Category: News Feeds

One of the predictions floating around regarding the (hopefully soon to arrive) post-COVID 19 patent landscape is that more operating companies with sizable patent portfolios will be considering monetization options. The reasoning behind that prediction is simple. In a challenging revenue environment, even those companies who were previously reticent about patent assertion will be under pressure to turn what can be a sizable cost center into a revenue-generating business unit. At the same time, patent monetization is a difficult endeavor even under optimal economic conditions. While litigation funders and law firms stand ready to assist, developing and executing on a workable monetization strategy requires time, a lot of thought, and significant buy-in within the company ranks. In short, a monetization campaign must be a considered effort, not something undertaken under a whim or based on the conception that following the herd in a particular direction is a good idea.

One company that has been involved in a number of high-profile patent enforcement efforts is consumer products giant (and quite-frequent patent defendant itself) LG. In perhaps the most prominent example of LG’s enforcement efforts, the company took the step of suing major TV competitor Hisense in November 2019, as part of a larger global patent enforcement effort against other TV competitors. The Hisense lawsuit was reportedly settled last week, at least according to a docket entry filed in the California court handling the case. Pointedly, that report of settlement came just a few weeks after Hisense filed a notice of institution of IPR for all relevant claims from two of  the asserted patents. While it is impossible to know how favorable or not the Hisense assertion ended up being for LG, the case does provide a recent example of a major technology company turning to its patent portfolio as a way to generate revenue from a market competitor.

While patent cases filed in LG’s own name are rare, there are other known examples of LG divesting patents for assertion by other entities. Just last week, for example, the Federal Circuit addressed one such divested LG patent in an interesting decision on prior licenses and patent exhaustion. In that case, Evolved Wireless v. HTC Corporation et. al, Appeals Nos. 2020-1335, 2020-1337, 2020-1339, 2020-1340, 2020-1363 (CAFC), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that “Evolved’s patent infringement claims were barred by a license agreement and the doctrine of patent exhaustion.” As background, it is important to note that the patent at issue in the appeal was just one of five asserted in litigation against the various defendants. Those patents were originally sold by LG to an entity called TQ Lambda, before being picked up by Evolved for assertion. (Highlighting the challenges of modern-day patent monetization, even for patents with an LG pedigree, only the patent at issue in the appeal was left standing in terms of potentially leading to revenue for Evolved before it too was bounced by the district court.)

When Evolved acquired the remaining patent, it did so subject to encumbrances originating at LG, including an LG license to Qualcomm that was granted all the way back in 1993. As that LG-Qualcomm license (which was apparently never considered in full, unredacted form by the district court) was renewed over the years, one thing remained constant — LG agreed that it wouldn’t sue Qualcomm or Qualcomm’s customers under any of its patents over their sale of smartphones. Because the license/covenant not to sue was extended at the product, rather than patent, level, the asserted patent was swept into the scope of the license since it was issued before the final renewal took place.

Once Evolved sued Qualcomm’s customers, the license between LG and Qualcomm came into play. As the Federal Circuit noted, if Qualcomm was licensed under the LG agreement then patent exhaustion meant that sales by Qualcomm to its handset-manufacturing customers (e.g., the defendants sued by Evolved) were licensed sales and thus immune from infringement liability. On appeal, everyone agreed that exhaustion would apply. The fight was over whether or not the 4G-capable products sold by the defendants were covered by the Qualcomm license. Finding that they were, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding of noninfringement pursuant to the license/patent exhaustion defense.

But all was not lost for Evolved. Because the license between LG and Qualcomm terminated as of the end of 2018 and the district court never addressed that termination in its summary judgment decision, the Federal Circuit remanded with instructions that “the district court should address whether — and why or why not — it considers Evolved’s proffered evidence of the termination part of the summary judgment record. If the district court concludes that the termination issue was properly raised, the district court should conduct further proceedings as necessary to determine whether a termination occurred, and if so, the effect on the license and Evolved’s claims of infringement for the post-termination period.” In short, there may be a path post-Federal Circuit decision for Evolved to sidestep the Qualcomm license issue for 2019 and onward sales of allegedly infringing products.

Ultimately, it is hard to gauge at this point whether Evolved still stands a puncher’s chance of extracting license revenue from the smartphone makers it sued. If anything, Evolved’s tortured litigation history may serve as yet-another cautionary tale for erstwhile patent monetizers looking for action in a patent litigation landscape that seems to favor defendants. At the same time, some on the patent assertion side will take succor in the fact that Evolved’s campaign continues to have life at all, proving the importance of patent plaintiffs demonstrating resilience and resolve in pursuit of their goals. As for those looking to follow in Evolved’s footsteps, we will see whether the alleged interest in post-COVID 19 patent monetization by large patent owners results in more attempts at patent enforcement by companies fitting that profile — whether directly under their own name or through divestment to nonpracticing entities. Put another way, will evolving attitudes lead to action or not?

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

Last night, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram for a riveting hour and a half live session that detailed exactly what happened during the January 6th Capitol insurrection, from her perspective. It’s a powerful and emotional description of events that *should* transcend politics to reveal the human toll of that day’s violence, but, well, I’m not going to hold my breath.

Before she gets to the harrowing tale of the riot — and really, you should watch it yourself — AOC addresses the critics who suggest she should just “move on”:

“We cannot move on without accountability. We cannot heal without accountability. And so all of these people who want to tell us to move on are doing so at their own convenience.”

In a personal moment, Ocasio-Cortez reveals she’s a survivor of sexual violence and draws analogies to the trauma visited by the insurrection. AOC specifically calls out a pair of Texas lawyers turned lawmakers — Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Chip Roy — for wanting to sweep the insurrection under the rug and even demanding she apologize. Ocasio-Cortez likens this behavior to that of abusers, who seek to move past any violence quickly so they can do it again:

“These are the tactics of abusers. Or rather, these are the tactics that abusers use,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “What they’re asking for when they say, ‘Can we just move on?’ … is, ‘Can you just can we just forget this happened so that I can do it again, without recourse?… Can you just forget about this so that we can, you know, do it again?’”

AOC also mentions the actions of two other lawyer-politicians for their actions in perpetuating the big lie of election fraud and fomenting the violence at the Capitol, Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Mo Brooks. She said she believes all these folks should resign as a result of their actions, and notes that in the weeks since the Capitol violence they’ve had the opportunity to apologize for their actions, but instead they’ve doubled down:

“What that tells me is that when given another window of political opportunity for themselves, even if they know that it means that it will endanger their colleagues, they will do it again.”

“Accountability is not about revenge. It’s not about getting back at people. It’s not about any of that. It’s about creating safety. And we are not safe with people who hold positions of power, who are willing to endanger the lives of others if they think it will score them a political point.”

It might be a mere coincidence that those named-checked by AOC as causing unique harm leading up to and then after the Capitol insurrection are all lawyers. (Lauren Boebert is not named, nor a lawyer or even a high school graduate, while causing plenty of damage.) But it still seems like there is something deeply wrong with our legal education system if it can create so many willing to overlook facts and data for political expediency.

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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).

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These attorneys filed a complaint based on falsehoods, used their law license in an attempt to disenfranchise Michigan voters and undermine the faith of the public in the legitimacy of the recent presidential election, and lent credence to untruths that led to violence and unrest. In doing so, they violated their oath and the ethical rules to which they are bound, abused the court system, and compromised the administration of justice — an important foundation of our civil society and the very bulwark of our democratic institutions.

— Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in a press release announcing that they would be seeking the disbarment of Sidney Powell and the three Michigan attorneys who joined her in bringing lawsuits based on conspiracy theories alleging unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud in the state.

(Flip to the next page to read the complaint against Sidney Powell in full. Here’s a little teaser: “[A]n attorney who abuses the court system places in peril the very administration of justice that we cherish and depend on. Texas attorney Sidney Powell (16209700) is such an attorney. She did not just tiptoe near a precarious ethical line—she outright crossed it. … Ms. Powell is unfit to practice law and should be disbarred.”)

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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.

For folks that follow the ins and outs of the legal world (like most of Above the Law’s readers), Ginni Thomas’s politics are nothing new. Sure you might think brazenly political stands might be surprising for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice — after all, Clarence Thomas has to adjudicate all manner of controversies that intersect with his wife’s interests. For example, she led a grassroots movement in support of Trump’s travel ban, worked for right-wing think tanks, and has led efforts to defeat the Affordable Care Act and with no hard and fast Supreme Court recusal rules, well, that’s just an appearance of impropriety that we, as a nation, have let slide.

Anyway, Ginni’s been back in the spotlight, and that’s because she expressed her “LOVE” to the demonstrators on social media just a few hours before the violent insurrection on January 6th began. (Days later she amended the post to add “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].”) Now according to a report by the Washington Post, she wrote an apology on a private listserv for those that have clerked for her husband for imposing her “lifetime passions” upon them:

“I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” Thomas, who goes by Ginni, recently wrote to a private Thomas Clerk World email list of her husband’s staff over his three decades on the bench.

“My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.”

Pardon me while I unstick my eyeballs from the back of my head — they got stuck from rolling my eyes SO DAMN HARD. Ginni Thomas has long trafficked in far right ideology and she doesn’t apologize for supporting folks who tried to violently overthrow the government or to those that were killed, injured, or otherwise traumatized by the events of January 6th. She’s only sad now because the coup attempt may have revealed a crack in the right.

Ginni Thomas’s attempt at brokering peace came after the listserv devolved into a spat about the riot:

After one law professor posted an article from Christianity Today about how rioters usurped religious symbols in the storming of the Capitol, former clerk Wendy Stone Long called it “offensive drivel” and wondered why it was shared.

“Many of my friends and I had been praying our knees off that January 6 would see light and truth being shed on what we believe in our hearts was likely a stolen election,” and that eventually “President Trump would be determined to be the legitimate winner,” wrote Long, a two-time U.S. Senate candidate from New York.

“Many of us marched peacefully and yes, many also prayed and shared another important message, ‘Jesus saves,’ ” she added.

Then former Thomas clerk John Eastman, who is out of his job in legal academia after riling up the crowd at the January 6th rally proceeding the violence, got involved in the discussion:

[Eastman] wrote to the clerks group: “Rest assured that those of us involved in this are working diligently to ascertain the truth.”
That brought an angry response from Stephen F. Smith, a law professor at Notre Dame.

“If by ‘truth’ you mean what actually happened, as opposed to a false narrative, then I agree,” Smith wrote. “I hope (and trust) that you — and everyone on this list — agree that the search for truth doesn’t in any way justify insurrection, trying to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, attacking police officers, or making common cause with racists and anti-Semites bent on wanton violence and lawlessness.”

But of course, calling on truth and facts is considered wilding by some on the right.

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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).

Last weekend, Donald Trump replaced his entire impeachment legal team, bringing in attorneys David Schoen and Bruce Castor, Jr to represent him at next week’s hearing. According to the New York Times, the split was due in part to his prior counsel’s failure to make the former president’s case to the most important jury of all: “Mr. Trump prefers lawyers who are eager to appear on television to say that he never did anything wrong.”

Naturally Schoen raced to remedy the deficiency with an appearance last night on Sean Hannity’s program, where he derided the entire impeachment as both illegal and bad for the country.

“Besides the fact that this process is completely unconstitutional this is a very, very dangerous road to take with respect to the First Amendment, putting at risk any passionate political speaker, which is against everything we believe in this country,” Schoen said. This is not the position that he’s taken with regard to “passionate” pro-Palestinian speakers on American college campuses, but nevertheless.

“I think it’s also the most ill-advised legislative action that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he intoned somberly to the television host who opened the segment with a 12-year-old quote from Barack Obama and a suggestion that Democrats want to burn down American cities. “It is tearing the country apart at a time when we don’t need anything like that.”

“He condemned violence at all times. Read the words of his speech. It calls for peacefulness,” Schoen continued, omitting to mention the part where the former president said “We fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” before exhorting the crowd to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and “try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

Perhaps that’s the reason the former president’s lawyer doesn’t want footage of the riot aired at the impeachment hearing, complaining to Hannity that the rioters whom Trump summoned via multiple tweets, addressed in person, and whose venue was coordinated with members of his own campaign were in no wise inspired by the president’s rhetoric.

“This has nothing to do with President Trump and the country doesn’t need to just watch videos of riots and unrest,” Schoen said. “We need to heal now. We need to move forward.”

Then he finished up by accusing Democrats of being biased against Trump and threatening to call them as witnesses.

“Can you imagine any American citizen considering to be in a trial where the judge and jury has already announced publicly that the defendant must be convicted in this case?” Schoen said indignantly, ignoring last week’s vote where 45 Republicans passed judgment on the president’s claim that the entire process is unconstitutional. “It undercuts democracy. How could you possibly have a fair trial? Senator Schumer promised a fair and full trial. You can’t when you know that they are biased going in.”

And if there’s one thing Sean Hannity can’t stand, it’s political bias!

But David Schoen knows whose fault this is. That’s right, it’s Joe Biden’s job to order Chuck Schumer to shut this whole thing down.

“President Biden missed a great opportunity to be a statesman and demand that this thing be called off,” he huffed.

It’s gonna be a shitshow. And we’re off to a great start.

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

Thanks to the pandemic, Biglaw firms attempted to manage their expenses throughout 2020 by using the cost-cutting measures of salary cuts, furloughs, and layoffs. While staff members seemed to be the target of the vast majority of the outright cuts, law firm associate head counts began to curiously shrink through a series of stealth layoffs. Of course, the Biglaw firms in question wouldn’t admit to doing such a thing, but the numbers don’t lie.

According to a new Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Index report, Biglaw firms started casting associates aside by the third quarter of 2020. If you remember what happened back in 2009, when thousands of lawyers lost their jobs thanks to the recession, you may be starting to have some flashbacks. The report notes that associates were the “primary targets of reductions amongst lawyers,” but didn’t specify how the reductions were made (hmmm…). When all was said and done, Biglaw firms, on average, employed 1.6 percent fewer attorneys in 2020 than at the same point in 2019, and the job cuts came at “a pace reminiscent of 2009 and the Great Recession.” We weren’t kidding about the flashbacks.

The American Lawyer has some additional coverage on the report:

The head count drop in 2020 was a result of decreased demand in general as well as clients and firms funneling work to more senior-level lawyers, said Mike Abbott, vice president of market insights and thought leadership at Thomson Reuters, in an interview Monday.

Firms “were hearing directly from the clients, that in a period of uncertainty, ‘We really want to rely heavily on the counsel of individuals who know our business best, who have longstanding relationships,’” Abbott said. “And that’s frequently the partner level. So a lot of that work was staying with or actually going to more senior people at the law firms.”

So, what came of all of the layoffs — aside from misery amid economic uncertainty for all those affected by them? A 1.4 percent increase in productivity and increased billing rates for attorneys, that’s what. But wait, there’s more:

[A]ggressive cutting and “sky-high” worked rates in the final months of 2020 propelled law firm market performance to near-record levels. The Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Index—a composite of factors affecting law firm profitability such as demand, rates, productivity and expenses—hit 69 in Q4. It’s the highest score since 2006.

According to the Peer Monitor report, profit per equity partner growth in the fourth quarter of 2020 increased by about 15% in the Am Law 100 and about 13% for the Second Hundred, relative to the fourth quarter in 2019. The average for all firms was about 11.5% in the fourth quarter.

The profit increases are in line with Wells Fargo’s survey results Monday, which showed net income growth was up an average 9.9% in 2020 across 130 firms and 12.7% up for Am Law 50 firms.

At least the associates who lost their jobs did it for a good cause. Ugh.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

Associates Bore the Brunt of Attorney Cuts in 2020 [American Lawyer]

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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.

Axios dropped a bonus dispatch to its “Off the Rails” series to give readers another saucy insider view of the final days of the Donald Trump White House. This time, we’re treated to a detailed account of the December 18 meeting between Trump and his overlapping and competing lawyers engaged in a heated argument over his post-election strategy that raged from around 6 p.m. until after midnight.

The showdown, featuring Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and administration yeoman Emily Newman on one side and former Kasowitz partner Eric Herschmann, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, staff secretary Derek Lyons, and campaign lawyer Matt Morgan on the other, with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien all showing up before it’s over.

Just look at this:

At one point, with Flynn shouting, Byrne raised his hand to talk. He stood up and turned around to face Herschmann. “You’re a quitter,” he said. “You’ve been interfering with everything. You’ve been cutting us off.”

“Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?” Herschmann snapped back.

“Yeah, you’re Patrick Cipollone,” Byrne said.

“Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!”

To say the article describes the American government descending into a circus is an insult to the Ringling Brothers. That this story came out on the same day that we learned that Hal Holbrook died makes one of his most iconic dramatic quotes all the more poignant:

“The truth is, these are not very bright guys.” Indeed.

Whenever Axios puts out a salacious piece like this, the world marvels at the insanity and I try and work out exactly who delivered the narrative. Powell provided a comment saying that she wouldn’t speak to anything that happened in the meeting, believing that it was “confidential under executive privilege and under rules of the legal profession,” despite explicitly not being Trump’s attorney. Trumpworld really struggles with privilege, don’t they? Not that her silence is surprising since she and her fellow travelers come across as fonts of wild conspiracy theories blasting everyone from Trump judges to the FBI as complicit in a communist plot to take over the United States requiring Trump to invoke a national emergency.

One that Trump almost swallowed but for the valiant efforts of a handful of his more serious lawyers.

So unless the Oval Office is wildly insecure, the source or sources for this story must be one of the participants who took part in the hours-long meeting that spanned both wings of the White House.

“How the hell did Sidney get in the building?” White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann grumbled from the outer Oval Office as Sidney Powell and her entourage strutted by to visit the president….

As Powell and the others entered the Oval Office that evening, Herschmann — a wealthy business executive and former partner at Kasowitz Benson & Torres who’d been pulled out of quasi-retirement to advise Trump — quietly slipped in behind them.

Gosh, I wonder who provided that account! Certainly Herschmann could have an unnamed leaky lackey standing at his elbow for every step of the affair, but it sure reads like the heroic account is coming directly from the former Biglaw attorney. Not that this renders the account unreliable. Indeed, it could be entirely accurate in all major respects. But when the story highlights Herschmann telling a retired three-star general, “Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me? If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down,” one has to smirk that this particular detail earned a featured role in a write-up of a several-hour meeting.

Cipollone manages to come across as a principled actor too:

Cipollone, standing his ground amidst this mishmash of conspiracies, said they were totally wrong. He aggressively defended the DOJ and the FBI, saying they had looked into every major claim of fraud that had been reported.

“Standing his ground.” Regular Sir Thomas More over here. Never mind that Cipollone was placed in the meeting where Trump asked John Bolton to dig up dirt on Democrats from Ukrainian officials. The rehabilitation project is underway and it begins with “at least he didn’t go along with the martial law thing!”

Now it was Meadows’ turn, blasting Flynn for trashing him and accusing him of being a quitter. “Don’t you dare challenge me about whether I’m being supportive of the president and working hard,” Meadows shouted, reminding Flynn that he’d defended him during his legal troubles.

This puts a new light on the video where Junior grabs Meadows — with Herschmann in the background — and praises him specifically as a “fighter.” I guess that became a sore point over the final days.

Axios isn’t naming its sources and who knows how many cooks were involved in this story. But this is a glowing tribute to the patriotism of Herschmann, Cipollone, and the rest of their buddies. It’s not just that they didn’t go along with the plan, but they repeatedly have all the snappy comebacks and tough talk throughout the piece. The details matter when reverse engineering a story. Maybe their allies are just eager to build them up, but it sure looks like post-administration damage control from lawyers hoping to avoid being shunned by the balance of polite society.

Now it’s up to polite society to decide if this literal 11th hour hagiography is enough.

Bonus episode: Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency [Axios]

Earlier: Oh Look, It’s A Former Biglaw Partner Hanging Out With Trump Before The Capitol Riot!

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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.

New York’s annual legal technology showcase kicked off this morning, marking the beginning of the year’s conference circuit for those of us charged with tracking the advancement of all the tools that lawyers use every day and then promptly forget about while they pose as bare-knuckle luddites to sound hard. As if dictating timesheets makes you Clarence Darrow or something. Lawyer culture is weird.

Not that progress in legal technology starts and stops on a calendar. Nothing magical happens in this niche corner of tech when the ball drops on Times Square. The business of lawyering doesn’t stop, so the business of arming lawyers with useful tools doesn’t either.

There’s always something about the show’s February arrival that sets the tone for the year ahead. Announcements are timed to the show, a new fiscal year invites new purchasing opportunities for eager IT departments, and the tech community camp followers from the journalists and critics to the public relations professionals all shake off the holiday break and throw themselves into this world again by bracing the miserable cold of Midtown Manhattan and shuffling to a nearby Starbucks — “not that Starbucks, the other Starbucks, sorry if that wasn’t clear” — to catch up with vendors to hear what they have in store for their New York clientele.

But this year there won’t be any congregating in the Hilton lobby, which is welcome news as the city digs itself out of one of the top 10 snowfalls in its history. Not that attending remotely helped much — dealing with some 20 inches of newly fallen snow still got me logged in a few minutes late for the show’s opening keynote. Traditions are important.

By the way, why exactly is this show starting at 9 a.m.? The legal technology sector may not be as Silicon Valley-centric as the rest of the tech world, but it still seems harsh to kick off at 6 Pacific when everyone’s virtual. It’s one thing when everyone’s flown in a day or two before to acclimate, but when joining from home, we can let the schedule breathe a bit.

In any event, it’s LegaltechNY time! Which was officially rebranded as Legalweek a few years ago. Which is now ominously styled as “Legalweek(year)” as its planners at ALM unchain the event burst beyond the confines of its traditional three days in February with extra virtual sessions in March, April, May, and July. Is the world ready for this much legal tech action?! More to the point, in a world where we already have other shows scheduled throughout the year, do we need this much Legalweekery?

No matter what you — or common sense — may think, that’s exactly what you’re getting, so buck up buttercup and prepare for webinars until the mere mention of client relations management sets you off like the Queen of Diamonds, bucko!

Today’s festivities were launched by the annual State of the Industry presentation from ALM Intelligence. James Willer, Lead Legal Analyst for ALM Intelligence, and Heather Nevitt, Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Counsel, recapped a tumultuous year that ended with the industry… pretty much back on track. It wasn’t as though we learned anything groundbreaking here — unlike most years, the subject has garnered non-stop attention over the past year — but it was a surreal contrast to consider how far things have come since last year’s presentation, and how much of that journey was fueled by the tech products on display.

Opening keynote speaker Stacey Abrams discussed her transition from tax lawyer to the rallying point for the ongoing struggle to secure voting rights. The Yale Law grad may not seem like an obvious legal tech speaker, but in between fielding questions about her recent work, she managed to sum up the crux of the legal technology mission, explaining that, as a tax lawyer, she was encouraged to be “innovative and creative” about how to apply the law to help clients. “But we leave that creativity at the water’s edge when it comes to solving pedestrian problems.”

There’s always a better way to deliver legal services and just because lawyers don’t want to think about streamlining billing process doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there as an open issue dragging down your practice. You don’t have to understand how legal technology works to get in on the fun in this sector, just open your mind to the idea that the legal tech nerds are exercising their creativity to solve your pedestrian problems.

So stop by the virtual show and catch a panel discussion! You only have until, I guess, July before they’re all gone.

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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.

As the old saying about law school goes, “1L, they scare you to death; 2L, they work you to death; 3L, they bore you to death.” One third-year law student is going to be anything but bored this year because she recently joined the White House staff as assistant press secretary to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Meet Rachel Palermo, a second semester 3L at Notre Dame Law. She’s been working in political communications since the 2016 election, when she joined the Democratic National Committee’s press team. As a 2L, she externed for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, and this fall, she became a member of the Biden-Harris Transition’s communications team. Now, she’s working just as hard to complete her law school studies as she is for the American people.

Here’s what she had to say just before the inauguration about how her legal skills will help her in her new job at the White House:

Notre Dame Law School has prepared me for my new role because there is an important intersection between law and communications. In both fields, I’ve learned how to write persuasively and communicate compelling messages. Law school has refined my research, writing, and advocacy skills, which will allow me to bring a unique perspective to the work of the vice president-elect.

It may seem like it would be difficult to manage a full-time law school schedule with a full-time work load as a staff member for the U.S. Vice President, but Professor Christine Venter, the director of Notre Dame Law’s Legal Writing Program, thinks her student will be able to handle all of it with ease.

Rachel embodies the best of Notre Dame Law. Her commitment to public service, her intelligence, her skills in both written and oral communication, her work ethic, and her warm collegiality will make her an asset to the Biden-Harris Administration. While completing the last semester of law school and working full time in a demanding position might seem daunting to some, I have the utmost confidence that Rachel will not only succeed but do so brilliantly.

Congratulations to Rachel Palermo on landing such an amazing job before graduation. Best of luck! We’re sure she’ll do a fantastic job.

3L Rachel Palermo to work for Vice President Kamala Harris [Notre Dame Law]

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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.