Author: TSA Press

Ed.
Note:
Welcome
to
our
daily
feature

Trivia
Question
of
the
Day!

As
of
the
end
of
today,
how
many
federal
judicial
vacancies
exist
for
Donald
Trump,
and
the
Republican-led
Senate,
to
fill
in
the
next
term?

Hint:
It’s
quite
a
few
less
than
the
100+
judicial
vacancies
that
existed
in
2017
for
Trump
to
fill
in
his
first
term,
thanks
to
the
Senate
stalling
of
Obama
nominees.

See
the
answer
on
the
next
page.

Ed.
note:
Welcome
to
our
daily
feature,

Quote
of
the
Day.

Change
is
always
good
for
the
government
relations
business,
and
this
will
be
no
different.
We
expect
a
very
aggressive
first
100
days,
both
in
the
administration
and
in
Congress,
particularly
if
Republicans
maintain
control
of
the
House.

—

Will
Moschella,
co-chair
of
Brownstein
Hyatt
Farber
Schreck’s
government
relations
department,
in
comments
given
to
the

American
Lawyer
on
the
likely
influx
of
work
his
practice
group
may
see
as
a
result
of
Donald
Trump
reclaiming
the
presidency.
“I
think,
early
on,
you’re
going
to
see
an
incredibly
fast-moving
regulatory
reform
agenda
and
in
a
number
of
different
spots,”
Moschella
added.
“You
saw
what
they
talked
about
during
the
campaign,
particularly
around
energy
and
anything
impacting
inflation.”

---

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

X/Twitter
and

Threads
or
connect
with
her
on

LinkedIn.

A
hands-on
approach
to
learning
is
one
of
the
best
ways
to
become
competent
in
a
subject.
The
dream
would
be
for
law
school
to
produce
students
capable
of
practicing
as
soon
as
they
cross
the
stage,
but
most
states
have
a
long
way
to
go
before
diploma
privilege.
That
said,
we
are
seeing
a
growing
number
of
states
experiment
with
experiential
learning
as
a
path
to
practice,
and
Utah
could
be
the
next
up.
From

Reuters:

Utah
is
forging
ahead
with
a
proposal
to
allow
law
graduates
to
become
licensed
without
taking
the
bar
exam,
following
the
lead
of
a
handful
of
other
states
that
have
adopted
alternative
licensing
pathways
in
recent
years.

The
Utah
Supreme
Court
on
Monday
released
a
plan
to
allow
graduates
of
American
Bar
Association-accredited
law
schools
to
practice
in
the
state
after
completing
240
hours
of
practice
under
the
supervision
of
an
experienced
attorney,
along
with
other
requirements.
Law
graduates
could
still
opt
to
sit
for
the
bar
exam.

The
great
thing
about
the
proposed
plan
is
that
it
increases
opportunities
rather
than
switching
to
one
end-all,
be-all
minting
process.
Three
cheers
for
the
aspiring
lawyers
who
know
their
stuff
and
can
do
the
work
but
fight
bouts
of
test-specific
performance
anxiety!

Utah’s
Supreme
Court
is
holding
a
public
comment
period
that
will
run
until
December
19th.
Make
your
voice
heard!

No
Bar
Exam?
Utah
Considers
It.
[Reuters]

Earlier:

Is
The
NextGen
Bar
Really
Next
Up?

---

Chris
Williams
became
a
social
media
manager
and
assistant
editor
for
Above
the
Law
in
June
2021.
Prior
to
joining
the
staff,
he
moonlighted
as
a
minor
Memelord™
in
the
Facebook
group Law
School
Memes
for
Edgy
T14s.
 He
endured
Missouri
long
enough
to
graduate
from
Washington
University
in
St.
Louis
School
of
Law.
He
is
a
former
boatbuilder
who
cannot
swim, a
published
author
on
critical
race
theory,
philosophy,
and
humor,
and
has
a
love
for
cycling
that
occasionally
annoys
his
peers.
You
can
reach
him
by
email
at [email protected] and
by
tweet
at @WritesForRent.

Sammy
Alito
openly
defies
the
Constitution
with

European
knighthood.
Chicago
Law
tapes
classes
but
isn’t
interested
in
letting
students
actually

use
those
recordings.

Students
are,
unsurprisingly,
pissed.
Professor
Richard
Epstein
brags
about
replacing
scientists
with
judges.
Yes,
the
same
guy
who
said

COVID
would
only
kill
500
people
and
got
the
first
Trump
administration
sold
on
the
idea.
And
mark
your
calendars
for
the
lawyer
movie
from
Hallmark’s
holiday
season.

My
deadline
for
this
column
is
midnight
on
election
night.
As
I
write
this,
I
don’t
know
how
the
election
is
going
to
turn
out
(though
you
can
probably
guess
my
preference
considering
that
one
of
the
candidates

talks
about
shooting
journalists).

I
do
know
that
on
November
6,
and
in
the
days
that
follow,
the
stock
market
is
either
going
to
go
up
or
go
down,
and
a
lot
of
people
are
going
to
be
attributing
it
to
the
election
outcome.
Don’t
buy
it.

If
you
follow
this
column
at
all,
you
have
probably
already
read

my
thoughts
about
a
president’s
impact,
or
lack
thereof,
on
the
stock
market.
Sure,
the
policies
of
a
presidential
administration
can,
over
time,
have
some
sort
of
an
effect
on
stock
market
returns.

Yet,
most
stock
prices
do
not
react
instantaneously
to
election
results.
In
case
you
haven’t
noticed,
politicians
lie
a
lot.
Even
the
honest
ones
frequently
over-promise
and
under-deliver,
stymied
by
checks
and
balances
embedded
throughout
all
three
branches
of
government.
Traders
cannot
react
much
to
what
a
newly
elected
politician
has
said
he
or
she
is
going
to
do,
because
all
too
often
it
does
not
actually
get
done.

When
there
is
some
level
of
certainty
about
a
president’s
ability
to
effectuate
a
certain
policy
—
tariffs,
for
instance,

can
be
unilaterally
imposed
by
a
president
so
long
as
he
or
she
can
declare
that
the
targeted
import
poses
some
vague
link
to
national
security
—
there
remains
so
much
nuance
in
what
actually
gets
implemented
as
to
make
election-week
prognostications
functionally
useless
in
terms
of
trading
equities.
What
will
the
exact
tariff
amounts
be?
To
which
products
will
tariffs
apply?
How
punitive
will
the
tariffs
be
toward
our
rivals
and
how
lenient
will
they
be
toward
our
friends?
Beyond
some
very
blunt
assumptions
in
limited
industries,
it
is
impossible
to
make
meaningful
market-wide
assessments
before
seeing
the
details
in
writing.

Like
the
weather,
the
economy
as
expressed
in
one
metric
through
the
stock
market
is
a
chaotic
system.
We
can
get
a
pretty
good
idea
of
what
the
weather
is
doing
in
our
immediate
vicinity
just
by
looking
around.
We
can
know
what
the
weather
was
doing
at
a
given
time
elsewhere
by
combing
through
the
data
after-the-fact.
Hell,
we
can
even
predict
the
weather
quite
accurately
several
days
into
the
future.
Still,
anyone
who
says
he
knows
exactly
what
the
weather
is
going
to
look
like
on
a
given
day
a
year
into
the
future
is
an
obvious
charlatan.

When
Donald
Trump
was
president,

the
stock
market
had
a
rough
2018
and
a
huge
(albeit
temporary)
drop
related
to
the
pandemic,
but
it
performed
great
overall.
With
Joe
Biden
in
the
White
House
(and
with
Kamala
Harris
as
his
vice
president)
the
stock
market
has
been
on
an
almost
uninterrupted
tear
for
some
time,

repeatedly
setting
new
record
highs.
Although
Trump
has
said
some
things
about
a
second
term
that
terrify
economists,
and
Harris
has
proposed
a
few
policies
herself
that
might
not
work
out
so
well
for
the
equities
markets,
at
least,
based
on
past
experience,
neither
candidate
can
be
assumed
to
be
an
absolute
disaster
for
the
stock
market
on
Day
One.

As
the
election
results
come
in,
markets
will
be
open
and
traders
will
be
working.
However,
whether
your
candidate
wins
or
loses,
you
really
should
not
blame
the
election
for
whatever
direction
the
ticker
symbols
are
headed
in
the
coming
days.

Now,
there
is
one
huge
individual
exception
to
this
general
market-wide
approach:
shares
of
Trump
Media
&
Technology
Group
trading
under
the
ticker
symbol
DJT.
Since
the
company
hardly
makes
any
money
at
all
and
bleeds
capital,

conventional
wisdom
is
that
DJT
shares
will
crater
if
Harris
wins
the
election
given
that
there
will
be
no
obvious
way
for
a
defeated
Trump
to
direct
funds
to
the
company
he
remains
the
majority
shareholder
of.
One
can
imagine
a
scenario
in
which
swathes
of
Trump
supporters,
enraged
by
another
“stolen”
election,
flock
to
Trump
Media’s
Truth
Social
platform
as
a
form
of
protest,
thereby
bolstering
its
bottom
line.
Yet,
the
MAGA
faithful
have
not
been
exactly
unenthused
for
the
past
few
years
and
nonetheless
failed
to
embrace
Truth
Social.
The
DJT
price
will
react
to
the
election,
and
odds
are
good
that
it
will
be
a
rout
if
Harris
wins
or
a
surge
if
Trump
wins.

For
the
most
part,
you
should
probably
ignore
the
stock
market
for
a
few
days
as
you
digest
the
election
results.
The
stock
market
is
not
going
to
be
dramatically
affected
by
the
election
results,
and
we
are
all
going
to
have
more
important
things
to
worry
about
this
week.

---

Jonathan
Wolf
is
a
civil
litigator
and
author
of Your
Debt-Free
JD


(affiliate
link).
He
has
taught
legal
writing,
written
for
a
wide
variety
of
publications,
and
made
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 [email protected].

When
I
wrote
“Repeat
After
Me,
‘Partnership
Without
Equity
Is
Not
A
Partnership’”
back
in
2019,
my
complaint
with
the
growing
and
shady
effort
to
recast
what
were
once
senior
associates
and
counsel
as
non-equity
“partners”
was
that
it
was
a
dubious
title
trading
short-term
vanity
for
cheap.
Little
did
I
realize
there
was
an

even
cheaper
way
to
sell
out.

Worse,
the
nonequity
partner
route
gets
used
as
a
dumping
ground
for
diverse
candidates
that
the
firm
can
sell
to
clients
and
the
public
as
“partners”
without
diluting
the
existing
partnership’s
equity.

But
I
never
realized
the
absolute
worst
of
it:
some
firms
treat
these
employees
as
partners
for
all
the
partnership
expenses
without
any
of
the
corresponding
revenue.

Justin
Henry’s
piece
in
Bloomberg
Law
News
is

horrifying:

The
meteoric
growth
in
law
firm
nonequity
partners
often
comes
with
a
side
effect
attorneys
dislike:
thousands
of
dollars
in
health
and
tax
costs
without
the
large
profit
payouts
full
partners
get.

Several
Big
Law
firms
treat
nonequity
lawyers
as
full
partners
for
tax
purposes.
That
means
they
saddle
them
with
Medicare,
Social
Security
and
health
levies
the
lawyers
didn’t
face
as
associates.

Wait,
what?
That’s
so,
so
much
worse
than
anything
I’d
imagined.
It
was
bad
enough
slapping
a
misleading
title
on
lawyers
to
cover
for
the
firm’s
unwillingness
to
share
the
wealth.
But
then
to
tax
them
as
partners
to
increase
the
pot
of
gold
for
the
equity
team
is
downright
dirty.

In
2024,
[Balanced
Capital
founder
Corey]
Noyes
said
firms
could
save
7.65%
of
Social
Security
and
Medicare
taxes
for
K-1
partners
on
their
first
$168,600
of
salary,
and
1.45%
on
income
over
that.
These
savings
would
collectively
top
$2
million
for
a
firm
with
about
140
nonequity
partners.

Aside
from
the
increased
tax
burden,
a
greater
cost
for
rising
nonequity
partners
comes
from
having
to
fully
subsidize
their
own
health
care.
For
a
high-deductible
family
plan,
this
could
mean
an
additional
$14,400
a
year
out
of
pocket,
Scruggs
said.
However,
self-employment
insurance
deductions
for
a
partner
with
a
marginal
tax
rate
of
35%
could
subtract
about
$10,000
a
year,
he
said.

By
listing
income
partners
as
partners
with
“0%
equity,”
the
firm
can
save
millions
of
dollars
a
year.

Some
firms
have
at
least
figured
out
that
they’re
the
baddies
in
this
exchange.
McDermott
Will
&
Emery
has
transitioned
nonequity
partners
to
W-2
employees.
Meanwhile,
Bloomberg
reports
that
Kirkland
&
Ellis
offers
a
comp
boost
to
offset
the
increased
charges.

Still,
this
leaves
a
bunch
of
firms
on
the
wrong
side
of
this.
The
article
identifies
Shearman
&
Sterling,
Duane
Morris,
and
Thompson
Hine
using
the
K-1
angle.

There
very
well
could
be
more.

Big
Law
Seizes
on
Promotions
That
Bring
Big
Tax
Bill,
No
Profits
[Bloomberg
Law
News]

Earlier:

Repeat
After
Me,
‘Partnership
Without
Equity
Is
Not
A
Partnership’

---

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 or

Bluesky
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.

In
today’s
modern
age,
many
law
firms
are
moving
business
intelligence
(BI)
solutions
from
the
nice-to-have
category
to
a
clear
differentiator
in
their
firm’s
success. 
Still,
there
are
many
questions
regarding
the
true
benefits
of
BI
for
law
firms,
and
whether
it’s
worthy
of
the
hype.

We’re
here
to
set
the
record
straight
about
BI
in
this
CLE-eligible
webinar.
 You’ll
learn
how
BI
can
revolutionize
your
law
firm’s
approach
to
data,
driving
efficiency
and
informed
decision-making. 
Sign
up
today
and
join
us
on

November
20th
at
1
p.m.
ET.

The
panel
will
explore:

• The
  untold
  story
  hiding
  in
  your
  data
  and
  how
  a
  BI
  solution
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  it
  to
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  for
  proactive
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  development
• The
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  data
  customization,
  ensuring
  that
  every
  role
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  has
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  tailored
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• How
  having
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  firms
  cut
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• Advanced
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• How
  establishing
  a
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  with
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  tool
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  all
  while
  strengthening
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  under
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