Category: News Feeds

* Kim Kardashian has purportedly hired an all-star lawyer to pursue a divorce against Kanye West. Too bad, this could have been her first case as a legal professional and some might call her a gold digger… [Page Six]

* President Trump is seeking to dismiss a fraud lawsuit filed by his niece. [Reuters]

* Over 1,000 law graduates have become attorneys through emergency licensure programs recently without taking a bar exam. [Bloomberg Law]

* A lawyer who lost an election to Josh Hawley at Yale Law School is urging the senator to accept the results of the last presidential election. [Yahoo News]

* Michael Jordan was awarded $46,000 in damages from a Chinese company that allegedly used a word that translates into “Jordan” to brand products. Jeeze, Jordan is a great name, wish it was worth more money… [CBS Sports]

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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.

New Technology Without Adoption Is Worse Than Doing Nothing

New Technology Without Adoption Is Worse Than Doing Nothing

Rohit Parekh – Matter365

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

According to preliminary data from Refinitiv, which Biglaw firm was ranked number 1 in global mergers & acquisitions advising for 2020?

Hint: The report also notes an 88 percent second-half uptick in M&A activity globally.

See the answer on the next page.

It may have started as a spiteful lark, one that proved spectacularly profitable but still based on one committed loather’s loathing of another, another who he believed had once wronged him, and whose quixotic if ultimately more-or-less correct (if somewhat overenthusiastic) analysis created an opportunity for vicious vengeance. Yes, the partnership between Carl Icahn and gassy diet shake purveyor Herbalife may have, initially, been nothing but the financially living embodiment of the axiom that the enemy of one’s enemy (in this case, crybaby Bill Ackman, before he found love and god in the form of an old man who he no longer has use for) is one’s friend.

After participating in a phone call where Donald Trump was captured on tape pressuring Georgia election officials to commit what election law experts identified as well within the statutory definition of election fraud, Cleta Mitchell is gone as a Foley & Lardner partner.

New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt relayed the Foley & Lardner statement moments ago.

The parties apparently never bothered to establish that the call was confidential, resulting in a bombshell when the Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the audio and transcript.

While Mitchell has resigned, there’s ample reason to believe this was less than a unilateral decision. Mitchell’s appearance on the call clearly shocked Foley & Lardner, who were quick to announce that the firm itself was not retained to represent Donald Trump, despite Mitchell’s rhetoric on the call where she spoke of reviewing evidence in the case and explaining allegations that “we” made in Trump’s filings challenging election results. As of yesterday, Foley & Lardner said they were concerned and investigating Mitchell’s private involvement in the case. Given that attorneys in law firms cannot easily practice side gigs without inviting myriad ethical and insurance coverage issues, Foley & Lardner had reason to be deeply troubled.

With some clients already expressing a desire to terminate their relationships with the firm, and outside groups gearing up to pressure others, the firm has now cleared itself of a potential drag on its overarching business. It’s the sort of move that firms like Jones Day have yet to make, preferring instead to withdraw from specific, publicized matters while preserving the opportunity to pursue future voter suppression work, a practice it has famously pursued for years.

The only remaining question is the identity of the third attorney on the now-infamous call. The transcript identifies Cleta Mitchell, Georgia attorney Kurt Hilbert, and someone only referred to as “Alex.” We have received some anonymous tipster input suggesting that this lawyer is another Biglaw attorney and have contacted the firm potentially involved but we have been unable to confirm. If you know who this wily attorney is, please let us know.

Earlier: Donald Trump Drags Biglaw Firm Into Middle Of Election Interference Effort

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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.

The past year functioned as a stress test on a lot of faulty American institutions from public health to basic democracy. Maybe attorney licensing doesn’t hold a candle to either of those concerns, but it’s still a crucially important process for thousands of law school graduates, the profession, and the public at large. And the only honest takeaway from 2020 is that the whole process is busted.

The in-person exams brought applicants into close contact with COVID cases, the remote exams leveled outlandish claims of cheating — some of it based solely on race — and bar examiners proved incapable of handling the burden of “actually responding to technical issues.” Beyond the test itself, we learned that state officials openly mused about using the character and fitness process to penalize anyone willing to criticize the debacle, further exposing the deep structural problems in the licensing process.

While detractors grew louder, the NCBE — the functional monopoly that controls the bar exam process nationally — issued flimsy white papers, weirdly irrelevant polling, and statements dismissing independent, meticulously researched studies as fake news. California’s bar examiners went so far as to hire a PR firm specializing in responding to mass shootings to deal with the mounting criticism.

But now, the same NCBE that spent the whole year declaring that absolutely nothing needed to change announced the results of its own three-year study conducted by its Testing Task Force promising big changes that might calm the mounting pressure on the licensing process… in five years or so.

The new recommendations would not come into effect until 2026 at the earliest, but at least they address the core problems with the exam outlined over the last year, right? Mostly wrong.

In defense of the report, it does correctly identify the need to transition the exam from one based upon encyclopedic mastery of generalist doctrinal knowledge in a profession increasingly oriented around specialization to one focused upon testing legal skills. But declaring a greater emphasis on skill seems to be the extent of the plan. From Law.com:

To that end, the Testing Task Force has recommended paring down the number of subject areas tested on the exam. Civil procedure, contract law, evidence, torts, business associations, constitutional law, criminal law and real property would continue to be tested. But family law, estates and trusts, the Universal Commercial Code and conflict of laws would be dropped.

That’s still a whole lot of substantive material that means exactly squat to an M&A attorney. While putting an end to the tyranny of spending the summer fearing a surprise UCC section, this paring back amounts to a modest alteration at best.

It’s also still proposed as a two-day, in-person exam. The latter point may sound fine given that COVID should be gone by 2026 — knocking on wood — but much of the trouble with online exams stemmed from the effort to slap them together in a matter of months. Committing five years out to building an infrastructure capable of supporting a remote exam might have been nice. It will be exclusively on computer though!

The bar exam would also continue to be a closed-book test, meaning that examinees would not be allowed to bring in notes or consult their own reference material during the exam. However, the revamped bar exam would offer more of a “closed universe” of reference materials that would be provided to all test takers than does the current exam.

Because nothing tests the research skills required of attorneys more than being given a packet and told the answers are in these 15 pages. I may sound like a broken record, but “the practice of law is an open-book exam.” If the goal is to guarantee that lawyers possess the requisite skills to be competent attorneys, give them a problem and let them research the whole universe to find the answer. A well-constructed question will require the applicant to settle on a core body of caselaw anyway, but the actual skill is in finding those cases and figuring out that they’re important. Handing them a primer and hoping testing their ability to pin cite the right sentence isn’t much of a test.

In addition to paring down the number of legal subjects tested, the Task Force has proposed bolstering the number of legal skills incorporated in the new bar exam. Legal research and writing remain on that list, as does issue spotting and analysis. But joining them are investigation and evaluation, client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management. Questions and tasks pertaining to those areas would be woven throughout the various legal scenarios presented to examinees, under the task force recommendations.

You know where else you could go to ensure applicants mastered these skills? Law schools! The bar exam is a relic of a bygone era when people without formal training would belly up to ask for a law license. But now that almost every jurisdiction requires a law school degree — and the exceptions ask for some other form of “law school,” like California’s Kardashian option — states could just develop a curriculum, ideally standardized across borders, that requires accredited law schools to prove that candidates for admission have competency in “client counseling and advising, negotiation and dispute resolution, and client relationship and management” before they earn a degree. Multiple weeks of iterative evaluation in a course or practice clinic are far more likely to guarantee that applicants understand the material than a manufactured one-off snapshot during a 48-hour testing period.

That’s the most frustrating aspect of the bar exam conversation — states simply refuse to consider using their power to regulate the law schools themselves in favor of a goofy, antiquated test that isn’t even designed to test minimum competency. Faced with the academic finding that skills are more important to ensuring competency and protecting the public, bar examiners respond with “I’m sure we can ‘skill up’ our testing” instead of figuring out how to make sure candidates actually demonstrate these skills. And the problem is that it’s better for the examiners to keep feeding the bar exam writing machine and it’s easier for the law schools to keep collecting tuition rather than have to tell someone to stop accruing debt because they’re not capable of earning a license. It doesn’t have to be this way, everybody.

But instead, we’ll get a new test in 2026. And life will carry on just the same as it did before. Meet the new test… same as the old test but with fewer number 2 pencils. Jeez, how did Ticonderoga end up as the only vested interest screwed over in this deal?

Bar Exam Overhaul Plans Go Public. So Long, MBE [Law.com]

Earlier: What Would Be Better Than The Bar Exam?
NCBE Dismisses 114-Page Academic Report As ‘Fake News’

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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.

Well, it’s 2021, and everything is still on fire. But while we all wait to see if Mike Pence burns down the electoral college before the Proud Boys burn down DC, we ought to spare a moment’s anxiety for the Northern District of Georgia, where the president just fired U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak.

As first reported by TPM, Pak had planned to leave his post on January 20 when Biden is inaugurated. Instead, he abruptly tendered his resignation on Monday due to “unforeseen circumstances.” This came just one day after the publication of the infamous phone call where Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

The timing could be coincidental, although Trump did refer to Pak in the call as “your never-Trumper U.S. attorney there.” Maybe Trump just fired Pak, whom he nominated to the position in 2017, out of sheer vindictiveness.

But perhaps there’s something else going on here.

We’ve already seen the recently departed Bill Barr try to Saturday Night Massacre the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York by announcing that Geoffrey Berman had resigned and SEC Chair Jay Clayton would be taking over. Berman hadn’t, and, thanks to Barr’s antics, Clayton didn’t. That office has a pending investigation involving Trump’s attorney/fixer/public spectacle Rudy Giuliani.

Similarly, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu was unceremoniously forced out and found her nomination for a post at Treasury… which was then yanked. In her absence, Barr installed his buddy Timothy Shea, and the prosecution of Michael Flynn mysteriously vanished.

And in July, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Richard Donoghue, was abruptly transferred to Main Justice, trading jobs with Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Seth DuCharme, a close Barr ally. That office is, or was, investigating irregularities in the Trump inauguration.

There’s clearly precedent for the Trump administration installing cronies in key Justice Department positions to cover the president’s ample flank. And here, as TPM reporter Tierney Sneed was first to note, Trump seems to have taken a personal interest in the running of this particular U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bypassing the career official who would normally take over, Trump personally installed Bobby Christine, the sitting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, to run the Northern District concurrently.

“On January 4, 2021, by written order of the President, Bobby was named Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia,” according to Christine’s DOJ bio.

Which is not normal. Why is the president so concerned with putting his guy in charge just 15 days before he leaves office? The right-wing echo chamber thinks that Brad Raffensperger is going to be arrested for recording the call, on which Trump agitated repeatedly for the prosecution of a Georgia election worker whom he believes triple-counted the same batch of 18,000 ballots. At the same time, Trump has been caught on tape trying to force the state’s governor and secretary of state to falsify election results. All of which is an alarming backdrop to the sudden departure of the top prosecutor.

Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe it’s not, so we better pay attention.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Bypasses Top Career Prosecutor To Name New Acting US Attorney In Atlanta [TPM]

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

Hello, I’m the Contralorian, your friendly neighborhood law professor!

You see, I have controversial and contrarian takes. It is because I think outside the box. I’m unbiased, as you can see by my Beskar-laden whataboutism. You might not like my take on whether or not VP candidate Kamala Harris could, under the constitution, serve as vice president, but I’m going to point out that you didn’t say a peep about the same article written about Ted Cruz. Yeah, what about that? Excuse me, I have to zoom off with my jet pack to another hot take!

I have a keen take on how many countless lives have been lost because we’ve spent time assuring “needless diversity” in our tests of drugs. Lives have been lost, and I read a few articles about it (not peer-reviewed journal pieces, just newspapers). My controversial take is just a though piece. It’s meant to provoke discussion. Jeez.

I’m also teaching constitutional law this semester. It will be difficult because our republic (NOT A DEMOCRACY!) has been hijacked by serious election fraud. All those votes are clearly not legit (just the ones voting for Biden, not the other candidates). I point this out because if you are a student looking at my Twitter feed, rest assured I’ll be testing you on principles that you won’t really find on my Twitter. But like the originalist foundling of democracy, I have abandoned these principles with my historical enemies and moved on to bigger things.

I’m not a big fan of President Trump, and you can tell this because I just tweeted that I’m not a big fan of President Trump. It might seem like I’m defending him, but I’m really defending the integrity of the law by not letting the unthinking Twitter mob run roughshod over our republic.

When a member of Congress tweeted that we are a republic and not a democracy right on election eve, I was there to defend him: He is quite correct! What, he can’t point out the obvious in a tweet right before the election?

Why are all you liberals all verklempt about me asking hard-hitting questions? I’m so calmly distanced and above the fray, I can’t help but notice your mob behavior.

Hey, sometimes I make jokes. For example, if you’re an anti-Trump conservative, you ought to be the first one against the wall and shot in the new totalitarian state. Hahahahaha!! See? That’s funny, right? Lighten up, sheeple!

Being a contrarian is so much fun. You can claim that people are being irrational because they don’t subscribe to your logical point of view. It’s like you’re playing referee while being partisan all the time.

If you want to be a contrarian, you need to practice. Here are my first hot takes:

• I can’t help but notice that people who were upset when members of Congress were partying in disregard to COVID-19 safety have been COMPLETELY SILENT about Kirk Cameron’s COVID-19 antics.
• Some academics are upset about pardons. At the end of every presidency, people get pardoned. This time it may not be people you like, but it probably wasn’t people I liked last time. That’s why they happen at the end of presidencies.
• It’s funny how some people are upset about the defense bill veto. Particularly liberals. Funny how no one seemed upset by FDR’s 635 vetoes.
• There’s good reason not to call her Dr. Biden. It’s only for medical doctors.  You don’t want to be choking in a restaurant and have someone ask for a doctor and then … [OK, you read that blog post from me last time].

So, dear students, while I write these blog posts, tweets, and hot takes in the press, I want you to remember to ground yourself in the law, the facts, and the policies behind the law. Don’t stray too far afield. Don’t fight the hypothetical given in the fact pattern of my exam.

But, there will be no bandwagons for me. Ever. Although there does seem to be a pattern to my contrarianism. I’m asking the hard questions. All of which lead down just one path. This is the way.

And the thing is: You’ve all been me. LPB has been me. You’re just not consistently like me. You take controversial viewpoints. You have hard takes.  You have positions that aren’t popular. But I do it ALL THE TIME. That’s what makes ME special. And why I get the jet pack.

Sincerely,

The Contralorian, law professor and superhero in my own mind.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

On November 11, Baker McKenzie shocked the Biglaw world by making the very first bonus announcement of the year. Two weeks later, Cravath adopted the same bonus scale and added special bonuses on top, and the rest of Biglaw rushed to match the new market standard.

Associates at the firm were disappointed that there were no special bonuses to be had, but when making its original bonus announcement, the firm said it would match any increases in the market. On New Year’s Eve, Baker McKenzie management finally came through on that promise, announcing that it would be matching the special bonuses that had been circulating for months. These bonuses will be made available to associates who have at least 1,900 qualifying billable hours (including 125 approved pro bono and diversity and inclusion hours). Check out the special bonus scale, below:

On top of that great news, the firm will also be making full salary restoration payments to all employees who were affected by the COVID-related spending cuts the firm instituted on May 1. All special bonus and salary true-up payments will be made on January 29. Happy new year, Baker McKenzie associates!

(Flip to the next page to read the full Baker McKenzie 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.

As a lawyer, you know the profession is all about change. You’re expected to keep up with an evolving legal landscape as you deepen your practice, define your career goals, and deliver for your clients. That’s where Practising Law Institute (PLI) comes in. For over 80 years, PLI has provided training and resources for lawyers at all stages of their careers. Craig Miller, PLI’s Interim President, provides an inside look at the organization that practically invented CLE.

How did PLI come to be?

Imagine yourself a young lawyer in 1933. It’s the height of the Great Depression. FDR has just been sworn in as President and the first one hundred days of New Deal legislation occurs. Massive changes to the legal and regulatory landscape are underway, impacting banking, securities, agriculture, energy, and so much more. Court challenges will ensue. Overseas, Germany’s newly appointed Chancellor is Adolf Hitler.

That’s a blistering rate of change for lawyers to keep up with. Our founder, Harold P. Seligson, saw the need for those in the profession to keep learning long after they earned their JDs. And that’s a need we continue to meet to this day.

We do this by offering over 10,000 hours of accredited continuing legal and other education programs in a variety of formats; by publishing over 100 titles each year through our PLI Press publishing division; and through other initiatives such as our online One-Hour Briefings and our podcasts on pro bono and securities law.

Now that lawyers have many ways to earn CLE, what makes PLI different?

We’re a nonprofit, membership-based organization, so our business model is unique. Because we have such a strong reputation, we’re fortunate to attract a stellar volunteer faculty from preeminent law firms, corporate legal departments, law schools, the bench, the government, and more. They share our goal of strengthening the profession and the rule of law.

Pro bono is at the heart of our mission and we strongly believe in supporting practitioners who work to ensure access to justice. Our Members not only benefit from the wide array of programs we offer, but also help support the training that other lawyers and nonprofit groups use to advocate effectively for pro bono clients like disabled veterans, victims of natural disasters, and the indigent.

Our Members are a community – they come to us for more than just CLE credits, and we take our responsibility to them very seriously.

How can smaller law firms and individual practitioners take advantage of your offerings?

Our membership model is designed for firms of any size, location or practice area. Privileged Members get unlimited access to our CLE programs and learning resources for an annual fee. Our team handles all credit and compliance matters upfront and helps you monitor CLE credits and deadlines through our popular My Credit Tracker tool. For solo practitioners, we also offer Individual Memberships, which afford all of the above for a reasonable flat annual fee.

Many firms of all sizes also take advantage of our PLI PLUS online research database, which provides unlimited access to our full collection of treatises, course handbooks, legal forms, program transcripts, journals and answer books.

In addition, 501(c)(3) organizations that meet criteria can gain Pro Bono Privileged Memberships, and scholarship applications are available to others seeking training.

How has PLI adapted to serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

For an octogenarian organization, PLI has always been quite progressive when it comes to serving our customers. Well before the pandemic, we saw that people needed more flexibility to attend our programs online and on their own schedules, so we have been producing live webcasts and online on-demand programming for years now. These capabilities have kept our CLE programs going seamlessly while everyone is remote. On the publishing side, because we knew that customers were unable to access books at their offices, we extended access to PLI PLUS so they could use these publications online.

Getting timely information to our customers – and the legal market as a whole – is always central to our mission. As soon as the pandemic materialized, our team worked relentlessly to provide essential COVID-19-related content and make it easily discoverable on our website. I am also proud to note that PLI published the first in-depth book on the pandemic’s legal issues.

Finally – what’s with the funny spelling of “practising”?

It’s not the style now, but the spelling was much more common in the ‘30s! I see it as a nod to the long and proud history of our organization – we always strive to innovate and grow, but we stay true to our roots and to our mission.