Author: TSA Press

Here at Above the Law we care a lot about increasing transparency at Biglaw firms — that’s why we spend so much time reporting on bonuses and salaries and benefits. And while reporting on the market standard and leaders will always be a part of our mission, we also want to hear about what it’s like to actually work in the halls of Biglaw.

So, we’re asking our readers to fill out a brief survey about what they wish they knew about their firm before they started working there. We don’t care about the firm’s PR line, but about what associates really feel about the firm. We’ll be integrating the results of the survey into a new transparency project that’ll be launched later this summer.

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 United Nations says more than 6 million Zimbabweans (or nearly 40 percent of the population) require food aid between now and the next harvest in April 2020 due to the drought and the impact of Cyclone Idai which hit the country, together with Mozambique and Malawi in March.

The Herald newspaper reported Wednesday that Public Service, Labor and Social Welfare Deputy Minister Lovemore Matuke had told a ruling ZANU-PF party meeting in Masvingo that the government had completed a document which outlined modalities on the implementation of the Food for Work program under which beneficiaries get food packs after working on identified projects.

The last food for work program was undertaken in 2016 following another serious drought in the country. Generally, priority is placed on projects that achieve food security. The incapacitated still receive food under the government’s drought relief program.

Matuke said the government had finalized the document which has already been sent to all the country’s provinces, adding that the program should be designed in a manner that promotes productivity, particularly irrigation, to ensure the country is self-sufficient in terms of food requirements.

“We need projects which have significant social economic impact,” he said.

“We need our people to provide labor on projects such as irrigation schemes, projects that help the country achieve food security rather than working on projects that have little or no impact on the economy. They should be well-designed to ensure the objectives of Vision 2030 are achieved.” he said.

He said while the government had put in place some measures and resources to alleviate food shortages in light of the El-Nino induced drought, efforts must be equally put in place to harness domestic resources to build self-food sufficiency.

Post published in: Agriculture

Last week, the central bank banned the use of foreign currencies as legal tender, officially reintroduced the Zimbabwean dollar a decade after it was wiped out by hyperinflation, hiked overnight interest rates to 50% and removed a cap on banks’ foreign-exchange trading margins. While slammed by some businesses, the moves have succeeded in reducing the gap between the nation’s official and black-market exchange rates.

The latter has strengthened to 9.50 per U.S. dollar from a record low of 12.90 last week, according to marketwatch.co.zw, a website run by financial analysts. Along with the central bank’s weakening of the interbank rate, the difference between the two is now the narrowest since at least early 2017.

Some locals and businesses criticized the return of the Zimbabwe dollar, saying it could accelerate inflation that’s already at almost 100%. Costs haven’t climbed so far. Fast-food chain Simbisa Brands Ltd. reduced prices on Wednesday at some of its chicken and pizza outlets.

“It looks like they caught the pass and they’re running with it,” said Kato Mukuru, head of frontier-markets research in Dubai for EFG-Hermes, the investment bank that described it as a Hail Mary. “But it’s still far from being a touchdown. The biggest problems could still be to come.”

He’s skeptical because Zimbabwe has nowhere near enough foreign exchange to support the currency and pay for vital imports such as fuel and medicine, which are running low. Plus, he said, higher interest rates will hit consumer demand and may cause non-performing loans to spike.

The government said it was drawing down part of a $500 million line from the African Export-Import Bank to supply the interbank market with dollars. But that won’t last long as it covers less than a month of imports, said Mukuru. It’s unclear whether Zimbabwe — which wants a loan from the International Monetary Fund but needs to clear debt arrears before it’s eligible for one — has other sources it can tap for hard currency.

A long-time Zimbabwean coffee grower, Muganyura almost gave up on the crop when prices slumped to as low as U.S. 20 cents a pound at the turn of the millennium, and foreign buyers took flight after land seizures drove out more than 120 white commercial coffee farmers under the banner of post-colonial reform.

But with companies like Nestle’s Nespresso arm now willing to pay a premium for Zimbabwe’s beans, small-scale farmers like Muganyura are returning to a sector that was all-but destroyed under former President Robert Mugabe.

Coffee output in Zimbabwe was 430 tonnes in 2018, a 10% increase over the previous year. This year production is set at 500 tonnes, according to industry officials.

Zimbabwe was never among the world’s top producers: output peaked at around 15,000 tonnes in the late 1990s. But its Arabica coffee is prized for its zesty and fruity tones, and the sector once provided a livelihood for more than 20,000 poor farmers.

Nespresso, which started buying Zimbabwean coffee last year at a 30%-40% premium above international prices and pays farmers in U.S. dollars, is helping to drive the modest revival.

It bought 200 tonnes from 450 small Zimbabwean farmers and two large estates in 2018 and wants to attract more growers, said Daniel Weston, who heads Nespresso’s corporate affairs division.

Its limited edition “Tamuka muZimbabwe” (“We Have Awakened in Zimbabwe”) coffee, launched in 16 countries in May, sold out in three weeks, he said.

“What we are hoping to achieve over time is to increase the volume of coffee coming initially from the smallholder farmers we are working with and also to encourage other smallholder farmers to join the program,” Weston told Reuters.

‘HUGE APPETITE’

Nespresso has teamed up with international non-profit Technoserve to offer training to small farmers in the growing techniques needed to achieve the high quality it demands.

“The market has a huge appetite for Zimbabwean coffee,” said Midway Bhunu, Technoserve’s farmer trainer. “The world was about to lose one of the world’s best coffees.”

Muganyura, a father of eight, received the training in 2017 and managed to more than triple output from his 2-hectare plot to 700 kg last year. This year, he expects to harvest 1.5 tonnes, a personal best that will earn him more than $10,000.

“This is only introductory to a stage where we will get real money,” Muganyura told Reuters during a visit to his plot in the eastern Honde Valley, about 360 km from the capital, Harare.

The dollar payments have enabled Muganyura to hire labor, install solar power at his homestead, buy farming inputs, pay school fees for some of his grand-children and medicine for his diabetic wife – which he struggled to do in the past.

This year, he aims to buy a car, a lifelong dream.

Because of his success, he said, neighbors are inquiring about growing coffee. He plans to add another half a hectare of coffee trees.

Zimbabwe outlawed the use of dollars and other foreign currencies last month, ending a decade of dollarization.

Nespresso said it was still assessing what that would mean for its dollar payments to farmers.

The Honde Valley is one of four districts that together had about 2,000 small coffee farmers at the turn of the millennium. But most quit and started growing bananas.

Just two white-owned commercial coffee farms remain in Zimbabwe. Robert Boswell, 50, owns one of them. His family lost two other farms to land seizures in 2000 and cut the area under coffee production by 46%.

Boswell said he felt more confident after President Emmerson Mnangagwa replaced Mugabe in 2017, promising to restore property rights and revive the ravaged economy.

Boswell, who had been selling coffee to roasters in Germany and Canada, started delivering to Nespresso in 2018. This year he will expand the area under coffee by 25% to 60 hectares, he said during a tour of his Crake Valley estate in the scenic Vumba hills, 140 km south of the Honde Valley.

Commercial growers have an average yield of more than 2 tonnes per hectare.

Tanganda Tea Company, owned by diversified group Meikles Limited, is Zimbabwe’s biggest coffee grower but its 134 hectares are a far cry from the more than 1,000 hectares it used to grow two decades ago.

Tanganda had largely abandoned coffee due to poor prices and started to grow avocados and macadamia nuts. But it too started selling to Nespresso in 2018 and plans to add another 40 hectares of coffee this year, according to a statement on its website.

Post published in: Agriculture

Why Law Firms Are Moving to the Cloud

Why Law Firms Are Moving to the Cloud

Clio

Joe and Elie are off for the Independence Day holiday but wanted to leave you with something to listen to while you enjoy your holiday. Last year, we spoke with Vanderbilt Law School’s Associate Director of Career Services Nick Alexiou to discuss the on-campus interviewing process. A good guide for those of you preparing for the interview of your lives.

Which Biglaw firm was ranked #1 in Vault’s 2020 practice area rankings in the area of media, entertainment, and sports?

Hint: The firm represents almost every major sports league in the country. Some would say that its name is synonymous with “sports law.”

See the answer on the next page.

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.

Last week, we talked a little about the importance of information governance and how critical it is to get stakeholders to the table. We asked why fully 40 percent of companies do not have a formal information governance policy and why half of organizations do not have a dedicated individual assigned to lead information governance.

This week, we look at that leadership function, the executive support that is needed to get an information governance initiative off the ground, and some specifics for implementing an IG program.

Data managers are repeatedly asking questions like who is creating data, where is it stored, and how are people accessing it? Additionally, they want to know who owns or controls the data, if it is needed and for how long, and how do they maintain and secure the data.

Talk to any CIO or IT director and they will tell you that their challenges lie in one or more of these questions.

But with everything else they have on their plates, it should surprise no one that many IT leaders have neither the money nor the time to formally implement an information governance program. And this says nothing about all the other potential obstacles they face.

An information governance program sounds like a big deal, after all. Some might argue that it’s okay to back-burner such plans in favor of more pressing needs. Done right, however, and IG plan can solve many of the issues facing IT leaders today.

First, get the right stakeholders involved. It starts, frankly, with legal operations. As the principle risk managers for the organization, lawyers and legal ops professionals should be leaning in heavily to press executive leadership for funding and resources. But that’s just the beginning.

Every business unit leader needs to be involved in the IG conversation. Because one of the first questions (i.e., who is creating data?) reaches across the enterprise, each leader must be engaged. Data silos that previously existed need to be broken down and centralized.

And there needs to be a formally appointed leader who is empowered to direct and manage the IG program moving forward. Some organizations have CIGO or CISO roles, others have less attractive titles. It really does not matter what the role is called, just that it exists.

The IG leader not only needs authority, they also need to be a strategic thinker. Realistic IG solutions involve coordinating a lot of moving parts, including people, processes, and software tools. The goal is to make the process as seamless as possible; it’s difficult to do in a bureaucratic and siloed setting.

Second, it is necessary to take an organization-wide inventory. From every business unit, it is necessary to answer each of the initial questions data managers repeatedly ask. What tools are they using? Where is data stored? How are they using the data?

Next, consider using data classification tools. Data classification is a relatively new term to some, but large organizations have been classifying data for many years. In order to properly manage data, it is essential to understand precisely what data is under management.

Fourth, determine the organization’s legal obligations to retain information. This is typically a broad undertaking, but a retention schedule should apply to all information under management. And, perhaps most critically, if data is not needed it should be subject to disposition.

Every organization is different, but once the stakeholders are engaged, and scope of the data and the need to retain it are understood, the next step is to begin focusing one at time on the other substantive issues, like security (device and user access, data loss protection, intrusion prevention), regulatory and compliance (privacy, corporate governance, GDPR and reporting), and legal requirements (legal holds, data preservation and collection, eDiscovery).

Information is the soft tissue that holds an organization together. Many executives don’t see it that way. Things like eDiscovery have almost invariably been called a nuisance by top management. That is, until a litigation event hits or there’s a failure to preserve data. The point is that through a strategically thought-out process, that is implemented functionally and with all the proper stakeholders involved, organizations can easily reap the benefits of information governance and everything that comes with it.

Mike Quartararo

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