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It is Championship Sunday in the NFL, the penultimate set of games in a pandemic-driven season that many thought would never make it this far. I write this before either of the games will have kicked off, so this will not be a column about what the Super Bowl matchup looks like. Instead, I wanted to focus on what makes this weekend’s matchups so compelling — the presence of four star quarterbacks leading their teams, from the biggest winner of all time in Tom Brady, to all-time great and MVP favorite Aaron Rodgers, to defending Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes, to the uber-talented and much-improved Josh Allen. Anyone who watches football knows that quarterback is by far the most important position in the game, if not the most difficult position to master in all of sports. And over the course of Sunday, we will be treated to a set of displays featuring the four leading current practitioners of the craft.

The star quarterbacks on display in the championship games this weekend are all at different stages of their careers, but have already demonstrated that they have what it takes to deliver winning results. Each can teach us in their own way something about what achieving and maintaining success requires in any professional endeavor, whether that be football or high-stakes IP litigation.

We can start with Tom Brady, acknowledged by many as the greatest quarterback of all time. Over the past two decades, he has performed at the highest level possible, winning six Super Bowls and playing in twice as many conference championship games as the next closest quarterback, 49ers legend Joe Montana. Given his record of sustained excellence, it can be hard to remember that he was an unheralded recruit to the professional ranks coming out of college, drafted in the sixth round after a nondescript collegiate career at the University of Michigan. Now, he has taken on the challenge of trying to replicate his past success with a new team, in the football equivalent of a leading trial lawyer leaving behind the firm where they had spent decades building their practice to effectively start over with a new firm in the waning years of their career. At a minimum, from Brady we can remind ourselves of the power of self-motivation, the importance of maintaining one’s professional focus at all times, as well as the benefit of taking on late career chances in the pursuit of a successful career capstone.

Next, we have Aaron Rodgers, a longtime star who has spent his entire career with one of the league’s most-storied franchises. While he also has a Super Bowl win and is tied with Brady as a three-time league MVP, Rodgers has had to overcome his fair share of adversity to earn his accolades. As a young quarterback, he faced the challenge of replacing a legendary predecessor — and even this past year (another MVP campaign) he had to deal with the Packers spending a first-round pick on a quarterback who may prove to be his eventual replacement. At the same time, Rodgers is a supreme example of someone with otherworldly talent taking his rightful place at the pinnacle of his profession. His legal equivalent is the highly credentialed understudy who develops into a leading trial lawyer in their own right, carrying forward the legacy and fortunes of their firm. From his example, we should remember the importance of trusting in our abilities and carrying the mantle of leadership for our firms.

Third, we have Patrick Mahomes, the son of a professional baseball player who is off to the greatest start of any quarterback in history. Possessed of supreme physical talent married to preternatural calm and confidence, Mahomes has quickly become synonymous with magnificence. He has already achieved so much, like the young trial lawyer who bursts on the scene with spectacular early victories. The only question going forward is just how great will his career accomplishments be. Since football, like IP litigation, is a team game, a big determinant of the answer will depend on the quality of his surrounding cast and the weapons he is provided. Just like his team has a responsibility to put him in a position for sustained success, so does a firm have a responsibility to its young talent to make sure they have the opportunity and support necessary to build on a hot start.

Finally, we have Josh Allen, the young star of the resurgent Bills. Considered a project, albeit an uber-talented one, coming out of the unheralded Wyoming football program, Allen’s physical abilities have never been in doubt. Blessed with an arm so strong it could double as a medieval catapult, coupled with running ability, the only knock on Allen’s prospects was his inaccuracy. With hard work and coaching, however, Allen has turned into a complete quarterback, reminding us that while talent can take someone so far, it is their ability to overcome their shortcomings that often determines their career ceiling.

In my view, the IP litigation equivalent of a star quarterback is the lead trial lawyer — upon whose shoulders the success or failure of the client’s investment in taking a dispute all the way to trial rides, along with the responsibility for managing the team of fellow lawyers and support staff necessary to preparing an IP case for trial. As with quarterbacks, the eyes of all are directed to the lead trial lawyers in IP disputes. And like quarterbacks, lead trial lawyers are judged primarily on whether they have led their team (and by extension their client) to victory. Sure, other lawyers and some forgiving clients may appreciate a skillful performance by a trial lawyer in a losing effort. But the goal is always victory, with lead trial lawyers typically very well-compensated and provided with any and all resources necessary to deliver winning results. Whether you are already a lead trial lawyer or aspire to become one, there is something of value that can be learned from each of the quarterbacks highlighted above.

In sum, we have four quarterbacks, four examples of how talent, discipline, professional focus, and hard work are essential ingredients for success. Whether in football or IP practice, taking lessons from champions is always a worthwhile exercise.

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.

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.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team as a sophomore.  Lucille Ball was told by her drama school instructors to try something other than acting. And because he didn’t speak much, Albert Einstein was not thought to be very smart. What each of these individuals had in common was that they persisted, refusing to give up on what they wanted to do.

It’s truly inspirational to hear about the underdog that achieves against all odds — and in addition to making great stories, there are lessons that can be learned from them as well. Of course, not every project has a happy ending, and not every story of persistence works out in the end. Businesses encounter failures all the time, and law firms are not exempt.

So how should legal professionals think about the pursuit of innovation, and when does it make sense to try again (and again) to achieve positive results?

Here are four tips to help organizations decide when to persist, particularly after a failed attempt.

Listen

The first step in understanding is to listen. What innovator hasn’t heard the words uttered, “Yeah, we already tried that. It didn’t work.” As someone working to drive a new project forward, pull that thread and try to understand what worked and what didn’t work. More importantly, organizations with strong cultures will tend to conduct post-mortems on projects and provide forums for open and honest feedback. Here, a strong dose of intellectual curiosity helps. Don’t be satisfied with the first answer. Be willing to dig deeper, to ask “why” and search for the root cause. For example, a perceived lack of funding to build out the project correctly could actually be the result of a lack of communication to management about the short cuts being taken. For a project that is really important to management, a full feedback loop might prevent decisions from being made that undermine the success of a project.

Assess What Has Changed

The world we live in is dynamic. After 2020, nobody needs to be convinced of that! Perhaps a dynamic that made success elusive in the past has changed.  Has the market shifted? Have your customers’ needs evolved? Is there a new technology that can be applied to a particular problem?

Rather than start over, can you build upon what was done in the past? Most people who were around when Microsoft Windows was getting traction may recall that the version that was successful wasn’t Windows 1.0 or even Windows 2.0. It was Windows 3.1. Don’t be afraid to try a second or even a third time. Just be sure that you are changing a variable so you can reasonably expect to achieve a different outcome.

Create A Culture Of Innovation

Participants in the Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer survey from 2020 identified lack of management support as one of the key gaps in becoming future ready. Innovators (and senior management if you are reading this), need to purposefully create a culture of innovation. Here are some questions to identify areas where this can be meaningfully addressed:

• Is the default decision for your organization to say “no” to projects or “yes”? Encouraging and rewarding thoughtful ideas with permission to conduct research or experiments can help your organization develop more intellectual curiosity and develop a can-do culture where “yes” is the default instead of “no,” and where it is OK to try and try again.
• Is it safe to try and then fail? Or is failure not tolerated? Encouraging teams to break projects down into small and digestible chunks can help project teams “fail” in a small part of a project, which should be OK, without causing an entire project to fail.  It can also help determine if a project needs to pivot. Mapping out key assumptions and developing ways to test those assumptions can help create a culture of innovation. Any subproject that can be positioned as experimentation can remove the stigma of failure too. Experiments never fail. But they may provide results that we didn’t desire.
• Does your organization encourage open and honest feedback? What people say isn’t always what they are thinking. Does a staff member or associate have permission to provide essential feedback that can be acted upon by managing partners? Providing forums for safe (and perhaps anonymous) communication can help management better understand the risks and issues that are perhaps understood but not always communicated to decision makers.

By considering ways to be thoughtfully persistent when approaching innovation, legal professionals can find new ways to drive productivity and efficiency. At a time when the industry is continuing to transform so rapidly, it’s a worthwhile exercise to seek out opportunities for growth and change.

Ken Crutchfield is Vice President and General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Ken has more than three decades of experience as a leader in information and software solutions across industries. He can be reached at ken.crutchfield@wolterskluwer.com.

With the presidency, Senate and House all under the control of the Democrats, the Affordable Care Act is in the safest position it’s been in about a decade. The healthcare law is not likely to see any major challenge in the coming four years — rather, it will be fortified.

“I think we are going to see a lot of actions to restore the ACA to how it looked under the Obama administration, and possibly even go farther,” said Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation and director for the Program on the ACA, in a phone interview. The Program on the ACA tracks and analyzes key aspects of the healthcare law.

She believes that the Biden administration will focus on tweaking the ACA and such changes would fall into the following four buckets:

1. Addressing deductibles
Democrats may peg subsidies to gold plans rather than to silver plans. Essentially that would make it easier for people to afford a lower deductible plan, Cox said. These plans are similar to employer-based coverage, as opposed to the high-deductible, catastrophic coverage some people are currently getting on the exchanges. 

2. Increasing subsidies for those who are eligible
Another likely step Democrats will take is increasing subsidies available for those who are eligible — those who make between one and four times the poverty level, Cox said. For example, someone who is making three to four times the poverty level would have to pay 10% of their income on a silver plan under the current law. Changes could include lowering the premium payments so those individuals would only have to pay 8% of their income but on a gold plan, which provides more benefits.

3. Widening access to people who aren’t eligible for subsidies
 There are people at both ends of the income spectrum who are not eligible for subsidies. There are the people who live below the poverty line and also live in states that didn’t expand Medicaid, and there are the people who live at above 400% of the poverty level, Cox said.

To help the former group, Biden’s administration may expand the amount of subsidies available on the exchange.

For the latter group, which has a higher income level, the administration may consider raising the subsidy eligibility cutoff, as the group is comprised of upper middle-income people who currently don’t get any assistance under the ACA.

“This is the group of people that has gotten a lot of attention when it comes to criticizing the ACA because these are people who may be small business owners or self-employed people who just don’t have any affordable option under the ACA,” Cox said. “They would become newly eligible for subsidies.”

4. Expanding access to people who have unaffordable employer coverage
The Biden administration will be looking to fix the so-called “family glitch,” Cox said. This glitch affects people who under the law technically have an option for coverage, but it’s through their spouse’s employer. This option may not end up being very affordable if getting on to their spouse’s health plan is a costly endeavor. 

One step the Biden administration may take to fix the glitch is to remove the firewall between employer coverage and the exchange. Essentially, this would allow people who have employer coverage to switch to coverage via the exchange if they are getting a better deal, Cox said.

The administration could also consider changing the way affordability is calculated to fix the glitch.

Beyond the ACA, the Biden administration might look into expanding the Medicare eligibility age or exploring a public option. But these ideas do not have enough buy-in among centrist Democrats, and so it is unlikely there will be any actual action on either one, Cox said.

Photo: zimmytws, Getty Images

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 was quite the troublesome year for Biglaw firms. With salary cuts, layoffs, and furloughs galore, some firms stumbled while others sauntered into their next deal, and some firms suffered while others soared into success. Through their highs and lows, these firms attempted to maintain their brands — the image they want clients to see when making hiring decisions and their overall reputations in the marketplace.

But which Biglaw firm has the best brand in the world? Today, Acritas (part of Thomson Reuters) published its 2021 Global Elite Law Firm Brand Index, so you’re about to find out.

Acritas ranks Biglaw firms based on feedback from their most important clients, general counsel at companies across the globe with revenue of at least $1 billion. Here’s how the survey was conducted:

The Acritas Global Elite Law Firm Brand Index is determined through four open-ended questions from the full Sharplegal survey to find out from senior legal buyers:

– The first law firms to come to mind (Awareness)
– The firms they feel most favorable towards (Favorability)
– The firms most considered for multi-jurisdictional deals across three or more countries (Consideration)
– The firms most considered for multi-jurisdictional litigation across three or more countries (Consideration).

Because 2020 was such a complicated year, corporate clients tended to stand by Biglaw firms they’ve known and worked with for years. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement.

[Elizabeth Duffy, senior director, Global Client Services at Thomson Reuters,] noted that the survey results emphasize firms must continue to adapt to survive and grow. In particular, firms should embrace flexibility for remote working, more inclusive working practices and an improved work-life balance to strengthen their brand as well as to demonstrate how they value and respect their lawyers.

‘Firms have always known their lawyers represent the firm’s brand, but this last year has put a spotlight on how everyone within a firm is a brand ambassador,’ added Duffy. ‘When lawyers feel support from their leadership and are proud to work at the firm, clients recognize that, and it often leads to stronger relationships, both within the firm and with clients.’

So, which firm is tops when it comes to its global brand? That would be Baker McKenzie, which has kept its lock in the #1 spot for the eleventh year in a row. Here’s the full Top 10 (with three ties):

1. Baker McKenzie (no change)
2. DLA Piper (no change)
3. Dentons (+8)
4. Linklaters (+4)
5. Clifford Chance (-2)
5. Hogan Lovells (no change)
7. Allen & Overy (-2)
7. Norton Rose Fulbright (no change)
9. Freshfields (-1)
9. Jones Day (-5)

Would you look at that! Jones Day, the only U.S.-based firm in the Top 10, lost face on a global scale, presumably due to its association with Donald Trump. This can only spell trouble for the firm when the U.S. rankings are published.

Click here to access the complete ranking of the Top 20.

Once again, this ranking speaks volumes as to which Biglaw firms are on top when it comes to client loyalty, but there are just a few U.S.-based firms among the Acritas Global Elite (with Jones Day almost sinking out of the Top 10 entirely). What does this say about our lawyers? Our Biglaw firms might be doing something right, but surely there’s a way to do things differently to propel additional firms to success.

Baker McKenzie, DLA Piper, and Dentons top the 2021 Acritas Global Elite Law Firm Brand Index [Thomson Reuters]

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.

No attorney dreams of chasing down non-paying clients. Law schools do not offer classes in digital marketing. New graduates are not focused on SEO, and PCI compliance rarely tops the list of concerns for new lawyers.

But when it comes to your success, areas like these can be as critical as your research and advocacy skills.

The good news: Radical changes are not necessary to perform these functions efficiently. In many instances, minor tweaks will increase your cash flow, bring in a steady stream of new clients, and make your firm more secure.

Fill out the form to download tips to shore up the key pillars of running and growing a successful practice: billing, marketing, and compliance.

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The move to sideline ordinary Zimbabweans who cannot access medical care in
light of the economic rot in the country amounts to a silent genocide.

On January 25, 2021, the Head of Monitoring and Evaluation in the Ministry of
Health and Child Care, Robert Mudyiradima announced that government was
failing to procure enough Covid-19 vaccines adding that of the 3 Million doses set
to be acquired under the COVAX scheme, the government would prioritize
frontline health care workers, ministers, Members of Parliament, the security
sector and senior government officials.

While we applaud the move to prioritize vaccination for frontline health workers
(who have largely been exposed to the pandemic due to lack of protective
equipment at public hospitals) we bemoan the fact that the government has deliberately left vulnerable groups out of the vaccination programme.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has so far claimed more than 1 000 lives, has
largely affected ordinary Zimbabweans; most of whom are living far below the
Poverty Datum Line and cannot afford medical care.

It is a known fact that over the years, Zimbabwe’s health sector has been in the
intensive care unit and ordinary Zimbabweans have had to bear the brunt of a
failed health care system.

The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the rot within the health sector and
it is highly irresponsible for the government to prioritize political elites while
sidelining vulnerable citizens.

Over the years, we have witnessed cases of patients dying at public hospitals
while top government officials, who are largely responsible for the rot in the
health sector were seeking medical treatment abroad.

For the government to prioritize the same people behind this rot is just but a
confirmation of the fact that the welfare of ordinary citizens is secondary to our
current crop of ‘leaders’.

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition would like to remind the government of its
obligation to provide health care services to citizens as set out under Section 76
of the Zimbabwean constitution.

Moreover, Section 82 of the constitution states that citizens over the age of 70
have the right to receive health care and medical assistance from the state while
Section 83 implores the state to provide medical care to persons with disabilities
and it is a serious abrogation of duty for the government to sideline these
vulnerable populations in the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

We further implore the government to prioritize vaccination for citizens with
terminal illnesses as well as those living with health conditions that make them
more vulnerable to Covid-19.

The Covid-19 vaccine should never be a preserve for the elite and we implore the
government to ensure that ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to bear the
brunt of a failing economy have access to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Post published in: Featured

Authorities in the impoverished southern African nation are scrambling to contain the accelerating spread of the coronavirus. Infections have doubled in just the past few weeks and three government ministers have died in the last 10 days.

Zimbabwe doctors’ groups say that hospitals are quickly filling up with COVID-19 patients and cite an increase in the number of infected people dying at home, unable to afford the steep fees charged by hospitals.

Authorities are now trying to establish whether a more infectious South African variant of the virus is circulating in Zimbabwe, fearing it may have entered when thousands of citizens living in South Africa returned home for the December holiday.

Portia Manangazira, a director of epidemiology and disease control in the Health Ministry, told a parliamentary committee that China and Russia were among those that had approached Zimbabwe to offer supplies of their COVID-19 vaccines.

“They have near pre-qualified vaccines and those are going to be for sale…they might offer a small donation,” Manangazira said without elaborating.

Zimbabwe has recorded a total 31,320 coronavirus cases and 1,005 deaths – more than half reported since the beginning of this year, data released late on Sunday showed.

The recovery rate has fallen to 71% from 82% on Jan. 1.

Acting Health Secretary Robert Mudyirandima said President Emmerson Mnangagwa would on Tuesday meet business leaders who have offered to finance vaccines to help out the cash-strapped government.

Zimbabwe is also in contact with the World Health Organization’s COVAX scheme set up to deliver shots to poor and lower-income countries. Harare hopes to use COVAX to inoculate about three million Zimbabweans – or 20% of the population.

The COVAX scheme is due to roll out next month, amid growing criticism of vaccine inequity from both the WHO and others as wealthy countries inoculate millions of people using shots procured through bilateral deals.

Post published in: Featured