Author: TSA Press

We’re nearly midway through summer associate season, and on-campus interviews begin in about a month at law schools across the country for next year’s crop of summer associates. What better time to release Vault’s closely watched rankings for the best summer associate programs?

Hot on the heels of Vault’s rankings of the most prestigious law firms and the law firms with the best quality of life comes the career website’s ranking of the best summer associate programs in Biglaw. Junior associates (first- through third-year attorneys) who summered at their current firms were asked to rank their experiences on how much fun the program was and how well it prepared them for life at the firm through six different categories (attorney interactions, substantive assignments, training & mentoring, preparation for associate life, quality of events, and satisfaction with firm-sponsored social opportunities and social interactions). From those ratings, Vault the best summer associate programs in three categories: Attorney Interactions, Career Development, and Social Experiences. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of the firms that made the Top 10 list for having the best quality of life made the Top 10 for having the best summer associate program.

There was a huge amount of movement in the Top 10 this year. Which firms made the cut? Without any further ado, here are the Top 10 Firms With the Best Summer Associate Programs based on Vault’s Annual Associate Survey for 2020:

1. O’Melveny & Myers (no change)
2. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (+7)
3. Clifford Chance (US) (+5)
4. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld (+11)
5. Crowell & Moring (-2)
6. Thompson & Knight (not ranked; first time in Top 10)
7. Choate Hall & Stewart (+4)
8. Eversheds Sutherland (US) (-6)
9. White & Case (-3)
10. Williams & Connolly (+10)

O’Melveny, Orrick, Clifford Chance, and Choate Hall each made appearances in the Top 10 for firms with the best quality of life. Let’s give these firms a round of applause for keeping their attorneys happy from their days as summers through their days as junior associates. (We’re sure their salary raises didn’t hurt, either.)

Here are the Top 3 Best Summer Programs for Attorney Interactions:

1. Thompson & Knight
2. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton
3. O’Melveny & Myers

Here are the Top 3 Best Summer Programs for Career Development:

1. O’Melveny & Myers
2. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
3. Crowell & Moring

Here are the Top 3 Best Summer Programs for Social Experiences:

1. O’Melveny & Myers
2. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
3. Thompson & Knight

Congratulations to all 50 of the Biglaw firms that made the latest edition of the Vault Best Summer Associate Program rankings. How did your firm do? Email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog to let us know how you feel.

Best Summer Associate Programs (2020) [Vault]

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.

CKR Law LLP is facing a new lawsuit, filed in New York state court yesterday, that alleges the firm allowed a “sexually hostile” environment in its New York office. Plaintiff Catherine Acosta was the former marketing director based in the firm’s New York office, and alleges she was subjected to repeated inappropriate comments that the firm was unwilling to do anything about.

According to the complaint, one attorney reached out to Acosta after work hours for a “chat” and asked “if she had any less professional pictures to share.” Additionally, Acosta alleges she was the recipient of inappropriate comments after her marriage to a same-sex partner. In one particularly galling alleged incident, an attorney commented on Acosta’s marriage asking “if she was done with men forever or if he could do anything to change her mind.”

As reported by Law360, as a result of these allegedly inappropriate interactions, Acosta sought permission to work remotely from the managing partner, Jeffery Rinde. Though that request was initially granted, the complaint alleges it was rescinded when it was revealed Acosta was aware of compromising information about Rinde:

Acosta, who says she suffers from anxiety, got permission from CKR managing partner Jeffrey A. Rinde to work from home after these purported incidents, her suit says. However, she says the firm’s and Rinde’s attitudes toward her abruptly changed after she told her assistant that security cameras had recorded Rinde and the assistant kissing in an elevator.

Ultimately, Acosta was let go from the firm, “allegedly due to her inability to work in the New York City office.” But as the complaint goes on to allege, her assistant, who took over Acosta’s position when she was fired, was allowed to work from home.

You can read the full complaint on the next page.

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).

Ed. note: This is part two of a two-part series on how law firms can address critical vulnerabilities in their security posture.  Part One focused on setting the stage for an external expert assessment and used a case study to examine physical security issues law firms should be examining.  Part Two will continue with the case study by addressing assessment techniques including attack simulations, social engineering and open source intelligence review.

A hostile threat environment that requires lawyers to critically consider how to adequately protect their clients’ communications in the digital age is something the ABA tackled head-on in ABA Formal Opinion 477 in May 2017 stating that cybersecurity recognizes a world where law enforcement discusses hacking and data loss in terms of “when and not if.”

Law firms are logical targets for hackers because they collect and store highly sensitive information about clients.  Small and medium-sized firms often struggle with ensuring they allocate proper attention to the electronic infrastructure in which to be productive and adequately protect data and communications.  Additionally, client data notwithstanding, law firms have their own data, business practices, intellectual property, and employee data to protect.  So it comes as no surprise that sophisticated hackers actively test the perimeters of law firms’ networks and cloud environments and are targeting employees to gain the fastest path into databases and other systems containing this valuable information.  What’s on the line: reputational damages, lawsuits, and risk of regulatory enforcement.

Outside experts can help law firms reduce the risk of a harmful and costly breach.  In part one, we discussed the benefit of physical security assessments.  Now let’s get into additional attack simulation exercises which can bring great value to uncovering and shoring up vulnerabilities.

Attack Simulations

Typically, law firms have invested a great deal of hours and funding into what they believe are strong enough security stacks to withstand hackers.  To create a truly resilient environment, however, it’s useful to vet this assessment against the realities of what sophisticated hackers can achieve.  Traditionally, adversaries approach exploitation of a target through social engineering, email compromise, public websites, or gaining physical access to a facility.

With a deep dive assessment that mimics a real-world attack by a malicious actor, an outside expert can demonstrate the ability to gain access to an office through a “red team” approach: this simply means that an outside team (the red team) will stage an attack against all potential attack vectors to evaluate the effectiveness of the firm’s security infrastructure and response capabilities.

Aside from attempting to compromise physical security assets such as badge reading systems and closed-circuit TV (CCTV) once inside the physical perimeter, an additional goal of a red team exercise within this context is typically to perform lateral movement within a network to other geographically disbursed offices, highlighting any vulnerabilities in network segmentation. Shared applications and resources between different global locations are prime targets within the internal network and pose unique threats to organizations with global locations.  These resources could range from file shares to intranet web pages, allowing unintended jump points between networks bypassing any segmentation between those systems.

Another tactic is to target key administrators with access to production systems and/or to attempt bypassing or compromising sensitive Security Operations Center (SOC) assets and tools.  This delivers a clear view of the SOC’s ability to properly monitor against risk and gauges the ability and response time of automated security technology alerts and IT personnel.

Finally, the red team will try to compromise internet-facing applications and network infrastructure including open ports and vulnerable services. They do this by performing credential stealing, executing two-factor authentication bypass, and applying other attack methodologies.

After these attack simulations are complete, the red team compiles a final report containing findings, precise remediation recommendations, and a gap analysis demonstrating areas for improvement.

Targeted Social Engineering Simulations

Another form of attack simulation is a highly tailored social engineering campaign directed at agreed-upon initial targets such as global help desk operations or other personnel who are typically on the front lines of inbound communications.

The primary objective of social engineering is to circumvent network defenses, leveraging an approach that targets trusted users to gain access to privileged information or resources.  Attackers often use social engineering to establish initial access and gather intelligence to prepare for a future remote attack.

Additional objectives of social engineering attack simulations include:

• Identify remote code execution vulnerabilities on workstations.
• Collect data on likelihood that your personnel will click on potentially malicious links or open emails yielding network credentials. This can be used to measure effectiveness of anti-spear phishing training.
• Bypass security controls, restrictions, and boundaries.
• Inform and prioritize risk mitigation and avoidance to prevent catastrophic effects from such attacks.

An important goal of these assessments is to determine a firm’s maturity in withstanding phishing attempts.  Broadly speaking, phishing denotes an adversary’s attempt to exploit a target by gaining entry (physical or electronic) by convincing employees or contractors to take an enabling action allowing entry or assets transfer to an attacker.  Phishing can take many forms including the following:

• Email/Chat Spearphishing
  • Emails impersonating fictitious entities which may contain malicious links, embedded malicious content, or attachments that contain malicious code.
  • The attack effort can include:
    • Establishing whether the email infrastructure is properly flagging spam.
    • Enticing users to click or execute malicious messages which ultimately would provide a hacker with access to a corporate endpoint.
    • Enticing high-level individuals (think: C-suite) to take actions more productive to the adversary because of the access and actions available to the high-level target (aka “whaling”).
    • Enticing targeted administrators to take enabling actions (aka “spearphishing”).
  • Phone Phishing
    • Phone calls in which operators attempt to elicit sensitive corporate data, reset a users’ password, or paired with email phishing, establish remote access to a user’s workstation through “pretexting,” which amounts to pretending to be someone else to obtain private information.
• Physical Phishing
  • Attempts to gain physical access to a corporate environment with the purpose of either collection of sensitive data, or installation of remote connectivity (see: physical security assessments).

Deploying the proper training, monitoring, email scanning/filtering, and policies designed to segment off critical assets can fend off even the most clever social engineering hackers. Understanding the capabilities of a firm’s people and systems is an important first step.

Open Source Intelligence Assessments

Through reviewing publicly available information on the internet, law firms can gain a better grasp of how hostile actors may be building profiles of their organizations.  Physical and digital vulnerabilities often begin with a small thread discovered online, such as in an employee’s social media postings or client files entrusted to a firm now being sold on the dark web.  Experts use a full suite of open source research tools and methodologies including social media to comprehensively identify personally identifiable information, leaked credentials, or breached data.  With an understanding of what hackers can learn about their executives, practices, clients, and physical assets online, firms can shore up their defenses and create a more secure perimeter around their critical assets.

No organization, law firms included, can fully reduce the risk of being a target of hacking.  The best approach is to understand the risk more comprehensively through sophisticated and tailored external assessments.  From there, detailed recommendations can direct internal resources to fix technical gaps.  The goal is not to extinguish the threat altogether, but to at least do so better than the next law firm.

Jennifer DeTrani is General Counsel and EVP of Nisos, a technology-enabled cybersecurity firm.  She co-founded a secure messaging platform, Wickr, where she served as General Counsel for five years.  You can connect with Jennifer on Wickr (dtrain), LinkedIn or by email at dtrain@nisos.com.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, presumably at the direction of President Donald Trump or shadow President Stephen Miller or former Confederate Attorney General Jeff Sessions, decided to add a citizenship question to the upcoming decennial Census. Their reasons were clearly and provably racist. Their intention, according to newly uncovered documents, was to suppress the count of non-citizens who would be afraid to fill out the form, in a way that would be “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.”

Of course, that’s not why they said they were adding the question. White people who are about to do some racism rarely say “we’re fittin’ to do some racism.” Before Donald Trump was elected, plausible deniability was key to the white supremacist regime. Since Trump, they’ve dropped the “plausible” but still cherish “deniability.” All of Trump’s most racist programs and policies have come with a thin veneer of deniability. We call these reasons “pretexts.” Everybody knows Trump is really trying to ethnically cleanse the country of nonwhites, but his pretextual reason for allowing people to drown in a river is “border security.”

The stated reasons for the inclusion of the citizenship question were a cruel joke. According to Ross, the citizenship question was added to help nonwhites access their rights under the Voting Rights Act. That’s a complete lie, but the Trump administration doesn’t believe it has to tell the truth even when everybody knows its lying.

His supporters are in on the joke, and the media slavishly repeats the Trump administration’s pretextual reasons for their policies, and conservative courts latch onto these “race-neutral” reasons when they have enough votes to advance his white supremacist policies. Most famously, the Supreme Court allowed Trump’s Muslim Ban to go forward, for the entirely pretextual national security tropes. After that tragedy of a Supreme Court decision, why would the Trump administration ever feel constrained to make a truthful argument again?

We have been waiting for the Supreme Court, for Chief Justice John Roberts essentially, to finally reach his limit with the pretexts and simply acknowledge that he understands what Trump is doing. Nobody expects Roberts, a lifelong conservative with a nasty streak when it comes to nonwhites who have the gumption to try to vote, to change his ideological stripes just because an open bigot is advancing Roberts’s political agenda. But we have been waiting to see if there is some point at which John Roberts will refuse to rubberstamp lies from the Trump administration when he knows they’re lying.

That limit was finally reached today. In Department of Commerce v. New York, Roberts finally called the Trump administration out on its BS. His opinion reads like a man desperate to go along with the Trump administration, who at the end just couldn’t swallow one more lie. From the Roberts opinion:

That evidence showed that the Secretary was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his staff to make it happen; waited while Commerce officials explored whether another agency would request census-based citizenship data; subsequently contacted the Attorney General himself to ask if DOJ would make the request; and adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process. In the District Court’s view, this evidence established that the Secretary had made up his mind to reinstate a citizenship question “well before” receiving DOJ’s request, and did so for reasons unknown but unrelated to the VRA. 351 F. Supp. 3d, at 660.

The Government, on the other hand, contends that there was nothing objectionable or even surprising in this. And we agree—to a point. It is hardly improper for an agency head to come into office with policy preferences and ideas, discuss them with affected parties, sound out other agencies for support, and work with staff attorneys to substantiate the legal basis for a preferred policy. The record here reflects the sometimes involved nature of Executive Branch decision-making, but no particular step in the process stands out as inappropriate or defective.

And yet, viewing the evidence as a whole, we share the District Court’s conviction that the decision to reinstate a citizenship question cannot be adequately explained in terms of DOJ’s request for improved citizenship data to better enforce the VRA. Several points, considered together, reveal a significant mismatch between the decision the Secretary made and the rationale he provided.

Remember, the Roberts court tried everything it could to cut off discovery into the real reasons Ross and the rest of the Trump administration decided to add this question. Roberts didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be forced to look the Trump administration in the eye and see it for what it always has been. Roberts has rested his entire career on the basis of not knowing how things really are (I’ll get to his gerrymandering decision later today). The operative difference between the jurisprudence of John Roberts and that of former Chief Justice Roger Taney is that Roberts loves accepting the conservatives’ pretextual arguments while Taney had no need for them.

But here, he blinked. It would appear that the bald racism of documents found on Thomas B. Hofeller’s hard drive was just too naked for him to ignore. Roberts likes to say: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This case would have forced him to say: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to discriminate on the basis of race and hope I don’t notice.” That was too much for him.

It’s far from a complete victory, because Roberts makes it very clear that nearly any other pretextual reason would be enough for Commerce to add the citizenship question. If Ross had come up with a slightly less obviously false reason for adding the citizenship question, Roberts would have let him add it. People forget, the Muslim Ban that Roberts approved was the administration’s third try at the Muslim Ban. The third Muslim Ban was itself a pretext and its true intentions were more directly explained in versions one and two. Roberts swallowed that pretext whole. Roberts is fine with giving the Trump administration multiple bites at the apple to get its bigotry in the right format.

What will frustrate the Trump administration going forward is not Roberts, it’s time. Roberts doesn’t want to wear a racist hat like the MAGA people; he likes the old-school hood that Republicans used to hand out. But it takes time to make those, and given that deadlines for printing the Census are coming up, the incompetent-on-a-good-day Trump administration might not have time to whitesplain this to Roberts’s satisfaction.

And there’s another problem. The case that came to the Supreme Court was only about whether the government’s actions in adding the citizenship question were arbitrary and capricious. Whether it was intentionally racially biased was not addressed by the Supreme Court, because the lower court decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to make that claim. But that was before the Hofeller documents. Now, U.S. District Judge George Hazel, who had previously ruled that those objecting to the citizenship question on equal protection grounds had not made their case, has agreed to re-open that question in light of the new evidence.

As with everything Trump, the more you dig, the more dirt you find. Even if the Commerce Department quickly comes up with new reasons for adding its racist question, the issue of whether the question is racist is back on the table.

Practically speaking, the citizenship question should not appear on the 2020 Census. But in many ways, the Trump administration has already scored a partial victory. Their goal has been to make nonwhites afraid to fill out the Census. No last-second Court ruling can diminish the fear and terror Trump has already put into immigrant and migrant communities.

But at least we now know that John Roberts has a limit. And if you stand up to a racist bully once, maybe you find the courage to do it again.

Department of Commerce v. New York [Supreme Court]

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.

According to Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer survey, the top challenges for corporate legal departments today include reducing and controlling outside legal costs, improving case and contract management, and automating routine tasks and leveraging technology in work processes.

I recently discussed this topic with Ali Butler, Deputy General Counsel at Wolters Kluwer. Ali was previously a partner at Mayer Brown LLP and has a lot of experience working within a law firm as well as within a corporate legal department. We had an interesting discussion about the impact of innovation from the perspective of the corporate legal department.

Technology Innovation

In-house legal departments are looking to technology solutions to help them become more efficient.  “At Wolters Kluwer, we created a technology committee to evaluate ways to leverage technology to better address the expanding legal needs of the business. Anything that maximizes efficiency and reduces the time we spend on administrative work allows us more time to focus on the substantive legal work where we add the most value.”

Most corporate legal departments deploy enterprise legal management solutions, which include eBilling and spend and matter management. Not only do these solutions streamline the review of legal billing by flagging invoice items that aren’t in line with the department’s outside counsel billing guidelines and allowing rejection of specific line items rather than the entire invoice — they also provide technology to manage legal matters from start to finish. “We are fortunate to be able to use our own enterprise legal management tool, which includes an AI-enabled bill review,” according to Ali. The added AI component enhances the analysis of outside counsel billing guidelines compliance.

The enterprise legal management solutions can also provide valuable metrics on outside counsel usage and spend. Having these metrics helps corporate legal departments in planning and budgeting, including evaluating the need for additional headcount. “Our enterprise legal management solution has the ability to deploy a workflow where in-house counsel can provide feedback about outside counsel which can then be used to guide discussions with their outside counsel about the relationship, including what is working and where there may be areas for improvement.”

Law firms also recognize the value of that feedback. “Obtaining candid feedback from clients is critical — it helps us to meet our clients’ expectations as to service delivery and value and to understand how we can better partner with them on budgeting, billing and other matters,” notes Jennifer Keating, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP.

Non-Technology Innovation

Non-technology innovation can complement technology innovations as corporate legal departments are under increasing pressure to control legal fees. “Many law firms try to raise their hourly rates every year,” Ali said. “As the hourly rates continue to climb at some firms, corporate legal departments look to alternative fee arrangements (such as fee caps, collars, portfolio fixed fee, etc.) or alternative legal service providers who can provide certain services more cost-effectively.”

While I don’t believe that alternative legal services providers can replace law firms, they do offer a more cost-effective alternative to law firms for routine work. “If you have a significant or complex matter or transaction, your corporate legal department will use a law firm (unless they have the ability to handle it in-house) that has lawyers who work in all of the practice areas needed for the transaction, such as benefits/ERISA, environmental, tax, and IP,” said Ali. “On the other hand, you might have routine work — such as licensing agreements or services agreements — that would not necessarily require the attention of a traditional law firm. For example, a software agreement with a modest license fee of $50K might be perfect for an alternative legal services provider, rather than paying $500-$700 an hour to an outside law firm to handle it.”

Ali noted that some law firms are competing with alternative legal service providers by opening offices in lower-cost geographies or having their own contract attorneys who bill out at a lower rate than an associate.

Ali offered some considerations that law firms should keep in mind to stay competitive as technology and innovation continue to shift the landscape for their corporate legal department clients.

Law firms’ use of innovation and technology: “Law firms have to embrace (or continue to embrace) innovation and technology to help streamline their own legal work or they risk becoming uncompetitive. This can include deploying AI-driven document review, contract automation solutions or working together with an alternative legal service provider. For example, having an alternative legal service provider do the contract review during due diligence and having the law firm handle the other aspects of the transaction.  A number of law firms we work with are already doing a lot in this area.”

A long-term view of the relationship: “It helps when our outside counsel doesn’t just see us as a transaction,” said Ali. “We want to hire firms that value long-term relationships. We want law firms that are solution-oriented and work with us to manage our costs — and we’re more likely to want to partner with those firms on future work because they’ve demonstrated that they understand the pressures we’re under.”

What do these in-house pressures mean for law firms? As technology and innovation continues to evolve the legal industry, there are new opportunities for law firms to identify ways to deliver value to their clients.

Dean E. Sonderegger is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Dean has more than two decades of experience at the cutting edge of technology across industries. He can be reached at Dean.Sonderegger@wolterskluwer.com.

One reason the American Bar Association recently yanked Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s accreditation was concerns about its current and anticipated financial resources.

The U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos is apparently less worried about the San Diego law school’s fiscal situation.

In criticizing the ABA’s accreditation decision, which Thomas Jefferson plans to appeal, the school said it had strengthened its finances.

One example Thomas Jefferson gave was the Department of Education relieving it of having to post a $3.1 million letter of credit to the department. Interim Dean Linda Keller said the DOE took this step because of the school’s improved financial situation.

“This was done after assessing the audited financial records of the law school in accordance with federal regulations,” Dean Keller wrote in a recent email. “The DOE uses an objective test to determine a school’s composite score for financial responsibility. Ours was in excess of the required level.”

The DOE also removed Thomas Jefferson in March from its “Heightened Cash Monitoring” list that the school had been on since December 2015 due to financial responsibility concerns.

A DOE spokesman confirmed that a review of Thomas Jefferson’s audited financial statements for fiscal year 2018 resulted in “a passing financial composite score for that fiscal year.” As a result, the department released Thomas Jefferson from the letter of credit requirement and heightened cash monitoring earlier this year, he said.

The spokesman noted that the law school originally had to post the letter of credit in order to continue participating in the federal financial aid program. The requirement was instituted after a review of the school’s fiscal year 2017 audited financial statements, he said.

The $3.1 million letter of credit “represented 10 percent of the Title IV program funds received by the institution” during the most recently completed fiscal year, according to the DOE.

Letters of credit are financial instruments issued by a financial institution, typically a bank, on behalf of a school to the DOE.

“Funds from a letter of credit may be drawn in part or whole by the department to reimburse the department for student refunds, loan cancellation costs, and may be used with the institution’s agreement to cover the expense of teach-outs when an institution closes,” a DOE webpage states.

The National Student Legal Defense Network criticized the DOE’s actions involving Thomas Jefferson. In a Twitter thread, the network noted that one of the reasons the ABA had initially put Thomas Jefferson on probation in November 2017 was financial concerns.

“Almost 2 years later ABA reaffirms financial problems,” the student network tweeted. “Cue Betsy DeVos concluding the school can keep the $3.1 million insurance policy taxpayers have against a failing school!”

An ABA spokesman did not provide a comment on the DOE’s actions relative to Thomas Jefferson’s finances.

The law school could raise DOE’s new stance on its financial picture as part of its appeal of the ABA’s accreditation decision. Thomas Jefferson will remain accredited while the appeals process plays out.

In its statement calling the ABA’s accreditation action “capricious,” Thomas Jefferson also said the school has eliminated $42 million in debt in recent years. It was able to do so as part of transactions surrounding its move from a state-of-the-art $90 million facility to several floors in a downtown San Diego office building.

The smaller footprint has helped the school save millions of dollars compared to its lease in its old building, according to the dean.

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.

Matobo Park — about 500 kilometers southwest of Harare — is home to both the endangered black rhino and the threatened southern white rhino.

Elusive as they are today, rhinos are on the increase in Matobo, in part because of a policy to protectively remove their horns.

Poachers kill the animals to obtain the horn, which in traditional Chinese medicine is believed to have healing powers, although there is little evidence to support this.

Verity Bowman is director of Dambari Wildlife Trust, a wildlife conservation research organization, one of the NGOs taking part in anti-rhino poaching efforts with the government.

“The dehorning, of course, removes the incentive to poachers and increases the risk, for a low reward. And in small populations, we feel it is the way to go, and it has made a big difference to Matopo National Park by having all animals dehorned,” Bowman said.

Priscah Mupfumira, Zimbabwe’s environment, tourism and wildlife minister, told delegates at the just-ended African Union  (AU) United Nations (UN) Wildlife Economy Summit that her country is winning the anti-poaching war.

“I am happy to report the number of poachers in Zimbabwe and in KAZA region has drastically reduced. We have good conservation programs to make sure that we look after our wild animals,” Mupfumira said.

Along with dehorning rhinos, Zimbabwe ensures that national park rangers have adequate camping equipment, cameras and GPS to patrol the parks and watch out for poachers.

But Bowman says it is not easy to stop the poaching of rhinos.

“Protection of rhinos is a very complicated affair, as you probably are aware, and there are a number of strategies which are in place,” Bowman said.

Zimbabwean officials keep the actual number of rhinos in the national parks a secret, to ensure poachers remain in the dark.

The strategies all help ensure that future generations will see rhinos in the national parks — not just in zoos.

Post published in: Featured

Last month, Kellyanne Conway ground the heel of her stylish yet economical Ivanka Trump pump into the remains of the Hatch Act, saying, “Blahblahblah … let me know when the jail sentence starts.” Because laws are for the little people.

Unfortunately Special Counsel Henry Kerner never got that memo, so on June 13, he sent a letter to Donald Trump documenting 10 occasions when Conway violated the act’s ban on senior White House officials using their position to influence elections and calling for her dismissal. From her endorsement of alleged pedophile Roy Moore, to her use of Twitter account to criticize “creepy Joe Biden,” to her repeated television appearances slagging Democratic presidential candidates, Conway has shown utter disdain for the statute. George Washington Law must be so proud of its famous alum!

Donald Trump cordially invited Kerner to eat dirt, and that would have been the end of it except congressional Democrats refused to let the matter drop. Conway was apparently too busy honing her impressive New Jersey accent to appear before the House Oversight Committee. But White House Counsel Pat Cipollone blithely asserted on her behalf that “the President’s immediate advisors are absolutely immune from congressional testimonial process.” Which is … not how we remember it going down in previous administrations.

Conway did have time to appear on Fox News Channel, though, where she admitted that “[t]he Hatch Act means that you can’t advocate for or against the election of an individual.” On its face, urging voters to vote for Roy Moore in the Alabama senate race might appear to be just such an activity, but Conway was quick to explain that she was just “quoting what some of the candidates say about the other candidates, I’m just repeating the news to you as I read it that day.” Which was good enough for the Curvy Couch Crew. 

“They want to put a big roll of masking tape over my mouth because I helped as a campaign manager for the successful part of the campaign.” Conway continued, “They want to chill free speech because they don’t know how to beat [Trump] at the ballot box.” No one at Fox suggested that Ms. Conway consider taking a position with the Trump 2020 campaign if she wished to continue her advocacy rather than using a microphone subsidized by American taxpayers. Nor did they ask her how she would be silenced by being invited to speak to Congress. Maybe it came up during a commercial break.

Yesterday’s Oversight Committee hearing was a predictable circus, with Congressmen Meadows and Jordan yammering about plots against the president and inveighing against the real villain here: Michael Cohen. Obviously. Here’s Congressman Clay Higgins, a former law enforcement officer who resigned rather than face discipline for excessive use of force, discussing nailing Michael Cohen to the cross.

Which is all very blahblahblah, let me know when the jail sentence starts. But Republicans had one more trick up their sleeves, and it was to paint Special Counsel Henry Kerner, a Trump appointee and lifelong Republican, as a man scorned by Kellyanne Conway. In their version of events, Kerner is trying to get Conway fired because she ignored him and wouldn’t meet with his office to discuss her repeated violations of the law he is charged with policing.

“Mr. Chairman, the report from the Office of the Special Counsel is outrageous. It is unprecedented. It is unfair. And it is just flat out wrong. The reason we’re here today is because Mr. Kerner got his feelings hurt,” said  Congressman Jordan. He went on to mischaracterize the brief notice Kerner gave the White House before sending his letter as giving her only “16 hours to respond” and accused the Special Counsel of caving to Democratic pressure, before returning to his theme of a federal official scorned, saying, “Mr. Kerner felt slighted. Miss Conway didn’t pay enough attention to him in his office.”

How could such a spineless liberal get appointed in the Trump administration? Is he some kind of Democratic holdover? Where did they find this guy?

Oh, he was a Republican staffer on the very same House Oversight Committee grilling him yesterday? And he worked for John McCain on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations? So, not from the ACLU via Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Black Lives Matter? Go figure!

Here’s a video of House Oversight voting to issue a subpoena for Kellyanne Conway at the end of yesterday’s three-ring circus. Luckily, she’s immune to that sort of thing.

Kellyanne Conway and the Hatch Act [C-SPAN]
House Panel Votes to Subpoena Trump Adviser Conway on Hatch Act [Reuters]

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

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Zimbabwe’s government has taken the controversial decision to ban local trading in foreign currencies, including the US dollar, with immediate effect.

It has also reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar, which was abandoned because of hyperinflation in 2009 when the country mainly adopted the US dollar and the South African rand.

The move has shocked Zimbabweans, who have little faith in a local currency – the exchange rate when the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped was Z$35 quadrillion to $1.

What has prompted the move?

The economy is a mess. Nearly everything is imported and there is a shortage of physical cash. The cost of living is very expensive. Unemployment is widespread.

Zimbabwe’s old currency became absolutely worthless

Various things have been tried to solve the problem, including the introduction in 2016 of bond notes, a parallel currency that was only accepted in Zimbabwe.

It was officially pegged to the US dollar but in reality was worth much less – so a thriving black market developed and Zimbabwe has become a cashless society, relying on card-based transactions or trading with mobile money.

In February, bond notes and electronic cash were re-branded RTGS dollars and allowed to float to try and crush the black market.

However, workers, who used to get their salaries paid in US dollars, have found that their salaries in RTGS dollars are not able to keep up with inflation – now running at 100%.

People were often expected to pay for goods in shops and services, like doctors’ fees, in US dollars.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the ban was an “important step in restoring normalcy to our economy”.

“While the multi-currency regime helped stabilise the economy, it did not give us control of monetary policy and left us at the mercy of US dollar pricing which has been a root cause of inflation,” he added.

The authorities also say because the US dollar is so strong, producing goods locally is expensive which is why businesses prefer to import goods.

What has been the reaction?

Anger and exasperation.

Some retailers have produced new prices lists: here an iron that usually costs about $30 is priced at Z$104

Most people, who associate the Zimbabwe dollar with food shortages and runaway inflation, have complained about the lack of warning. The RTGS officially became the Zimbabwe dollar on Monday, the only legal tender.

“We should have our own currency. But they shouldn’t have abolished it as if they were swatting a fly. They should have given us notice,” one man told the BBC.

Supermarkets and those in the formal sector responded a day after the announcement by issuing new prices in Zimbabwean dollars – but they were beyond the means of many.

A first-time doctor’s consultation is now Z$1,800 – more than a teacher or nurse earns in a month.

Informal traders, who dominate the economy and need US dollars for imports, have vowed to defy the directive.

A street vendor in the capital, Harare, told the BBC: “How is it possible that the US dollar is no longer accepted? It won’t work. We actually want greater use of it, so that as street vendors we can have them. Scrap the bond note instead.”

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) lawmaker David Coltart called the move “sheer madness”.

“The market has been re-dollarising because of lack of confidence in the RTGS dollar. You can’t force people to love a currency… This will exacerbate the chaos,” he said on Twitter.

Will these objections make any difference?

The trade unions have threatened “mass action” if the policy is not reversed.

Unrest broke out after a fuel price hike in January

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) wants workers to be paid in US dollars again.

In January, it led nationwide protests against a 150% fuel price increase, triggering a violent crackdown by the army and police that rights groups say left at least 12 people dead.

On the streets of the capital, black market traders are still exchanging and accepting US dollars.

The value on the black market has remained unchanged – one US dollar is worth 11 Zimbabwe dollars, compared with the official rate of 6.2.

Ultimately Zimbabweans have proved good at adapting over the years to one economic crisis after another.

Why do Zimbabweans prefer foreign currencies?

They are scarred by the mismanagement of the economy by the government of then-President Robert Mugabe. The central bank was forced to print banknotes of ever higher values to keep up with surging inflation.

US dollars are the most highly prized currency in Zimbabwe

Annual inflation reached 231 million per cent in July 2008. Officials gave up reporting monthly statistics when it peaked at just under 80 billion per cent in mid-November 2008.

The prices of goods multiplied several times a day. Though it was illegal at the time, many people opted to keep US dollars, which they bought on the black market.

Businesses began demanding foreign currency. Eventually authorities were forced to catch up, scrapping the Zimbabwe dollar and sanctioning the use of several currencies, including the Chinese yuan and Indian rupee.

You could purchase something with one currency, and get change in another currency.

But in reality Zimbabwe ran out of all these currencies because it was importing far more than exporting – and has become a cashless society.

Post published in: Business