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Do the college athlete name, image, and likeness laws in California, Florida, Colorado, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Michigan go far enough? They are intended to provide all college athletes with the equal opportunity to exploit their publicity rights for commercial gain (with varying effective dates); however, they fail to go further than that, but for Florida’s requirement that athletes receive a certain amount of financial literacy and life-skills education prior to their first and third years of enrollment.
California Assembly Member Sydney Kamlager would answer in the negative. She has introduced a bill titled, “College Athlete Race and Gender Equity Act,” which intends to allow certain athletes to receive a royalty from their universities and also place a cap on the amount of money that athletics administrative personnel can be compensated.
To be clear, the bill (AB 609) was only introduced on February 12, 2021, and has not yet been heard in any committee. It may not ever be passed or signed into law, but the mere fact that it has been drafted and introduced is of note due to its potentially far-reaching consequences.
First, the bill specifies that if 50% of a school’s total sports revenue in California exceeds the total aggregate grant-in-aid athletics scholarship amount that is given to that school’s athletes during the reporting year, then the school will be required to pay the qualifying athletes with what is referred to as a name, image, and likeness royalty fee.
The calculation is expressed as follows:
The name, image, and likeness royalty fee amount for a college athlete shall be determined for each sport, and division or subdivision, by subtracting the total aggregate grant-in-aid athletic scholarships amount provided to the institution’s college athletes in a sport from 50 percent of the institution’s total sports revenue in the state, as reported to the United States Department of Education. That difference shall be divided by the total number of college athletes receiving a grant-in-aid athletic scholarship in that sport during the reporting year.
Second, the bill says that any school that receives state funds or tax-exempt status cannot compensate athletics administrative personnel in an amount above 50% of the average total compensation paid to such personnel by colleges in the Football Championship Subdivision of the NCAA.
Third, there is a provision that would, as of January 1, 2022, prevent colleges that receive state funds or tax-exempt status from entering into agreements for new athletics facility expenditures unless they are deemed necessary for health and safety reasons, are beneficial to the environment, or are necessary to comply with Title IX of the federal Educational Amendments of 1972.
This may be the most radical college athlete rights-related bill proposed on the state or national level since California signed its Student Athlete Bill of Rights into law. It provides a foundation for the concern that some have about the more basic name, image, and likeness proposals evolving into much greater changes to the college sports landscape. It is also hard to comprehend the justification for preventing schools from improving upon their facilities, putting California athletic departments at a disadvantage as compared to competitors outside of the state, if athletes are separately being afforded enhanced rights. More likely than not, this bill will go nowhere.
Last June, the state of Washington decided to extend emergency diploma privilege to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Those without such degrees, and those who wanted the flexibility of a UBE score, were free to take a later administration of the exam. The extension of diploma privilege allowed graduates to begin their careers serving the public immediately, while vastly reducing the number of expected examinees, making future administrations — either in-person or remote — much less taxing. With in-person exams still a risky proposition in the early days of vaccination and remote exams boasting imposing grading obstacles (along with being generally terrible), it was an all around win. It also functioned as a trial balloon, allowing the state to evaluate whether or not it really needed a costly, anachronistic bar exam for ABA-accredited graduates in the first place.
That’s what appears to have terrified the folks in Wisconsin — ironically a diploma privilege state — who make millions of dollars off the existence of the bar exam and their colleagues in the state licensing apparatus.
So Washington found itself a battleground for the professional necessity of an additional expensive test after an already expensive degree from schools that have gone through an already extensive accreditation process. And, at the moment, entrenched monied interests appear to have the upper hand.
The Washington Supreme Court decided to go forward with the February bar exam through ExamSoft, bringing it back in line with the rest of the national licensing consortium. One cycle of diploma privilege licensure risks exposing that the emperor has no clothes when the waived cohort proves no less competent than attorneys who passed the bar, but two cycles becomes a trend that could unravel the whole self-justifying ball game. The data demonstrating that the bar exam has no public protection value can be downplayed based on the small sample size — adding more states to the diploma privilege pool would obliterate a key examiner talking point.
The court received letters from many sources including at least three letters from Washington law student coalitions, two letters each from two of Washington’s three law school deans, and an ACLU-WA letter. Unfortunately, these entreaties didn’t receive any direct engagement from the court.
The earlier opinion provided no details as to the reasoning behind the grant of emergency privilege, but, Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez says that he felt the earlier diploma privilege grant was limited to a world where remote exams could not be effectively administered, something that the court feels — despite the letters from experts and the actual lived experience of the October exam — is possible now. Because the NCBE and ExamSoft say it’s possible now and would very much like their money promptly.
It doesn’t even make sense. Whatever the reasoning in June, the court decided that diploma privilege did not jeopardize the public. That a half-measure exam is now possible doesn’t change that. To paraphrase the Winston Churchill anecdote, we’ve already established that the bar exam doesn’t protect the public, we’re just haggling now.
Chief Justice Gonzalez said the Washington State Bar has assured the court some of the problems associated with the software have been addressed.
“For example, the last iteration had problems with people being flagged during the test and knowing they were being flagged and people being disproportionately flagged if they had darker skin,” Gonzalez said.
He said it no longer flags test takers in the middle of the exam.
While informing examinees that they have been flagged put an unacceptable additional burden upon them, somehow I think the bigger problem was that it marked people of color for cheating based on the color of their skin in the first place. A shorter translation of the Chief’s reasoning: “Look, we get that it’s still racist, but we’re assured that it’s that polite, country club racism now.”
A recent “Bar Exam Q&A” further extends upon the state’s reasoning:
Q. How will WSBA address the bias inherent even in human review, especially when we know we can expect people of color and people with disabilities to be subjected to more flags and, hence, more human review?
A. We acknowledge no process is free from bias—we are cognizant of those biases and working to mitigate them. We are prepared to review many flags, and we are not going to look at anything beyond the very specific behavior flagged by the software. In most cases, the flags should be easily cleared (for example, as in the case of a dog barking in the background).
And by “extends,” I mean they found a way to make the shrug emoji 66 words long.
California flagged one-third of all examinees for cheating! The volume of false positives was so high that California then improperly compounded the harm by shifting the onus to the examinees to show cause that they shouldn’t be failed. Washington seems committed to avoiding the latter problem, but everyone has a plan before they get punched in the face. When half of the exams come back flagged — which empirics suggest is more than possible — what are they going to do then? “Easily cleared” flags may exist, but what happens when the test flags someone repeatedly for just a complexion too dark for the inherent bias of the algorithm? That’s not an isolated incident, it’s going to be flagged repeatedly. Are they watching the whole exam? That’s the sort of scrutiny that can gin up imagined violations that would never even be seen in other exams. These are all problems that no one has addressed that the court is just waving away.
Gonzalez did say the court has set up a working group, co-chaired by Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis, to discuss the broader issue of using the bar exam as a way of measuring someone’s ability to practice law.
“Anyone can submit input to that,” Gonzalez said.
That’s a great idea. Unfortunately, anyone could submit input to this decision too and it just ended up in the trash heap.
The Department of Health and Human Services has issued several waivers for Texas hospitals reeling from the devastating winter storm that has gripped the state. These waivers provide flexibility in complying with HIPAA rules and other federal regulations.
Texans are experiencing a harrowing February. Record-low temperatures sent life in Texas into a tail-spin this month, with residents facing major transportation issues, lack of access to clean water and power outages that left millions without heat. About 26 people have died since Feb. 11, according to CNN.
“As communities across Texas are facing the aftermath of severe winter weather that is unusual for the area, we are ready to provide critical support,” said HHS Acting Secretary Norris Cochran in a news release.
Cochran declared a public health emergency for the state on Feb. 17, which allows federal agencies to give healthcare providers and suppliers greater flexibility amid the winter storm. The declaration, and associated waivers, are retroactive to Feb. 11.
Hospitals in Texas have faced a series of mounting challenges during the storm, from water disruptions and electrical outages to staffing shortages and overwhelming demand in emergency rooms, according to the Texas Tribune. Health facilities that spoke with the publication reported drawing water from wellness pools and waiting days for delayed medication shipments.
To help hospitals provide care amid these challenges, HHS is waiving sanctions and penalties for non-compliance with certain provisions of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
Specifically, the department is waiving compliance with four HIPAA provisions, including one that requires health facilities to obtain patient consent before speaking with family members or friends involved in the patient’s care and another that gives patients the right to request privacy restrictions.
But the waivers only apply:
In the emergency area and for the period identified in the public health emergency declaration
To hospitals that have instituted a disaster protocol
For up to 72 hours from the time the hospital implements its disaster protocol
Further, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued certain waivers for Texas healthcare providers. These are in addition to the waivers already available for providers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Through March 4, CMS will not impose civil monetary penalties on Texas nursing homes that do not report Covid-19 cases to the National Healthcare Safety Network.
In addition, the agency is waiving a statutory requirement linked to coverage for skilled nursing facility stays. CMS will provide temporary emergency coverage of skilled nursing facility services without a qualifying three-day inpatient hospital stay for those people who experience dislocations or are otherwise affected by the public health emergency in Texas.
The crisis in Texas is ongoing, with more than 15,700 people still without power and 8.7 million people experiencing water disruptions Monday morning, CNN reported. The state could take weeks or months to recover completely from the debilitating storm.
Paul Davis is like the gift that keeps on filing bonkers motions. Davis first shot to Above the Law infamy when the then-associate general counsel for Goosehead Insurance attended the Capitol insurrection, and posted boasting about getting tear gassed and saying he was trying to enter the Capitol building on social media.
After he got fired from Goosehead (because logical and natural consequences are still a thing), Davis attempted to put his law degree to use by filing a lawsuit, along with lawyer and failed candidate for the Texas House of Representatives Kellye SoRelle, seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election but is somehow “not a 2020 presidential election fraud lawsuit.” (That distinction, for whatever it’s worth, appears to be the source of discord between the two attorneys that filed the original complaint.) The complaint lists every single member of the 117th Congress, every state governor and secretary of state, and Mark Zuckerberg as defendants, and alleges changes to election laws in advance of the 2020 election were in violation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which resulted in civil rights violations. And it asks that all actions of the new Congress — including certification of Joe Biden’s win and the second impeachment of Donald Trump — be invalidated.
That wasn’t the end of the filings in the case. Yes, it’s still in its infancy but he went ahead and filed an amended TRO motion using the experiences of Gondor as precedent. For you non-nerds out there (are there any that read Above the Law?), that’s the FICTIONAL kingdom created by J.R.R. Tolkien. And because “Gondor has no king” that’s the example he uses as precedent for asking a federal court to throw out the results of the 2020 election.
Then Davis got fired, again. There was apparently a split amongst the plaintiffs regarding what strategy to pursue (though, tbh, none of them sound like winners). And two camps — the SoRelle plaintiffs and Davis plaintiffs –were born. (Of course, Davis signed that filing with an email address at a domain name he doesn’t own, which is just BEGGING trolls to have fun with you, which, natch, they did.)
So, what the hell else could possibly be happing in this case?
Well, Davis wants attorneys fees. He starts out by taking some potshots at one of his former clients (now a SoRelle plaintiff):
For reasons that are difficult to fathom, after Mr. Davis donated over 450 hours of pro bono time to Plaintiff B.G. and her organization, “Latinos for Trump,” B.G.— with no hint of preexisting animosity between B.G. and himself— suddenly sent Mr. Davis a scathing termination letter full of vindictive lies regarding concerns about non-existent “ethical issues.” Mr. Davis, shocked, but suspecting some sort of political gamesmanship, given the nature of this lawsuit, sent a diplomatic response, extending an olive branch over apparent differences in strategy that Ms. SoRelle had suddenly began pushing on Mr. Davis the week of February 15, 2021 despite previous and consistent agreements among counsel, and even B.G. herself, not to pursue such frivolous strategies.
Then he begins to detail some of the behind-the-scenes action the led to the fracturing of the plaintiffs. Reading between the lines, it seems Davis wanted to stay away from election fraud claims and stick with the (also specious) HAVA/civil rights claims. But Davis believes some identified “Bob” (who is not a plaintiff or an attorney) is pushing alternate legal theories. There’s even a group text with Bob and Davis (as well as SoRelle and plaintiffs) and in that text Bob “scurrilously accused Mr. Davis of unethical behavior, in front of clients for whom he had been working 80-100 hours a week, for free, and not getting much sleep.”
And then, THAT’S when Davis says, “This is when things went from strange to downright bizarre.” It seems Davis thinks SoRelle shared with this Bob character privileged communications, based on the accusations Bob made. But that’s not what SoRelle thinks:
Ms. SoRelle’s excuse was that Bob was “listening in on our comms!” Mr. Davis, now extremely concerned, began recording the rest of that conversation with Ms. SoRelle.5 To Mr. Davis’s shock, Ms. SoRelle clarified that she did not mean merely that Bob was listening on a speaker phone or similar. No, Ms. SoRelle actually indicated several times that “Bob” was illegally listening in to the calls between Mr. Davis and Ms. SoRelle and monitoring our text messages.
Anyway, Davis now seeks $1,800 in attorneys fees for the “3.6 hours [he spent] in drafting and preparing to draft this response, including reviewing various related communications and call recordings.” But truly, the full filing is quite the ride, and available below. AND IT ISN’T EVEN DAVIS’S ONLY FILING.
Yesterday, Davis also filed a new complaint — what the internet is joyfully calling Gondor II. It’s basically a rehash of the original (and Tolkien-free) complaint. But we can only guess how many more filings this new case will bless us with.
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).
* A lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of New York City fitness studios argues that exercise facilities should be allowed to operate despite COVID-19. Guess people soon might not have an excuse to stay away from the gym… [Pix 11]
* The Supreme Court has declined to get involved in the defamation lawsuit Stormy Daniels filed against Donald Trump. [Forbes]
* Two New York City lawyers, who allegedly torched an NYPD car last year, have purportedly been offered a plea deal. [New York Post]
* Check out this article on the cases Vice President Harris handled as the former California Attorney General. [Juris Lab]
* A lawyer is aiming to create the “Starbucks of pet grooming.” Wonder what a caramel macchiato is with dogs… [Newsday]
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
Of the 50 Biglaw firm included in Above the Law’s Law Firm Transparency Directory, powered by Leopard Solutions, which firm has added the largest number of attorneys over the last five years?
Hint: The firm added a whopping 895 attorneys to its payroll since 2016.
The last 11-odd months in fashion have been unprecedented in its challenges, which, at times, have appeared almost insurmountable. On every rung of the supply chain ladder, players from artisans to consumers have wondered, well, where do we go from here?
But there’s at least one narrative that tells another story of stability.
During this same period, headlines began creeping in announcing a spate of initial public offerings. To IPO, of course, typically signifies that a company is in a position that’s financially solid enough to both front the many necessary legal, accounting and marketing costs and even more importantly, to risk failure that required funding may not be raised. So far in 2021, Mytheresa, Poshmark and ThredUp have either already debuted on the public exchange, or quietly filed to do so. Just last month, Mytheresa and Poshmark both crushed their valuations: Mytheresea raised $407 million after pricing shares at the top of its marketed range, while Poshmark’s own shares climbed 141.7% to $101.50 during its first day on Nasdaq.
Poshmark’s case is a definitive success story. With a market capitalization of $7.4 million, the social-selling platform is now theoretically “worth more” (per the stock the market’s valuations, at least) than some of fashion’s most established public fixtures, like Macy’s Inc. (with a market cap of $4.3 billion), Nordstrom Inc. ($6 billion) and Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo parent Capri Holdings Ltd. ($6.6 billion).
That investors want in on retail is quite clear — but fashion and Wall Street have not always been as harmonious as the previous paragraph may lead one to believe. Take Mytheresa’s London-based luxury e-commerce competitor Farfetch, which opened at a respectable $27 a share in 2018, but soon after dipped below $20 and later, to around just $11 after the company reported lackluster quarterly earnings.
So, what does it mean to IPO a fashion business in 2021? And is it set to become a more popular move in the future? Read on.
The RealReal Inc. executives applaud while ringing the opening bell during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City in June 2019.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Fashion and Wall Street have history
The relationship between fashion and Wall Street is well-encapsulated by the Versace episode of the 1990s.
In 1997, the privately-held fashion empire was within months of taking its company public when Gianni Versace was shot and killed outside his Miami Beach home. As Gianni’s siblings Santo and Donatella assumed control of the label, both reportedly remained dedicated to entering the public exchange, and sought to skip the Milan stock market for the New York Stock Exchange.
Yet the IPO never surfaced — until years later in 2014, when the family company sold a 20% stake to Blackstone Group LP to help finance another IPO, again. Instead, Michael Kors bought Versace in 2018 for a whopping $2.12 billion.
Meanwhile, around the time of the 2018 Michael Kors deal, a wave of companies began seeking their own public aspirations. 2019 saw successful IPOs from Revolve, Levi Strauss & Co., The RealReal and Kontoor Brands, Inc., which owns and operates Wrangler, Lee and Rock & Republic. The RealReal was the year’s crown jewel, raising $300 million with stock priced at roughly 40% above the company’s $20 IPO pricing. (At press time, the resale company now finds its shares around $27, but as recently as this past December, shares hadn’t gotten above $15 in a full year.)
“The markets are fickle and can be swayed day-to-day, or even hour-to-hour,” says Thomaï Serdari, adjunct professor of marketing and director of the Fashion & Luxury MBA at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “That’s why retail experts are trying to block out the market noise and base their bets for longevity on consumer trends and business models.”
Why are so many businesses looking to go public now?
As Serdari explains, the figures endorsed by Wall Street don’t often tell the full story. What’s missed between the digits and dollar signs, she says, is the context within which companies grow and make an emotional bond with their shoppers. All of this is to say, then, that the pandemic has actually accelerated trends that have been taking hold for some time now, like e-commerce and sustainability, but also more nebulously, authenticity.
“What has been happening in retail started at least 10 years ago, if not longer,” says Serdari. “As many businesses are moving online, they’ve been trying to grow their e-commerce, which has been growing really substantially in the last years. With COVID, all of these factors have accelerated and made people see the opportunity, especially in the last year and a half, to also accelerate that strategic direction for their own companies.”
Now a year-plus into this pandemic, fashion retailers have gone from effectively treading water to reconsidering entire business plans. We saw this in the case of climate consciousness, for example, wherein companies have been forced to shift to more effectively cater to changing consumer habits. With the pandemic tightening shoestrings for a vast number of Americans, many shoppers have taken to shopping more locally and/or upcycling items — activities that are good for reducing emissions associated with shopping and production.
Financially speaking, the effects of the pandemic have also impacted the expectations retailers may have of their customers. In the past, Serdari says, companies relied more strictly on what she calls a “top-down authoritative decision-making process” that didn’t allow the consumer to have much say in what they want from the brand itself or what they’re going to find in-store. No longer, because all-powerful millennial– and Generation Z-aged consumers won’t allow it.
Poshmark Inc. signage outside the Nasdaq MarketSite during the company’s IPO in January 2021.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“First of all, the customer has changed a lot,” says Serdari. “It’s not only the younger generations who are increasing in volume. The younger customers are also influencing how older people shop, and how they go to retail markets.”
Now, the so-called “old-fashioned” way that companies might relate to their customers may, in fact, lead to a fair amount of risk when pursuing the public markets. In order to even respond to the demands of shareholders after the IPO, retailers can almost certainly plan on scaling up their operations — and doing so quickly, perhaps without developing a rigid strategy around which aspects of operations are being scaled.
Today, social media and e-commerce analytics have much of that research already built into the very infrastructures of the platforms themselves. So if the primary goal in a company going public is to expand its own business and therefore expand its customer base, it’s of enormous benefit to build an authentic connection with shoppers, so brands can truly address every desire in the retail space.
“I think everyone sees that opportunity, and it’s the perfect time for them to jump in if they haven’t already,” says Serdari. “If they can boost up the way they do their business from the e-commerce side of things, they’ll be getting the more information on their true customers — people who not only browse their sites, but actually complete sales on their sites. And by getting more information about these personas, companies can then start thinking about brand extensions or categories that they want to enter.”
With an IPO, are there any concerns?
Mytheresa had a strong NYSE debut right out of the gate, having listed the 15.6 million shares it planned to sell at higher than its original price of $16-18. With significant investor demand, it’s the latest luxury e-tailer to become a Wall Street success story.
Theoretically, wouldn’t investors also be considering the crowdedness of this market — and of any market, for that matter? Though Mytheresa and a rival retailer like Farfetch reflect different consumer groups, as well as different benefits to interested shareholders, they’re still two cogs in an industry wheel that isn’t all that big.
Serdari has found that the public exchange allows ample space for up to five large-scale competitors, with even more room for smaller, more niche businesses to fill any gaps left by corporations. Although it’s a global marketplace, consumers are still privy to regional and cultural biases that retailers can reflect in their own strategies, from their visual marketing to the actual product buy.
A customer waits to enter The RealReal store on Madison Avenue in New York City in September 2020.
Photo: Nina Westervelt/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“Mytheresa came out of Munich and had a traditional retailer relationship with their local community, but they slowly expanded, then moved onto an e-commerce platform and continued expanding,” says Serdari. “This tells me that the e-commerce industry cannot be a blanket solution. In other words, we cannot all buy from Net-a-Porter, we cannot all buy from MatchesFashion. There are different pockets of culture that demand different ways of merchandising.”
Analysts warn there’s a limit, however. At the start of 2020, many direct-to-consumers startups were preparing for their venture-backed bubble to burst. Companies that had previously banked millions in Series A, B and C rounds were preparing to “hit a revenue wall” if they didn’t differentiate themselves in some way or another from their (many) peers, and fast. While the pandemic has granted the startup sphere a bit of a reprieve, funders and founders alike remain on high alert for the other shoe to drop. Could a rise in IPOs from fashion-adjacent businesses signal the same fate?
Retailers may have divested from the “top-down authoritative decision-making process” Serdari referenced earlier, but by and large, analysts haven’t. That dissonance could hinder said analysts from correctly assessing the values of campaigns that want to put forth an IPO, which, if unchecked, could lead to another popped bubble.
Who’s an ideal candidate for an IPO in 2021?
In business, it never exactly hurts to have a crystal-clear value proposition that makes a company or product attractive to shoppers. The public exchange may indeed support up to five competitors, but even still, a retailer’s value proposition is necessary in helping to define a unique foothold in the marketplace. And this is as lucrative for the benefit of everyday consumers as it is for formal investors.
“This is where things get very competitive because sometimes companies rush into this market without a value proposition that clearly states the new aspect they bring to market, or what is, so to speak, the solution they bring to their ideal customer,” says Serdari. “That’s a problem that has persisted in the way brands present themselves, how businesses set up retail stores. This is the most difficult thing, but if you get that right, then you can very easily grow the business in terms of customers, which is a golden ticket when preparing for an IPO.”
By that definition, according to Serdari, Goop is extremely well-positioned for an IPO. Its $95 peach-pink vibrators may already be courting investors: In September, private equity partner and LVMH executive Ravi Thakran filed paperwork for a new “blank-check company” called “Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp.,” which is reportedly looking to raise $225 million to invest in “businesses with premium brands that offer an aspirational lifestyle experience to consumers.”
Blank-check companies (also known as special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs) have become favorable, back-door ways to take companies public without the burden of operations and assets, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“There aren’t a lot of private companies that fit the description here,” one Wall Street banker who follows SPACs told financial journalist Thornton McEnery this fall. “Goop fits, and it has a big enough profile to make SPAC investors happy.”
Not many retailers enable — encourage, even — shoppers to peruse four-digit gemstone heat therapy mats while simultaneously reading about antepartum depression. But such is Goop’s value proposition, carefully honed over a decade with an involved community that doesn’t scoff at vagina-scented candles as much as one may think. And this is exactly what an IPO is all about.
We should not try to mask some of the problems caused by the pandemic.
— William Adams, managing director of ABA accreditation and legal education, in comments given during a recent ABA council meeting, regarding a request made by the deans of New York, New Jersey, and California law schools that the final law graduate employment data deadline be pushed back from March to June due to the upheaval caused by the pandemic. As Adams went on to explain, many law schools’ acceptance deadlines fall between April and early summer, and moving the data deadline back would not help pre-law consumers make their law school decisions. Per the ABA Journal, Adams noted that when job statistics are released, they will include a statement “explaining that the pandemic has affected both bar passage and employment numbers.”
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.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of 
Jordan Rothman is a partner of 
