Author: TSA Press

Listen, here at Above the Law we love a good lockstep bonus memo. It sends a message of collegiality, avoids the problems of black box compensation, and makes bonus season easy for Above the Law. But, not every firm is on board with that world view, like Perkins Coie.

The good news is that Perkins Coie has been sending around individualized bonus announcements. And, you know, any bonus is better than no bonus. But, according to tipsters, a bunch of associates are off the market scale set by Milbank last month. From a source:

You should call out Perkins Coie. Law students should know—if you come to Perkins, you are unlikely to make Cravath scale bonuses. I am an associate who billed over 1950 hours (which is the billable hours requirement at Perkins) and made substantially less than the Cravath scale for my class year. I have spoken to multiple associates who say that they have made less than Cravath scale bonuses (across all class years) in recent years as well. So this is not just a one-year thing—it’s been ongoing. This is interesting for a firm that touts itself as a “tier 1 firm.” You would think they would pay their associates like a tier 1 firm. Clearly not.

But like any firm with individualized bonuses, we depend on our readers to help fill out the details. So, are you a Perkins Coie associate? What do you think about bonuses this year? Feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

The moral of the story is, as always, our tipsters are essential to bonus season. We depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

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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).

Documents are the lifeblood of legal practice, and one of the biggest areas where lawyers stand to benefit from today’s latest technological advances. Preparing documents has long been a tedious, time-consuming task involving manual processes that resulted in human error and repetitive work.  That’s where document automation comes in. But, until now, document assembly tools have required an IT team or developer to set up.

The folks at Documate are changing all that. Originally looking for a way to automate critical forms and workflows for domestic violence survivors and other pro bono clients, Documate’s founders, a team of lawyers and software developers, quickly realized that the existing document automation tools on the market were either too complicated to use, didn’t offer enough functionality, or both. They invested their time and impressive engineering resources to build their own solution, and the result was a sophisticated document automation platform that is changing the way that lawyers across all practices are looking at documents.

Documate offers unrivaled ease of use — no coding, ever — while also allowing lawyers to build the complex forms and documents they need to successfully streamline their workflows, all backed by the security of isolated AWS databases to protect the highest level of security for your sensitive client information. Simply put, Documate succeeds where other document automation tools have failed, empowering you to automate your expertise and build complex workflows that will cut your document preparation time by 90%.  

And as a bonus, their workflows are shareable, allowing you to gather data as a virtual “intake” process or even whitelabel your workflows to sell automated forms to the public online.  If you’ve ever wanted to create a “TurboTax for law,” this is your chance to build it – all without hiring a developer.

How To Automate Word and PDF Documents with No Code 

When it comes to legal technology, simpler is better, and Documate delivers. They don’t expect busy lawyers to learn to code or master any complicated processes like you might find with other document automation software. Documate is simple to use and quick to master. With clear instructions and a few clicks, you’ll be on your way to automating even your most complex forms and workflows.

Your Documate experience takes place in the user-friendly Workflow Builder screen, a simple dashboard with two tabs, one for creating your interview questionnaire to gather the necessary data and information from your clients, and another for setting up the documents you’ll eventually generate.

Image 1: Documate’s Workflow Builder Makes It Easy to Build Document Assembly Apps

On the interview tab, you add the questions your clients need to answer in order to fill out their forms — basic identifying information, the underlying facts relevant to the issue at hand, and much more. The process is similar to programs like SurveyMonkey or Typeform, where you can build out questions of various types, including text, yes/no, multiple choice, or file upload answer questions, among others. For each question, you assign a variable name to the answer — for example, “client name” — and build out a workflow to take in all the information you need to complete your form.

Image 2: Documate Makes it Easy to Set Up Conditional Logic Without Any Code

Documate makes the document automation process even easier by incorporating question logic and page logic, which connect your questions to each other and save you from having to do extra work. For example, if your first question is about marital status and your next question asks you to identify your spouse’s name, that second question will only appear if the answer to the first question is “married.” The same sort of internal logic applies to groups of questions — for example, the client will only get a whole series of questions about children in an estate planning matter if they’ve indicated that they actually have children. It even allows for looping repeating questions to keep adding children until all necessary information has been provided, without having to set up the question more than once. The best part from the lawyer’s perspective, though, is that you don’t even have to understand what question logic or page logic means. Documate does all the heavy lifting for you.

The second step is to load your templates (as many as you want Documate to generate from your the data it gathers through the interview questions) into the output documents tab to complete the process.

Image 3: Upload Your Templates and Forms and Set Logic to Which Ones Are Generated

Documate allows you to automate both PDF and Word templates (or anything that can be turned into a .docx). While the process for the two is a little different, Documate always walks you through it to make sure your document is set up correctly. The platform allows you to link your template to the variable names you set up in your interview and creates all the workflows you need based on logic that’s already built into the system. It even allows you to incorporate complex items like conditional phrases or paragraphs, boolean logic, complex calculations, automatic date calculations, or lists and tables with the same ease as the most straightforward questions.

Image 4: The Word Add-In Helps Set Up Conditions, Calculations, Loops, and Calculate Dates

You can always preview your questions and answers and review your documents before you generate the final versions. When you’re satisfied, completing the job simply requires you to hit “Save and Run.”  Then, you’re all done. You have a web-based form that you can use yourself, or share with colleagues and clients to generate documents:

Image 5: Run Your Workflow as an Online Questionnaire that Generates Documents

Revolutionizing the World of Document Automation

Complex Boolean Logic? Calculations? Special Formatting?  It can handle it all.

Documate is a gamechanger for lawyers, particularly those in practice areas that rely heavily on templates and forms. There’s really no limit to what can be automated, as long as it’s template-based or process-oriented. Whether you’re working with simple intake to gather data being pushed into other documents, or complex estate planning documents that require intricate complications, Documate can handle it.

Better yet, the system is incredibly powerful and can be used to build expert systems in even the most complex areas of law. It takes just a few minutes to set up basic forms, and only as long as it takes to take what’s in your head and put it onto the screen for more complex templates.  You can add complex boolean logic to dictate what phrases or clauses are generated. Set up looping questions or add calculations (e.g., add up income or expenses or calculate against dates for statutes of limitation). You can always change it if you want to add new elements or the law changes, but the intensive manual work never has to be done again. Multiply that exercise across the number of forms you deal with every day and the number of clients you assist in a year, and the time savings quickly add up.

Documate has a number of practical uses that cover nearly all aspects of law. Some lawyers use it completely internally to essentially assist with case management. Others use it as a client intake or data gathering exercise to obtain critical client information to store in their dashboard. For those who want to sell their forms online, Documate even allows you to put a paywall behind your documents and prompt clients for payment information after they’ve answered all the questions but before they can access their final documents, allowing you to compete with companies like LegalZoom.

All Your Data in One Dashboard

Regardless of how you use it, Documate gives you the ability to see all your generated documents in your dashboard, along with information on who’s started and finished your workflows, when they took and completed them, and what documents were created. Data can be reused from one workflow to another, so if your client comes back next month for a new document, you don’t have to retype all that information again.  Their newest feature allows you to conduct a multi-user workflow, where your client can enter some of their case data, and you can take over from your dashboard and finalize the documents.

Image 6: Take Your Intake Data and Push it Into Other Workflows

You can give different users access to different workflows, and you can even whitelabel the forms or add your own logo if you prefer not to have the Documate name visible. 

To top it all off, Documate keeps your data secure — every client gets their own dedicated instance and database, wth their own subdomain and AWS server, meaning that Documate is more secure than most tools and software you’ll find in the market in any area.

Going forward, Documate will be offering additional data capabilities, including running analytics on data to really understand your clients better. Through it all, there’s excellent 24-hour customer support available, even though the platform is so easy to use that you probably won’t need it.

When it comes to document automation, no one does it better than Documate. You get ease of use, power, and security, all combined in one package that you won’t find anywhere else. Give Documate a try and it will change the way you think about document automation.

For a free trial of Documate’s document automation software, sign up on Documate here or email hello@documate.org to schedule a live demo.  Don’t have time to automate your forms yourself?  Documate’s team of document automation specialists can help with that, too.

Lawmakers voted Thursday to confirm a Texas oncologist as the newest head of the Food and Drug Administration.

The full Senate voted 72-18 to confirm Dr. Stephen Hahn, a radiation oncologist and chief medical executive at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, as commissioner of the FDA.

President Donald Trump nominated Hahn last month to succeed former Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who stepped down in March. National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Ned Sharpless and Department of Health and Human Services official Dr. Brett Giroir had been heading the FDA as acting commissioners.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions voted 18-5 last week in favor of Hahn’s nomination. Still, Hahn attracted some criticism – and votes against his confirmation – for not taking a stronger stance on electronic cigarettes. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington was among those who voted against his confirmation after he “refused to commit to following through with the Trump Administration’s promise to ban non-tobacco flavored e-cigarettes that have not undergone FDA review.”

Indeed, former Commissioner Gottlieb has been particularly vocal on the issue of e-cigarettes since his departure, calling last month for a full ban on pod-based e-cigarettes. His advocacy comes amid a nationwide outbreak of lung injuries associated with vaping products.

Hahn had already been under consideration to lead the agency for a couple of months when Trump nominated him. It was initially reported in September that the administration was mulling his nomination, though Sharpless and Giroir were also reportedly in the running.

Several new therapies for serious diseases will come under FDA review on Hahn’s watch next year. Following the presentation of positive data at the recently concluded American Society of Hematology meeting, Bristol-Myers Squibb plans to seek approval for two CAR-T cell therapies – lisocabtagene maraleucel in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and idecabtagene vicleucel in multiple myeloma, the latter of which it is developing with bluebird bio. Gilead Sciences said Wednesday that it had filed for approval of KTE-X19 in mantle cell lymphoma as well. And bluebird plans to initiate a rolling application for the gene therapy LentiGlobin in the blood disorder beta-thalassemia, which won European Medicines Agency approval earlier this year.

Photo: The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

— Doug Emhoff, partner at DLA Piper and husband to Senator Kamala Harris, showing Twitter love to his wife on her return to Senate duties following the end of her campaign to be president. Yesterday Harris attended a Judiciary Committee hearing to question the DOJ Inspector General while Emhoff spent most of the day tweeting (and retweeting) messages of support.

You get a defamation suit! And you get a defamation suit! And YOU get a defamation suit! Everyone’s getting a defamation suit these days, thanks to conservative thought leader Rep. Devin Nunes, the influencer who started the trend when he sued a cow on Twitter for $250 million.

Now Fox News contributor Dan Bongino is joining the herd, hiring Nunes’ famous libelslander lawyer Steven Biss to make him whole after “a digital assassin owned and controlled by billionaire Clinton-devotees, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg” destroyed his reputation by implying that his departure from NRATV might have been less than entirely voluntary. Yeah, it’s that kind of a complaint.

“The National Rifle Association’s media arm has dropped pro-Trump firebrand Dan Bongino from its lineup of conservative commentators,” is how Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Markay worded his article last December. Markay never said that Bongino had been fired, but according to Biss’ Law of Defamatory Gist, the only thing that matters is that Twitter decided to believe he had been — a reasonable assumption since the NRA was bleeding cash at the time — and laugh heartily about it.

Inveterate Trump-hater, Rick Wilson of Florida, republished the Daily Beast Article to his 649,000 Twitter followers together with the words, “Womp womp.” [https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1072248324760195073]. Wilson imitated the noise made in old cartoons or on gameshows to indicate someone had done something embarrassingly dumb, or failed at something, or whatever they did backfired on them (first womp is a higher frequency sound than the second womp).

News you can use!

Bongino insists that he “simply decided not to renew his contract,” although he and the NRA refused multiple requests for comment before the story went to press, a fact Bongino confirmed with screenshots of his texts with Markay.

From this, Bongino adduces proof that Markay’s source must have told him that Bongino jumped and wasn’t pushed. Which may or may not be true, but Bongino hasn’t exactly bolstered his case for defamation of public figure by demonstrating that Markay made repeated attempts to get his side of the story.

Bongino is similarly blasé about venue, concluding without evidence that “Daily Beast’s defamation was purposefully directed at Plaintiff in Florida,” borne out of a “desire to hurt Plaintiff because of Plaintiff’s support for President Trump and because of Plaintiff’s conservative ideology.”

He claims defamation per se because saying that his contract was not renewed “impute[s] to Plaintiff an unfitness to perform the duties of an office or employment for profit, or the want of integrity in the discharge of the duties of such office or employment.” Bongino accuses the Daily Beast of violating Florida’s consumer protection laws by making false business claims, which is a … creative interpretation of the statute.

All of this is par for the course in a Steven Biss lawsuit. But how has this tough guy, who scorns liberals and their pathetic safe spaces, actually been injured?

As a direct result of Daily Beast’s defamation, Plaintiff suffered substantial presumed and actual damages and loss, including, but not limited to, pain and suffering, emotional distress and trauma, insult, anguish, stress and anxiety, public ridicule, humiliation, embarrassment, indignity, damage and injury to his personal and professional reputations, loss of business and income, attorney’s fees, costs, and other out-of-pocket expenses in the amount of $10,000,000.00 or such other amount as is determined by the Jury.

Bongino, who swears on his MAGA hat that he quit the NRA job, is suing the Daily Beast for making him sad and unemployable. His reputation is ruined! All he has to fall back on is his 1.3 million Twitter followers, 611,000 Facebook friends, daily podcast, compensated speaking gigs at Republican events, appearances in Trump campaign videos, and his regular gig as a Fox contributor.

Clearly poor Dan Bongino’s life will never be exactly the same as it was before people who already think he’s a raging loon spent a pleasant afternoon laughing at him on Twitter. Some scars only heal with the application of $15 million.

“The liberal activists inside of many media outlets have gotten away with character assassination for way too long,” Bongino quotes himself saying on his own website. “The Daily Beast tried to smear me, and I guess they thought I would just take it. They were wrong.”

Lotsa luck, Florida Man.

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

Todd C. Bank is having a rough week and we’re not even to Friday yet. The Queens-based attorney found himself getting escorted out of the Second Circuit by security while a judge repeatedly told him to leave. Astoundingly, this isn’t even the only faceplant he’s had at a federal appellate court this week.

The oral argument in Doyle v. Palmer, a matter involving attorney Robert Doyle’s objection to having to submit a good character affidavit to be admitted to the Eastern District of New York, which despite being par for the course in this business, Doyle feels violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses, as well as the First Amendment. That set up this exchange between Bank, Doyle’s attorney, and the Second Circuit panel. For some excerpts…

I am not defending Bank’s behavior here, and the whole case is kind of stupid, but he is right that the briefs addressed this question. The question is: “why would an attorney complain about having to produce a potentially negative character affidavit when the attorney gets full control over whether or not to hand in the affidavit?” And he provided an answer:

This argument ignores the delay, in being admitted to the bar, that an Applicant would endure if he were to seek one potential Sponsor after another until (if ever) he finds a Sponsor who approves of his moral character (that an Applicant of poor moral character may continue to seek a Sponsor until he finds one who likes him enough to be his Sponsor or is of equally poor character (likely the same person), and who will therefore likely see his fellow wretch, that is, the Applicant, as a morally upstanding person, reveals the farcical nature of the Affidavit Requirement).

Sure. But bad character folks should have to work harder and suffer more delays because of their issues and getting unreliable affidavits from sketchy people then becomes something the court can consider. It’s not a rubber stamp as much as it may feel like it for students strolling out of their T14 lectures.

Still, most folks would welcome an opportunity to talk more about their briefs rather than blast the judge. And while there are exceptions where judges are so unprofessionally megalomaniacal that they earn some snark, inviting an advocate to take a few minutes to explain the basic premise of the case isn’t one of those times.

After being scolded for unprofessional behavior, Bank tried to deliver a rebuttal and when he wouldn’t take the fact that he’d waived his rebuttal for an answer, security was told to escort him out.

One of the judges on the panel was Judge Robert D. Sack, who must have felt some sense of déjà vu since he found himself affirming a ruling about Bank’s professionalism eight years ago. Back then, Bank lodged a number of constitutional complaints over not being able to wear a baseball cap in court while arguing that it was unfair that court employees could wear yarmulkes but others couldn’t wear hats.

Earlier in the week, Bank saw another appeal tossed when the Federal Circuit decided that no, in fact, you can’t challenge someone’s intellectual property rights just because you don’t like them. Bank had challenged the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decision that Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik in Wisconsin had a trade dress interest in the idea of keeping goats on a grass roof because, Bank felt, this was demeaning to the goats. The court felt that this didn’t give a Queens attorney any standing.

If we could offer any advice to Bank right now, it would be to maybe lay off the appellate cases for the rest of the week. Go visit a goat farm and just chill.

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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.

The Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group released its latest report and once again informed us that revenue is up — but only because firms have jacked up their rates — demand is sluggish, and firms are taking longer and longer to collect on their bills largely because in-house counsel have made everything unduly difficult.

The biggest sticking point in the report is over just what the next year to 18 months will bring. Citi Private Bank takes the firm stance that there is no looming recession, but the people running the firms and spending every day with access to financial records of businesses across sectors are totally smelling that recession. A majority of “industry leaders” surveyed believe the bottom falls out next year and an even larger majority see trouble by 2021.

“Although 2020 is expected to be a positive year for the law firm industry, it is an opportunity for firms to ensure they are well-positioned should there be a downturn in the market,” said Gretta Rusanow, Head of Advisory Services for the Law Firm Group at Citi Private Bank. “Despite the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and volatility, and a challenging talent market, we expect the most successful firms will continue to expand and innovate in 2020. For those firms, expansion will be closely aligned to the firm’s business strategy – more so than pursuing opportunistic growth.”

This view doesn’t necessarily clash with firm leadership’s sense of a recession. Law firms often experience recessions on a bit of a lag. It’s why law firms talk about the Great Recession as a 2009 phenomenon instead of something that burned everyone in 2008. There’s money to be made in law when the rest of the economy begins its skid. Indeed, right up until the point where firms can’t continue to boost revenue by raising rates, recessions aren’t bad at all for firms.

Rusanow’s advice for firms may not come out and say it, but she’s telling everyone to invest in countercyclical talent.

So if you’re in bankruptcy, this might be a good time to test the waters.

Earlier: In-House Counsel Make Increasingly Arcane Billing Demands And It’s Costing Firms Money

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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.

Who doesn’t love a good bonus announcement? It’s the perfect inspiration to keep associates happily billing with the promise of a big payday in the near future.

The good folks at Arnold & Porter understand that money can be a great motivator for associate productivity. That’s why in addition to the market bonuses, established by Milbank last month, the firm is offering extra money for their big billers. Associates will get 20 percent above the market rates if they’ve logged 2,400 hours, 2,200 of which is billable time, this year.

The firm’s bonus scale is as follows:

Class of 2019 – $15,000
Class of 2018 – $15,000
Class of 2017 – $25,000
Class of 2016 – $50,000
Class of 2015 – $65,000

You’ll notice the bonus grid at A&P drops off after 2015 while Biglaw bonus schedules tend to end with the classes of 2012 or 2011. According to the firm’s bonus announcement, senior associate bonuses will take into account market rates and well as productivity and other factors. Qualifying senior associates can expect to receive bonuses of up to $125,000.

Bonuses will be paid at the end of January. You can read the full memo on the next page.

Remember — we can’t do this without you, dear readers! We depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

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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).

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government appeared hopeful that after 100 days, the doctors’ strike may finally be drawing to a close.

HARARE – Wednesday marked a hundred days since doctors in Zimbabwe went on strike.

The industrial action, which began on 3 September, affected most major hospitals.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government appeared hopeful that after 100 days, the doctors’ strike may finally be drawing to a close.

The Health Services Board said at least 80 doctors applied to return to work after an offer of financial support was made by the Higher Life Foundation, a charity run by billionaire Strive Masiyiwa. But, that figure was still only a fraction of the 1,600 doctors in government service.

Most of them had joined the strike.

The Hospital Doctors Association’s Masimba Ndoro told **Eyewitness News **the problems of low government wages, and lack of medicine and equipment in hospitals still hadn’t been addressed.

Post published in: Featured

“The move is part of strategic efforts to get the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa and across the globe to come back home not only to celebrate 40 years of independence, but as an effort to create a dialogue between the diaspora and those back home,” ZimThrive said in a statement on Wednesday.

Co-founder Mike Tashaya hoped the event would help create a dialogue among Zimbabwean nationals on how to “be part of the change the country so desperately needs”.

“The idea is to come together and help market Zimbabwe as a fantastic tourist and investment destination, create a dialogue among its citizens and be part of the change the country so desperately needs,” Tashaya said.

This will be achieved through the hosting of various social and business events in the country, while also collaborating with a wide range of business, social and community organisations.

“It is also a chance for them to attend family-friendly music, sports, arts and cultural events.

“There is a significant population of Zimbabweans in the neighbouring country, making up South Africa’s largest group of foreign migrants. With an estimated population of between one and three million,” ZimThrive said.

Co-founders Mildred Mujanganja, who is based in the US, and Tashaya, who is based in the UK, established the platform to bring Zimbabweans who live in various countries around the world together, with the aim of reinforcing unity, building new and old friendships, and creating a stronger and self-sufficient nation.

“We are less than six months away and the team has been working closely with our partners and key stakeholders to populate an exciting and inclusive calendar of events that allows families and friends to come together and create long-lasting memories,” Mujanganja said.

This year saw a wave of xenophobic attacks in the country that affected migrants who left their homes across the continent in pursuit of a better life.

In September, Gauteng was the hardest hit, with sporadic violence occurring across all three of its big metros, News24 reported.

The protests saw various communities looting both foreign and South African-owned shops, calling for an end to drug syndicates.

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula previously revealed close to 700 people had been arrested on charges ranging from public violence, arson, malicious damage to property, theft and possession of stolen property, possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, attempted murder and murder, business robbery, and ongoing contraventions of the Gathering Act.

Post published in: Featured