Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
According to Law.com’s 2020 Midlevel Satisfaction Survey, what percentage of midlevels say they’re on track for partnership?
Hint: Only 11.4 percent of respondents have a much more statistically realistic perspective and say they are not on track to make partner.
See the answer on the next page.
Even though the months seem to blend together these days, it’s hard to believe that summer is coming to an end. While returning to school and work this fall might not look as it once did, one thing remains constant: Lawline’s CLE. This month we have programs on topics such as divorce in elder clients and the legislative process. Check out some highlights below:
If you can’t attend a live webcast, don’t worry! All of our courses go on-demand within 48 hours after airing (and you can check them out with our free trial). Check out some recent highlights:
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The practice management platform MyCase has been sold to a private equity firm, it was announced this morning.
The previous owner of MyCase, AppFolio, a California-based provider of cloud-based business technology, said it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell 100% of the equity interest in MyCase, a wholly owned subsidiary.
It was sold to funds advised by Apax Partners, a private equity firm, for approximately $193 million in cash.
Founded in 2010, MyCase is a leading cloud-based legal practice management software designed to help firms run efficiently from anywhere, provide an exceptional client experience, and easily track firm performance so that firms can reach their business goals.
MyCase covers the entire client lifecycle with Lead Management, Case Management, Billing and Invoicing, and robust Reporting. It includes market leading features such as integrated MyCase Payments, 2-way text messaging, and the MyCase Client Portal to centralize client communication and share files securely.
In a statement, Kim Coalson, president of MyCase, said, “Our mission at MyCase is to enable our customers’ success by providing powerful legal practice management software that modernizes the client experience and increases the efficiency of firm operations. The Apax Funds’ record of investing in software companies that become category leaders makes the partnership a great opportunity for MyCase to increase the breadth of our product and accelerate growth, while continuing to provide the high level of service our customers expect.”
In a separate blog post, Coalson said that MyCase remains strongly committed to its customers and “to continuing to provide the level of service you’ve come to expect from our team.”
She also said that the full MyCase team, including its senior leadership team, will continue to be part of MyCase. “This continuity ensures that our technology and services remain at a high level and that we remain focused on our mission to empower law firms to improve efficiency, deliver an exceptional client experience, and reach their business goals,” she wrote.
Umang Kajaria, partner at Apax, said, “MyCase software and its integrated payments greatly simplify law firm operations, so legal professionals have more time to do what they love most – serving their clients. Increasing adoption of cloud-based legal software is driving rapid growth, and MyCase is a leader in modern legal practice management through its best-in-class product and customer centricity. We are excited to partner with Kim and the MyCase team to invest behind continued innovation and growth acceleration.”
The Apax Funds will support MyCase with increased investments in product development, sales, and marketing to continue its impressive growth trajectory.
The transaction was approved by AppFolio’s board of directors and is expected to close before the end of the third quarter, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions.
Lin Wood strikes again! Fresh off his glorious victory, errr “victory”, representing conservative teen Nick Sandman in his defamation suit against CNN, the notorious lawyer has netted the My Pillow Guy as his newest client.
“While I am fully aware that [Anderson] Cooper’s sarcastic, mocking, derisive, and demeaning tone, attitude and facial expressions toward Mr. Lindell are not legally actionable,” he wrote to CNN’s executive vice president David Vigilante, “I have complete confidence that Cooper’s false and defamatory accusations are actionable.” Newsmax and Newsweek both got their hands on a copy of the missive, but failed to publish more than excerpts.
Mike Lindell’s staunch support of the president has netted him access to the entire universe of Trump insiders including the White House’s coronavirus task force.
“It’s a great administration,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an August 18 interview. “Anything I hear out there, whether it be good sanitizers, or cures, or anything, to bring it back to the task force.”
Why Lindell, who possesses no medical credentials (or even an undergraduate degree) is qualified to speak on infectious disease treatments is unclear. Nevertheless, Lindell claimed that he’d “told the whole country to pray” for a cure for COVID-19, “this guy called me on Easter Sunday and said he had an answer to the virus.” Hosanna!
In fact, what “this guy” Andrew Whitney had was a company called Phoenix Biotechnology which was flogging Oleandrin, an extract derived from the poisonous oleander plant, as a potential treatment for COVID-19. By amazing coincidence, Mike Lindell has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, and would thus stand to benefit if the federal government decided to buy up millions of doses of the drug and start touting it as the “answer to the virus.”
And indeed, Lindell did his darnedest to make it happen, contacting HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, who helped arrange an Oval Office meeting with Trump in July for Lindell and Whitney to pitch the president on their supposed miracle drug.
The problem is that Oleandrin has never been proven to be an effective cure for COVID in human beings.
“Wait a minute, sir. Wait a minute, stop.” Cooper interrupted Lindell mid-rant about his supposed miracle cure. “There’s no public, peer-reviewed studies about this. There’s no trials that have been published anywhere. There’s no human trials that have been published anywhere.”
But Lindell continued to insist that Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials had indeed been performed somewhere and “the FDA’s got ’em all.”
“There’s been no Phase 1 and Phase 2 on this drug sir,” Cooper said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, yeah, there has. The FDA has had it since April. You’re just misconstrued [sic] because the media’s trying to take away this amazing cure that works for everybody,” Lindell huffed.
“You have no medical background; you’re not a scientist. A guy called you in April, said he had this product. You are now on the board and going to make money from the sale of this product. The reason he reached out to you is because you have the ear of the president, so he gets a meeting with the president, and you stand to make money from this,” Cooper deadpanned.
“How do you sleep at night?”
The interview degenerated from there, with Cooper accusing Lindell of being a “snake oil salesman” who is “willing to promote anything . . . even if it doesn’t work.”
According to Newsweek, which, again, has not published the letter from Wood, “Among Cooper’s statements that Wood says in his letter are false are that Phase I and Phase II clinical studies have not been conducted; that the drug ‘has never been tested;’ and that tests do not exist ‘anywhere outside a lab in a test tube.’”
In the letter Wood provided a link which purported to establish that Oleandrin’s efficacy against COVID was being studied by the government at the time of the interview. But Newsweek hasn’t seen fit to pass this link on to its readers, nor has Wood offered it in his chest-thumping Twitter feed.
Our best guess is that Wood was referring to neutralization tests which the Army was conducting at the time to determine Oleandrin’s efficacy against the coronavirus — an in vitro assay, which is neither a Phase 1 or Phase 2 trial, and certainly doesn’t involve 1,000 human subjects.
How the existence of such a test establishes that Cooper defamed Lindell is unclear. But in any event, the test results were inconclusive, and the FDA rejected Phoenix Biotechnology’s application to market Oleandrin as a dietary supplement, both because it had been publicly bruited about as a treatment for coronavirus (thanks, Mike Lidell!) and because “your submission did not provide sufficient information to establish that the information that you rely on as evidence of safety is qualitatively and quantitatively related to the ingredient, when used under the proposed conditions of use, as indicated in your submission.” Which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Lidell’s claims that his miracle drug is totally safe.
So good luck to Mr. Wood and his client. We’re sure he’ll prosecute his case with all the tact and discretion he’s become known for.
My Pillow Creator Michael Lindell Threatens CNN with Legal Redress Over Anderson Cooper Interview [Newsweek]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
He’s Black. He went to Harvard Law. He graduated at the top of his class. He’s incredibly articulate. He is all the things that Donald Trump wants to be, and he just can’t handle it. And what do you do if you can’t handle it, and you’re Donald Trump? You attack it.
— Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, in comments given about the president’s fixation on Barack Obama during an appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. Cohen was a guest on the show to discuss his new book, Disloyal, where he makes quite a few rather damning (and incredibly colorful) allegations against his former employer.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Connie Bertram
It’s been three years since Connie Bertram helped to shake up the staid world of Biglaw by being one of the early trend setters of partners suing their firms, in her case it was Proskauer Rose. Though the case settled for an undisclosed amount, the allegations — which included that there were “substantial gender disparities” at the firm, that Bertram was objectified by two partners, and that her compensation lagged behind that of similarly situated male partners — helped to break the silence surrounding these issues in the legal industry.
After the settlement, Bertram joined Polsinelli, but now the time has come for another big career move. Bertram is saying goodbye to Biglaw and opening up her own firm, Bertram LLP. It’s something she says she’s “had in the back of my head for 10 or 15 years. I’ve had several clients that encouraged me to do this.”
And, no, it isn’t a reflection on Polsinelli. She tells Law.com the move “had nothing to do with Polsinelli. It was a great firm. I had a good experience there.” That firm similarly wishes Bertram all the best, “We thank Connie for her commitment to our firm over the past two years and wish her well in her future endeavors.”
As with all new business endeavors launched during the pandemic, there are some questions hanging over the project. For example, Bertram, who is at the moment the only attorney at the new firm, is holding off on getting permanent office. But since she has an existing client base from her 20 years of practice, she doesn’t see much of a problem. On opening her own shop Bertram says, “It depends some on who you are and what kind of practice you have. If you were coming out of government, hanging up your shingle with no clients, [I] would be nervous.”
The new firm will focus on employment counseling, investigations and litigation including whistleblower claims, executive and board disputes, restrictive covenants, trade secret disputes and government contractor compliance. And Bertram hopes to grow the practice to as many as 50 lawyers over time. Her focus will be on hiring women and minorities:
Bertram said throughout her career she held management roles and worked on client service along with associate development and “trying to be ‘the voice in the room’” for women and minorities. As a result, she would like to focus on hiring women and minorities at her firm.
“It’s more on bringing together very like-minded people … who want to do exceptional work, but maybe had some challenges in the practice of law. I’ve found that a lot of attorneys actually have had difficult life experiences and it pushes them to be more exceptional,” she said.
Best of luck to this new firm.
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).
(Image via Getty)
Earlier this week, Vault released its closely watched rankings of the nation’s 100 most prestigious law firms. It was there that we learned Cravath held onto its title as the most prestigious firm in America for the fifth year in a row, and that Skadden had edged out Wachtell from the No. 2 spot for the first time in the history of the rankings — by just 0.010 points.
But what if your firm wasn’t top-ranked in the Vault 100? Perhaps your firm isn’t the most prestigious, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have clout. Some law firms reign supreme when it comes to certain practice areas, and others are known to dominate entire regions of the country.
Which law firms are considered to be at the top of their game by practice area and region? Let’s find out!
For the purposes of the practice area ranking, Vault asked associates to vote for up to three firms they think of as the strongest in their own practice area, and the overall ranking indicates the firms that received the highest percentage of votes. Associates were not allowed to vote for their own firm, which we’re sure made many recovering gunners very, very sad. Current gunners may find this list useful if they know which area they’d prefer to practice in. Pay attention, prospective laterals, because this is useful for you, too.
We’ve picked out a dozen of the practice areas that were ranked by Vault (you can see the full list here):
Appellate Litigation: Gibson Dunn
Bankruptcy: Weil Gotshal
Energy, Oil and Gas: Vinson & Elkins
General Commercial Litigation: Quinn Emanuel
General Corporate Practice: Cravath
Intellectual Property: Fish & Richardson
International: White & Case
Labor and Employment: Littler Mendelson
Private Equity: Kirkland & Ellis
Real Estate: Fried Frank
Securities: Davis Polk
Tax: Skadden
Next up, we’ve got a ranking that matters to those who think “location, location, location” is the most important thing in life. Vault’s regional rankings are based on votes tabulated from associates who were asked to rate firms on a 1 to 10 scale based on their prestige within the region.
Here’s the list of prestige by region from Vault (you can see the full list here):
Atlanta: King & Spalding
Boston: Ropes & Gray
Chicago: Kirkland & Ellis
Florida: Holland & Knight
Mid-Atlantic: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Midwest: Jones Day
Mountain States: Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
New York: Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
New York – Midsize: Pryor Cashman
Northern California: Morrison & Foerster
Pacific Northwest: Perkins Coie
South Atlantic: King & Spalding
Southern California: Latham & Watkins
Texas: Vinson & Elkins
Texas – Midsize: Susman Godfrey
Washington, DC: Covington & Burling
Congratulations to the firms that moved up in this year’s practice area and regional rankings, and congratulations to all the firms that made the cut in the first place. It must be nice to see which firms associates consider as their peers in prestige, and it must be even nicer for partners to know whose pricing models they need to undercut the next time around.
Best Law Firms by Practice Area (2021) [Vault]
Best Law Firms by Region (2021) [Vault]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Although I co-authored Social Media for Lawyers a decade ago, I never expected that online connections would wholesale replace in-person professional networking. Instead, online networking as a springboard to a relationship that would ultimately solidify though a face to face meeting.
Yet IRL connections are difficult to come by in a time of coronavirus. And when they do, they can be awkward. Recently, I met with a young attorney who had done some work for me and was passing through my city. We met at Union Station in Washington D.C., masks on, no handshake or hug. We wandered empty corridors until we found a fast food restaurant in the food court that was open, then took our food outside where we sat on the concrete amidst a stream of homeless people to chat. The encounter was enjoyable and yet..it felt as if something was off.
That was just a single one-on-one encounter. Will we ever meet up at conferences or bar association happy hours or small groups without a mask? And what does that mean for online interaction? Does it take on more meaning because we have no other choices. Or is it less valuable because we won’t meet in person anyway so why bother?
At the upcoming LawyerMomOwnerSummit, we have an entire panel devoted to Marketing When You Can’t Meet in Person. We’ll engage in some hands on DIY exercises, engage with an expert on role of fashion in personal brand and learn how to use Facebook, Insta and other social media to build presence – and ask how personal referrals can still work in an era when we no longer interact in person. Hope to see you there!
LawyerMomOwnerSummit.com is just 3 weeks away. Click the link and Register Today!
Thanks to the coronavirus crisis, the legal landscape for Biglaw firms seemed a little rocky for a few months, leading incoming associates to grow worried about their future careers — and rightly so. Amid salary cuts, furloughs, and stealth or outright layoffs, first-year start dates were delayed at many firms until January 2021 and beyond. Were we witnessing a repeat of what happened during the Great Recession? Would another year of law school graduates become a lost generation due to the economic turmoil that rocked the legal world? Outcomes are looking a little rosier now, with salary cuts being walked back and furloughed staff and associates returning to work, but perhaps incoming associates shouldn’t get too comfortable just yet.
Why’s that? The deferral year is making a comeback.
Back in 2009, when Biglaw firms were faced with the problem of too many employees and not enough work, they came up with a unique plan to deal with this issue: the deferral. Incoming first-year associates were offered the chance to voluntarily take a year off and receive compensation for going away with the understanding that they would be able to come back to the firm and resume their Biglaw careers after the deferral. While many sought refuge in the public sector, others focused on having fun and taking trips around the world. Unfortunately, even the best laid plans fall apart, and some associates weren’t welcomed back to their firms on time — or at all, ever.
Ropes & Gray — a firm that landed at No. 13 in the 2020 Am Law 100 rankings, having brought in $1,903,616,000 in gross revenue in 2019 — announced two new deferral programs for first-years earlier this week. Ropes is the first major firm that we know of to offer a voluntary deferral year to its incoming associates.
A memo (available in full on the next page) sent on behalf of Peter Erichsen, the firm’s hiring partner, explains the reasoning behind why these programs are being offered:
This year has truly been one like no other, and we certainly would understand if its developments has prompted a temporary rethinking of your professional priorities. Perhaps you are looking for ways to contribute your knowledge, talent and time to public service work in a variety of areas—fighting racial injustice, addressing housing crises and other needs arising out of the COVID pandemic, or supporting political causes important to you, to name just a few. Alternatively, some of you may have been personally affected by the pandemic in ways you did not anticipate, and could benefit from taking some time off before launching your career.
Incoming Ropes associates have the option of taking either a fellowship year or a sabbatical year, with the promise of joining the class of 2021 when those associates start at the firm. The firm emphasizes repeatedly that these programs are voluntary.
For those who choose a fellowship year, they’ll have to find another job — during a pandemic — at a public interest organization or at an approved government entity, and will receive a stipend of $80,000 (pre-tax). For those who choose a sabbatical year, they can do anything they want (except work at another law firm), and will receive a stipend of 20 percent of their starting base pay, or $38,800 (pre-tax). Like all of the firm’s associates whose start dates have been delayed, first-years who opt for a deferral will also be eligible for health insurance through the firm starting on October 20, 2020. Those who take a deferral year will still receive a $10,000 October stipend and will remain eligible for a $10,000 loan from the firm.
This all sounds great, but there’s just one catch: incoming associates need to make a decision by October 1. We reached out to Ropes & Gray for comment and received this statement from a firm spokesman, who again reiterated that those who choose not to participate in the voluntary deferral will start as planned in January 2021:
The firm is healthy and the business is strong. Our lawyer activity levels are on pace with 2019, which was an outstanding year. As an example, our asset management and capital markets groups have remained busy throughout the year, and the health care and life sciences groups have been going gangbusters. We’ve also seen M&A activity pick up meaningfully in the third quarter.
We have no plans for any actions like furloughs or layoffs. Associates were reassured of this just today in a Town Hall meeting.
The fellowship is completely voluntary. We recognized that in the current climate, some people might want to switch gears and focus on public service, and the program is designed to help them do that. We have heard from some associates that this is something they have been wanting to do; and we have heard from public service organizations that they need help. We know there is a need for help in our communities, and this is one way our lawyers can contribute.
We got positive feedback from our current associates who appreciate the opportunity, and we wanted to make the same option available to incoming associates. (To clarify, the fellowship program is offered to current associates, too.)
Good luck to incoming associates at Ropes & Gray who choose to embark upon a voluntary year-long deferral. Let’s hope it all works out for the best.
If your law firm planning to offer deferrals to incoming associates? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Deferrals”) and let us know.
(Flip to the next page to see the memo from Ropes & Gray in full.)
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.