Author: TSA Press

Joe and Kathryn do another rapidfire rundown of the biggest stories in legal news this week. Bar exam horror stories! Jones Day’s salary and discrimination suit woes! The imminent collapse of a national Biglaw firm! All that and more. Plus sound effects!!!

Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock and who works in the legal technology business has heard of the Master’s Conference. It’s been going strong for over a decade and it only gets better every year. I spoke recently with Robert Childress about the conference and here are a few outtakes from our conversation.

Started in 2007, the Master’s used to be local to just Washington, D.C. It was a two-and-a-half-day event held at a fancy convention center that brought together the biggest thought-leaders in the industry.

In 2012, with the popularity and growth of other large conferences and events, the Master’s shifted to a one-day conference model and began traveling the country to host the conference in San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, and Orlando. Later, London was added. The Master’s partners with Sidley Austin, Seyfarth, Reed Smith, Jones Day, Thompson & Knight, Blank Rome, and others to host the conferences.

It’s typically not more than a few hundred people who gather in any given city, but thanks to Robert Childress and his team, this conference punches above its weight class with great speakers and content covering topics of interest to corporate legal operations, law firms, and service providers.

With the remaking of the conference several years ago, the Master’s moved away from pure eDiscovery topics and now also focuses on information governance, cyber, and blockchain. It’s not heavy on pushy vendor sales, either, which has always been a plus.

I had the pleasure of presenting at the recent Master’s Conference in NYC. Our Legal Update 2019 panel discussion was led by Ari Kaplan, from Ari Kaplan Advisors, and included input from lawyer and legal technologist Dera Nevin, and attorneys John Levonic from Pepper Hamilton and Jeffrey Rosenthal from Blank Rome. Blank Rome graciously hosted the day’s events. We covered everything from current social media trends in eDiscovery to IoT and biometrics.

The New York City event this year included topics ranging from strategizing eDiscovery operations, how cybersecurity and eDiscovery collide to present security issues, and my favorite, “eDiscovery is Not Just for Litigation Anymore.” There were panels on AI, on information governance, and on blockchain. It’s always relevant and always features the best and brightest speakers.

But it gets better.

The Master’s has always been big on philanthropy, too. And this year is not different. At the ILTA Conference in Orlando this year, the Master’s Conference is hosting the Lawyer’s Invitational, a charity golf tournament to benefit the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. The Lawyer Invitational takes place on Monday, August 19, at the Four Seasons within Walt Disney World. If you are interested in sponsoring, please reach out to Robert Childress at rchildress@themastersconference.com.  You can register for the Lawyer’s Invitational here.

Robert told me during out little chat that one of his goals is “to help people develop their careers and to build a legacy through the Master’s Conference.” He has done that and brought together community, education, and products that build upon a lasting legacy in the legal technology space.

In the end, if the Master’s Conference is in your town, it will benefit legal operations professionals and you should consider attending. Check out the line-up of events here.

Mike Quartararo

Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.

Jones Day has come under a lot of well-deserved scrutiny during the Trump administration. They have become the legal farm team for the Trump administration, and given the Trump administration’s actually embarrassing record in court, that is not a compliment. We all knew that some Biglaw firm would sacrifice its reputation for the racist, sexist, authoritarian President. However, if you had polled lawyers in 2015 and asked them “which one” Jones Day would have easily been in the top-three, which means their current role as Trump stooges has the added effect of being totally “on brand” for the firm.

A normal firm would look to mitigate its increasingly evil reputation by loudly promoting the “good works” done by its lawyers. Jones Day somehow got the National Law Journal to put it on their “pro bono hot list” for 2019. Among other things, the publication touted the firm’s victory in an asylum case. That’s a little bit like lauding the arsonist for calling the fire department, but whatever.

Luckily this is Jones Day we’re talking about. Even when it tries to get good press, the firm’s true colors shine though. From the ABA Journal:

Two former mobile home owners have filed a malpractice suit against Jones Day that claims that the law firm’s work on their eviction case was a “fiasco.”

Zona Bernier and Gary Hill of Orange County, California, allege that Jones Day pressured them to accept a “burdensome settlement” without asserting legitimate defenses and then dropped them as clients a few weeks after the deal was signed. Bernier and Hill said they couldn’t navigate the deal themselves, and they became “permanently homeless” after being evicted.

Defendants are Jones Day and four attorneys.

Again, so on-brand for the firm. The allegation is that they forced a bad settlement, something that they could probably lodge as a quick pro-bono “win” for people who make hot lists, then dropped their clients who ended up actually homeless. The only way to make this more of a Jones Day representation would have been if it ignored an attempted rape allegation somewhere along the way.

On-campus recruiting starts soon and I’m sure some bright young law students will get offers from Jones Day and try to figure out if all the bad press they receive is justified. It is. Adjust your interview lottery requests accordingly.

Jones Day sued for alleged malpractice by pro bono clients who say eviction deal left them homeless [ABA Journal]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Almost 12 years ago, the FBI warned us all that white supremacists were infiltrating law enforcement “in order to disrupt investigations against fellow members and recruit other white supremacists.” Despite this warning, however, to date virtually nothing has been done to address the threat that this movement presents to national security. In fact, the current president not only has specifically excluded funding for groups that seek to fight against the white supremacist ideology, he and his allies have incorporated vile white supremacist rhetoric. Even if we had a president who wanted to fight white supremacism, the question of how to engage in this fight most effectively would remain. I submit that the answer lies in the lessons learned by organizations such as Quilliam, who have been fighting against a violent extremist ideology for over a decade.

After a deadly mass shooting perpetrated by a domestic terrorist occurred in Orlando, Florida, one of the founders of Quilliam, Maajid Nawaz, offered a succinct approach to fighting the violent Islamist ideology behind the attack. As a first step, Maajid was adamant that society must acknowledge that the violent ideology simply exists. A more difficult feat than it might sound. For instance, just as many liberals still refuse to acknowledge that a violent Islamist ideology exists, while many conservatives have for years denied that white supremacism is inspiring violence. Instead, conservative pundits and politicians continually claim that video games, yes, video games, are to blame for mass shootings conducted by white supremacists. Some conservative politicians have even blamed “homosexual marriage” and “the acceptance of recreational marijuana.” All while the ideology that these mass shooters explicitly state is their motivation is ignored, which, of course, is precisely the point for these conservative pundits and politicians.

To get to the root of the matter, however, we simply all have to admit that ideology matters. The obfuscation that these mass shootings are more attributable to video games, gay marriage, cannabis, the media, or mental health needs to be challenged and corrected wherever it is stated. Instead, we must confront the fact that the vile white genocide replacement theory has inspired an already deadly movement to greater panic and violence. Acknowledging that this ideology is behind these attacks allows us to move on to the next step, which is developing ways to isolate and challenge this ideology in the local communities most susceptible to its influence.

Lastly, it is of immense importance that broad support be offered to the voices who challenge white supremacy, particularly conservative voices. To be clear, this means having a lot of imperfect allies on the issue. For example, anyone who reads my column regularly must, by now, be aware that I find David French’s views on secularism and abortion repugnant. However, French also happens to be one of the more vocal opponents on the right who regularly criticizes white supremacy and tried to warn us all of the recent surge. The simple fact is without broad support across the political, social, and regional spectrum we will never be able to isolate hateful white supremacist ideology. To those who think this strategy does not go far enough, consider the fact that social forces, rather than government prohibitions have always been most effective at lessening violence and violent ideologies.

Equally crucial to our struggle is recognizing the methods that won’t work, particularly — and please stay with me here — the ineffectiveness of broad policies of gun control. I have made the case before that most gun-control laws have been destructive, ineffective, and unnecessary (I do offer in the piece those gun control measures I agree can be effective). However, a recent conversation between Elie Mystal and Ken White (you may know the latter as Popehat on Twitter) I think better illustrates the point I was trying to make. Of course, Elie and Ken were discussing prohibitions on speech, not guns. Nevertheless, when asked by Elie to provide a moral argument for the protection of hate speech, Ken gave an answer that I think directly relates to the issue of gun control. Here is Ken’s answer:

“My moral argument is not about the value of the speech. It’s about our brokenness as people and the inevitability that speech restrictions get used to attack the powerless. The moral argument is the same one I use about blasphemy or flag burning or speech that offends people on “the other side.”

We are weak and censorious and we like to punish people for ideas that make us mad. This trend particularly burdens the powerless, because that’s the way the system works. Exceptions to free speech always have been, and always will be, applied disproportionately to people of color and the poor and unpopular political minorities. Morally, I want to fight that.”

It is Ken’s point about our weaknesses and the inevitability that restrictions “always have been, and always will be, applied disproportionately to people of color” that I want to focus on in the context of gun control.

For example, read this piece from Radley Balko detailing how gun laws have traditionally been enforced disproportionately on people of color. As Balko points out, the reason is broad gun control laws, like broad drug laws, are susceptible to basic factors like personal prejudices, resource allocation, and the discretion of law enforcement in deciding “what communities to target and what methods they’ll use to target them.” To be blunt, if you think law enforcement, the same law enforcement the FBI stated was being infiltrated by white supremacists, is going to target affluent or middle-class whites who are largely responsible for mass shootings, and not focus almost entirely on communities of color, then I have some swampland to sell you. As the artist and activist Killer Mike put it, gun laws are going to affect black communities “first, and worst,” and we best remember that when discussing effective solutions to this serious, deadly problem.

Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

As a 1L, it seemed obvious to me that people needed something they weren’t getting. There were people having anxiety attacks by October.

If you don’t do well on the LSAT, you don’t get into the right school. If you don’t do well in the right school, you won’t get the Big Law job you’re meant to want to get. My read on it is that, particularly if you’re in a school with a curve — which is the vast majority of them — from the day you start, you are in constant competition with everyone around you. That’s isolating. It’s awful for people’s mental health.

There was some resistance when I started on this issue, rooted in the idea that it will make the school look bad if you are doing an activist-y mental health thing. I think there’s a realization now that actually it’s a good thing. If you’re trying to recruit the best or most mature students, then showing that you take people’s emotional and mental health seriously is a selling point.

— Luke Finn, a rising third-year student at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, commenting on his efforts to increase awareness about law student mental health and wellness at the T14 school. He started the Students Mental Health Alliance at the school during his first semester and founded the Law Students Mental Health National Alliance group on Facebook last year, where students now share their advice on everything from starting mental health groups at their own schools to lobbying state bars for changes to the character and fitness process. Finn says Northwestern’s current dean supports his advocacy.

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.

When you cut away all the pseudo-intellectual originalism crap, there are essentially two theories of Constitutional interpretation when it comes to gun violence in America.

Theory A: We are a brutish, violent people, and the Second Amendment, as written, provides no relief from our evil nature. The Constitution is soaked in the blood of our children and, absent amendment, it textually demands that more blood be sacrificed in the name of our murderous culture. No right to life or happiness can overcome the rights of the gun or the bullet as codified in our most sacred laws.

Theory B: EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION IN THE WORLD HAS FIGURED OUT A BETTER WAY TO DEAL WITH THIS! There’s nothing in the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, that requires us to be actively dumber than the rest of the modern world. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, WE CAN DO SOMETHING.

The people who subscribe to Theory B are gaining momentum. After every mass shooting, the number of people who believe that our current Constitutional structure allows for some action on gun control and regulation grows. Universal background checks is an overwhelmingly popular position. Polls show that 85 percent of Americans support “red flag laws,” which allow family members to petition that a gun should be taken away from a person who appears to be a danger to themselves and others. The Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is not absolute, and we all know it’s not absolute (go try to buy a decommissioned M1 Abrams tank if you don’t believe me). Clearly, there are many regulations we can enact that would start the process of declawing our violent society, and those regulations would not interfere with your Constitutional right to own a weapon that took approximately 10 to 15 seconds to reload after every shot.

Unfortunately, the people who subscribe to Theory B are underrepresented on our nation’s courts. This has been the work of the Federalist Society generally, and Mitch McConnell specifically. They have worked to stack the courts with hardcore originalists who subscribe to Theory A.

So much of what McConnell and the FedSoc have done has been to address the fact that their positions are wildly unpopular and manifestly against the small “d” democratic arc of history. They are losing the intellectual battle on guns, just as they’ve lost the intellectual battle on women’s rights, civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, and voting rights. They know that as the Baby Boomer generation finally and mercifully dies off, many of their white male supremacist theories will die with them, and be rejected at the ballot box. And so their plan has been to infuse the courts, the one anti-democratic branch of government, with people who will prevent the progress of society long after people like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are gone.

On Slate, Mark Joseph Stern explains how dire the situation is:

The GOP may have no plan to stop mass shootings, but it does have a plan to ensure that Democrats can’t stop them, either.

To understand the dynamic here, it’s important to remember that the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions have been fairly narrow. In 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that the amendment protects law-abiding individuals’ right to keep handguns in the home for self-defense. In 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago, the court held that this right applies against state and local governments. Thus, the Constitution prevents the government from outlawing the possession of a handgun in the home. Under current precedent, the Second Amendment poses no threat to the vast majority of proposed gun regulations.

Try as it might, the National Rifle Association and its allies have failed to persuade the Supreme Court to go any further. The court has declined to hear challenges to a ban on assault weapons, a requirement that guns be stored in a lockbox, a prohibition on concealed carry, and a mandatory waiting period between firearm purchases. A majority of the justices have simply refused to expand Heller and McDonald to curb Americans’ ability to protect themselves from the gun massacres that plague us today.

Trump’s judges are desperate to change that.

We are looking at federal courts, from the Supreme Court on down, that will try to make it easier for people to access deadly weapons, at the very time that overwhelming majorities want to restrict access.

Preventing federal action on gun control is the key to allowing these mass shootings to continue ad infinitum. It doesn’t matter if California has strict gun control laws if a white domestic terrorist can buy his arsenal in Nevada. What happens in Vegas most definitely does not stay in Vegas when it comes to gun reform.

It is because of the relentless efforts of Republicans and conservatives when it comes to promoting conservative judges, including all the “Never Trump” conservatives who now pretend to give a s**t, that I myself have now come to subscribe to Theory A. Our Constitution, as currently interpreted by courts controlled by Republicans, is a blood-soaked invitation to continued mass murder. As long as conservatives can hide behind the Second Amendment, the killings will continue.

The founders didn’t get slavery right, and they didn’t get women right, and they didn’t get guns right. Nobody’s perfect, least of all wealthy white people from the 1700s. How many more people have to die before we can admit they made a mistake?

The answer, obviously, is many more — scarcely imaginable more. So many more people will be violently gunned down while Republicans act like there’s nothing we can do about it.

Senate Republicans Are Quietly Advancing a Radical Gun Plan [Slate]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.