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Recognizing the importance of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, Biglaw firms have started to implement strategies to improve how their workforces operate when it comes to moving toward achieving equity. We’ve previously acknowledged Dorsey & Whitney, Hogan Lovells, Reed Smith, and Cooley as firms where approved diversity and inclusion-related work will be billable for attorneys and will count toward bonus thresholds. We’ve just received word that yet another leading law firm has had a successful program like this that’s been quietly running since summer 2020 — and this firm is offering the highest number of billable diversity and inclusion hours we’ve heard of yet.

Baker McKenzie — the firm that was the first to announce 2020 bonuses and sits at #4 in the latest Am Law 100 rankings — rolled out its diversity and inclusion billable hours credit program in July 2020 when it announced the formation of an Anti-Racism Taskforce. Here’s an excerpt from the firm’s announcement:

The Firm’s Anti-Racism Taskforce will examine the Firm’s hiring processes, work allocation systems, partner promotions and other long-standing practices with a critical eye toward rooting out bias and increasing equity and inclusion. The Taskforce will work closely with the Firm’s leadership to bring about concrete change. The Firm’s recognizing and providing credit for attorney time spent on diversity and inclusion activities includes up to 125 hours annually in the US and Canada and 50 hours annually in Mexico.

Baker McKenzie’s 125 billable D&I hours dwarfs the offerings of all other firms we’ve covered by 75 hours. This is a major move in the right direction. Firm leadership shared their thoughts on why this was such an important step to take:

North America Chief Executive Officer, Colin Murray, said, “At Baker McKenzie, we stand united as a Firm in saying that Black lives matter. We are adopting meaningful, concrete changes within the Firm to dismantle institutional bias and to walk down the path to full inclusion and equity.”

Director of Global Diversity & Inclusion, Anna Brown, said, “Baker McKenzie is not neutral. We are committed to taking an affirmative stand and putting action behind our words. These actions are steps forward in those efforts, and we look forward to making meaningful, long overdue change.”

Congratulations to Baker McKenzie on its commitment to diversity, and for offering its attorneys a way to create a more inclusive workplace. If diversity billables are anything like bonuses, perhaps we’ll see more firms rushing to meet (or perhaps even beat) the firm’s 125-hour rule. Which firm will take the challenge?

Baker McKenzie Forms Anti-Racism Taskforce to Build Inclusion and Equity Inside and Outside the Firm [Baker McKenzie]

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 part of what I hope will be an ongoing campaign to remove the cruelty from American immigration policy, Joe Biden signed three executive orders on immigration Feb. 2 and then another on Feb. 4. You’ve probably read about them. However, because Biden is also busy unwinding all the messed-up stuff on other topics, you probably haven’t done a deep dive into any of it.

Allow me to present my cheat sheet, with accompanying opinions. Broadly speaking, these four executive orders accomplish the following:

1. Create a task force to reunify families separated by the Trump administration. This is the headline order. Despite some heroic efforts from a group of nonprofits, there are still 1,198 children who have not been reunited with parents deported without them. (Yes, the reported number was much smaller last fall, but that was partly because there was a dispute about who counted. The court has expanded the class of parents since then.) The Biden executive order creates a task force with representatives from the departments of Justice, State, HHS and Homeland Security to try to reunite the families, issue immigration documents when appropriate, and connect them to any services they need.

This is great. The Ms. L. v. ICE (the leading case on this topic) plaintiffs have been frustrated all along by the government’s unwillingness to help clean up the mess it made. The order also asks them to issue a report every 120 days, which gives me a journalist boner. But the people who are actually doing this work want specifics and a timeline, and I don’t blame them. Governments love to study questions for months and produce thick reports that don’t do anything about whatever the underlying problem is. Actual implementation then takes months more. When children are growing up without anybody in their lives who loves them, and in some cases outside their own cultures, that is not an acceptable timeline.

2. Start to unwind Trump-era policies designed to destroy the asylum system. This order starts out strong by asking government agencies to look at the root causes of immigration. This is way overdue, since long before Trump. In fact, I’m not sure whether anybody has ever bothered to look at the root causes of migration, even though doing what we can on Latin America policy could go a long way toward addressing immigration. People don’t leave everything they’ve ever known for fun; they usually have powerful “push” factors like violence or famine.

Where this thing stumbles is Section 4, asking agencies to review and consider terminating or modifying various Trump-era anti-asylum policies. This would include Remain in Mexico/MPP, Title 42, the “safe third country” agreements they strong-armed Central American nations into, policy on asylum for domestic violence victims, and more. These things were never intended to do anything other than keep brown people out of the United States, and a lot of them are probably illegal. It’s obscene that our tax dollars support them.

The Biden administration has publicly argued that we don’t have the processing capacity to deal with renewed migration that would result. But after four years of the Trump administration repeating “processing capacity” like a mantra every time it slammed the door shut, I need specifics. Did all the asylum officers quit after being reassigned to Kansas City? Make your case before the immigration law community starts making noise.

3. Review and consider rescinding federal policies that make life tougher for immigrants. These are mostly things that affect legal immigrants, like the USCIS fee hike and the public charge rule. What I like about this is that it mandates a review of agency actions, and the devil is in the details on a lot of this stuff — ask anyone who’s dealt with USCIS. What I don’t like is that nothing is specifically said about visas, and the Trump administration certainly messed with visa programs. I’m also concerned about the federal government’s inability to get rid of immigration judges (and probably others in the immigration agencies) who were hired specifically to harm immigrants. Those people are protected by civil service laws, so they probably can’t be fired just because they were illegally hired for political purposes.
4. Rebuild the refugee admissions system. Quick explanation: Refugees and asylum seekers enter the U.S. through two different programs. Asylum seekers come to the border and ask for help; refugees apply while still living overseas and go through a comprehensive battery of tests. The number of refugees admitted to the United States every year is set by the president for each fiscal year, and the Trump administration cut refugee admissions from six figures under Obama to 15,000 in Trump’s last year. Biden is free to raise that back up to a more responsible number, and CBS News says he’s planning on setting it at 125,000 for fiscal 2022. The trouble is that federal fiscal years start October 1.

In the interim, the executive order authorizes all the necessary rehiring, attempts to streamline the application process, cancels Trump executive orders on the subject, and asks agencies to report on any policies that need to be changed. The order also, and I love this because it is not well known in the civilian media, mandates a review of the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis and Afghans who used to work for the U.S. military. These people risked their lives for us, and too often, we have repaid them by letting their visa applications rot while terrorists tried to kill them. Even under Obama, a lot of them were stuck in administrative processing forever, so I can only imagine how bad it must have been under an administration that actively hated Muslims.

Lorelei Laird is a freelance writer specializing in the law, and the only person you know who still has an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker. Find her at wordofthelaird.com.

It took two full decades, but shares of SoftBank — the operator of the world’s largest technology-focused venture capital fund — have recovered to levels not seen since February 2000.

* Starbucks is being sued for allegedly failing to have real vanilla in its chilled Frappuccinos. Hope the plaintiff doesn’t settle like Kramer… [National Law Review]

* A California lawyer was arrested earlier this week for allegedly defrauding investors of nearly $5 million on a bogus real estate opportunity. [KTLA]

* A Texas lawyer is claiming that receiving stimulus money can lead to a higher divorce rate. [CBS News]

* A lawyer has been sentenced to a prison term for charging a client for immigration work and never doing the promised tasks. [Go Erie]

* One of Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers apparently sued Trump last year. Must be water under the bridge… [Vanity Fair]

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.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to Norton Rose Fulbright’s 16th annual Litigation Trends Survey, respondents said what percentage of litigation legal spend in 2020 was allocated to law firms?

Hint: In 2019, law firms got 73 percent of legal spend, but in 2020, law firm allocation decreased, with a comparable uptick in in-house spend.

See the answer on the next page.

Oh, what happened last week? Well, there was the lawyer having sex on Zoom during a criminal hearing for a gang leader. And there was Columbia Law School, as well as Michigan, sounding the alarm about mental health issues mounting as the schools pushed forward without noticing the toll it was taking. Frankly, that’s a pretty good microcosm of the whole pandemic. Also, some Trump lawyers manage to come across as incredibly sympathetic in a gossip piece that they in no way leaked themselves… no sir!

When Edelson PC created Edelson Creative to serve as a platform to “produce and host creative content generated by the firm and its artistic partners,” we expected to see some fun content coming out of the high-powered, iconoclastic plaintiffs’ firm. But with the pandemic and an election and a coup and two impeachments since we first wrote about the Creative, it’s been a while since we’ve checked in.

This morning, the firm dropped two new videos to brighten your day. First up, is a Hamilton parody (technically making it a Broadway piece, but it counts as a rap video), pushing back against Biglaw recruiting narratives and reminding applicants that high-powered boutiques really can deliver top-notch work and a better experience. And it’s animated, and as any Legaltech Week listener this week knows from our discussion about Hamm’s Beer (the show goes a lot of directions), I’m a sucker for animation.

Don’t have time to listen? I’ve got the lyrics reproduced here.

The second offering is a more traditional rap video from Ari Scharg, whose video kicked off our coverage of Edelson Creative back in 2019. He’s back, and while the spirit is different than the animated short, this ode to the firm touches on a lot of similar themes: Edelson is the place to go if you’re hoping to get involved in high-stakes, impactful litigation and recruits aren’t missing out — in fact they may be doing better — to eschew Biglaw and join up with the plaintiff-side.

And again, I’ve got full lyrics here, but here’s a preview:

See I write raps at night when I need to unwind,
I take aim at lawyers on the other side,
Of the room, of the court, of the street, of the V,
What I mean if you ain’t with Edelson PC,
Then you don’t fuckin bleed the same color as me,
And you’ll see how we treat parasitic attorneys,
Line em up 1-2-3,
Knock em down with this MC,
When we plan our attack, I doubt you are ready, ayyyee

As we start seeing the light at the end of the pandemic, here’s to some more Edelson Creative content in the new year!

Earlier: Law Firm Partner Drops Rap Video About Class Actions

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.

(Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, telling it exactly like it is concerning former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. As it stands, just six Senate Republicans voted that Trump’s trial was constitutional.)

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.