Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
Skadden Plays Ball With Retention Bonuses: For certain practice groups, that is.
Paul Weiss Is Making An About Face: On the death penalty.
New Ranking Metric? Biglaw firms that require vaccinations.
More Evidence On The Trump Coup: Everything’s totally fine!
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Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
According to the 2021 General Counsel Compensation Report, who was the highest paid GC for this year?
Hint: They reportedly took home $6.7M in total cash, plus a bunch more in stock ($4M) and option ($1.2M) awards.
See the answer on the next page.
Aiming to create a community that brings together developers, investors and buyers of legal technology products in order to expand opportunities for all three groups, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) will launch the ILTA Innovation Hub Aug. 22 during its annual ILTACON in Las Vegas.
“ILTA sits at the center of the legal services ecosystem,” says a brochure describing the Hub. “To better meet the changing needs of its members and the legal community, ILTA is planning to launch an ILTA Legal Innovation Hub to bring together key buyers of legal services, with the providers, talent and the investor community.”
The Hub will launch in three phases, beginning with the ILTA Investment Hub, where select investors will be invited to have priority access to legal tech and services providers for potential investments and vetted talent.
Subsequent phases of the Hub will include the Talent Marketplace, bringing together vetted legal and business talent, and the Innovation Marketplace, designed for smaller corporations and law firms to identify vetted technologies and services.
The first-phase Investment Hub, launching Aug. 22, will include:
Nita Sanger, director of the Digital Advisory Practice at Cherry Bekaert, has worked with Joy Heath Rush, ILTA CEO, and Jason Stookey, ILTA’s vice president of partner development, to develop the program.
“We want to bring together the key players in the legal tech ecosystem,” Sanger told me during a recent call, “the investors, the legal tech companies who are part of ILTA, and then the buyers of services, the corporate GCs and law firms.”
She envisions that local get-togethers in various U.S. cities will be a key feature of the Investment Hub going forward, where startups can showcase their products to potential investors. For now, however, those events will remain virtual.
The Hub will also begin to publish weekly interviews and articles for members, showcasing successful companies, founders and investors, Sanger said.
While ILTA has not set a firm timeline for launching the subsequent stages of the Hub, Sanger said the Talent Marketplace will not be a job board, but rather a place where venture capital and private equity firms can tap into select individuals with the industry skills and expertise they need.
In a separate call, Stookey told me that a goal of this project is to better amplify ILTA’s work within the legal startup community.
“Our goal is to plant a flag in the ground that we are a resource for startups to grow into being more successful companies,” he said.
More information will be posted at: www.iltanet.org/resources/hub.
HCA Healthcare is being accused of anti-competitive behavior in a new class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Nashville, Tennessee-based hospital operator purchased Mission Health in 2019 to gain monopolistic control in Western North Carolina, according to the suit filed by a group of six state residents.
Mission Health, a six-hospital system based in Asheville, North Carolina, allegedly operated as a monopoly from 1995 until 2019. HCA’s decision to buy the health system was driven by Mission’s “outsized ability to dictate prices and other contract terms to its customers,” the plaintiffs claim.
Since the purchase was completed, HCA has used improper restraints in its arrangements with commercial health plans and third-party administrators of self-insured plans, “including tying, all-or-nothing arrangements, gag clauses, and…other anticompetitive terms and negotiating devices” to drive up prices, according to the lawsuit.
The document cites Rand Corp. data from 2020 showing that the defendants charged commercial insurers 372% on average over the Medicare price for inpatient and outpatient services and an average of 393% above the Medicare price for only inpatient services. This was far higher than the mean of 262% and median of 277% above Medicare prices charged by other hospitals in North Carolina included in the Rand study.
Along with raising prices, HCA has allegedly been cutting costs and reducing staff, resulting in poorer quality healthcare for those in Mission Health’s service area.
“Today, HCA holds an approximate 90% market share…for inpatient [general acute] hospital care in Buncombe County, the most populous county in Western North Carolina, and in nearby Madison County,” the lawsuit states. “Because insurers and consumers in the region have no choice but to use HCA, HCA has free rein to dictate the prices it charges insurers and consumers while at the same time undermining quality to cut costs.”
Further, HCA has refused to fully comply with the hospital price transparency rule enacted at the beginning of the year, the lawsuit claims.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages and injunctive and declaratory relief to prevent HCA from engaging in anti-competitive in the future. They are also seeking a jury trial.
In a statement provided to MedCity News, HCA affirmed its commitment to the people of Western North Carolina.
“Once we have been served with the lawsuit, we will respond appropriately through the legal process,” said Nancy Lindell, Mission Health/HCA Healthcare N.C. Division spokesperson, in an email. ” We are committed to caring for Western North Carolina as demonstrated through more than $330 million in charity care and uninsured discounts we provided in 2020, expansion of hospital services…Further, we have invested in our colleagues with onboarding nearly 1,200 new members this year.”
The lawsuit comes about a month after President Joe Biden issued an executive order taking aim at anti-competitive behavior, including in the context of hospital consolidation. Biden urged the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to review and revise their merger guidelines through the lens of preventing patient harm.
But how the government agencies will act on the executive order remains to be seen.
Photo: MicroStockHub, Getty Images
The original Koreatown merch.
Photo: Courtesy of Michael Pak
(Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)
Lin Wood’s legal woes include more than just litigation surrounding the 2020 election. He’s also dealing with a lawsuit in Georgia in which his former law partners — Nicole Wade, Jonathan Grunberg, and Taylor Wilson — claim Wood fraudulently induced them into signing a settlement agreement following the break up of their firm that Wood then breached.
During a court hearing today, the attorney for Wade said that, after Wood slammed her to his Telegram followers, the threats came rolling in. As reported by Law & Crime:
On Thursday, Wade’s attorney Andrew Beal claimed that Wood called Wade a “lying ghost” to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Telegram, sparking some to besiege her with threatening messages.
“You f-ing snake,” one message allegedly read, according to Beal. “We will not stop until you’re put to the sword.”Beal added: “Then it’s topped off with threats of gang rape.”
Wood has denied the allegations, saying, “I just resent the idea that I threatened anybody. I don’t do that.”
The lawsuit also includes some wild allegations that appear to document the increasingly bizarre behavior of Wood:
“In the Fall of 2019, defendant Wood also committed assault and battery on Grunberg in an elevator of a hotel during an out of town deposition,” they wrote in their complaint, which also alleges that Wood attacked Wilson. “In both assaults, there was essentially no reason whatsoever for the attack, and defendant Wood later acknowledged and apologized for this violence.”
According to the lawsuit, Wood likened himself to Biblical figures and had a habit of associating himself with “God Almighty.”
“I might actually be Christ coming back for a second time in the form of an imperfect man, elevating Christ consciousness,” Wood was taped saying, according to a remarkable footnote of his ex-associates’ motion. “That cause you to have a little bit of a chill? Who would be more eloquent to say what the will of God is, the belief of God in me.”
Following this “erratic, hostile, abusive, and threatening” behavior, Wade, Grunberg, and Wilson went on to establish their own law firm.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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).
Ninety percent is a wonderful vaccination rate. I think anywhere north of 75% is positive. Obviously the higher the better.
— Jonathan Segal, an employment partner at Duane Morris who works with clients to create vaccination policies, commenting on the numerous Am Law 200 firms that are now touting their high COVID-19 vaccination rates for attorneys and staff.
Thus far, the Am Law firms claiming to have current employee vaccination rates of 90% or higher for U.S. employees are Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Arent Fox; Dickinson Wright; Hanson Bridgett; O’Melveny & Myers; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; and Ropes & Gray. Am Law firms that claim 90% or more of their personnel are currently vaccinated or will be vaccinated by their return-to-office deadline include: Ballard Spahr; Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton; Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr. Smaller and midsize firms claiming to currently have more than 90% of their employees vaccinated are: Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger; Kline & Specter; and Sanford Heisler Sharp.
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.
What legal issues arise when workplaces require proof of vaccination from employees? How can law firms prevent cyberattacks? What are the hallmarks of Cyberbullying and Revenge Porn law? These questions and more will be answered throughout Lawline’s August lineup of great CLE webcasts. Check out some highlights below:
If you can’t attend a live webcast, don’t worry! All of our courses go on-demand within a week after airing (and you can check them out with our free trial). Check out some recent highlights:
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The state of Oklahoma recently filed cert in Oklahoma v. Bosse, asking the Supreme Court to overturn McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Gorsuch opinion recognizing that Oklahoma cannot just fiat away treaty obligations the United States owes to American Indian nations. At the very least, the state wants the Court to say that it doesn’t have to overturn the scores of illegal convictions it racked up in violation of federal treaties over the years.
It was a 5-4 opinion relying on Justice Ginsburg’s vote, so it’s safe to say the opinion is likely to be overturned soon unless you believe the other conservative members of the Supreme Court will adhere to basic principles of stare decisis, which is just silly. It’s a wild case because after years of the conservative legal community leaning on “if the legislature didn’t intend this outcome, it’s up to them to fix it, not us,” the right-wing (sans Gorsuch, of course) responded with “Congress?!? Are you crazy? They can’t do anything, we have to legislate from here!”[1] Could it be that the whole “Congress must act” thing was just a disingenuous tool hauled out to permanently table civil rights? Hmmmmmmmmmm.
In this matter, Shaun Michael Bosse, a death row inmate convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her children is using the McGirt decision to argue that he was improperly convicted in state court. Oklahoma is trying to stop that from happening.
And the state hired Paul, Weiss to make that argument for them.
It’s a curious representation given the firm’s proud history — touted on its own website:
The firm and its lawyers participated in efforts… to resist the death penalty by defending scores condemned to die and obtaining a historic victory in the U.S. Supreme Court forbidding execution of the mentally disabled….
Paul, Weiss has always relished its reputation for supporting liberal causes. No one is confusing the elite Biglaw firm for the National Lawyer’s Guild — it’s still fundamentally the Wall Street firm that began in the late 1800s, but its lawyers have dedicated considerable effort over the decades advancing social justice.[2] This case seems to be a change of direction.
The argument here seems to be that the firm isn’t so much “sticking up for the death penalty” as it’s sticking up for Oklahoma having a functional criminal justice system. It does sound like McGirt precipitated a lot of problems in Oklahoma, but remember it didn’t cause those problems, Oklahoma’s historical “oopsie” of ignoring federal law for decades did.[3]
Repping Oklahoma is Kannon Shanmugam. When he joined the firm, we wondered if it might change the firm’s personality to add a FedSoc lifer who clerked for Justice Scalia. It seems like it might have because one assumes a blood red state government like Oklahoma’s hires its Supreme Court advocates directly off the Federalist Society approved list.
At some firms, you can brush unsavory cases off as a professional commitment to being a true advocate-for-hire. Some lawyers are like stone-cold action movie villains… “it’s not personal, just business.” But that’s just never been the Paul, Weiss character before.
Whether law firms should be held responsible for their representations or not is a complicated judgment call. “Everyone deserves a lawyer” doesn’t mean “everyone deserves you as their lawyer.” Once attorneys choose to take work for pay, it becomes a business decision. A lawyer dedicated to victims of sexual misconduct shouldn’t represent Harvey Weinstein, while an attorney passionate about zealous criminal defense as the bedrock of a functioning legal system can.
It may feel weird to say that branding is what matters, but when it comes to holding lawyers to their representations, whether or not they’re being true to themselves says a lot. Because the business of law is a business and the work a firm does defines it. And for Paul, Weiss, it might be time to stop holding them to their history and start recognizing that the firm contains multitudes now and that for every heroic pro bono matter there’s going to be a death penalty defense in there.
[1] This is an actual passage from the petition: “While the Court believed that compromise or congressional action could limit the disruption from its decision, it is now clear that neither is forthcoming. The tribes do not agree among themselves, much less with the State, on the proper path forward, and Congress is unlikely to adopt any proposal not supported by all of the parties involved.” Basically, “we tried to do it the legal way, but it’s too hard.”
[2] This isn’t meant to downplay past problematic representations. The phrase “Indonesian torture case” isn’t exactly inspiring.
[3] This is almost the opposite of the Nestle matter that got everyone mad at Hogan Lovells. In that case, we all had to begrudgingly admit that federal law doesn’t cover the awful consequence of transnational capitalism contracting out for child slave labor. Here, federal law does cover the situation, but Oklahoma is arguing that the Court shouldn’t let it because the consequences are bad. And as we said when covering the Nestle case, asking the legislature to micromanage everything is naive and unrealistic, but it’s pretty ominous to go all the way to asking the Court “to usurp the role of the legislature out of necessity.”
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.
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