Author: TSA Press

Last Saturday night, as I was preparing quarterly employment tax returns and thinking about being a CPA, I received numerous notifications that the California State Bar had told all of the bar exam applicants the subjects being tested on the upcoming exam. This was because they were accidentally disclosed to a select group of law school deans a few days before.

I thought the news was amusing and this site would cover the blunder first thing Monday morning. I figured that with the exam being only a few days away, the applicants could enjoy a few chuckles, narrow their studies, and forget about the rule against perpetuities and UCC 2-207.

But several things happened which I did not expect. First, a lot of people were angry. Now I get that for the exam takers, this news comes as a shock considering they spent a lot of time studying and a lot is at stake. And being stressed, I can understand being emotional about this. But even a number of practicing lawyers — who I assume have no dog in the fight — were outraged about this.

Second, this story became viral and was covered by many mainstream news sites. This was surprising because I didn’t think many in the legal profession and even less in the outside world would care about this. Perhaps they wanted to cover the story to reach as many examinees as possible, particularly those who turned off social media so they could study. Or maybe they thought their readers would get a kick out of a lawyer screw-up story. Or all of the above.

The State Bar tried to explain the situation but it seemed to add fuel to the fire rather than contain it. On social media and in private discussion, people brought up all kinds of theories. Some have noticed that almost all of the law schools who received this information are not accredited by the ABA. The one notable exception is UC Hastings, whose dean has recently been an outspoken critic of the bar exam and has spearheaded the effort to reduce the pass score. This made some think that the State Bar intentionally leaked this information to covertly boost those schools’ bar passage rates.

The attention has gotten so bad that it’s to the point where the California Supreme Court feels that a thorough investigation is necessary to protect the integrity of the examination.

Personally, I think this is overblown.

Is this unfair? Only to a very few. Now let’s accept the State Bar’s timeline of events. The subjects tested were accidentally sent to select law school deans sometime on Thursday, July 25^th. When they discovered the error, the infamous email was sent to all of the exam takers on the night of July 27. To my knowledge, there have been no reports that any of those deans notified their students.

But let’s assume the deans forwarded the information to the students immediately after receiving it. This gives these students approximately an additional 50 hours with this inside information. If we deduct 10 hours per day for sleep, meals, and posting selfies with bar exam materials on Facebook, these students will have 30 hours of advantaged study time.

So will spending 30 hours specifically on the subjects that are guaranteed to be tested provide an unfair advantage over those who spent that time studying every subject that could be tested? Intuitively, that would seem to be the case. The lucky students can focus on those topics and have time left over to take MBE questions or do something else while everyone else tries to understand holographic wills. But in reality, this question is difficult to answer since everyone studies and learns differently and has unique life circumstances.

Let’s compare this to the hours spent studying overall. Considering that most people have studied for the exam since mid-May (or even earlier), 30 hours is a drop in the bucket. At this stage, most people will either know the material or they won’t. Most bar prep programs advise students to use the final stretch for practice exams and not for substantive studying. So the 30 hours of advantaged study time will likely be of minimal benefit.

Accordingly, any bump in the applicants’ scores as a result would likely be minimal. This means that if you did very badly on practice exams, the theoretical score boost probably won’t be enough to put you in passing territory.

Finally, there is the psychological shock (commonly known as “OMGWTF!!”) of knowing that someone else will have an unfair advantage. All I can suggest is to not let it get to you. It happens. Sometimes you benefit from inequity, most of the time you don’t. Know that if you studied properly, you will likely pass. If you don’t think you are ready, you can take this rare opportunity to withdraw and get a refund.

The California State Bar has some explaining to do and the Supreme Court’s investigation will determine whether this was an accident or a systemic conspiracy to dismantle the bar examination and allow Google Deepmind to practice law. But I think the effect of this leak will be very minimal and will only affect the few who are on the fringes. We’ll see if a class-action suit for negligence follows but I wouldn’t bet on it since torts is not being tested on the exam.

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Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at sachimalbe@excite.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

* California just enacted a law that will require Donald Trump to release his tax returns if he wants to get on the state’s primary ballot next year. Get ready for a tweetstorm about this one. [Los Angeles Times]

* Not only is LeClairRyan facing a gender discrimination case amid its uncertain future, but the firm is also facing a lawsuit over allegedly unpaid rent to the tune of $348K+ at one of its offices. [American Lawyer]

* In case you missed it, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and three game officials are going to be deposed over the “stupid blown call” during the Saints-Rams game that allowed the Rams to proceed to the Super Bowl. [Sports Illustrated]

* Good news for Biglaw legal ops professionals: The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, an organization designed for in-house legal ops employees, has now opened its membership to those who are working at law firms. [Big Law Business]

* Guess what? There’s something to look forward to after this torture. As the saying goes, “you can do anything with a law degree,” but if you pass the bar exam this week, you’ll probably be able to practice law in one of these exciting jobs. [U.S. News]

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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.

It’s been years since we’ve seen a truly positive law school jobs report, but now that we’re more than a decade out from the nation’s financial turmoil that wreaked havoc upon the legal profession, we’re looking at employment outcomes that “approach pre-recession levels.”

According to the latest entry-level employment figures from the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), the class of 2018’s employment outcomes were quite strong. Not only did overall graduate employment increase to 89.4 percent (0.8 percent over the class of 2017), but the number of graduates employed in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required was nearly 71 percent (an increase of about 2 percent), a percentage that’s even higher than rates measured before the recession. Here’s what James Leipold, NALP’s executive director, had to say about the latest employment figures:

“The employment outcomes findings for members of the Class of 2018 are strong and, along with the findings for members of the Class of 2017, clearly mark the beginning of a new post-recession cohort. The employment outcomes for this class more closely resemble employment outcomes measured in the years before the recession than they do the classes that graduated between 2009 and 2013 in the immediate aftermath of the recession,” noted James G. Leipold, NALP’s executive director. “Certainly, the overall employment rate has improved because of two intertwined factors. First, and most importantly, the smaller graduating class has meant that there is less competition for the jobs that exist. Second, large law firm hiring has increased steadily since 2011, adding more than 1,900 jobs in seven years.”

In fact, much of the class of 2018’s success in the job market was thanks to Biglaw employment. About 160 more associates were hired at firms with more than 500 lawyers than in 2017, such that 29.1 percent of 2018 graduates employed in law firm jobs were employed at the biggest of Biglaw firms. According to Leipold, this is “even higher than the pre-recession levels of over 25 percent in 2008 and 2009.”

Before you get too excited, please allow us to temper it with some cold, hard facts about the class of 2017. From a press release about the latest NALP numbers:

• Despite the rise in the overall employment rate, the number of jobs found by graduates declined again this year, by about 150 compared with the Class of 2017.

• Despite the relative strength of the job market for new law school graduates, at 8.3%, the unemployment rate ten months after graduation remains higher by nearly three percentage points than before the recession.

Will law schools continue to enroll smaller classes to ensure that their graduates will be able to find jobs, or will they take students’ nondischargeable student loan dollars and run? “Rising law school enrollment could also certainly put downward pressure on the employment prospects for future classes, and it is unlikely that the current jobs environment could support a graduating class of anything over 40,000,” said Leipold, sounding a cautionary alarm amid soaring law school enrollment.

On a more positive note, while “any significant economic interruption or slowdown could once again depress legal employment numbers for future classes,” Leipold thinks that the Class of 2019 “is also likely to post strong employment outcomes.”

“All of that suggests cautious optimism is in order, with an eye to the sky for ill winds and the understanding that independent of whatever happens with the national and global economies, the legal services sector continues to be in the midst of dramatic change that will be ongoing, and will, in the end, change the job market for law school graduates in ever more dramatic ways. Ten years from now the employment profile of the graduating Class of 2028 is likely to look quite different from the Class of 2018.”

Congratulations to everyone who was able to find a job in this brave new world of post-recession legal employment. Remember that law school may be less of a risky investment now than it was at any time over the course of the past decade, but it’s still a risk. Be sure to do your research before you enroll — but in the meantime, law school graduates can enjoy all of their sweet Biglaw cash.

Jobs & JDs: Class of 2018 [NALP]
Class of 2018 Employment Outcomes Approach Pre-Recession Levels [NALP]
Employment for the Class of 2018 — Selected Findings [NALP]

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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.

A new proposal from the Trump administration would take steps toward allowing importation of drugs from other countries.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday proposed two potential pathways to allow the importation of drugs from foreign markets, part of a broader effort bring down drug prices. One would allow importation from Canada through pilot projects, while the other would allow manufacturers to go around distributors and import their own products directly from other countries.

“Today’s announcement outlines the pathways the administration intends to explore to allow safe importation of certain prescription drugs to lower prices and reduce out-of-pocket costs for American patients,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “This is the next important step in the administration’s work to end foreign freeloading and put American patients first.”

Under the first pathway, HHS and the Food and Drug Administration would use authority provided under current federal law to authorize pilot projects by states, wholesalers and pharmacists outlining ways to import drugs from Canada that are versions of FDA-approved products manufactured in ways consistent with U.S. regulatory standards.

However, there’s a catch. Because it would be based on current federal law, it would exclude products that are controlled substances, biologics, infused and intravenously injected drugs, drugs inhaled during surgery and any drug with a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, along with certain parenteral drugs. Moreover, drugs would be eligible only if they contain active pharmaceutical ingredients made at the same manufacturing plants used to produce APIs for the products sold in the U.S.

The second pathway would allow manufacturers of FDA-approved drugs to import versions they sell in foreign countries, using a new national drug code that would potentially allow them to offer lower prices than those required by their current contracts with distributors, provided they could demonstrate to the FDA that the foreign versions were the same as the U.S. versions. Drugs covered under this pathway could include insulin and medicines for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disorders and cancers.

“The Administration has reason to believe that manufacturers might use this pathway as an opportunity to offer Americans lower cost versions of their own drugs,” an accompanying action plan put out by the FDA and HHS read. “In recent years, multiple manufacturers have stated (either publicly or in statements to the Administration) that they wanted to offer lower cost versions but could not readily do so because they were locked into contracts with other parties in the supply chain.”

While welcoming the plan, Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, expressed reservations. “The key for me is whether this plan preserves the Food and Drug Administration’s gold standard for safety and effectiveness,” he said in a statement. “Millions of Americans every day buy prescription drugs relying on the FDA’s guarantee of quality.”

However, Stephen Ubl, president of trade group the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, called the proposal “dangerous.”

“There is no way to guarantee the safety of drugs that come into the country from outside the United States’ gold-standard supply chain,” Ubl wrote in an emailed statement. “Drugs coming through Canada could have originated from anywhere in the world and may not have undergone stringent review by the FDA.”

Ubl added that law enforcement officials have said drug importation plans could worsen the opioid crisis, while Canadian officials have called such policies unworkable and run the risk of creating drug shortages in Canada.

The Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents drug distributors, also criticized the proposal.

“Pharmaceutical distributors support efforts to address the high cost of prescription drugs,” a statement by the HDA read. “But we firmly believe the administration should focus on policies that maintain the same high standards of safety that Americans have come to rely on. Importation runs directly counter to the efforts of many regulators, the pharmaceutical industry and congressional intent — and is simply not worth the risk.”

Current FDA regulations prohibit importation of unapproved drugs, which includes foreign-made versions of drugs that are approved in the U.S. and “have not been manufactured in accordance with and pursuant to an FDA approval.”

The administration has long accused other countries of “freeloading” off of American biopharmaceutical innovation by forcing Americans to pay more for drugs than people in other countries. However, experts have said this is misleading because every country makes its own decisions around pricing and reimbursement. Indeed, Medicare’s statutory inability to negotiate drug prices – as agencies of universal healthcare systems abroad do – is a consequence of domestic policy, not the policies of foreign countries.

Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images

They always say when it rains it pours and the case of the once Biglaw firm of LeClairRyan proves the saying. We’ve been reporting on the firm a lot recently, what with partners fleeing from the firm like rats on a sinking ship — even name partner Gary LeClair is leaving — and being barred by their lender from returning departing partners’ capital contributions and the firm handing out WARN Act notices informing staff of pending mass layoffs. But it turns out a decimated headcount isn’t the only problem the firm is facing.

Earlier this month, the firm was sued by the landlord of their Williamsburg, Virginia, office for $348,000, apparently over back rent. The lawyers practicing out of the office left the firm in February, and as reported by Law.com, the firm signed a promissory note, but the lawsuit suggests they haven’t lived up to the terms of the agreement:

The bare-bones confession of judgment filed by Robertson Liebler Development Group indicates that the law firm failed to pay the amounts due under a promissory note. The note doesn’t mention rent, but Robinson Liebler has the same address as the LLC that is listed in property records as the owner of the building where LeClairRyan had its offices.

LeClairRyan agreed to pay its landlord $506,000 under the promissory note, which was notarized Feb. 14 and signed by firm president Elizabeth Acee. Once the firm paid $272,000, the remaining amount due was to be waived, but based on the amount of the judgment, LeClairRyan only appears to have made the first two payments, plus a few hundred dollars.

The firm is also facing an unequal pay lawsuit. Former marketing professional Marci Keatts says she was paid less than her male colleague who was hired after she was and whom she was supervising:

Keatts was initially hired at the firm as a marketing communications coordinator and was promoted to marketing communications professional at the start of 2018, according to the complaint.

While in her previous role, she learned that she was earning $14,000 less than a male colleague hired five years after her start. She said that even after being promoted to supervise the colleague and receiving a $7,000 increase, she still lagged his salary by $7,000.

As part of LeClairRyan’s “law firm 2.0,” both the plaintiff and her subordinate were transferred to ULX Partners (the firm launched a strategic partnership with alternative legal service provider UnitedLex). Keats says she brought the matter to human resources, but the pay disparity continued. The plaintiff says she left the firm because of the unequal pay:

“This was not a voluntary decision on plaintiff’s part, but the result of defendants’ insistence of continuing a discriminatory pay practice towards plaintiff as reflected in the compensation associated with the ‘offer’ for continued employment,” said Keats, represented by Harris D. Butler III of Butler Royals in Richmond, Virginia.

All of this adds up to a heap of trouble for a firm that doesn’t seem to have much more time left.

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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).

For the last year or so, I’ve been tinkering with a book manuscript about law school, and more specifically, about law school debt. This experience has generally reinforced the perfectly reasonable assumption I came into it with that this noble legal profession of ours maintains a lot of statistics.

I could give you many examples. Thanks to U.S. News and World Report, for instance, I now know that for full-time law programs for the 2018-2019 academic year, the average annual tuition at private law schools was $49,095, at public schools for out-of-state students it was $40,725, and it was a comparative bargain at public schools for in-state students at $27,591. Sadly, I also know that the median private sector starting salary for 2017 law grads was only $72,500, and that the median public sector starting salary for new lawyers was only $54,550. Keep in mind that these median salary figures are only from the 180 or so law schools that U.S. News actually ranks, and if you included ABA-accredited schools which are not ranked and the non-ABA accredited law schools, there would be almost 60 more law schools, many of which, presumably, would be producing graduates with lower average salaries than the accredited and ranked law schools. So, while the U.S. News salary data is far from perfect, it’s a start, at least.

It is not just U.S. News that compiles statistics on the legal profession. The American Bar Association, our very own national representative of the legal profession, curates a lot of helpful stats, including info that, when combined with data from individual schools, tells us that the average sticker price for private law school tuition jumped 273 percent from 1985 to 2018, while public law school tuition over the same time period, also adjusted for inflation, skyrocketed by 582 percent. Very helpful.

But, go to the ABA statistics page on their website, and click on the link for “Average Amount Borrowed,” and you get this: a crappy one-page spreadsheet with the most recently available data from the 2012-2013 academic year.

Not only is the presentation crappy, and the data stale, the gathering method is pretty suspect. For the 2011-2012 year, the average reported amount borrowed to attend a public law school was $84,600, a historic high at that point, while the average reported amount borrowed to attend a private law school was $122,158, second only to the $124,950 incurred for the preceding 2010-2011 academic year, when I myself was still attending a private law school in the doldrums of the Great Recession.

With tuition rates rapidly outpacing inflation, people incurring more and more law school debt is what you’d expect. But then, the following academic year, 2012-2013, the supposed amounts being borrowed dropped by nearly two-thirds, to $32,289 for public schools and $44,094 for private schools. The difference wasn’t a change in reality, but a change in how the questions were asked. Prior to the 2012-2013 academic year, the ABA asked for “The average amount borrowed in law school by J.D. graduates who borrowed at least one education loan in law school.” But for the 2012-2013 academic year, the ABA switched to asking for “The average amount borrowed in law school by J.D. students who borrowed at least one education loan in any amount in the previous academic year.” See the difference? It’s subtle, but obviously pretty meaningful, especially when you realize as someone who actually went to law school that it becomes much easier the second and third years not to take out more student loans because you’re probably actually able to work, and have probably already taken out enough loans to fill the gaps. But isn’t the total amount of debt incurred to go to law school what actually matters, not when exactly you took it out?

Apparently, after the 2012-2013 academic year, the ABA stopped collecting even crappy data on the average amount borrowed by law students to become lawyers, or at least stopped publishing it. Now, it’s nearly impossible to find out how much the average law student has to borrow to become a lawyer. Go ahead and Google “average law school student debt” sometime and see what you come up with.

Right now at least, all you’ll find is marginally helpful information on debt loads at individual schools from U.S. News (with some of the inherent flaws of U.S. News data, including that it misses a quarter of the law schools in existence), an Above the Law piece by Staci Zaretsky (who is a talented and fabulous human being, not to mention my own editor, but was writing back in 2017 and only citing to the best data available at that time), and a couple pieces from student loan debt companies citing back to Above the Law (one of which I think actually does a pretty swell job of calling out the decrepitude of ABA data on the subject).

This, my friends, is pathetic. This data should not be that hard to collect. Law schools have to report all kinds of other data that is ultimately presented in a digestible fashion. People are not being allowed to make an informed decision about something that will affect them, and their families, for the rest of their lives.

It’s almost as if powerful people stand to benefit from not being forthright about how much debt one has to incur to become a lawyer.

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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.

I spend a lot of time ranting (and writing, although the two are probably synonymous) about the fact that we lawyers have not made mental health in our profession a priority. It needs to be one, and I am not the only ATL columnist to say so. Perhaps if we are willing to talk more openly about issues that we confront as lawyers, and not just the legal ones, we’ll make some progress in this area.

Last week, I was invited to join a group of other lawyers to do exactly that, to talk about issues we confront as lawyers, be they substance abuse, isolation, or the myriad of other pressures that we face. It’s not just about marketing and networking; it’s about being unemployed after years of practice, it’s about wanting, needing work-life balance, it’s about managing pie in the sky client expectations with the realities of what can be obtained for the client (any disconnect there? No, of course not.)

We were a big group, 20 or so, more than the host expected, and it is a tribute to him that people battled Los Angeles traffic to join him. It also said that there was a hunger for this kind of group, a group of like-minded people who were and are concerned about our mental health. There were millennial lawyers, Gen X lawyers, and boomers. We had all kinds of practices; we were male and female. Everyone was respectful and listened (to the extent possible given the decibel level) to what others had to say. Not everyone spoke up, not everyone shared thoughts, but there was no “mansplaining,” no patronizing behavior, no “you don’t know what you are talking about.” There was no judging, just understanding where people have come from and where people are at right now.

The host led off the discussion. His story was raw, visceral, and courageous. He had shared his story with me some years ago, but I would guess that most of the people there didn’t know it. He had a drug abuse problem that finally forced him into rehab. His insurance wouldn’t pay for as long as he would have wanted to stay to detox, but he gutted it out. After a few rocky years and therapy along the way, he and his practice are flourishing.

There was talk about issues that we all face: getting clients, rather, getting the right clients who will listen to the advice, will pay our bills, including replenishing the retainer when it’s used up. No one went into the profession to be a de facto lender.

We talked about managing expectations and firing clients who refuse to take advice and then complain when they receive “only” 99 percent of what they wanted. They perseverate about the one percent they didn’t get and blame the lawyer for failing to get that one percent. We’ve all been there.

There were stories about having an awesome résumé and great experience, but having trouble finding a job past a certain age.

People talked about the need for work-life balance, that spending time with family and friends is critical, that coaching Little League games, attending school recitals, and other school events, that just being there for the family is intrinsic to mental health. What about vacations? As one wag once said, and I am paraphrasing here, on your deathbed, no one is going to say that you should have spent more time at the office.

We have all seen the destruction that working to death, either literally or figuratively, has caused,and that it is not the way we want to or should want to live our lives. We have read about the deaths by suicide of lawyers of all ages, not just millennials, not just dinosaurs. We cannot help but be profoundly moved by the tragic unnecessary losses of lives.

One story that will always haunt me is that of a widow whose drug-addicted Biglaw husband was so caught up in his work that his last cell phone call was dialing into a conference call.

Slowly, very slowly, lawyers are starting to speak out about their own struggles with substance abuse and mental health issues. As one lawyer noted at the meeting, practicing law is a lonely profession. And that point is borne out by a study last year not only confirming that but concluding that law is the loneliest profession.

Factors contributing to the loneliness include the solitary nature of research, long hours, and just sheer exhaustion. We can’t afford to isolate ourselves. Loneliness can be even worse for us dinosaurs, also known as the “silver tsunami,” those of us who are reaching or have reached retirement age. One friend of mine isn’t taking any more cases, but still goes into the office very weekday for interaction with colleagues.

I think lawyer support groups are a good idea. It’s not networking, not hustling, not business development. Talk like that should be grounds for tossing the person out. It’s development of a totally different kind: it’s self-development by sharing with other lawyers that you are not alone, that other lawyers share the same or similar frustrations and failures, that we are more than our lawyer identities, that we all have vulnerabilities, try as we might to conceal them. We all need this kind of support. If there’s a support group in your area, then join it. If there isn’t one, why not start one?

So, to my host, keep this one going. My only request is that you find a place that’s not so damned noisy. I am a dinosaur and my hearing is not what it used to be.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

HARARE – Langton Chiwocha chose Emmerson Mnangagwa among 23 candidates in Zimbabwe’s presidential elections a year ago.

Today he says he deeply regrets his choice.

“We had high expectations as many promises were made, but things have turned worse since the elections,” Chiwocha told AFP.

“I wish I could take back my vote, or maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to vote at all.”

Mnangagwa, 76, who took over from long-time autocrat Robert Mugabe, went into the July 30 2018 elections vowing to revive Zimbabwe’s sickly economy, end cash shortages, mend fences with former western allies and lure foreign investors.

Chiwocha, who holds a business studies diploma from a college in the capital Harare, says his hopes have been cruelly dashed.

“I graduated in 2012 and I have not had a job. I thought after winning the elections, Mnangagwa would fix the economy and all who had qualifications would get jobs.”

But within months of Mnangagwa’s election, the ghosts of Zimbabwe’s economic past returned: severe power rationing and shortages of fuel, bread, medicine and other basics.

In June this year, the annual inflation rate hit a decade-high 175 percent. Memories revived of the terrifying hyperinflation that reached 500 billion percent in 2009, wiping out savings and wrecking the economy.

That episode ended when the US dollar became the national currency, replacing the Zimbabwean dollar, which had been proudly introduced upon independence in 1980.

But in June, Zimbabwe in theory ended the use of greenbacks, replacing them with “bond notes” and electronic RTGS dollars, which would combine to become a new Zimbabwe dollar, a currency that has yet to be introduced in paper form.

– Exodus –

Zimbabweans say it is a nightmare to get common documents such as passports, drivers’ licence discs and vehicle registration plates – the government is too poor to import the materials to make them.

Over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have fled abroad seeking work. Many others are now seeking to join the exodus as the economy withers.

“We are sitting in a vehicle whose wheels have fallen off,” Derek Matyszak, a senior researcher at a South African think tank, the Institute of Security Studies, told AFP. “Nothing is moving”.

“Mnangagwa was fully aware that Mugabe had left behind an economic disaster. To get out of it required re-engagement to attract investment from wealthy countries, improved governance and respect for human rights,” he said.

Two days after the election, at least six people were killed when soldiers opened fire on protesters demanding the results of the ballot be published.

In January, at least 17 people were shot dead and scores injured as soldiers were ordered to crush nationwide protests triggered by a doubling of fuel prices.

“The events of August 1 last year and January this year have set back the re-engagement effort and possibility of a bailout,” Matyszak said.

– Pessimism –

Power is usually turned on between 10 pm (2000 GMT) and 5 am (0300 GMT) – at other times, businesses are at at loss to know whether they will get electricity.

“Factories and industries will not open for the duration of the power cuts,” said Matyszak. “That’s hours of production lost. It means Zimbabweans are going to sink deeper into the hole”.

Tony Hawkins, a professor at the University of Zimbabwe’s School of Economics, agreed.

“It’s very difficult to be anything other than pessimistic and negative at the moment,” he told AFP.

The community dialogue series seeks to strengthen citizen agency in driving the reform agenda in Zimbabwe and build national consensus among citizens on key political reforms and allow citizens to envision as the national crisis persists. The initiative is running under the theme: Save Zimbabwe and is targeting citizens who are ordinarily left out of national processes. At its inception, the campaign has reached out to Domboshawa, Epworth, Kuwadzana, Mutasa, Zvishavane and Plumtree. The campaign is informed by the following key developments:

o The abdication of the Social Contract by the state further impovereshing its citizens

o The neoliberal economic thrust, Austerity for Prosperity, which has further removed the limited scope of social protection for ordinary citizens and undermined inclusive economic growth

o The stalled political transition which has seen an increase in rights violations, shrinking democratic space and a regression of the limited scope of democratic gains.

The campaign will see the Coalition focusing on the unpacking to citizens and civil society the human effects of a neoliberal economic policy and mobilising the ordinary citizens, social movements and civil society to advocate for a social market order that protects the interests of both the citizens and capital  while emphasizing on the need for a broader, inclusive national dialogue.

a. Advocating for Social Protection as a government policy and budget and legilsative priority area

b. Amplifying the rights and governance crisis from the local community to the national level with a view of mobilising such communities to:

i. Closely monitor the situation in Zimbabwe

ii. Implore the Government of Zimbabwe to restore the Social Contract  through an array of reforms on the governance and economic front.

iii. Advocate for a broader and inclusive national dialogue that focuses on agreed legislative and practical reforms to the economy, social and political governance.

iv. The decriminalisation of human rights work and opening up of democratic space.