Author: TSA Press

I went to see Justice Elena Kagan speak this week. She was interviewed about the makeup of the Supreme Court, the logistics of becoming a justice despite having never previously donned a judicial robe, and her unlikely friendship with the late Antonin Scalia. She was careful with her answers, and kept the mostly fawning audience fully engaged. While I was underwhelmed by her defense of the institution she’s a part of as being far less political than people think (it’s basically the same one you hear from any of the justices whenever one of them speaks: all the justices are best buddies despite their differences in legal philosophy, they decide about half their cases unanimously, etc.), she did defend writers like yours truly when her interviewer bashed “the press” as having simplistic thinking about the political bents of the justices (there is a “great group” of reporters covering the Supreme Court, according to Justice Kagan).

But what really struck me as being worthy of passing along in my column this week was Justice Kagan’s admirable self-awareness about her own career path. There is hardly a lawyer in the United States who hasn’t, at least in a daydream, imagined a future that ended with a seat on the Supreme Court. In Justice Kagan’s opinion, such ambitions are pretty much futile, however. The most important factor in her winding up on the highest court in the land is one that she had no control over: Luck.

[I]t’s like a lightning strike to get on the Supreme Court.

Justice Kagan believes it takes so much luck to get onto the Supreme Court that she compared it to a “lightning strike.” She described most careers, her own included, as being “a matter of luck and serendipity.”

That is such a refreshing take from a person in a position of extreme power. Many CEOs, top government officials, and celebrities will throw out a token acknowledgment of being lucky or having been “blessed” in obtaining success, but still ultimately attribute it to some combination of hard work and innate talent. Justice Kagan, no doubt, worked very hard in her career, and she is a very talented jurist. But she candidly acknowledges that there are plenty of other lawyers with just as much talent, who work just as hard, who are not sitting where she is now simply because of luck — because of random chance that worked out in her favor.

Now, Justice Kagan certainly wasn’t saying that any individual lawyer has no control over his or her career path. Probably her best career advice, knowing that in this profession we tend to be obsessive planners, was to keep your eye out for where you should get off of your predetermined plan. Justice Kagan herself had always had goals, including one that would have taken her out of the legal profession entirely. But many of her career goals became superseded by new opportunities that arose. And she’s the first to admit that while the public only sees the opportunities that she seized on and that worked out for her, there are plenty of failures (like doing “really poorly” in her first semester of law school), and jobs she sought but never obtained, that are not highlighted in her background. Getting back up after these setbacks and continuing forward put her in a position to take advantage of later opportunities when they presented themselves.

Nobody should be floored by any particular disappointment.

While she described it as being “magical thinking,” a type of reasoning she seemed to find distasteful, at least in the context of career ambitions, Justice Kagan believes that when a door closes, a window opens. It certainly did for her.

We all want to succeed in our careers, to reap financial rewards, and to make a positive contribution to society with our work. But we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we don’t make it to the absolute top in our fields — assuming you’ve worked hard, the fact that you’re not at the top is probably much more attributable to luck than any personal failures. And we should always scan the horizon for new opportunities, even, maybe especially, when they conflict with our best-laid plans. If you can do those things, you still probably won’t end up on the Supreme Court like Justice Kagan. But you will give yourself the chance to see that window sliding open every time a door is slammed in your face.

Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Boston Democrat Dan Hunt has proposed a bill in the Massachusetts legislature to ban the word “bitch.” The law seems to take aim at using rhetoric to silence or demean women, though, given the state, it’s probably just designed to prevent everyone else from describing Tom Brady a little bitch.

The measure proposes adding two sentences to the section of state law that assigns fines and other penalties for various offenses, such as crimes for common night walkers, indecent exposure, and disturbers of the peace.

“A person who uses the word ‘bitch’ directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person in violation of this section,” the bill says.

This is, obviously, stupid. Using rhetoric to police women and enforce the patriarchy is a real thing and I shudder to watch the social media neanderthals respond to this law with “durr, it’s just words, snowflakes” in a collective, apotheosis of white male privilege. Why give these people more unwarranted self-satisfaction with their own insecurities? Sure, this is absolutely harassment, but this kind of targeted, blanket ban on a word isn’t the solution. Frankly, if you’re looking for patriarchal language to hurl at a woman, this isn’t even the most robust arrow in the lexigraphic quiver.

It’s also probably useless. “Bitch” would reasonably be covered in the law’s overly broad and vague prohibition on “disorderly acts or language [to] accost or annoy another person.” Maybe Hunt is trying to add some specificity to the provision — though notably by adding particular examples without narrowing the existing scope — but vagueness is the least of this law’s constitutional problems. There are so many better ways to address this kind of angry language without raising constitutional ire — like funding an anti-discrimination curriculum for Kindergartners or criminalizing telemarketing.

You know what? Put a pin in all the flowery free speech fundamentalism about the “grave threat to democracy” of arresting people for being jerks — this whole proposed change is somehow unironically getting shoehorned into a law designed to police women. General Law Section 53 is that sort of catch-all law designed to allow the cops to arrest sex workers — or, frankly, anyone that annoys them — for just being outside at night. If the state legislature wanted to strike a real blow against the patriarchy, they might start by gutting Section 53 instead of adding to it.

Also, note what word Massachusetts feels isn’t rushing to ban when used to “accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person.” I’ll give you a hint, it starts with an “n.”

Shows you where these bitches put their priorities, doesn’t it?

Proposed law would make the ‘b-word’ illegal in Mass. [B News]

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.

Most people understand that junior associates often need to deal with grunt work that other attorneys do not want to handle. Everyone needs to work up the corporate ladder, and this usually means that junior associates must contend with menial tasks and administrative duties that are usually delegated to the newest attorneys at a firm. However, some of the responsibilities of junior associates at many firms might be considered hazing.

With the increased emphasis today on power dynamics in the workplace and fair ways to treat employees, it is important to recognize that junior attorneys oftentimes get forced into uncomfortable tasks without a real opportunity to opt out. There were a few situations during my own career when I had to contend with onerous, and sometimes embarrassing, work responsibilities that could properly be called hazing. Before I get trolled online for being hyper-sensitive, let me just say at the beginning that I do not think that any of the hazing I experienced crossed any lines, and I recognize that some forms of harmless hazing can have positive benefits to law firms. However, it is important for senior attorneys to evaluate if some of the practices at their firms might constitute impermissible hazing against more junior associates.

One rite of passage for many junior litigators is to be the one designated with carrying all exhibits and other necessary materials to court. Since attorneys oftentimes travel to court by public transportation, it can be extremely difficult to lug around all of the materials needed for hearings or trials. Sometimes, it is unavoidable for attorneys to have to carry items to court, but this responsibility should be shared equally. This would make it much easier to get the materials to court without unduly burdening anyone.

I remember one time, the senior partner on my team was arguing an appeal, and he asked a few junior associates to print out every decision cited in the papers and bring binders of the decisions to court. Even though there was little chance he would actually refer to any documents during the hearing, we junior associates dutifully complied, and struggled to carry the dozen or so huge binders of decisions to court. Of course, the partner did not refer to any of the decisions in the binders, and because we were afraid of throwing out our work product, the junior attorneys and I needed to schlep these materials all the way back to the office.

Some firms have administrative employees who are tasked with shuttling materials to and from court, and these professionals are usually most knowledgeable about how to efficiently carry documents to court and back. However, I am sure many litigators have seen junior attorneys handle this task, and it is not uncommon to see a fresh-faced attorney standing outside a courthouse with stacks of boxes full of materials. This can be an onerous responsibility, and senior attorneys should share the burden equally or plan arrangements to make it easier to get materials to court.

Other times working at firms, my coworkers and myself were subjected to what you might call hazing in situations that did not directly involve legal work. For instance, at one firm where I worked, the first-year attorneys were all tasked with dressing up for Halloween. However, this was a constructive form of hazing. My coworkers and myself needed to work together to pull off a common theme with our costumes, and this was a fun project for everyone in the office.

Another time, however, the junior attorneys and I needed to dress up for our Christmas party, and this was a less-fun experience. At the firm Christmas party, the boss dressed up like Santa Claus, and the junior associates dressed up like elves and helped our boss (Santa) hand out presents. Now, I’m 6’9’’, so it must have looked pretty funny for me to dress up in an elf costume, kind of like Will Ferrell in that movie “Elf”!

However, I’m also Jewish, and no one seemed to care how I might feel participating in this Christmas celebration that did not substantially involve any of the other faiths observed by attorneys at the office. Of course, I couldn’t really opt out of this role, since I did not want to seem like a buzzkill in front of my boss. Again, I’m not the type of guy who gets easily offended, and I was okay participating in a happy occasion that resulted in a ton of joyous kids getting presents. However, senior attorneys should be more cognizant of the fact that such practices may cross a line, and it might be difficult for junior attorneys to opt out of similar traditions.

Another time, I worked at a firm that tasked the junior attorneys with running the March Madness pool. This required a lot more work than you’d think! My colleagues and I had to hound people for money, and even contribute our own funds to the pool until people paid up. Right before the deadline to submit brackets online, a senior attorney handed me a ton of handwritten brackets from his family members. I had to manually upload the brackets into our online system at the last minute, and use every email address I had to make sure that the registrations were done properly. Again, this was not such a big deal, but junior associates should not be compelled to satisfy such responsibilities outside their job descriptions without a real option of opting out.

Once more, I’m not saying that any of this activity crossed any lines, and most of the tasks discussed did not impose too much hardship on me and my colleagues. In addition, there can be value to some hazing in certain contexts. However, senior attorneys need to carefully evaluate how they treat junior attorneys, and consider whether associates have a real opportunity to opt out of tasks with which they might not be comfortable.

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.

Senditoo has also signed a guarantee partnership with with leading financial institution, Banc ABC Zimbabwe, securing US dollar cash pick-ups in all Banc ABC branches across Zimbabwe.

Founded by UK based Zimbabwean Takwana Tyaranini and his Guinean business partner Ibrahima Soumano in 2016, Senditoo was an innovative service that solely focused on allowing migrants to send instant mobile phone credit to their loved ones in over 140 countries across the world.

The company’s revenue increased by over 600% globally in approximately 36 months and they have progressively become the favourite airtime transfer platform for Zimbabweans living in the UK, with 30% of their transaction volume coming from them.

The company is looking to become the leading transmittal enterprise, offering customers both the option to send airtime and money synchronously.

“We created an innovative way of sending mobile phone credit almost three years ago and it only seemed fitting to make another ground-breaking move that will make it easier for friends and family to remit money internationally at a very low cost,” Tyaranini said.

“In the last few years, Senditoo has built a sustainable brand based on transparency, and great user experience. As a result, every other week, we received emails from our current clients insisting that we add money transfer.

Our customers are at the centre of everything that we do and everything that we aim to achieve, or have achieved so far. As we continue to grow and revolutionise the way our customers transact, we want them to be part of our next journey,” he added.

Africa as a central hub for international remittance

Africa has one of the world’s most mobile populations, and African nations account for a large part of the expanding global remittance market.

Tyaranini said that with Africa’s infrastructure, the continent has a significant advantage that can drive remittances across the globe and promote financial inclusion, particularly through mobile money.

“Digital transformation is helping the flow of money and connecting more people around the world and that is where Senditoo comes in,” Tyaranini said.

Customers are being offered a number of incentives and signing up with Senditoo to remit money in the next three months will see them receive a £5 discount on their first transfer. They will also get £5 every time they refer a friend to the service and will receive a Senditoo T-shirt when they send £100 or more.

Post published in: Business

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Photo credit: REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Zimbabwe is pinning its hopes on the mining sector to drive the recovery of an economy grappling with rolling power cuts and shortages of foreign exchange and fuel.

Russia’s Vi Holding, through its JSC Afromet subsidiary, owns half the shares in GDI, which is developing the Darwendale platinum project near Harare, while Zimbabwe’s Landela Mining Venture (Pvt) Ltd owns the rest.

Landela is a subsidiary of commodity trading firm Sotic International Ltd, linked to Zimbabwean fuel tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwireyi, one of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s advisors.

Former Zimplats chief executive David Brown is the new GDI chairman, the company said.

Tagwirei did not respond to calls to his mobile phone. Brown could not be reached for comment.

The Darwendale project is located in the mineral-rich Great Dyke belt and had initially earmarked $400 million for the first phase of the project. It aims for the mine to start production in 2021 and at its peak to produce 860,000 ounces of platinum group metals and gold per year.

Last year, Zimbabwe produced 978,692 ounces of platinum.

Zimbabwe is seeking to exploit its reserves of platinum, which is used in catalytic converters to limit auto emissions, at a time when vehicle manufacturers are boosting production of electric cars powered by lithium batteries.

GDI said in a statement its lead financial arranger African Export-Import Bank was targeting financial closure for the syndicated funding by March 31, 2020.

“Advanced negotiations are currently underway with a number of South African, Russian and Zimbabwean financial institutions to participate in the syndicate providing funds for equipment, machinery and services procurement,” GDI said.

GDI was also finalizing contractual terms with foreign and local contractors, suppliers and service providers.

Brown said in a statement that the Darwendale project had potential to become a significant low-cost PGM producer.

Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum Holdings already mine platinum in Zimbabwe. Impala also owns a joint-venture mine with Sibanye-Stillwater.

Karo Mining Holdings, part-owned by South Africa’s Tharisa Plc, plans a $4.2 billion platinum mining venture, while Bravura, owned by Nigerian billionaire Benedict Peters, was given a concession to explore for platinum in May.

Post published in: Business

 Dr Peter Magombeyi (Photo: Thom Pierce)

Magombeyi, who was abducted a month ago after leading demonstrations against the intolerable conditions that healthcare givers in Zimbabwe are working under, is recuperating in SA after seeking care for a medical condition associated with his abduction. He spoke to Maverick Citizen.

According to Dr Peter Magombeyi, the salaries of doctors in Zimbabwe have been slashed from $1,800 a month to a mere $80. This left doctors unable to sustain themselves and their families. Many of them cannot even afford to pay for transportation. The drastic salary cut was never communicated to doctors officially: the news came via an SMS notification.

The decrease in salaries is speculated to be a consequence of switching from the US dollar to the RTGS dollar, Zimbabwe’s new currency. With the prices of essential commodities soaring by nearly 1,000%, Zimbabwe’s economy is at an all-time low, leaving most of the population unable to afford basic living expenses.

Resources such as fuel are scarce, and the country is in the throes of rolling power cuts, some lasting up to 18 hours. Many patients have been turned away from their surgical appointments because of the power cuts and those on life support are in a precarious position, to say the least.

In the midst of severe economic unrest, the Zimbabwean healthcare system has collapsed. Just under 2,000 doctors serve a population of 14-million, who are largely unemployed.

“This collective job action is not a strike; we are incapacitated,” said Magombeyi.

Magombeyi, who practises as a doctor at the Harare Central Hospital, said the current working conditions of healthcare practitioners were tantamount to slave labour.

“Imagine being in a hospital that accepts all referrals, and then not having things as simple as gloves or bandages. Patients have to buy and bring their own test tubes,” Magombeyi said.

In some instances, patients are forced to buy medication privately. “We don’t even have Paracetamol,” Magombeyi said. Paracetamol is the most basic pain medication. Millions of Zimbabweans who rely on the public healthcare system bear the brunt of the under-resourced facilities as they are unable to access the private healthcare system.

“The private system is for the rich and politicians, and they often have the option of flying out of the country to access healthcare,” said Magombeyi.

He described the situation in Zimbabwean hospitals as a “silent genocide”.

“Our government is averse to truth-telling. When we speak out about what is happening, we are labelled as a third force trying to destabilise the country; if you tell the truth, you become an enemy of the state. We can no longer subsidise the government, our people must know exactly what is happening.

“The government should have policies that enable us to look after the population, and that is not happening. We subscribe to the codes of health practice that outline that we cannot do harm to our patients. If the government does not create policies that allow us to execute our duties in a safe manner, then our patients’ lives are at risk.”

The public healthcare system in Zimbabwe has become dysfunctional even at the lowest level of care. The primary healthcare system is severely incapacitated, forcing their referrals onto even more incapacitated central hospitals, which are supposed to cater to the needs of patients from all over the country.

“There are very high rates of death linked to HIV/AIDS as well as chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Thousands of people have died,” Magombeyi lamented.

On 21 October, doctors in Zimbabwe had been on an “incapacitated” demonstration for 50 days. None of them has received a salary since they embarked on demonstrations against the government. Magombeyi said the government had refused to respond to the healthcare crisis with any degree of urgency. He criticised the state for skirting around the issue of remuneration of healthcare givers.

He further refuted government claims that there were only five doctors who were disgruntled with the state of affairs and influencing other doctors to take part in the demonstrations.

“How can 1,600 doctors be influenced by five people? Our requests are not a matter of greed, we are not being unreasonable either, our patients are dying. Thousands have already died. If we don’t advocate for them, who will?” asked Magombeyi.

Despite the doctors’ continued action of incapacitation, Magombeyi clarified that the collective job action was structured so that emergency cases were still attended to.

“It’s not that we are all on leave at once. We have doctors on call to attend to life-threatening cases. If a patient is identified as baton red, they are attended to. We are an essential service and we honour those ethical engagements.”

Doctors and the government are at a stalemate, as doctors continue their collective job action awaiting a favourable resolution to address their dire situation. MC

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Four years ago, breast cancer claimed the life of her mother. Now, 34-year-old Thembi Bhebhe, a high school teacher by profession, is battling cervical cancer, bed-ridden at her Harare home, the Zimbabwean capital.

In Chitungwiza, a town 25 kilometers (16 miles) southeast of Harare, 46-year-old Megan Saruwaka, a mother of four, is battling breast cancer, which she says doctors have classified as having reached stage four, meaning it has reached its advanced stage.

Breast cancer has become Zimbabwe’s new health headache, and it is not alone, having teamed up with cervical cancer, becoming the poor country’s loathed twin evils in the health sector.

Hammered by one of the two, now Megan’s situation is beyond redemption, she said.

“I’m in pain, dying is better, I wait for my day to rest from this pain,” Megan told Anadolu Agency as she winced in pain, lying in bed in her room as despondent loved ones encircled her.

For any cancer patients like Megan and Thembi, “what decides the treatment depends on the stage of the cancer,” according to oncologist Patrick Hungwe in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.

“Each stage is cured differently, with early breast or cervical cancer detection, one can be saved before cancer cells start spreading throughout the lungs, liver and the brain,” Hungwe said.

For Thembi, even as she hopes for chemotherapy treatment sessions, her hope of survival is slowly fading away as Zimbabwean doctors have remained on strike for over two months now, demanding increased wages.

“There are no doctors at hospitals and I can only afford to be treated at government hospitals. I’m afraid the absence of doctors reduces my hopes to win against cancer,” Thembi told Anadolu Agency.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the number of annual cancer deaths globally reached at 8.2 million, adding that the numbers were expected to triple by 2030.

With breast and cervical cancers as the country’s twin evils haunting hundreds of women here like Thembi and Megan, the Health and Child Care Ministry says approximately 1,500 women are succumbing to cervical cancer each year.

Not only that, but Zimbabwe’s Cancer Association says breast cancer alone is claiming more than one thousand women every year in the southern African nation.

Even health experts here concur cervical and breast cancer have wreaked havoc in Zimbabwe.

“You would realize that because of poverty and lack of knowledge many women are discovering too late that they have breast or cervical cancer; women are delaying to be screened for these cancers and that is why we are having many of them succumbing to the diseases,” Hillary Goto, a private oncologist based in Harare, told Anadolu Agency.

But women rights activists here have blamed government for the deaths of their colleagues from breast or cervical cancer.

“Government is solely responsible for the lack of service in hospitals and that means cancer patients like women with breast or cervical cancer are at the receiving end of the crisis in hospitals as they die before getting help,” Linet Chaota, a member of the NGO Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), told Anadolu Agency.

Cancer Association of Zimbabwe is currently carrying out a month-long free cancer screening as part of commemorations of the World Breast Cancer Awareness month, which is observed in October across the world.

WOZA is a Zimbabwean civic movement formed in 2003 to provide women from all walks of life with a united voice to speak out on issues affecting their day-to-day lives, according to Amnesty International.

“Some well-to-do women cancer patients are having to cross to neighboring countries like South Africa to seek treatment,” according to women rights defender Chaota.

But, the likes of Thembi and Megan are having to bear the brunt of the disease holed up in their homes, because to Chaota, “many women suffering from either breast or cervical cancer can’t afford to seek medication outside the country”.

“The poor are just dying in their homes with no care or treatment,” said Chaota.

According to Zimbabwe’s Cancer Registry, from 6,548 registered cases of cancer in 2013, figures have shot up to 9,220 in 2018.

For breast cancer, registered cases went up from 246 to 487 in the same period, the same time period that the disease caught up with many like Thembi and Megan.

Out of 2,062 recorded cancer-related deaths so far in Zimbabwe, breast cancer has been responsible for 7% of the fatalities, with cervical cancer being the highest killer accounting for 13% cancer deaths in the country.

Meanwhile, the Cancer Association of Zimbabwe has been on record in the media saying breast cancer is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers today, with the number of cases worldwide having significantly rose since the 1970s.