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Frodo: What news of the outside world? Tell me everything.

Gandalf: Everything? Far too eager and curious for a hobbit, most unnatural. Well what can I tell you? Life in the wide world goes on much as it has this past age, full of its own armed insurrections and deranged election challenges. Scarcely aware of the existence of law… for which I am very thankful.

How has the age of 2021 gone for Paul Davis? Let’s recap:

Jan. 1, 2021: Beginning a new year as Assistant General Counsel at Goosehead Insurance.
Jan. 6, 2021: Participates in storming of United States Capitol.
Jan. 7, 2021: Former Assistant General Counsel at Goosehead Insurance.
Jan. 18, 2021: Files insane election challenge, Latinos for Trump et al. v. Pete Sessions et al. claiming that every member of the 117th Congress and Joe Biden barred from public office based on dubious election fraud claims (even the roughly 2/3rds of the Senate not elected this cycle? I guess?). And Mark Zuckerberg… something something.

So it’s been an eventful year so far.

And now he’s filed an amended TRO motion in the Western District of Texas and he decided to open it by establishing the high level of credibility the case is bringing to the court:

2. “Gondor has no King,” to invoke a very appropriate quote from the J.R.R. Tolkien epic classic, “Lord of the Rings.”

You know who else doesn’t have a king? The United States. In fact, he addresses that later on citing the Declaration of Independence and noting, “Rather ironically, one could now easily insert ‘United States federal government’ in place of ‘King of Great Britain,’ which has ceased being accountable to its voting citizens.” No, you can’t. Maybe in D.C. where they are subject to taxation without representation.

But as for this Gondor thing, hear him out!

During the course of the epic trilogy, the rightful King of Gondor had abandoned the throne. Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the King, known as “Aragorn,” occurred at the end of the story. This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington, D.C., a group of individuals calling themselves the President, Vice President, and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American People. Accordingly, as set forth in the Proposed Temporary Restraining Order, as a remedy the Court should appoint a group of special masters (the “Stewards”) to provide a check [sic] the power of the illegitimate President until this Constitutional Crisis can be resolved through a peaceful legal process of a Preliminary Injunction Hearing and a jury trial on the merits.

Um… excuse me. Aragorn hadn’t abandoned the throne. The throne of Gondor was vacant from the death of King Eärnur, who passed without an heir in 2050 of the Third Age when Mardil Voronwë “the Steadfast” took on the role of Steward beginning a line of royal stewardship that lasted almost 1,000 years until the return of King Elessar Telcontar (whom this peasant deigns to call “Aragorn”) in 3019. Duh.

But look, he’s got concerns:

The risk of the United State government descending into such an oppressive police state is tangible and imminent given the rampant cancel culture that has emerged to terminate and intimidate anyone who supported the previous administration combined with the powers granted to government agencies to spy on U.S. Citizens is a perfect storm for such a scenario. Internet searches regarding cancel culture will bring up headlines describing tangible fear from those on the political right of being eventually rounded up into Soviet-style gulags or “reeducation camps.”

That’s just how Stalin started, by telling Trotsky that his writing was busted and then the entire Politburo unfriending him on the Party messageboards (SocialismWithAHumanFacebook). It truly is a hop and skip from refusing to book someone on TV to repeatedly stabbing them in the skull with an ice pick.

So there are a lot of problems with this suit, but before tossing it aside, let’s consider that there is an expert witness lined up:

Furthermore, as set forth in the expert report of J.S. Vanderbol III entitled “Global Risk Analysis: Special Report”….

I stopped reading right there to check up on this J.S. Vanderbol III. The very first link is to the Texas Courts official list of “Vexatious Litigants.” So that’s how the expert report is going.

The only way Gondorian politics reads even close to analogous is to say that we just had a mad ruler with incredibly creepy relationships to his kids, sitting in an office he didn’t earn based on anachronistic rules and after refusing to make any effort to confront the mounting viral threat of orcs and Uruk-hai spreading over the land at an exponential rate he went out in a blaze of infamy paving the way for someone to come in and clean up the mess.

A day may come when this specious legal challenge fails, when the court forsakes the president who appointed it and breaks all bonds of Federalist Societyship, but it is not this day!

But it will almost definitely be very soon.

Check out the filing below (sometimes you have to hit refresh on your browser for it to show up).

Earlier: After Being Fired Over Capitol Insurrection, Lawyer Finds Legal Work Suing… Pretty Much Every Politician And Mark Zuckerberg
Associate General Counsel Was Part Of Yesterday’s Attempted Coup. He’s No Longer Associate General Counsel.

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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.

So much for the dream of Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani working their magic in the well of the Senate. Trump campaign apparatchik Jason Miller confirmed the news yesterday that the former president has hired South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers to represent him in the upcoming impeachment trial on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s recommendation.

After Rudy Giuliani came to the belated realization that he’s likely to be a witness and is thus unable to appear as counsel, there were reports that the impeachment might be delayed because Trump couldn’t find a lawyer willing to work for him.

But with the House signaling it plans to transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday, Bowers’ hiring averts the need to go with one of the motley crew that represented the president in his disastrous election suits.

“Well, I think he’s going to have a good [legal team],” Graham told reporters. “Butch Bowers, I think, will be the sort of anchor tenant. But I’ve known Butch for a long time, solid guy. And I think over time, they’ll put the team together.”

And indeed Bowers does look to be a solid lawyer, with wide experience representing wayward politicians. He defended former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on ethics charges when she was a state legislator and argued for the state’s current Governor Henry McMaster when he faced allegations of accepting excessive contributions. He even has impeachment experience as lawyer for former Governor Mark Sanford after he took his infamous walk on the Appalachian trail.

That’s a big step up from the Elite Strike Force Super Friends JD Esquire Task Force!

It’s unclear whether Bowers will go with the “perfect, perfect incitement” defense or take up the current Republican Senate position that impeachment after the president leaves office is illegal. If so, he can bring back law professor Jonathan Turley for a reprise of his last impeachment performance. Indeed, Turley is already auditioning for the part with a Fox editorial suggesting that the former president should challenge the impeachment in court on grounds that he is now beyond congress’s jurisdiction.

“On its face, the planned impeachment trial is at odds with the language of the Constitution, which expressly states that removal of a president is the primary purpose of such a trial,” he wrote. “At the time, Trump will be neither a president nor in office. He will be a citizen and would be best served legally to forgo the trial entirely as extraconstitutional and invalid.”

To the surprise of exactly no one, this is odds with Turley’s own position in a 1999 Duke Law Review article, as noted by University of Texas Law Professor Steve Vladeck.

In fact, Turley completed the triple axel of flip flops with an editorial in The Hill condemning Democrats for seeking to “gut not only the impeachment standard but also free speech” by impeaching a president for telling a mob of crazed insurrectionists to march on the Capitol and “fight.” Back in 1998, Turley was all for Congress impeaching President Clinton for conduct which was unethical but not illegal. In 2021, they really should “look[] to the criminal code to weigh impeachment offenses.”

So, will Bowers bring back Turley for another round? Will he treat Giuliani as a friendly or hostile witness? And will we ever escape from 2020?

Hooboy, can’t hardly wait.

Columbia lawyer to represent Trump at impeachment trial: ‘It’ll be interesting to watch’ [Post and Courier]
Jonathan Turley: Trump impeachment trial – why his best defense may be no defense [Fox]

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

(Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka Joe Exotic the Tiger King, commenting on former President Donald Trump’s stream of pardons en masse before he left office. Exotic and his lawyer alike thought he would surely be pardoned — he even had a stretch limo awaiting him — but it was not meant to be.)

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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.

I will surely botch my Newtonian metaphors throughout this piece, but I am sufficiently proficient in Wikipedia to know that Newton famously promulgated three laws of motion in his Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. First, he posited that objects that are as rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force — this is called inertia. Second, the acceleration of an object is proportional to its net force and inversely proportional to its mass — this is force and acceleration. Third, for every action there exists an equal and opposite reaction — I don’t think this has a special name, but it’s pretty famous.

Since I both somewhat understand it and have an easy metaphor building on it, I shall write about the first one: Momentum matters. Whatever you are doing right now, all else being equal, you will probably keep doing it. Whether it is good or bad, productive or wasteful, smart or stupid, you’ll probably keep doing whatever you’re doing at any point in time. This goes both ways: If you’re doing good, you’ll probably find it easier to keep doing good; if you’re doing bad, you will be more tempted to keep doing bad. Even if you’re not a physics expert, you can make use of this by keeping an eye on what you’re doing right now and through thoughtful planning.

First, keep a careful eye on what you’re doing — inertia means that even small deviations in what you’re doing now make a difference. And while planning is important, as the philosopher Mike Tyson taught up, no plan survives being punched in the face. Thus, even in a carefully planned scenario, micro-adjustments may be needed to maintain an optimal course. And because of Newton’s First Law, that optimal course obtains crucial future importance. Not only does it matter when you are being productive in the present, but it will affect your work later today, tomorrow, and, in a small and indirect way, the work you do in the weeks and months to come.

Second, you should take especially thoughtful care of your planning. Since what you plan out and execute will have lasting repercussions, you should plan accordingly and consider the Mike Tyson-plan-punching factor. Whatever you plan will have far-reaching effects — both in carrying out the plan itself and the inertial effects of those actions. Additionally, the act of planning will cause its own momentum, for good or ill. Thus, take special care, not just in what you plan but that you do so thoughtfully.

So, if you’re still looking for a New Year’s resolution, try this one. Take special care, at least for a few weeks, of the effects of the momentum of your actions and planning. You may like the results.

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Matthew W. Schmidt has represented and counseled clients at all stages of litigation and in numerous matters including insider trading, fiduciary duty, antitrust law, and civil RICO. He is of counsel at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at matthew.w.schmidt@balestrierefariello.com.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband, Marty Ginsburg, modeled a true partnership in pursuit of gender equity. Their commitment to equal justice pervaded their personal and professional lives and will have a lasting impact on the legal profession and our society. To honor their legacy, the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas School of Law is proud to announce the Ginsburg Initiative, which will advance gender-neutral initiatives that support systemic change, such as best practices surrounding work assignments, performance expectations, parental leave, and transparency in career development.

On Tuesday, February 2, to mark the launch of the Ginsburg Initiative, the Center will host a virtual panel discussion on the life and legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which Lateral Link is proud to sponsor. The panel discussion will be moderated by Nina Totenberg — NPR’s celebrated legal affairs correspondent, as well as a longtime friend of Justice Ginsburg — and will feature four former RBG clerks:

The event is free and open to the public, and it has been approved for 1.25 hours of CLE credit (in Texas and reciprocal jurisdictions). Please register here for what will surely be a fascinating discussion about one of the most important and groundbreaking figures in American history.

Meanwhile, here at Lateral Link we have been working on the development of a new podcast focused on the Biglaw lateral market, entitled “Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers.” Each week, my colleague Zach Sandberg and I will dissect some of the most significant recent lateral partner moves, discuss important trends in the legal market, and provide you with the news you need to know about the ever-changing ecosystem of the world’s largest law firms. If you have suggestions for topics or guests for the podcast, please reach out to me or to Zach.

We look forward to hearing from you, and we look forward to seeing you on February 2!

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by David Lat, a managing director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, David founded and served as managing editor of Above the Law. Prior to launching Above the Law, he worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

Attention Biglaw associates: Just because it’s January 2021, it doesn’t mean that firms are done handing out 2020 year-end bonuses. In fact, an elite law firm just announced bonuses this morning, and we’ve heard that another highly ranked firm announced bonuses today as well. For the time being, we’ll be dedicating some coverage to a top-ranked firm that already announced that it would be handing out special bonuses (with a catch — they’re hours-based), and has finally decided to open its coffers for year-end bonuses.

The firm in question is Goodwin Procter, and they’ll be matching the prevailing Baker McKenzie/Cravath scale. Here’s what that looks like, in case you’ve forgotten:

2019: $15,000

2018: $25,000

2017: $50,000

2016: $65,000

2015: $80,000

2014: $90,000

2013+: $100,000

Associates at the firm must have met a 1,950 hourly threshold to be considered for a market bonus. Goodwin also uses a rating system when it comes to bonuses, and those who recorded hours “materially higher than 1,950 hours” and received a “distinctive” rating are eligible to receive bonuses that are above their class amounts. According to the firm, “43% of bonus recipients will receive an amount greater than the amount listed for their class, and 57% will receive their class amount.”

All bonuses at the firm will be paid out on January 25. Congrats to everyone at Goodwin!

(Flip to the next page to read the full Goodwin Procter memo.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for all of your help!

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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.

A disciplinary panel found that UK barrister Dominic Woolard “acted without integrity” and “behaved in a way that which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public places in him or the profession.” The finding comes as a result of a 2018 incident where it’s alleged he slapped and groped a colleague. He’s alleged to have also pulled the unnamed colleague onto his lap, telling her, “I really wanted to smack your arse.”

As reported by Legal Cheek, the charges against Woolard reveal some wildly inappropriate behavior:

According to the rap sheet, Woolard had held his colleague, “over whom he was in a position of professional seniority”, by or around the neck while saying “I really wanted to smack your arse” or words to that effect. The panel found that this was a sexual act with no consent or reasonable belief that there was consent.

A second charge records that Woolard did in fact smack Ms A, “with a slap which caused her physical pain”. He also pulled her “on to his lap, which was unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which had the purpose or effect of violating A’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or otherwise offensive environment”.

As a result, Woplard was fined £6,000 plus £3,600 in costs. The finding is subject to appeal.

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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).

Thanks to the pandemic, Biglaw associates across the country are stuck at home, billing their lives away, minute by minute, hour by hour. The monotony is enough to drive lawyers completely insane, but thankfully, an Instagram account exists whose creator feels your pain. You see, he’s a Biglaw associate too, and he understands just how badly his colleagues need to be entertained.

Meet BigLawBoiz (BLB). He’s a midlevel litigation associate in New York, and he’s keeping himself anonymous because Biglaw firms don’t take too kindly to being openly mocked by their employees. BLB says being anonymous is part of the fun of running the account. “It lends some credence to the fact that we’re all in this together,” he told me in a direct message. “We generally all feel and think in a somewhat similar way, and BLB could be you, could be me. It’s just someone there to give you a laugh and some perspective.”

(For what it’s worth, BLB isn’t the only Biglaw attorney who’s gotten into the IG meme game. Check out @nonequitypartner for some corporate law comedy.)

BLB has 89.6K adoring followers, and his memes are pure gold. Take this, for example, from the day of the insurrection at the Capitol.

I recently got to chat with BLB. Here’s a write-up of our conversation.

SZ: Why did you decide to start this account?

BLB: When I was a junior associate, I didn’t feel like I had the ability to be terribly creative in my work. A lot of being a junior associate in Biglaw is doing what you are told (going above and beyond, of course) and coloring within the lines. I needed to flex some creative muscles, and I always considered myself a “funny” person. This was a good way to do that. I don’t know if I have the ability to be a story-teller like a stand-up comedian, but I am certainly situationally funny, and memes were the perfect avenue for that. I’ve tried some longer format writing and comedy in my blog. Whether people like it or not I don’t know, but I really enjoy the process. And I crack myself up.

SZ: How many hours a day do you dedicate to memes?

BLB: It’s hard to really put a specific amount of time to it. Ideas just pop into my head. Sometimes it’s the format that inspires the meme, or the joke that I find a format for. If I try too hard to come up with something funny, then it usually ends up as a flop. The proper process is quite natural, and truly beautiful. Some people dream in sound, I dream in memes (literally, sometimes).

SZ: What’s it like to have a cult following as an anonymous Instagram persona?

BLB: It was really strange at first. People always wanted to know who I was, or if I would do a face reveal. At first the anonymity was 100% about protecting my identity from public ridicule. As I started to realize it really wouldn’t matter at all who I was, the anonymity became more fun. I’m like your friendly neighborhood troll. I could be anyone, the guy two desks down, you, me. It doesn’t matter. Just someone here to make you laugh.

Although, it is fun when someone sends me or shows me one of my own memes. “This guy is hilarious!!!!” I’m certain I have made a meme about that.

SZ: Can people submit things to you that they think are worthy of being posted on your account?

BLB: I take submissions all the time. Sometimes it’s humor related, but more often it’s a cool picture (a pls fix), or some piece of news, or someone asking for advice and I pose it to the following. It’s definitely a community. Some have definitely started to figure out what makes me laugh, and that will get a re-post for sure. Sometimes the joke is just for me and my other meme account friends.

Here are some of BLB’s greatest hits. Don’t tell me you don’t feel seen.

Click here to see more from Big Law Boiz. He’s even got his own merchandise. It may not be billable, but if you need endless entertainment, Big Law Boiz is here to help.

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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.

Listen, we all want COVID over and done with. But the only way we’re going to get to the “post” is diligent mask wearing and vaccination. Yet the conspiracy theories about the novel coronavirus and mask wearing persist.

And it turns out, the legal profession is far from immune from the believing and perpetuating the lies. As reported by Roll on Friday, one law firm partner not only believes baseless conspiracy theories about COVID, he’s proselytizing about it. Jonathan Lea, a lawyer in the UK formerly of Clyde & Co and Hammonds (now Squire Patton Boggs) who now runs his own firm The Jonathan Lea Network, posted a sign on the firm’s door, denying the existence of COVID-19 (So…. what does he think people are dying from? Hard to say.), and telling people to take off their masks to enter the office since wearing a mask is the “devil’s work.” Ummmm okay. Yeah, the full text of the sign is below, and it’s a doozy.

STAY SCEPTICAL. CONTROL THE HYSTERIA. REMAIN HUMAN. SAVE LIVES.
NO MASKS IN THIS OFFICE

If you choose to wear a mask please take it off if you enter this office. We should not be treating perfectly healthy and law abiding people as diseased ridden lepers and criminals.

All masks do is perpetuate completely irrational fear and make the public more amenable to the government’s ludicrous economy and liberty wrecking restrictions. Anything that causes people to enter into un-Godly fear and compliance to tyranny is demonic.

If there really was a dangerous virus out there, a mask would be largely ineffective in halting any viral respiratory illness from spreading throughout the population. Multiple scientific reports state a mask is about as useful as a pair of speedos preventing a kid peeing in the pool. Giving life to a lie is the devil’s work.

In fact, masks are actually a health hazard that deprive us of oxygen, force us to breath our own CO2 and increase the risk of respiratory illness and viral infections.

If people are really somehow concerned about any health risk and believe masks have any benefit then they should be fine just wearing their own without being bothered if others choose not to.

It should be clear by now that what the mask mandate is really about is training people in mindless compliance and group think so that the same propaganda is used to apply social pressure and force to make people give up the fundamental human right of bodily autonomy and take unsafe and life debilitating ‘vaccines’.

I am not willing to suffer the disease of this abject tyranny.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” Voltaire

“When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty”

THIS ENDS WHEN WE ALL SAY NO

I am stupider for having read that.

The scientific evidence in support of masks is overwhelming, and frankly you have to question the judgment of a lawyer who believes this nonsense. I would not take the advice of anyone who spread these lies.

Lea made additional statements about his stance:

Lea told RollOnFriday he put up his sign after the manager of his serviced offices posted notices recommending people wear masks in the communal areas, and everyone “started obediently walking around with bits of cloth on their face”.

When a client from another office in the building walked into Lea’s firm with a mask on it “sent me over the edge and led to the sign”, said the lawyer.

However, Lea’s call to arms “only lasted a couple of days before our serviced office managers took it down”, he said.

….

Lea said his staff were allowed to work from home, and were all following government guidance. “We are an open, inclusive and supportive firm and if anyone for any reason thought they’d like to wear something on their face, or have a vaccine, there would be no issue”, he said.

“While the team clearly know where I stand on the scamdemic, we are all free to express and discuss different opinions”.

At least his effort to ban masks in the office were thwarted. But as long as attitudes like Lea’s are allowed to thrive, well, we’ll never be rid of the scourge of COVID.

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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).