Power crisis turns night into day for Zimbabwe’s firms and families – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

A worker checks a furnace used to produce wall plaster as the Plaster Centre plant is forced to run at night to avoid 18-hour daily power cuts in Harare, Zimbabwe, July 25, 2019. Picture taken July 25, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Moments later, eight men in blue overalls walk into a factory and begin shoveling a mound of gypsum into a drying machine to make wall plaster.

Zimbabwe’s worsening power shortages have effectively turned day into night for many businesses, with most work happening well after dark, when lights flicker on for a few hours.

For families, it is the same. Cynthia Chabwino, 32, is a mother of four young children. By the time the lights come on at her modest home in Hatcliffe township, on the outskirts of Harare, they are all fast asleep and she has a few hours to complete the household chores.

Chabwino begins her nocturnal routine by fetching water from an electric-powered borehole for use the next day. By 10 p.m., the line of women and children stretches more than 50 meters (yards).

She then converts a small coffee table in the middle of her living room into an ironing board and starts pressing the children’s uniforms for school the next morning.

“Our lives have become unbearable,” she said. “We are always tired now, but what can we do?”

The southern African country is producing just half of its 1,700 MW peak demand, the result of a prolonged drought that has reduced output at its largest hydro plant and aging coal-fired generators that keep breaking down, according to state-owned power utility ZESA Holdings.

The company has imposed rolling blackouts that last up to 18 hours a day, crippling factories and mines and compounding the country’s worst economic crisis in a decade.

Zimbabwe’s economy, initially forecast to grow 3.1% this year, is now expected to contract, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said on Thursday, without providing a figure.

Annual inflation surged to 175.66% in June, eroding earnings and stirring memories of economic chaos under former president Robert Mugabe, when hyperinflation forced the country to abandon its currency in 2009.

The hope that greeted Mugabe’s ousting in 2017 has now turned to despair as his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa struggles to revive the economy and ease shortages of electricity, fuel, medicines and bread.

The government says it plans to import power from its neighbors for now, expand and build new generation plants in the future and encourage off-grid power such as solar for consumers.

SEVERE IMPACT

The power cuts have cost manufacturers more than $200 million in lost production since June, according to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries and Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce.

The country’s largest mobile operator Econet Wireless (ECO.ZI) said in July it was struggling to maintain its network.

It said 1,300 base stations, a quarter of its total, now run on diesel generators for over 18 hours a day, burning 2 million liters of fuel every month and adding to its operating costs.

But it is small firms such as Moses Chipurura’s plaster factory – which provide much-needed employment in a country with a jobless rate above 90% – that bear the brunt of the outages.

“It is a very tough time indeed,” Chipurura told Reuters, barely audible as humming conveyer belts moved the fine, powdery building material for packaging at the industrial park.

Like many business owners, Chipurura, 41, has been forced to flip to a night shift at Plaster Centre in the capital, Harare.

Before the power cuts, the plant produced about 20,000 bags of wall plaster a month, he said. Production has now dropped to below 7,000 bags. But he still pays his 24 employees their full salaries, even though they only work six hours some nights.

He has installed a generator to try to keep up with orders. But he can only run it for four hours before it needs to cool down. However, diesel, like electricity, is in short supply.

“Running a plant of this magnitude on diesel definitely means I’m going to be forced to increase my prices,” Chipurura said.

“For now, we are absorbing the costs because the market is already under pressure from inflation. I do not know how long we can do this, though.” he said. “The past couple of months have been a nightmare.”

“WAY OF LIFE”

Zimbabwe’s only immediate hope to ease the electricity crisis lies in imports. The government on Tuesday said it had started importing 300 MW from a regional power pool and was negotiating for an additional 400 MW from South Africa.

Zimbabwe’s energy regulator is also raising electricity tariffs to enable loss-making ZESA to make much-needed repairs.

In the long term, China’s Sinohydro Corp plans to add another 600 MW at the Hwange thermal station, while Zimbabwe and Zambia will start building a 2,400 MW hydropower plant next year.

But for now, the prospects of an end to the rolling blackouts appear dim.

The relentless power cuts are not only affecting how businesses operate. They are up-ending people’s lives.

John Alfonzo, 42, manages the borehole Chabwino uses in Hatcliffe. He goes to bed around 6:30 p.m. so he can be up when the electricity comes back just before 10 p.m., to begin operating the pump.

“The moment that we receive electricity back, I have to rush and open for these people so that they are able to access water,” he said.

“Because of these power outages, we have since changed our way of life.”

Zimbabwe’s y/y inflation won’t be published till February
US Sanctions Zimbabwean Official over Post-Election Killings

Post published in: Business

US Sanctions Zimbabwean Official over Post-Election Killings – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

HARARE – The United States on Thursday placed on its sanctions list a former Zimbabwean army general who commanded troops accused of killing six civilians after a disputed election a year ago.

The listing of Anselem Sanyatwe signals U.S. frustration over the lack of accountability in the Aug. 1, 2018 killings in the capital, Harare. There was no immediate response by Zimbabwe’s government to the U.S. announcement, which was likely to bring fresh anger from an administration that has pressed for the lifting of U.S. sanctions over past rights abuses.

Sanyatwe is the first to be sanctioned over the crackdown and the first Zimbabwean official listed since the fall of longtime leader Robert Mugabe in November 2017. Sanyatwe and his wife are now barred from traveling to the U.S.

Soldiers were deployed to suppress a protest against delays in announcing results of Zimbabwe’s first election without Mugabe on the ballot. The U.S. statement says it has “credible information” that Sanyatwe was involved.

The election had been peaceful, giving many people hope that the southern African nation was on the brink of change. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over after Mugabe’s forced resignation and was declared the election winner, had promised sweeping post-Mugabe reforms and re-engagement with the West.

Sanyatwe later defended the soldiers’ deployment while appearing before a commission of inquiry into the killings, but denied the army shot the protesters and instead accused the opposition.

He later retired from the army and was appointed ambassador to Tanzania.

Zimbabwe’s military has been sent into the streets since the killings. The U.S. sanctions statement also noted that “there has been no accountability for the excessive use of force by Zimbabwean security forces on civilians in January and February this year, which reportedly resulted in at least 13 deaths, 600 victims of violence, torture or rape, and more than 1,000 arrests.”

That crackdown came after protests in Harare over the country’s collapsing economy.

The U.S. and the European Union, which imposed sanctions almost two decades ago over alleged rights abuses, have in recent months issued several statements warning against continued violations.

Mnangagwa’s government has made the lifting of sanctions a top priority and has held several meetings with senior officials from the U.S. and EU to lobby for that and Zimbabwe’s readmission to the Commonwealth.

The killings “demonstrated to the whole world the crisis of governance that has defined the character and the nature of the problem in Zimbabwe,” opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, who placed second in last year’s election and lost a court challenge to the results, told a prayer meeting on Thursday to remember the killings. “After the departure of Mr. Mugabe, nothing has changed. The old cannot renew.”

Zimbabwe’s GDP to shrink as power price hikes pile on economic misery – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube gestures during a media briefing in Harare, Zimbabwe, October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Prices of basic goods and services have more than doubled since June, when the government renamed the RTGS currency as the Zimbabwe dollar, which has been sliding in value amid widespread shortages, including power, fuel, U.S. dollars and bread.

That has stirred memories among an increasingly impoverished population of economic chaos a decade ago, when rampant money-printing fueled hyperinflation and forced the country to abandon its currency.

“The revised 2019 GDP growth is expected to be negative,” minister Mthuli Ncube told parliament in his mid-year budget review, without providing a figure. In November he had forecast growth of 3.1% growth.

He also said average domestic electricity tariffs would rise to 3 U.S. cents per kilowatt/hour from 1 cent with immediate effect as the government seeks to raise more funds for power generation.

The businesses tariff would average 5 cents while mines would pay up to 9.86 cents depending with the sector, he said.

“These are short term measures we are taking to ensure better supply of power with immediate effect,” Ncube said.

Zimbabwe has been suffering acute power shortages since May, as a result of a prolonged drought that has reduced output at its largest hydro plant and ageing coal-fired generators that keep breaking down.

Ncube also said Zimbabwe would defer publication of year-on-year inflation until February 2020 because adoption of a new currency impacted the base for calculating the consumer price index. Only monthly data would be published.

Annual inflation hit 175.66%, up from 97.85% in May.

GROWING DESPAIR

The hope and euphoria that greeted long-time leader Robert Mugabe’s departure after a coup in 2017 has gradually turned to despair as his successor as president, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has failed to revive the economy or usher in meaningful political reforms.

The main opposition boycotted Ncube’s presentation attended by Mnangagwa, whom they do not recognize after disputed elections last year.

Workers’ incomes have been eroded by the resurgent inflation and many now struggle to buy basic goods like sugar, flour and cooking oil.

In a bid to give some relief to workers, Ncube raised the non-taxable income threshold from 350 Zimbabwe dollars ($76) to 700 Zimbabwe dollars. He said the government would import grain to feed 5.5 million people in need of food.

Foreign investors could now own majority stakes in platinum and diamond sectors, Ncube said, adding that indigenisation and empowerment law that limited foreign ownership would be repealed and replaced by new legislation.

But Zimbabwe’s economy is in meltdown, fuelling popular anger, and there are concerns of a resurgence of the violence that spilled onto the streets in January, when a sharp fuel price hike sparked protests and an army clampdown in which more than a dozen people died.

Yet, analysts say increases in the price of fuel and electricity tariffs are needed to remove subsidies and put government’s finances on a strong footing.

Ncube said the government ran a budget surplus up to June, first time in years, stopped runaway money-printing and ended offshore borrowing. It has not used a central bank overdraft under an IMF staff monitoring program, actions that are supposed to revive the economy.

But probably the biggest driver of inflation expectations is the lack of confidence many Zimbabweans have in the country’s new currency. Before its reintroduction, it was named the RTGS dollar and had been artificially pegged to the U.S. dollar, leading to a huge discrepancy between its official and black market rate.

Many citizens also doubt their leaders can deliver the changes they seek because they are mainly the same people who propped up Mugabe for decades.

US Sanctions Zimbabwean Official over Post-Election Killings
US paying $475G toward border wall – in Zimbabwe: report

Post published in: Business

Mid-Level Energy Associate Attorney

Posted on by TSA Press

The Denver office of our client, a Top I00 AmLaw international firm, is seeking an associate attorney with 3-5 years’ experience to support the office’s growing and busy Energy team.

The position’s primary responsibilities will involve supporting energy litigation in both judicial and administrative forums, but the ideal candidate will have had exposure to drafting and negotiating operational and transactional agreements and/or regulatory and government affairs advocacy.

Our clients is particularly interested in candidates with professional experience in the oil and gas, midstream, energy finance, and/or renewable energy industries. This is a partner track position ideal for a mid-level associate seeking to enhance practice skills and grow a personal practice in the energy industry. The client’s Denver Energy team strongly encourages its associates to participate in the team’s business development efforts and the selected candidate will receive support to develop and grow the candidate’s individual practice. Consistent with that emphasis, candidates with personal or professional networks within the Colorado business community are strongly preferred.

Candidates who have completed a judicial clerkship at the federal or state appellate level are strongly encouraged to apply. Candidates should have a strong academic record from a nationally respected law school and an equally impressive undergraduate degree, as well as large law firm experience and excellent references. Strong verbal and written communication skills and a commitment to excellence are also required.

Interested and qualified candidates should apply online to this posting, or you can email your resume in confidence, or with additional questions, to:  jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com.

APPLY

Lawyer Jumps Off Roof Of Courthouse, Returns To Courtroom To Be Sentenced

Posted on by TSA Press

Will County Courthouse via Will County Board website

Adam Wirtz is undoubtedly less risk-averse than the typical attorney. While most of us are toying with what mutual fund strategy maximizes our retirement security, Wirtz is climbing the new courthouse and leaping off.

Wirtz base jumped off the Will County courthouse a few months ago and landed safely in the parking lot of the Joliet police station, which wasn’t the ideal landing spot since jumping off of government buildings is totally illegal.

In a return performance at the courthouse, Wirtz was a bit more subdued, receiving a $600 fine and 100 hours of community service work, with 50 hours that will be performed at an animal shelter. All told, hanging out with puppies for the next few months isn’t the worst punishment in the world. If all you’ve got to do to draw that gig is jump off a building, then sign me…

Actually, no, I’m not jumping off of any building. I’m too cautious for that.

Lawyer Who Jumped From New Courthouse Gets Sentenced [Patch]

Bar Exam Snafu A Momentum-Killer For California Bar

Posted on by TSA Press

(Image via Getty)

The State Bar of California’s recent inadvertent disclosure of the bar exam topics just days prior to the July test was a serious setback for an agency that has appeared headed in a positive direction on other fronts.

The exam blunder harkened back to prior years in which there was a new bar scandal popping up nearly every month, ranging from ignored unauthorized practice of law complaints to questionable spending decisions.

The California Supreme Court and the bar have vowed to investigate the premature release of the essay and performance test topics, though the snafu has already generated plenty of unflattering headlines and critiques of the agency’s competence.

A particularly unfortunate part of the timing for the bar is that the slip-up comes as the agency appears poised to secure legislative approval for its first annual fee hike in roughly two decades. The bill funding the bar next year will boost the overall fee for active lawyers to $544, a 27 percent increase from the $430 in place now.

Though the bar exam scandal is unlikely to derail the fee increase legislation, it certainly won’t boost lawmakers’ confidence in the oft-criticized agency.

Another more sanguine development the screw-up has overshadowed is the work of a bar task force crafting rules changes designed to spur innovation and bolster access to justice. Proposals under consideration include allowing non-lawyers to own legal services companies and undertake some legal tasks without committing the unauthorized practice of law.

The Task Force on Access Through Innovation of Legal Services will hold its next meeting on August 9 in San Francisco and host a public hearing the next day at the bar’s San Francisco office from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Even the state auditor’s report on the State Bar this year was less critical than prior reports and noted some improvements being made, such as the development of performance measures.

State Bar Trustee Joanna Mendoza, who also serves on access the task force, said the bar has made great strides since she joined its board six years ago. One of the major changes Mendoza was a strong proponent of was the splitting off the bar’s specialty practice groups, known as sections, to become the California Lawyers Association.

She said the early release of the bar exam topics to some law school deans, which prompted the bar to disclose the topics to all test takers, should not minimize the agency’s improvements.

“After working so hard on these reforms, it is incredibly frustrating that all these improvements can be so easily ignored as the result of human error by a single employee,” Mendoza said. “While it was unfortunate that this occurred, some of the attacks against the State Bar as an entire agency based upon a premature email is completely unjustified.

“The investigation will confirm how it happened and help the agency determine how it can therefore be prevented in the future,” Mendoza continued.

The results from the investigation and the performance on the July bar exam will also likely go a long way toward determining the type of impact the State Bar’s major blunder will have on the agency’s reputation moving forward.

Lyle Moran is a freelance writer in San Diego who handles both journalism and content writing projects. He previously reported for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Diego Daily Transcript, Associated Press, and Lowell Sun. He can be reached at lmoransun@gmail.com and found on Twitter @lylemoran.

Will Doing Away With The Billable Hour Cure Biglaw’s Mental Health Crisis?

Posted on by TSA Press

If we want to improve the shared mental health of our profession, we must change our incentives. We must change how we practice law at law firms today.

I am tired of seeing our best and brightest suffer from the pressures we create by our own incentives. I am tired of watching friends suffer. I am tired of seeing good partners, talented associates, and top-notch staff fight each other and fight their own worst impulses—because that is, most fundamentally, what our industry is motivating them to do.

I know we can change and thrive. Let’s transform our profession into one that encourages and fosters mental and physical well-being and that views both as utterly compatible with productivity, performance, and profit.

— Jana Cohen Barbe, a senior partner at Dentons, in an open letter published by American Lawyer, where she argues that Biglaw firms must change not only the structure of the billable hour, but also the way performance metrics are evaluated, in order to make a difference in the mental health crisis that the legal profession is currently facing.

Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.

Doing Good While Doing Law

Posted on by TSA Press

(Image via Getty)

Lawyers, from all walks of life, have been the true backbone of the “resistance” to President Donald Trump and the atrocities he commits in America’s name. It’s lawyers who are filing the injunctions that arrest or retard some of Donald Trump’s proposed human rights violations. It’s lawyers who are deployed to the concentration camps and try to help victims advocate for what rights they still may have. It’s lawyers who flood the airports, investigate corruption, and represent and try to elevate the claims of women who say the President of the United States sexually assaulted them. The people have not taken to the streets, the media continues to play a game of normalizing the president, but lawyers have kept their eyes on the ball.

And it’s not just public interest lawyers. Yes, lawyers who work for nonprofits like the ACLU have done a lot of the heavy lifting, but it was a Biglaw firm which defeated the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to revoke Temporary Protected Status to black and brown immigrants. Plaintiffs lawyers have exposed some of the crimes Trump has committed, and are the closest to forcing Trump to sit in a chair and speak under penalty of perjury. And individual attorneys who work at firms both big and small have donated their most valuable asset — their time — to Trump’s victims, even though “immigration law” or “family law” or “international human rights law” are not their fields of expertise.

For every lawyer who is directly involved in pushing back against the Trump administration, there is another who wants to get involved, but doesn’t quite know how. The question I get most often from lawyers I meet is… well, check that, the question I get most often is “AHHH! This is so bad and we’re all gonna die, right?” But the question I hear next is “What can I do, how can I help?”

For the rest of the summer, Above the Law is going to run a series of profiles about lawyers who have been in the fight. Hopefully these stories will help illustrate how others can join, and give people a taste of what they can expect if they devote even a small portion of their time towards being a part of the solution.

Our first interview is with Maxim Thorne. Thorne is the founder of JusticeInvestor, a crowdfunded litigation finance startup. He’s the managing director of the The Andrew Goodman Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that is non-partisan and focuses on registering and activating young voters. He’s taught philanthropy at Yale University, and has been involved in the lawsuit against Tennessee’s voter suppression law.

Our email interview has been edited for space. Questions are in bold.

How did you become involved in the Tennessee case?

In my role as the Managing Director of The Andrew Goodman Foundation, I have seen firsthand how this oppressive law directly impacts the work that AGF has been doing on the ground in Tennessee and the risks it poses to our student leaders (Ambassadors). The Foundation and our co-plaintiffs decided to sue Tennessee because it is clear that this law is a transparent and shameful attempt to restrict the right of students, people of color (POC), and marginalized Americans to vote. From our Foundation’s “boots-on-the-ground” in 25 states and Washington, D.C. vantage point we are certain that this is a Jim Crow-like, larger disenfranchisement effort underway in Tennessee and across the country.

This Tennessee law is a repeated and intensified attempt to suppress African American and youth voting in Tennessee. I first heard this from our program managers who work directly with the student Ambassadors on their college campuses and from our Tennessee coalition partners.

In Tennessee last year, our co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, the Equity Alliance (in partnership with the Black Voters Project) successfully engaged in a voter registration drive that registered over 90,000 new African American voters. As a result of this and many other efforts, Tennessee saw an unprecedented increase in youth and youth of color voting in November 2018. This record breaking turnout of young people and African Americans motivated these legislators to pass this unconstitutional law. Historically, Tennessee’s voter turnout rate and voter registration rates have been abysmal, ranked 45th and 49th in the country respectively. As a result of the efforts of the Equity Alliance, Black Voters Project, and our student Ambassadors in Tennessee, the voting turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds went from 11.9% in 2014 to 31.1% in 2018, which is a 261.3% increase, as reported by the Census in 2019.

This new law subjects third-party voter registration groups, like The Andrew Goodman Foundation and Equity Alliance, to a whole host of restrictions. It requires compliance with pre-registration, training, and affirmation requirements, which, if not followed, result in severe criminal and civil penalties ranging from imprisonment to fines of tens of thousands of dollars. This law would impose both civil and criminal punishment on voter registration workers and organizations for things like submitting registrations that the state determines are not “complete,” which can be interpreted as forgetting to check a box for “Ms.” or “Mr.” or inaccuracies like writing “Jim” instead of “James.”

Thinking about voter suppression specifically, what can lawyers do to help that fight? I’ve known some people who have signed up to be election monitors, you know, just answer phones and trying to help out on election day. Is there more we could be doing?

Yes, a lot of work still needs to be done. You can definitely sign up for election monitoring — Tennessee now wants to prevent anyone who does not live in the state from doing so as a means to suppress voting even further. These kinds of laws are spreading like a virus across our country.

Lawyers can find opportunities if they reach out and are willing to give their time, talent, and resources to stop voter suppression. Victims of voter suppression are hungry for help.

The three prongs of our work at The Andrew Goodman Foundation are organizing, advocacy, and litigation to raise the voting rate of young people, to increase their civic power by combating voter suppression, and to empower young leaders. Lawyers can always partner with us on at least these fronts. We also need assistance with regulatory compliance of all kinds, from IRS regulations to state charity laws.

In terms of advocacy, our goal is to empower student voices and help them advocate for the issues they care about like climate change, mass incarceration, reproductive justice, gun regulation, gender and LGBTQ+ equality, and more. The Foundation also helps with voter friendly legislation that students can use to educate their peers and elected officials and build awareness about impediments to voting. Lawyers can help students litigate and advocate for polling sites on their campuses, which is a sure fire way to increase student and youth of color voting.

We need lawyers to represent students in attempts to block unlawful residency restrictions and limits on using student IDs as voter IDs. This is done by filing for declaratory and injunctive relief as early as possible so that enough runway is secured before the next election to have these issues resolved. Illegal voter purging, particularly of African Americans and other POC is another issue that needs litigation support. These cases can be brought by students, organizations with standing in the jurisdictions, and more. There is never a shortage of clients or issues to address.

How do lawyers help with this fight given that front lines are generally far away from NYC or Chicago or K-street where a lot of these Biglaw types end up? Like, there aren’t a lot of Yale and Harvard Law School grads who want to *move* to Tennessee or Georgia or Indiana. How can they carpetbag in for extra legal muscle?

First, I want to demystify where some of the work is needed. In the South definitely, but right here in New Jersey and New York we’re dealing with myriad issues. You don’t have to travel far to make an impact. For example, Montclair State University in North Jersey is ridiculously gerrymandered — it is divided into three congressional districts, similar to how Louisiana State University is divided into four, and North Carolina A&T State University into two — in order to dilute the youth vote.

Take Bard College, a private liberal arts school located alongside the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, 100 miles north of New York City. In this Dutchess County voting district, 68% of the eligible voters reside on campus, yet its polling site is deliberately set miles from campus on an unlit street with no sidewalk or public transportation route, which is in clear violation of New York Election Law regulating polling place accessibility. The Dutchess County election commissioners have continually imposed unlawful rules like prohibiting students who’ve changed dormitory residences from voting by machine or rejecting registrations because students used their dorms’ street addresses rather than their dorms’ names, and more. Dutchess County’s actions display a clear pattern of youth voter suppression. Since 2000, Bard students have been forced to resort to litigation or the threat of litigation three times to protect their voting rights. They could use legal support again. The list goes on and on.

BigLaw lawyers interested in fighting youth voter suppression across the country, whether you are in NYC, DC, Chicago, LA, SF, Seattle, etc. should reach out to us.

Do you think it’s better for young lawyers who want to be involved in this kind of work to go through the pro bono coordinators and support at their firms, or do you suggest a more direct approach of networking and finding clients on their own?

If you’re already in a firm, both the pro-bono coordinator route and direct networking can lead you to fulfilling engagement in social justice movement work. Firms that have pro-bono coordinators may already have strong connections, especially with the more prestigious nonprofits, and that can lead to good opportunities. Direct networking does have the potential to be more rewarding because it can be client intensive, and you’d get greater flexibility in tailoring the work to exactly what you’re seeking to do.

How much time, in a kind of billable hours way, does it take out of your day to do that kind of work? A lot of people are kind of consumed with how many hours they can “bill for free” on issues like this.

We have a team of paid and pro bono lawyers who do most of the legal research, writing and filing, and they commit varying hours, depending on the work they’re doing. The kinds of legal help that our organization needs runs the gamut from high profile cases like Tennessee’s, to assisting us with reviewing grant agreement terms, leases, IRS regulations, fundraising rules, and more.

If lawyers care about safeguarding and expanding voting rights, there are a wide range of opportunities to take advantage of, that can take very little time or can take many days, depending on how involved one wants to be. Our movement needs as much legal advice on organizational infrastructure as it does on voting rights litigation.

To put it another way, last year in Florida, we successfully sued to blocked the state from prohibiting any early voting sites on college and university campuses that would deny over 850,000 students their right to vote early . That suit may generate an award in the upper hundreds of thousands in legal fees and costs, particularly since we amended it to include a new egregious voter suppression law that was recently signed by the Governor. On the other hand, legal assistance to help us register to fundraise in California may be only a few hundred dollars in attorney time. The hours needed vary on a case by case basis.

What is your feeling on “offsets”? By that I mean, a lot of people with high salaries earned from representing corporate clients “give back” by making donations to the ACLU or some other organization. Do you find these offsets effective? Is more direct action required? If you’re a fifth-year corporate associate, with no actual litigation training, is your checkbook more valuable than your legal skills to these efforts?

I believe we each give in our own way and on a different schedule. As a nonprofit executive over the last two decades, I can say without qualification that monetary donations are our lifeblood as much as in-kind assistance such as voluntary legal work. I am forever grateful to my friends who chose a different path and at the same time take the opportunity to financially support my work and other equality and social justice causes.

Direct legal action is, of course, still required. And some of the best legal work in the social justice space can be done by corporate law firms that have the resources and talent to take on complex, long-term, and broad geographic cases. In this era of threats and attacks on our democracy, from every level of the government including the very policing of our communities, we need as many resources as we can get.

Okay, let’s assume people who have read this far are sold, how can they reach you?

They can contact me at The Andrew Goodman Foundation www.AndrewGoodman.org, @AndrewGoodmanF, @maximthorne, maxim.thorne@AndrewGoodman.org. Stacey Abrams’s organization Fair Fight Action is another great avenue. Biglaw can also reach out to organizations like ours fighting various kinds of voter suppression and offer to partner with local counsel or represent students pro hac vice throughout the year. Don’t wait until three months before the 2020 Presidential Election. We all need help now — and it’s doable from wherever you are.

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.