Category: News Feeds

If you think Biglaw firms that made layoffs in the middle of the pandemic were showing some economic weakness, well, that theory has been thoroughly disproven. According to an illuminating report by Law.com, 15 Biglaw firms saw significant upticks in revenue or profit — we are talking 5 percent or more — after they conducted layoffs of staff and/or attorneys as the COVID-19 pandemic raged. Here’s a look at what happened at some Am Law 200 firms that cut positions and still came out on top.

Akerman:

Back in April of 2020 Akerman laid off both staff and attorneys. They saw record revenue in 2020, up 6.5 percent to $467.4 million. In a statement about this dichotomy, a spokesperson chalked in up to uncertainty in the market and “careful expense management”:

“Like many firms, we made business decisions early in the pandemic to confront the uncertainties facing the legal industry,” a law firm spokesperson said in an email. “Akerman’s success in 2020 is a direct result of our team’s phenomenal work for clients across numerous practice areas and sectors within the United States and internationally, as well as careful expense management.”

Reed Smith:

Billion-dollar firm Reed Smith had a banner 2020, with profits per equity partner up 15.9 percent and revenue up by 5.1 percent. It also axed 19 jobs from its London office. Global managing partner Sandy Thomas said of the lost jobs:

“We don’t like that, of course, but you do have to reconcile the ongoing needs of the shape of the business with where you are in any particular point in time.”

Hogan Lovells:

Hogan Lovells announced a 4 percent reduction in staff in the United States and Mexico in October. During that same period, the firm saw a 2.8 percent uptick in gross revenue. And profits per equity partner for last year are way up — by 30.8 percent, though that was assisted by a 23 percent decrease in the firm’s equity partner ranks. But the firm has pointed to the potential for more challenging times ahead:

A firm representative pointed to CEO Miguel Zaldivar’s statement in October, when he said the firm has “performed well over the past few months” and was ahead on revenue. “However, we see continuing uncertainties in the market for 2021 and need to be well-positioned to weather what could be a more challenging period,” Zaldivar said at the time.

Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch:

Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch cut its workforce by 13 percent last year. They also saw an increase in revenue of 7.6 percent and partner profits were up by 24.8 percent. But chief operating officer James Perkins says a hefty chunk of the increase in net income was from a PPP loan, which they anticipate will be forgiven. On balance, firm leaders say those they cut were not missed:

“It’s something we needed to do to weather the storm. We took those three steps pretty quickly, before many of our peers, and then when we were approved for the PPP funds, we equalized it all,” said Perkins, referring to the firm reversing pay cuts and hourly restrictions and hiring a few people back.

….

“We did hire a couple [staffers] back later in the year, but on balance we didn’t bring anyone else back,” said Perkins, the COO. “I hate to say this but we didn’t really miss them, and that’s what we’ve seen in the use of our technology, to allow our ratios to grow of attorneys to staff.”

McDermott, Will & Emery:

McDermott conducted layoffs to both the staff and attorney ranks in 2020. But, wow they had an amazing year — up a whopping 17.9 percent in gross revenue which translated to a 25.6 percent bump in profits per equity partner. Firm chair Ira Coleman characterized the cuts as part of a “moderated approach” and said the firm didn’t do any “big things.” Hmmm, tell that to the folks that lost their jobs mid-pandemic.

“You run the business based on the information you have at the time. When times get tough, you focus on everything a little closer, you trim expenses, you don’t do any riffs or big things,” chairman Ira Coleman said in a statement. “We took a very moderated approach. We knew partners were going to bear the risk of the year whether it turned out to be a good or bad year.”

Dickinson Wright:

Dickinson Wright cut its workforce by 3 percent last year, despite a 2.9 percent hike in revenue with a corresponding 14.9 percent increase in profits per partner. Dickinson CEO Michael Hammer said the pandemic was an “opportunity” for the firm. “It really was an opportunity to address some of those underperformance and overcapacity issues most firms have,” he went on:

“When you are looking into a sea of uncertainty, we know we have these people we have been carrying along and can address it in a humane, transparent way, and then we don’t do any more cuts,” said Hammer… “We didn’t want to get to a point where we were making cuts on people we need for economics’ sake.”

Davis Wright Tremaine:

Davis Wright Tremaine increased gross revenue by 7.5 percent and profits per equity partner by 8.7 percent. But in September, the firm announced that furloughs would become layoffs for some staff members. The firm’s managing partner said the elimination of those positions were not part of cost-cutting measures:

“The layoffs were not a cost-cutting measure,” said Jeff Gray, managing partner, in a statement. “They were due to a fundamental shift in how we expect to operate and support our clients and lawyers going forward. We had already started looking at those changes. It involves an assessment of our staff structure and what kind of roles and capabilities we need to best support our clients and lawyers.”

Saul Ewing:

Saul Ewing laid off attorneys and staff last year, and saw profits per partner increase by 14.4 percent. Managing partner Barry Levin said the cuts were made “in anticipation of reduced and evolving client needs.”

“There has been a shift from the traditional lawyer-secretary-paralegal model to having all kinds of other nonlawyer professionals who can provide really important insights that benefit client relationships in terms of project management and pricing experts,” Levin said last month.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

In the annals of embarrassing moments in Zoom lawyering, this isn’t the worst, though it might be the most high profile. Kshatrashal Raj, a lawyer from the Patna High Court decided to grab some lunch when he thought the call was either over or taking a break. Unfortunately for him, he failed to turn off his camera during the call with India’s Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta.

The hungry lawyer apparently muted his own headphones though and warnings by other participants in the call failed to get his attention. Eventually, the Solicitor General himself decided to call poor Raj and let him know what was up. The 3 seconds between answering the phone and pure terror setting in are absolutely priceless. Mehta approached it with good humor, beckoning for Raj to “send it over” in Hindi.

Again, it’s not like accidentally responding to a judge with “sneaky bitch” or straight up having sex on camera during a hearing, it’s perfectly innocent if embarrassing to start gobbling down lunch while talking to one of the nation’s top legal officials.

At least there’s only a billion or so people watching this on repeat right now.

Lawyer Forgot To Turn Off Camera, Caught Eating On Official Call; See Hilarious Reactions [NDTV Food]

Earlier: Yep, That’s A Lawyer Having Sex On Camera During A Hearing!
Lawyer Says ‘Sneaky Bitch’ Before Judge Reminds Him He’s Not Muted

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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.

The indignities of the bar exam cycle are well documented. People flagged for cheating based on the color of their skin, applicants forced to soil themselves, and examinees subjected to COVID exposure while the state’s spokesperson labeled them lazy. But if anyone’s still not convinced that this exam — largely unjustified by data-based analysis — is a cruel waste of time consider the travails of the in-person MPRE.

While New York is administering the bar exam remotely for the foreseeable future, the MPRE is still set to be handled live. The MPRE enjoys more flexibility when it comes to test-taking conditions, so presumably the bar examiners feel it’s safe to offer in-person without dragging all of the baggage surrounding online testing into the affair. Which would seem fair enough, except when one considers that the test is generally scheduled during the school year and people might well have to travel to take it.

Like this tipster from Canada, who took the UBE in February and now needs to take an MPRE, but is being told to come to New York City. Except…

However, upon checking the Covid-19 policies of Pearson VUE, I discovered that Pearson requires that at least 14 days have passed since the start of a candidate’s quarantine or centralized observation has been lifted by the government or healthcare authorities before the candidate could be admitted to the testing center. In order to comply with this requirement, I would have to arrive in New York at least 14 days before my scheduled MPRE, since I am subject to a mandatory quarantine upon arriving in New York from a CDC Level 4 country. Furthermore, when I return to Canada, I would be subject to another 3-day mandatory hotel quarantine at my own expense, before returning home for at least another 11 days of quarantine. In total, I would have to spend at least 28 days in quarantine and incur thousands of dollars in traveling expenses, all for a two-hour long multiple choice exam.

Upon reaching out to the NCBE, the applicant learned that “NCBE is in active communication with Pearson VUE about the potential to offer the MPRE via a limited remote option for those candidates who have no in-person alternative; however, we do not have any further updates at this time.” That’s better than refusing to consider remote administration out of hand, but it speaks to the loony death drive behind the exam.

Despite being the most important subject in the bar process, the MPRE is largely dismissed as “the joke section” because it’s laughably superficial for an exam designed to prove that someone exhibits the highest professional ethical standards. The profession would be just as well off if we didn’t have the exam at all, but instead we’re going to drag someone through 28 days of quarantine to cling to this charade?

Of course we are.

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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.

It is said, these days, that stocks only go up. That IPOs are can’t-miss opportunities—indeed so much so that the tyrannical hold over them by institutional investors must be broken by a legion of SPACs.

That it was Friday the 13th was not lost on me.

There I sat, one year ago this week, on Friday the 13th, on a packed flight from Salt Lake City to Boston, almost no one wearing masks, feeling superstitiously anxious as I returned home from BYU Law School, where I’d traveled two days earlier to attend a meeting of a law school advisory board.

Just two days earlier, literally as I flew out to Utah, watching CNN on my back-of-the-seat monitor, news broke that Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Not only that, but the NBA had just suspended its 2019-20 season because a player for the Utah Jazz had tested positive. Utah. The state to which I was flying.

I mean, movie stars and basketball. This was getting real. Coronavirus hysteria was beginning to sweep a panicked world.

Trust me, I’d considered staying home. But the meeting had been long-planned and there had seemed no strong reason at that point not to go.

I should have thought twice when I went to a pharmacy the day before leaving to buy hand sanitizer. Finding none, I inquired of the clerk, who spontaneously broke into uncontrolled laughter at the audaciousness of my request.

Hand sanitizer? No way. Masks? Fuggedaboutit!

As it turned out, the meeting for which I’d flown was abridged. While I was there, the law school made the decision to go virtual and send students home. At least I got a podcast out of it, recording an episode live on the school’s shutdown.

Sometime late on Friday the 13th, or maybe it was early on Saturday the 14th, I arrived back in Boston and stepped off the plane.

I’ve not been back on a plane since.

This has been a year none of us will ever forget. It has been a year of loss, suffering, pain and hardship for so many. It has been a year that will forever change all of us who lived through it.

While the pandemic has impacted all of us as individuals, it has also impacted the industry in which we work. The strange irony of the pandemic’s impact on the legal profession is that there is general agreement that it was for the good.

Let me emphasize that, in saying that, I mean not to minimize the grief of those who suffered illness, the loss of loved ones, or financial hardships.

I will forever remember the iconically frightening and redemptive story of David Lat, the Above the Law founder whose near-death experience defied the then-popular conception of who should be hit with COVID-19 and whose recovery gave us all a reason for hope. When I interviewed him in April for my podcast, he could still barely speak, hoarse from intubation.

But I will repeat something I wrote in my 2020 year-end wrap, which is that, in the world of legal technology and innovation, the phrase I heard most often repeated this year was “silver lining.” It was a silver lining in the form of an accelerant.

“The challenge to modernizing the delivery of legal services and our systems of justice, as legal futurist Richard Susskind has observed, is that you can’t change the tire on a moving vehicle,” I wrote. “Well, this year brought that vehicle to a screeching halt. Full stop. And then presented the opportunity to reboot.”

The legal system has rebooted. And done so for the better of all it serves and of all who work within it.

The evidence of this is all around us. It is in the profession’s expanding adoption of cloud-based technologies — for that matter, technologies of any kind. It is in the law firms that are rethinking more deeply than ever before how they structure their businesses and deliver their services. It is in judges and judicial systems that not only have come to understand the need for change, but who are, in some cases, leading that change.

A telling statement of this came during the plenary discussion at Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology conference in January, when Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack said:

This pandemic was obviously not the disruption we wanted but I think it might have been the disruption we needed in courts to be able to accelerate change in a way that I hope can produce a justice system that’s more accessible and more transparent and more efficient.

No one wanted this past year. But the fact is that it served as that full stop Richard Susskind said we needed, that disruption we needed, as Justice McCormack said.

It seems — knock on wood — that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Many are receiving vaccinations. A friend of mine this week went to a store for the first time in a year. In-person legal conferences are back on the calendar.

I will always remember Friday the 13th as the day that, for me, marked the beginning of this year like no other. But what happens from now on should not be left to superstition or chance.

For all the tragedy this year wrought, it also set in motion changes that can be for the better. The challenge for all of us is to maintain that momentum towards a better legal system.

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Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

As one of the very few women leading a firm in Big Law, I am keenly aware that while there has been progress in hiring, investing in, and elevating women lawyers – there is still much more to be done. A personal commitment of mine is to mentor and sponsor diverse legal talent within our firm, including women and people of color. I am proud to be part of a firm that has demonstrated a deep commitment to women lawyers for many years, and I am excited about the amazingly talented women leaders who represent the next generation at Jenner & Block. I look forward to the day when there are as many women as men leading Big Law firms.

— Katya Jestin, co-managing partner of Jenner & Block, issuing a powerful statement on women’s progress in Biglaw, and at her firm in particular, on International Women’s Day.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

As lawmakers call for an investigation of One Medical for letting some of its members jump the line for Covid-19 vaccines, several California counties are dropping it as a partner as they ramp up vaccinations. San Francisco County — where One Medical is based — Los Angeles County, Alameda County and Washington state have all stopped working with the concierge primary care company.

Health departments across the country had allocated thousands of doses to One Medical to administer to eligible patients. But in California, where testing sites were tasked with verifying eligibility, the company did not ask for any evidence that the people it vaccinated were healthcare workers, Forbes reported last month.

The company may have also been offering vaccines to its staff working from home, as well as friends and family of its leadership, according to an NPR investigation where it reviewed internal messages between One Medical providers. 

A House subcommittee overseeing the Covid-19 crisis sent a letter to One Medical this week, seeking more information about the company’s vaccine administration practices.

California counties stop working with One Medical
MedCity News received confirmation from three counties that they had stopped using One Medical as a vaccine provider:

San Francisco’s Department of Public Health (DPH) said it had initially picked One Medical because it had the capacity to provide high-throughput community sites and had been registered in the state’s enrollment system.

In mid-February, after the Forbes article broke, the county asked One Medical to provide a full accounting of the vaccines it had administered.

“One Medical’s response indicates a number of doses were administered to patients who were under 65 who self-identified as Phase 1a Health Care Workers, but were not (in-home supportive services) workers, DPH referrals, or One Medical health care worker employees,” the department wrote in an email. “Because of this and our inability to verify the 1a status of this cohort, DPH has stopped allocating doses to One Medical.”

On Feb. 22, San Francisco’s Department of Public Health told One Medical to return 1,620 doses. The company was allowed to retain enough to provide second shots to people who had received their first.

LA County Public Health struck a partnership with One Medical in January for similar reasons to its northern counterpart. In total, the company received doses to vaccinate 5,612 people. But in a Thursday email, the department confirmed it was no longer working with One Medical.

Orange County also said on Friday it had distributed 600 doses to One Medical, but stopped sending them vaccines in late January due to supply limitations.

One Medical did not respond to requests for comment. In a letter released by CEO Amir Dan Rubin on Wednesday, the company said it would require in-person vaccine eligibility verification, and make it more clear that access to vaccine appointments is free.

The company, which normally charges a $199 membership fee for its primary care services, was requiring eligible vaccine candidates to register for a 90-day free trial to schedule an appointment.  Some Washington D.C. residents who were routed to One Medical through DC Health’s vaccine registration portal also ran into questions about whether they’d have to pay the membership fee.

House subcommittee launches investigation

Now, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is seeking more information on how One Medical oversaw vaccine administration and  a breakdown of who the company has vaccinated.

Rep. James Clyburn (D- S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee, raised concerns in a letter sent Monday to Dan Rubin about reports that One Medical let some members skip the line ahead of healthcare workers and that eligible patients thought they had to pay for membership.

“Despite being warned that the company’s lax oversight of vaccine eligibility rules was allowing ineligible patients to jump the line, OneMedical has reportedly failed to promptly implement an effective protocol to verify eligibility and instructed staff not to police eligibility,” he wrote. “As a result of these irresponsible practices, numerous authorities have now halted distributions of vaccine doses to the company.”

One Medical  went public last year at a $2.7 billion valuation. Since then, the company’s stock has nearly doubled, though it fell last month on news of the investigation and a flat earnings outlook.

In a February earnings call, Dan Rubin told investors that the company was registered as a vaccine provider with more than 30 different jurisdictions. It’s not clear where the company is still administering vaccines.

One Medical recently published an update on its website, but only indicated that it was “temporarily out of first dose vaccines” for San Francisco, Alameda, Los Angeles County and other counties that said they had dropped One Medical as a vaccine partner.

The company still appears to be working with D.C. and New York City. Both cities did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Last week, lawyers for Donald Trump sent cease and desist letters to the three largest Republican groups demanding that they stop using the former president’s name and likeness in their fundraising materials.

As Politico was first to report, Trump is pissed that the Republican National Committee, the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee are using his name in their near-hourly pleas for cash.

Three sources told us that Trump, who made his fortune licensing his name, has felt burned and “abused” by the GOP bandying about his name to haul in money.

His team has conveyed that any Republican or GOP committee seeking to use it needs explicit approval, according to five sources familiar with the situation. One Trump adviser said they’ve been sending out cease-and-desists to faux PACs using Trump’s name to fundraise, among other demands to knock it off.

The former president, who enjoys wide support among the Republican base, has made no bones about intending to remain the center of the GOP universe. But while the Emperor expects unconditional fealty from his subjects, they can expect no such loyalty in return. While the RNC, RSCC, and NRCC are focused on protecting incumbents and taking back the House and Senate in 2022, Trumps main concern is making sure that no use uses his name to fundraise for any of the “traitors” who backed impeachment.

“President Trump remains committed to the Republican Party and electing America First conservatives, but that doesn’t give anyone – friend or foe – permission to use his likeness without explicit approval,” a Trump advisor told Politico. Which you can safely read as If you want my help, you’re gonna have to throw Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney overboard.

He’s also hot to direct all donors to his own campaign and PAC, as CNN notes. Two weeks ago at CPAC, Trump directed his fans to make their checks out to him, or risk wasting it on anti-MAGA fifth columnists. “There’s only one way to contribute to our efforts to elect America First Republican conservatives, and in turn to make America great again,” he said, “and that’s through Save America PAC and DonaldJTrump.com.”

But the Republican establishment seems to be ignoring Trump, whose habit of having his lawyers fire off nasty letters threatening dubious litigation is well known.

Meanwhile the NRSC landing page is currently flogging two Trump T-shirts under the heading “Featured Merch.” One features a photograph of Trump with the caption “Miss Me Yet?” and the other depicts the former president in louche embrace with an American flag.

And speaking of unfortunate couplings … good luck to the GOP and Trump, who clearly hate each other more than the Lockhorns but are doomed to grapple ’til death do us part. Oh, you crazy kids!

Playbook: McCarthy struggles to manage Trump [Politico]
Playbook: Scoop: Trump sends legal notice to GOP to stop using his name [Politico]

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

From what I’m told, eating humble pie is nothing Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been good at. He’s been called brash, a bully, and a know-it-all. But many of those characteristics are what helped get him elected and kept him in office since 2011.

Now he’s charged with four allegations of sexual harassment against women some 20 years his junior. Are the accusations serious?  Yes, but they’re not as serious as those leveled against Harvey Weinstein or even Donald Trump, who boasted that as a celebrity he could do anything he wanted with women, even “grab ‘em by the pussy.”

Should Cuomo have known better? You bet. He may not have been born in the “#MeToo Era,” but there’s no excuse for what’s at best “aggressive flirting” and at worse sexual harassment in this day and age. Putting your hand on a younger woman’s lower back during a wedding after a few glasses of wine and telling her you’d like to kiss her is not criminal, but it’s definitely obnoxious.  Engaging in conversations of a sexual nature with your staff at work, asking if they’d date older men, is downright wrong. Office managers have been read the riot act about this for years. However, while tone deafness on the part of the governor is alarming, it doesn’t undo all the good he’s done for the state of New York.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Cuomo issued daily press conferences that millions tuned into to a hear a leader speak with compassion, intelligence, and common sense. His addresses became a national solace. His briefings were followed throughout the country. There was talk of him running for president.

Even before COVID-19, he spearheaded many projects in New York including rebuilding the Tappan Zee Bridge (now called the Mario Cuomo bridge after his father), retooling the giant post office across from Pennsylvania Station to become a modern transit hub, shutting down antiquated upstate prisons, raising the age when children can be tried as adults, legalizing gay marriage and marijuana, and phasing in a minimum wage hike of $15/hour. These gains are not insignificant.

I feel for the women who were subjected to inappropriate behavior, and the angst they must have felt in figuring out their next move — keep quiet, leave the office, or go public. None of these choices is easy.

And while I decry Cuomo’s behavior, I also decry the quickness of judgment to condemn him. There’s got to be a middle place where a leader is neither a hero nor a heel. Even powerful governors are human beings, subject to feeling lonely, drinking one too many at a party, or acting inappropriately.

Quick calls to judgment without proper investigation cause mistakes. Think of former senator Al Franken and the prank photo he posed for which forced his resignation. Prior to becoming a politician, he had been, after all, a comedian. I wonder how many Democratic leaders now regret the pressure put on him to resign.

I question the knives-out mentality of colleagues and foes who never got along with Cuomo and are all too ready to sweep him under the rug of history so they can vie for his position. (I’m thinking particularly of New York City’s ambitious mayor Bill DeBlasio, whose relationship with Cuomo has long been on the rocks.)

Is this a scandal? Yes. But is it a crisis compelling resignation?

There are other torpedoes waiting to hit Cuomo’s governance. Attorney General Letitia James is looking into an undercount of elderly who died in old age homes during COVID-19. And who knows what else will come to light now that the pile on has started?

But before demanding his resignation and filling the office with a less-experienced leader, let’s take a collective breath. New York is just rounding the COVID corner, businesses are reopening, kids are going back to school.  Vaccinations are being widely disseminated.

Does Cuomo deserve some comeuppance? Sure. But should it mean he abandons office in the midst of a crisis? I don’t think so.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

They say it takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, and aside from the gendered sentiment it’s a fairly accurate statement. Actual heartfelt and earnest apologies are surprisingly hard to come by, but that’s exactly what a Canadian judge has penned. Last week we told you about the ire of The Hon. Mr. Justice R.W. Danyliuk a judge in Saskatchewan, Canada. But, as it turns out, the judge got it wrong and he’s very sorry about the whole mess.

If you’ll recall, Judge Danyliuk’s anger was sparked when a draft consent order was filed without the proper application form or accompanying affidavit. But as it turns out, there were additional filings made in the case which would have contextualized the draft consent order, they were just improperly rejected by a court clerk. Rut-roh.

So they very premise of the benchslap was disproven by an account of the full events. And, according to the judge, he was also surprised about the viral nature of his order as it was picked up by news outlets throughout the world. (If only we all understood exactly what made a story go viral, well, it’d make this job a lot easier.)

Anyway, apologies are in order, and Judge Danyliuk uses the same eloquence that made the benchslap so readable to say he is sorry.

As well, I had absolutely no intention to malign, bully, or embarrass Mr. Green. The wording of my initial fiat — while unintended to be harmful in any way and intended to soften my criticism with humour — has blown up in my face. As noted, I have known him for many years — decades, in fact. He was my student in a class I taught in law school. He is highly capable counsel. He has appeared before me many times, doing high quality work. He enjoys an excellent reputation within the practicing bar and before this Court. I regard him as a valuable member of the profession. He is a very good lawyer and a great guy. His sense of humour and easygoing manner is well known. He can make and take a joke It was with all of this in mind and with an incomplete record that I drafted my first fiat. My last wish was to cause him harm or upset or reputational damage.

I appreciate that, while unintended, my fiat has done exactly that to Mr. Green. How it gained such wide distribution, so quickly, remains a mystery. But it did. I am utterly chagrined that it affected Mr. Green in this way, and so publicly.

As a result, within this present fiat I unreservedly apologize to Mr. Green, his family, and members of his firm for all upset or trouble I have caused, however unintentional it was. Such was never my aim, yet it has occurred and non of that was his fault. I have apologized to him directly, person-to-person, openly and sincerely and he graciously accepted. But that private apology was insufficient given the public nature of the harm done to his reputation. Hence this new fiat.

Times have changed. Judges no longer always write in stilted, stentorian tones. The language used is more accessible. Humour is not always misplaced. But given the circumstance — of which I was no aware — which preceded this application landing on my desk, I would surely have drafted my response to Mr. Green different had I been aware of the background. Judges are human. We do not always get it exactly right.

Again, my profound apologies to Mr. Green for the unintended consequences of my earlier fiat.

That’s a helluva apology.

You can read the full filing below.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).