Author: TSA Press

A legal career is a marathon, not a sprint — and whether you’re a law student, associate, or partner, you always need to be thinking about the next turn in the road. You might have achieved a major career goal — getting into a top law school, landing a job as a Biglaw associate, making partner — but you can’t rest on your laurels (unless, well, you’re ready to retire). There’s always a new achievement to be unlocked.

In my new career as a legal recruiter, I have broadened and deepened my knowledge of the legal industry and job market. Based on my experience as a recruiter so far, as well as my 20 years as a practicing lawyer and then a legal journalist, here are five pieces of career advice. They’re most germane to Biglaw associates, but some of them apply to law students, partners, and even non-lawyers. I hope you find them helpful.

1. Be open to opportunity.

The job I held from 2006 to 2019, as founder and managing editor of Above the Law — “legal blogger,” “online journalist,” “digital journalist,” or whatever you might want to call it — didn’t exist when I was in law school. And when I was in law school, I certainly had no idea that I would wind up in it.

Careers take unexpected and surprising turns, often driven by luck. And you can “make your own luck” by keeping abreast of industry news (by reading ATL and other Biglaw-focused publications), networking (in person and online), and being receptive to possible opportunities (even if an opening might not initially seem like your dream job).

When in doubt, hear the pitch or take the meeting. It’s not like Persephone eating the pomegranate seeds; going to an interview doesn’t obligate you to take the job. But going to an interview, even for a job you ultimately decline or don’t get, could help you learn about a job that you do accept, make a valuable new professional contact, or land a client.

Going to a callback never killed anyone. You might get stuck in an elevator for a few hours, but that’s very, very rare.

2. Always be learning.

To paraphrase the old motivational phrase “always be closing” (made famous by Alec Baldwin’s star turn in Glengarry Glen Ross), you should always be learning, especially in a knowledge-driven field like the law. Laws change, industries change, and the only way to remain relevant is to stay on top of the changes.

If you no longer feel challenged or stimulated in your current job, or if you find yourself working on the same types of matters or performing the same types of tasks over and over again, then it might be time to start exploring. If you’re no longer learning from your job, then you’re just collecting a paycheck — and while collecting a paycheck is nice, you can do that while improving your knowledge and skills at the same time. (I can relate; a desire to take on new challenges and develop new skills drove my own recent career switch.)

3. It’s no longer all about the benjamins (or prestige).

When picking where to start their careers, many law students go for the firm offering the biggest paycheck and greatest prestige (which often just boils down to prestige, since most of the top firms pay on the same market/Cravath scale). This is an admittedly crude way to pick a firm, but it’s the approach of many students, including myself back in the day, and it has a certain logic: if you don’t know what type of law you want to practice, you might as well “start at the top” and keep as many doors open as possible.

But a few years into your career, armed with a better sense of what you actually want to do, it might be time to move to a platform that makes more sense for your specific interests. The uber-prestigious firm you picked for starting your career might not be the best place for you to build a practice based on the particular type of work you’ve selected as your specialty or the particular industry you’ve decided to focus on — perhaps with an eye to moving in-house in a few years.

4. Don’t go in-house too early.

Speaking of moving in-house, it’s the promised land for many Biglaw associates (and even some partners), and many can’t wait to make the jump. But don’t make the jump too early.

As Dan Cooperman, former general counsel of Apple, said on the Legal Speak podcast(around the 5:30 mark), the best time to go in-house is after four or five years at a firm. That’s the amount of time you typically need to become fully confident in at least one area of the law, which will serve you well as corporate counsel and help you get the best work.

(Speaking of the Legal Speak podcast, I recently appeared on it, speaking with host Leigh Jones about how Biglaw has changed over the past 13 years, the role Above the Law played in covering (and promoting) that change, and my new work as a legal recruiter. Check out the episode here.)

5. Don’t leave Biglaw too late.

The conventional wisdom is true: there’s a sweet spot for leaving Biglaw, falling somewhere between your third and sixth years. If you know that you don’t want to stick around to make a run at partnership, either because you don’t want or don’t think you’ll make partner, then figure out a good time to leave.

If everything is going reasonably well, it can be tempting to just stick around your current firm and collect a nice paycheck. And as long as you’re making money for them, your firm will be more than happy to keep you.

But beyond a certain point, your marketability will drop. If you search for jobs based on the desired year of law school graduation — one of countless searches I have been able to run with the resources I have at my disposal working at Lateral Link — you’ll find a bell-curve distribution: not many jobs for lawyers with under two years of experience, lots of jobs for lawyers with two to six years of experience, and then fewer jobs for lawyers with six or more years of experience (although this will vary based on a number of factors, including your credentials and practice area).

(Beyond a certain point of seniority, you ideally want to be a partner with a big book of business. Partner hiring doesn’t rely as much on public job postings; instead, recruiters play a major role.)

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These tips are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; the best career advice is individualized. If you’re an associate or partner at an Am Law 100 firm or elite boutique interested in reviewing your options, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, where I often post advice and opportunities, or to drop me a line by email. It’s always a pleasure to hear from ATL readers — no matter where they are in the great career marathon.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. David Lat is a managing director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.

On the latest episode of The Jabot podcast I talk with Andie Kramer and Al Harris, about their new book, It’s Not You, It’s The Workplace, Women’s Conflict At Work At The Bias That Built It. We discuss the stereotypes that exist about women in the workplace and how they work to hurt women and their careers.

And, of course since Andie and Al have a ton of experience in the legal profession (he ran his own firm for years and she’s a partner at McDermott Will & Emery), we dish on Biglaw. The unique challenges for women in Biglaw, and importantly, what firms can do to improve the situation all get aired out.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench. It’s a reminder that even when we aren’t winning, we’re still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

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).

The weight of the world sits on you, so the people in the firm — attorneys and staff alike — depend on you to thrive. That was really weighty.

— Richard Scheff, currently a partner at Armstrong Teasdale, explains to Law.com on why he left Montgomery McCracken, his firm of 28 years. At the time of his departure from Montgomery McCracken he was both the firm’s executive chairman and the firm’s largest revenue generator.

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).

Somehow, it’s 2019 and many are still talking about using cloud computing software as if it is some untested or radical approach to running a law practice.  It’s not! By now, clearly, the benefits of cloud-based software far outweigh any perceived risks. So if you haven’t already consciously leveraged cloud computing tools–although you almost certainly already have! –this report from our friends at Clio, How Cloud Computing is Making Law Firms More Efficient and Profitable, is a must-read.

Among other topics, this report explores:

• What cloud computing is. 
• How cloud-based legal software helps law firms save money, enhance productivity, and increase security
• Why cybersecurity is of the utmost importance for modern law firms—and how compliance is cost savings.
•  How cloud computing enables law firms to “productize” their services, 
• How to evaluate which cloud software is the right fit for your firm.

Download your free copy of the report here.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all the “Varsity Blues” stories is the tale of college consultant Rick Singer’s efforts to enmesh himself in the Buckley School. Singer, the alleged mastermind behind the college admissions scandals that have provided so much glee to those of us watching rich people plead guilty to trying to rig the system to help out their fail kids, locked in on the prestigious school’s board members and took the questionable tactics we’ve read about in other indictments to a whole new level.

Adam Bass, the CEO of the Buchalter firm and a Buckley board member approached the school’s headmaster to push his daughter’s C+ to a B-. That’s mildly sketchy but the difference between the two is often negligible so that’s not so bad. But that’s when Bass says he gave Singer his daughter’s applications password and things took a curious turn. According to a detailed Vanity Fair report:

In December 2017, [Guidance Counselor Julie] Taylor-Vaz found herself in a different curious conversation, this time with Tulane. A Tulane admissions officer said the college would be delighted to offer a spot to one of Buckley’s students, Eliza Bass—an African American tennis whiz, ranked in the Top 10 in California, whose parents had never attended college. But Taylor-Vaz knew this wasn’t true. Eliza was white. She didn’t play tennis competitively. And her father was Adam Bass, a wealthy board member, with a B.A. and law degree from USD. Taylor-Vaz shared the information with her superiors. Puzzled, Buckley made calls to Georgetown and Loyola Marymount. They too wanted to accept Eliza, the African American tennis wonder. Buckley set the colleges straight and promptly got to work trying to determine what on earth was going on.

When pressed, Bass informed the school that he’d handed over his daughter’s applications to Singer but had no idea she had become an unwitting Rachel Dolezal. Now aware of the issue, his daughter contacted all the schools and set the record straight, pleading for an opportunity to submit her real bio for consideration.

It turned out she got into Berkeley on her own merits, so the story ends well for her.

Meanwhile, her dad isn’t facing any penalties for his work with Singer. In some ways, since the scam apparently set up for his daughter was so off-the-wall — one that didn’t involve parents and students colluding with shady proctors to fake test scores like many of the Varsity Blues stories — authorities seem to believe that he was fully out of the loop on all this.

So the lesson, for anyone out there still considering an admissions consultant, is to remember that no matter how much you’re paying them, it’s still your child’s application and under no circumstances should you cede control of the application to anyone else. You wouldn’t let an associate file something with your signature without passing your eyes over it — your kid deserves the same courtesy.

To Cheat and Lie in L.A.: How the College-Admissions Scandal Ensnared the Richest Families in Southern California [Vanity Fair]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey apologized for appearing in blackface while in college. A yearbook photo surfaced of her sorority sisters appearing in blackface… because appearing in blackface in your YEARBOOK used to be a thing for white people. Ivey was not featured in the photo, but old radio interviews allude to her being in blackface. While Ivey couldn’t specifically remember a time when she lathered herself in black shoe polish to make fun of Negros, because apparently that thing was so commonplace doing it was forgettable, Ivey copped to probably doing it and apologized.

From NBC News:

Ivey said Thursday that while she cannot recall dressing up in blackface, she “will not deny what is the obvious.”

“As such, I fully acknowledge — with genuine remorse — my participation in a skit like that back when I was a senior in college,” she said in a statement. “While some may attempt to excuse this as acceptable behavior for a college student during the mid-1960s, that is not who I am today, and it is not what my Administration represents all these years later.”

There’s no law against blackface. No Constitutional carve out that makes mocking the terror and pain experienced by black people a form of unprotected speech. There’s no ethical rule or norm that prevents people who have engaged in this textbook racist form of “entertainment” — and white people cavorting around in blackface doing a mock “minstrel show” is textbook racist — from running for office.

All that we can hope is that white people who didn’t wear blackface and always knew wearing blackface is wrong outnumber the white people who did or do. But there are not enough of those non-blackface-wearing white people. Not nearly enough. And so the blackface-wearing white people win. And we all have to pretend that wearing blackface is a “youthful indiscretion” white people are allowed to make and still hold positions of public trust.

Even though they’re clearly, provably and actionably racist.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey apologizes after 1967 audio describing her in blackface emerges [NBC News]

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.

* Brexit is going to be a real problem for law firms. [Law.com]

* Former paralegal sues firm alleging it “fosters a ‘party culture’ rife with drug use and sexual harassment.” [Philly Voice]

* Law firms are feasting on the Sears bankruptcy. [NY Post]

* 2020 could be a monster year for Biglaw fundraising. [American Lawyer]

* What happens to intellectual property when artificial intelligence starts inventing things? [The Recorder]

* Even the Second Circuit doesn’t want to fly Spirit. [Law360]

* SEC targets investment fund that allegedly preyed upon brain-damaged NFL players to enrich themselves. Team owners, meanwhile, face no repercussions. [Daily Business Review]

* The DOJ makes secret laws? Super. [Politico]

Harare — Earlier this month, Zimbabwean opposition leader Nelson Chamisa announced that his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was taking to the streets. He said they were protesting against the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, and promised to bring the nation to a standstill.

The demonstration, when it happened on August 16, fell far short of that promise. In Harare, only a few hundred people turned out, in defiance of a last-minute government ban.
Chamisa was not among them. Riot police locked down the city centre and dispersed the protesters with extreme force. The protest was over before it really began.

That day, the repressive tactics of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration were on full view and were broadcast to the world. But a cross-section of members of the political opposition and civil society activists — none of whom are strangers to government brutality — said this was merely the public face of a crackdown that has been longer, more systematic and less predictable than any other they can remember.

“You know, under [former president Robert] Mugabe, we knew what we could do and what we couldn’t do. We knew where the line was. But now there is no line. The repression is much worse,” said one journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The crackdown has come in two waves. The first was in January this year, in response to a much more successful protest: a national stayaway sparked by a sudden rise in fuel prices. Protest leaders encouraged citizens to stay at home, and they listened, shutting down the country for several days and prompting a vicious backlash from the government.

This backlash took two forms. In the first, uniformed members of the police and army were accompanied by plainclothes paramilitary units aligned to the ruling Zanu-PF in a largely indiscriminate wave of violence unleashed across the country. This was supposedly in response to the looting that had occurred during the protest.

In addition, opposition party supporters, union leaders and civil society leaders were targeted. Some were abducted and assaulted, while others were thrown into jail and charged with a range of crimes, including treason. Not all the abductions were by men in uniform, but all seemed to be operating on government instructions. Several of those targeted mentioned the existence of a “list” against which their names were being checked.

In the space of a single week, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum had recorded 844 human rights violations that included 12 deaths, 78 gunshot injuries, 242 incidents of assault, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment; 46 incidents of vandalism and looting; and 466 arbitrary detentions.

Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the opposition Movement for a Democratic Change, had promised the action would bring the country to a standstill but given the ongoing repression and violent action by the state, the protest attracted few people. (Jekesai Njikizana/AFP)

The second wave of the crackdown took place this month, with serious abuses taking place before and after the August 16 protest. The latest statistics from the forum show that prior to the protest, at least six people were abducted, assaulted and tortured by “suspected state agents”, including one person who had caustic acid poured on his body. After the protest, at least 128 people were arrested, and 12 needed urgent medical attention following injuries sustained at the hands of the police.

The abductions have continued.

Last week, Samantha Kureya, a popular comedian who goes by the stage name Gonyeti, was at her home in Harare’s Mufakose township when masked gunmen burst in and bundled her into a vehicle. Over the course of several hours, she was severely assaulted and forced to drink sewage water, before being dumped naked on the side of the road.

The attack was explicitly related to Kureya’s work, which makes fun of the government. “According to the guys who took me, it is the type of content we create which they don’t like and it includes the recent skit titled Statutory Instrument of Evil Servants. When they took me they kept referring to that skit,” said Kureya.

She and her family — who were at home when she was abducted and assaulted — are being counselled. “Imagine someone pointing a gun at a seven-year-old … just a sound from outside can make everyone panic.”

Kureya said that she will not be silenced by the attack. “Yes, I am scared but we can’t stop doing our work. Comic relief is a key aspect of our society. Humour keeps the ordinary citizens going in this tough situation. Our content doesn’t just entertain, we also inform and educate, so we feel that we are playing an important role in getting youths and women engaged in key issues of society. So stopping is not an option.”

Earlier this week, six armed men descended on the home of Makomborero Haruzivishe, the outspoken former leader of the Zimbabwe National Students Union. He was lucky; he was not there. This is not the first time that he has received such unwelcome attention.

“Two days before the January demonstrations began, we were raided at midnight at a guest house where we were having a youth conference under the auspices of the Global Network for Youth Action. I managed to escape the raid by 12 armed men with AK-47 rifles but my colleagues from the Democratic Republic of Congo and one from the United States of America were abducted and interrogated for six hours,” said Haruzivishe.

He was arrested two days later and charged with working with foreigners to subvert the government.

Although the alleged perpetrators of these attacks are not always in uniform, there is no doubt in the minds of civil society leaders that they are operating at the government’s behest.

“Artists and creatives are deeply concerned that a rogue and criminal behaviour operating outside the realms of law and human decency is taking over our law enforcement,” said two Zimbabwean arts groups, Nhimbe Trust and Rooftop Promotions, in a joint statement in response to the attack on Kureya. “Someone must be responsible for this lawlessness that seems to be acting on behalf of the government. Unfortunately the buck stops with the law enforcement agencies and our government.”

The government disagrees. Although the information ministry did not respond to a request for comment, in a previous statement — released before the August 16 protest — the ministry blamed the spate of abductions on a “force comprised of discharged and disgruntled former members of the old establishment, of whom some are trained”. This force is apparently loyal to Mugabe, and intent on discrediting the new president.

Whoever is responsible for the violence, there can be no doubt that it is having a chilling effect on all forms of opposition to the government. And although Kureya insists that the show must go on, not everyone agrees.

“The stakes are too high now. These guys can do anything,” said one high-profile activist, speaking on condition of anonymity.

This activist, who is known for his outspokenness, has never before requested to keep his name out of the newspaper, but felt that the risk of retaliation had become too high for him to speak freely.

“It has never been this bad,” he said. Other sources echoed this sentiment.