimalbe@excite.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Kazuo Okada made billions in gambling, as the tech geek who figured out how to make slot machines register a “near miss” to prompt the weak willing to shovel another quarter into the maw of avarice. Before it was all said and done, Okada’s slot machine company owned roughly 20 percent of Wynn Resorts and had its own independent casino in Manila. But his latest gamble — not paying his $50 million legal fees — didn’t pay off.

Bartlit Beck negotiated a fee deal with Okada back in 2017 when he locked horns with Wynn over the value of his stake in the resort empire. Wynn ousted Okada, claiming the Japanese businessman “likely violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act” and gave him a $1.94 billion 10-year note for his troubles. But Okada’s stake was worth $2.7 billion now so he sought out the power litigation firm to get him his money. Which they — specifically Phil Beck, Chris Lind, Hamilton Hill, and Brian Swanson — did to the tune of a settlement for $2.632 billion in 2018.

With a couple of billion coming in, you’d think Okada would have no problem paying his attorneys a relatively piddling $50 million, but you’d be wrong! The date for payment came and went with Bartlit Beck seeing nothing. Bartlit Beck decided to call Okada’s bluff.

Chris Lind from the underlying case, along with Bartlit Beck’s Adam Hoeflich, and Sean Berkowitz from Latham & Watkins, all went to arbitration — a condition of the fee agreement — to get the firm paid. Along the way, Okada called the fee “unconscionable,” a ballsy for a fee amounting to less than 2 percent of the recovery. I guess if your billion-dollar fortune is built on quarters it can skew your perspective. The arbitrators, on the other hand, suffered no myopia and awarded Bartlit Beck its full fee plus interest. It didn’t hurt that Okada refused to participate in the hearing, pulling out at the last minute.

Unfortunately, winning an award is only the first step. The firm filed the arbitration award with the courts to get it enforced. Hopefully, Okada has assets easier to tag than some clients. Personally, I once had to order Texas Rangers to seize a Boeing 707 to get someone to pay up. Arranging for hangar space isn’t exactly a skill they teach in law school.

Why do clients think it’s acceptable to stiff attorneys? The greedy lawyer stereotype makes for some good jokes, but while tragic abuses can target the most vulnerable, among the elite ranks of the profession the fees are pretty reasonable. Paying $50 million to recover over $800 million extra is hardly unconscionable. Trafficking in “money-grubbing lawyer” tropes while sitting on billions is much more unconscionable.

And it’s also dumb. If you’re betting on powerhouse litigators to walk away from their fees without a fight, then you’re making the losing bet.

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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.

* A donor connected to President Trump’s inaugural committee has plead guilty to obstruction of justice. [Fox News]

* A Long Island lawyer has been charged with stealing 300k from a former client. That’s not even a lot of money for “Strong” Island. [Newsday]

* The San Francisco City Attorney has ordered that a rebel e-scooter company cease and desist operations. What a buzzkill. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* CNN has settled a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann. [Yahoo News]

* New York’s high court may soon decide if a defamation lawsuit filed by an Apprentice star can proceed. [Reuters]

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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.

There was a desire on my part to continue a very active practice and do so unencumbered by institutional requirements that ran contrary to that. When you add in the respect and affection I have for people here [at Mayer Brown] from prior experiences, it was a relatively easy decision.

—Jim Schell, now a partner at Mayer Brown, told Law.com that part of the reason he lateraled from Skadden — a firm he practiced at for over 30 years — was a desire to practice after 70, Skadden’s mandatory retirement age. He also said that at Mayer Brown, “I wouldn’t have to worry about a ‘time for you to go’ business model. I want to be active, I have been active, and this was an ideal home for me to continue to do that.”

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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).

From 2010 to 2016, ABA-accredited law schools lost how many full-time faculty positions?

Hint: Law school faculties grew 40 percent from 1998 to 2008, but in order to cut costs following the recession, lots of full-time faculty positions were on the chopping block.

See the answer on the next page.

Just a little more than a year after a venture capital firm brought it out of stealth mode, a biotech startup focused on oncology drugs that target mutations outside of those traditionally targeted by therapies currently on the market is filing to go public.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Black Diamond Therapeutics filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday for a $100 million initial public offering. The company would trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BDTX.

Black Diamond did not respond to a request for comment.

Black Diamond’s most recent venture capital fund raise happened last month, when it closed an $85 million Series C financing round, led by Boxer Capital of the Tavistock Group. In addition to existing investors Versant Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, RA Capital Management, Nextech Invest, Invus, Perceptive Advisors, City Hill Ventures and Roche Venture Fund, new investors included Wellington Management Company, BVF Partners, Deerfield Management and funds managed by Janus Henderson Investors, Casdin Capital and Logos Capital.

The company emerged from stealth mode at San Francisco-based Versant in December 2018, having been launched out of Versant’s Basel, Switzerland-based discovery division, Ridgeline. Black Diamond’s focus is on drugs targeting allosteric mutant oncogenes, in contrast with the kinase domain mutations that are targeted by most small-molecule drugs.

Black Diamond’s pipeline page states that it plans to start a Phase I/II study of its lead product candidate, BDTX-189, in the first half of this year. ClinicalTrials.gov lists the trial, called MasterKey-01, as having opened on Dec. 19 and states that it is currently recruiting patients with advanced solid tumors who have mutations or alterations in the HER2 or EGFR genes, with a target enrollment of 184 participants, at sites in Florida and Tennessee.

The company presented preclinical data at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual meeting in September showing that BDTX-189 was able to inhibit a broad range of EGFR and HER2 mutations.

The company’s other drug candidate is undisclosed, but is designed to target EGFR in patients with the brain cancer glioblastoma, a disease that has seen little in the way of improvements in therapy. Black Diamond’s pipeline page lists the drug as being in the optimization stage of development, with plans this year to initiate preclinical studies that would enable it to apply for Food and Drug Administration approval to open clinical trials.

Photo: jxfzsy, Getty Images