Category: News Feeds

Recently, I shared some job search tips for lawyers seeking their first legal jobs or those looking to re-enter the legal workforce. One tool I mentioned that can be helpful when looking to break into a market is the informational interview.

Here are 12 tips if you’re asking for an informational interview and would like to be respectful of your interviewee’s time. (Note: I refer to the person you’re hoping to speak with as the “interviewee” rather than the “interviewer” because, in an informational interview, you are the person asking questions to obtain information from the interviewee. Remember that this is not a job interview, in which you are on the receiving end of the questions.)

1. Send an initial e-mail or LinkedIn message that:

a. makes it clear that you are asking for an informational interview and on what topic(s),
b. offers enough background on yourself as necessary, but as succinctly as possible,
c. shows how you are connected or how you came across the interviewee’s profile,
d. states the time commitment you are looking for (no more than 20-30 minutes!),
e. offers several time slots when you are available but invites the interviewee to offer alternative times, and
f. asks permission to send your resume and a list of questions you’d like to ask. Follow up with these items only after the person has agreed to speak with you, but at least a day in advance of the call.

2. Be sure your messages are free of any typos and include a proper signature block and link to your LinkedIn profile. Do not, however, shower the person with so much information or a full job application bundle such that it seems like “homework” just to navigate your request.

3. If you do not hear back from the prospective interviewee, it’s okay to follow up, but wait 7-10 days. No one likes a follow-up 12 hours later when you are asking for a favor.

4. You may offer to speak by phone or by Zoom, but make it the interviewee’s choice; do not push a Zoom meeting on someone. Offer to send a calendar invite. If you do offer a Zoom meeting, be prepared to send a meeting link.

5. Be prepared to take the lead in the conversation. It’s fine to remind the interviewee of your basic experience, but do not waste time repeating your whole resume.

6. Keep the informational interview to the time frame you requested.

7. Follow the interviewee’s cues as to how formal or informal your conversation will be, but err on the side of treating this like an actual interview. It’s great practice for a true interview!

8. Take notes if you can, but above all, be sure to LISTEN to the answers to your questions. There’s nothing more annoying than plodding through a list of pre-ordained questions when some have already been answered earlier in the conversation.

9. At the end of your interview, ask if there is anyone else the interviewee recommends you speak with, including anyone they might introduce you to. Ask for their suggestions on next steps.

10. As I discussed recently in The Importance of Authentic Networking, any networking or relationship building must be a two-way street. Always ask your interviewee if there is anything you can assist them with. It may be something as small as sharing a link to an article they might enjoy or sharing news of your shared alma mater. Just be sure to ask how you can reciprocate. And ask permission to stay in touch and ask what method they prefer.

11. Be sure to follow-up with an immediate thank you message the day of the interview. Send any articles or reciprocity you’ve promised. Connect with the individual on LinkedIn if you haven’t already.

12. If your interviewee agrees that you should stay in touch, stay in touch! If you’re conducting multiple informational interviews, you may consider keeping a spreadsheet with names of interviewees, notes on your conversations, and reminders to follow up every few months.

If used correctly, the informational interview can be a powerful tool for you in your job search. Good luck!

---

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Abby Gordon, Senior Director at Lateral Link, who works with attorney candidates on law firm and in-house searches, primarily in Boston, New York, and Europe.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, Abby spent seven years as a corporate associate with Cleary Gottlieb, focusing on capital markets transactions for Latin American clients in New York and for the last five years for European clients in Paris. A native of Boston, Abby holds a J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in government and romance languages, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College. Abby also worked with the International Rescue Committee as a Fulbright Scholar in Madrid, Spain. She is a member of the New York, Massachusetts and Maine Bars and is fluent in French and Spanish (and dabbles in Portuguese and Italian). You can view additional articles by Abby here.

---

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.

Considering the fact that many firms conducted salary cuts due to COVID-19, Biglaw’s 2020 bonus season numbers were actually quite generous. This year’s bonus haul consisted of traditional year-end bonuses coupled with special bonuses that were given to associates in appreciation of their hard work during the pandemic. Firms that didn’t hand out both bonuses were considered below market, which is not a great place to be — but that’s where this Am Law 200 firm reportedly finds itself.

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan — a firm that brought in $258,000,000 in gross revenue in 2019, placing it at #122 on the most recent Am Law ranking — slashed salaries in June, but gave attorneys the opportunity to recoup lost pay through their annualized billable hours. We recently learned that Stroock handed out bonuses just before the holidays, but associates aren’t exactly thrilled.

The firm doesn’t send out bonus memos, but instead calls associates individually. Here’s what our sources say about 2020’s bonuses at Stroock:

Associates were given the standard end-of-year bonus scale as in past years but were NOT given a special “COVID” bonus – neither in the fall nor at the end of the year. This is extremely troubling as Stroock has always been a “market rate” firm, yet now gives sub-market-rate bonuses while less prestigious firms with lower payscales and much lower profits per partner are awarding special bonuses.

Morale at the firm is at an all-time low. All this while the firm touts how busy our Financial Restructuring practice has been right on the front page of the website. It seems from all firm communications that 2020 was a great year financially for the firm despite COVID, so to make less than my peers at firms that have struggled is anything but fair.

Ooof, sorry about that, Stroockies.

Are you an associate at the firm? What do you think about bonuses this year? Feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous, as always — could find its way into an update to this story.

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!

---

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.

Right or wrong, the modern Supreme Court has transformed the analysis of the First Amendment’s religious clauses from being focused on individual free conscience liberty (as it was originally intended to be), into a single-minded inquiry of discrimination. Before we get into how this transformation has fed a false victimization narrative that is being used to attack other Americans (particularly LGBT and nonbeliever Americans), to strip them of their free conscience liberty, we need to get into some necessary background.

The modern transformation of religious liberty began with adjacent paragraphs in Everson v. Board of Education in which the Supreme Court identified two facially contradictory principles that have plagued religious liberty doctrine ever since. The first principle was meant to be a reflection of the clear original intent by the drafters of the First Amendment’s establishment clause to erect “a wall of separation between church and state” by ensuring that “[n]o tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

The next principle, however, squarely contradicts the first by declaring that states “cannot exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Non-believers, Presbyterians, or the members of any other faith, because of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation.”

If you are having trouble identifying why these principles are so contradictory allow me to let Douglas Laycock, arguably this country’s foremost religious liberty scholar, explain. According to Laycock, the problem with Everson’s two principles is that “each can expand to cover all the cases.” Per Laycock:

Every law providing for any form of neutrally distributed government funding can be understood as public welfare legislation. And any part of that funding that goes to a religious organization can be understood as support for religion. The Court has never acknowledged the conflict between these two principles, but it has struggled with that conflict for seventy years.

I differ from Laycock in that I see no conflict, at least not anymore. Because although it once appeared as if the 21st century Supreme Court was going to continue to uphold the centuries-old federal prohibition against government levying taxes “to support religious activities or institutions,” this new superconservative majority SCOTUS now only characterizes such prohibitions as discrimination. Unlike yesterday, today government can forcibly tax Americans under a First Amendment framework in order to fund religious monuments, church property enhancements, and religious education. Indeed, the full scale of just how much of your taxes is being levied for the express purpose of supporting religious activities and organizations is simply staggering.

Of course, for a long-time religious apologists and members of the Supreme Court draped all of this direct funding of religion in the language and context of equality. They were just granting religious institutions equal access to public welfare funds as Everson required, you see. The problem is, in order to have a system of free conscience liberty where citizens will not be forced by government to subsidize religions they don’t believe in, the system necessarily requires treating religious organizations differently — particularly when it comes to getting government money. By classifying any differential treatment of religion as discrimination, free conscience protection against compelled support of religion has been stripped away. In other words, by transforming religious liberty into an analysis of discrimination, millions of Americans have seen their free conscience liberty destroyed.

As the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has grown, however, the pretense of equality has been thoroughly abandoned. Now, religion is being expressly favored in government pandemic-relief efforts. Federal circuits are declaring that religious activities are superior to nonreligious activities, and, therefore, deserving of greater protection than even political speech. Along with this favoritism comes the inevitably disfavored. Recently, federal courts have held that nonbelievers can be barred from addressing their own legislatures or performing private wedding ceremonies for nonbeliever couples.

Yet no amount of legal favoritism and government preference seems capable of stemming the false victimization narrative of the religious. During the pandemic, when governments began initiating lockdowns, many in the religious community cried discrimination because megachurches were being regulated differently from dissimilar activities like retail stores. It was not until Amy Coney Barrett replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, however, that the discriminatory narrative finally won out at SCOTUS.

Yet not all courts are buying into this false narrative. Indeed, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal thoroughly dismantled it using basic logic, evidence, and reason, and I invite you all to read the full opinion because boy is it a beauty. To summarize, in California, like many other states, places of assembly such as indoor church services, movie theaters, concerts, or sporting events are being subjected to stricter restrictions on occupancy than other places like commercial retail. As Bernal explains, the reason church services are lumped into this stricter category with other types of assembly is simple and has nothing to do with targeting religion for disfavor:

Attendees at indoor worship services typically assemble close together in one space, seated in a series of many rows (or pews) that are physically close together, making close proximity of many individuals highly likely. Worship services typically last a minimum of one hour with congregants gathered in close proximity. Many services involve substantial group singing and other group vocalization by those leading the services and those in the congregation which carry with them a potential for increased risk of transmission of the novel coronavirus. (internal quotations and citations omitted)

In contrast to indoor religious services or movie theaters, however, Bernal also further explains that (again internal quotations and citations omitted):

[R]etail shopping centers, hotels, laundromats, and liquor stores pose a lower risk of transmission than indoor religious gatherings. Staying at a hotel, doing laundry at a laundromat and retail shopping may bring people into relative closeness, but none of these activities would require them to remain in proximity for longer than a brief interlude. Because viral load matters, standing next to someone infected with Covid-19 for fifteen minutes is much less dangerous than standing next to someone infected with Covid-19 for one hour.

In sum, California restrictions are based on scientific understanding as to how this deadly virus is being spread. Although Bernal goes to great length to differentiate California’s restrictions from the type the Supreme Court enjoined against in New York recently, if the nondiscrimination philosophy applied in the New York case by SCOTUS were to be applied in California, Bernal will be overruled. After all, in New York, the fact that churches were being treated differently from any other type of business was all the Supreme Court needed to declare religious discrimination. And in California, indoor church services (along with movie theaters and concerts) are undeniably being treated differently.

What began as a commitment to nondiscrimination in Everson has transformed into a doctrine where religion is always deemed superior to every other social or constitutional concern, including concerns over public health during a historically deadly pandemic. And while it is refreshing to see a judge dismantle the false and destructive narrative of victimization, with the makeup of SCOTUS as it currently exists, none of it will matter in the end.

---

Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

Welcome to 2021, what we all hope will be a year of healing from the traumas of 2020. While each of us experienced 2020’s challenges differently, my personal end-of-the-year journey left me plenty of time to reflect on the blessings of good health. Despite my best efforts — the same efforts that had allowed me to elude the virus despite living in a Brooklyn neighborhood that saw at least two distinct infection waves — I had a positive test for COVID-19 just a few days before New Year’s. I was thankfully spared the fever and coughing that usually accompanies COVID-19 infection, but was also forced to acknowledge that the intermittent muscle pain and fatigue I experienced before testing was the actual start of my symptoms. It is hard not to feel guilty for walking around as usual (with masks and social distancing in any public spaces, of course), even though there was no way of knowing it was COVID-19 before getting the positive test result. Either way, the experience does nothing other than to make me thankful for a return to health, as well as deeply empathetic with those whose experience with this dreadful disease was not as favorable in the end.

While in isolation, I had plenty of time to contemplate an extremely varied list of topics, from the existential (e.g., the fragility of good health in the face of a tiny microbe) to the mundane (e.g., will I still need to get a vaccine when they open up access to people in my age group sometime in 2022-23). One of the things I kept coming back to, however, was “what are employed people going to do in 2021 with all the extra time and money they will have because they won’t have to commute to the office with the same regularity?” Considering that I have been working remotely for some time myself, my mind’s continued return to the topic was a bit puzzling. But then I would imagine myself as a younger lawyer, in my Biglaw days, where the already-long hours in the office were supplemented by significant commuting time. Soon enough, I realized that my former experience as a commuter still weighed on my subconscious somehow. Metapsychology aside, I do recognize that prior to the pandemic, commuting was a big part of the daily routine for many IP lawyers. And that in many cases 2021 promises adjusted commuting schedules — or continued elimination of commuting altogether — for those fortunate enough to remain employed.

If 2020 was a shock to our working lives, 2021 offers the opportunity to proactively reconfigure things for the better. For some, the lack of a need to commute to an office daily presents an opportunity to flee the urban environment for somewhere cheaper and less stressful. For others, it presents more chances for family time, whether that be for family dinners closer to the end of the school day or the ability to help out with household chores. At bottom, not needing to commute every day will result in a net gain — for most IP lawyers — of two precious resources, time and money. Which begs the question of how best to use that extra time and money. The answer of course will depend on each person’s circumstances, personality, and values. But here are some ideas to get your personal thinking started.

There are a lot of great things you can do with the money saved from not commuting as often. Calculating the amount saved could rightfully include not only your gas and tolls or train/bus tickets, but all the extra expenditures — morning coffee, donut(s), afternoon snack, whatever — associated with trying to make the commute more livable. Whatever your personal savings add up to, consider applying at least some of the money saved to investing in your remote workspace. (First, however, try and get your employer to pay for as much of the home office outfitting as possible.) You will be spending more time than ever working from home, so make sure your workspace is as good as it can be ergonomically, technologically, and in terms of presenting a professional backdrop for video calls. Next, consider using some of the savings toward charity — we all know the needs are great all around us. Finally, set aside some of the savings on an ongoing basis toward your hoped-for return to leisure travel at some as-yet undetermined point. Yes, everyone is already desperately in need for a vacation. Start saving toward one.

As important as the financial savings is the excess time many will have as their liberation from the daily commuting grind is solidified in 2021. Try and apply some of that newfound time in socially beneficial ways. Get on that pro bono project you always wanted to start. Or set some time each day for outdoor exercise of some kind — more important than ever when the comforts of working all day from home can stealthily reduce time spent outdoors. Don’t forget to replace the social interactions inherent in the commuting lifestyle as well. Use some of the time for late afternoon post-work Zoom social events with friends or colleagues, or even former commuting buddies. The ideas are endless. What matters most is doing something productive in response to 2021’s commuting challenge.

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.

The Miami Dolphins hope their defense in court proves stronger than it did in the final game of the 2020 NFL season against the Buffalo Bills. The franchise will be forced to defend against a new federal case brought by Ronald Katz, who worked for the Dolphins from 2008 through 2016 and claims that he was improperly classified as an independent contractor instead of as an employee.

Katz, who held the title of vice president of the Dolphins, is perturbed about not being provided with benefits provided to NFL employees, which includes a pension plan and supplemental employee retirement plan. He claims that his $600,000 annual salary was paid in exchange for his performance of tasks that were integral to the Dolphins’ business such as signing checks for the Dolphins; analyzing budgets and cash flows; attending quarterly owner and advisor meetings; and reviewing, negotiating, and executing contracts for stadium events.

Katz also points out that he was provided a permanent office in Florida and New York, as well as a company credit card. He makes the claim that the Dolphins controlled and supervised all of his decisions, that he was provided official Dolphins email addresses, and that the business expenses, including travel, were all covered by the team.

While Katz was a licensed certified public accountant (CPA) and continued to provide some services of that profession during the eight-year period he worked with the Dolphins, he claims that such business was not of the same nature as the services he provided to the Dolphins. Furthermore, Katz says that he gave up his CPA license because of the demands placed upon him by the team.

What Katz intentionally left out of the complaint is that, in 2016, he was charged with engaging in a multiyear tax-evasion scheme. Katz was alleged to have diverted from a law firm more than $3 million in fee income from tax shelter and related transactions and to have received and failed to report to the IRS over $1.2 million in fee income. Katz plead guilty to felony obstruction and tax evasion.

The counts in Katz’s complaint seek welfare and pension benefits pursuant to the Employment Retirement Income Security Act based on the alleged misclassification of Katz as an independent contractor instead of as an employee. The defendants in the action also include the NFL and FIN Associates LTD, which is described as an entity affiliated with the Dolphins that paid out some of Katz’s salary during the years he worked with the team.

The complaint was filed in the Southern District of Florida on December 31, 2020, and Katz is represented by the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based law firm of Mansfield Bronstein & Stone, LLP. The Dolphins declined a request for comment on the allegations.

---

Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.

What happens when three of the most powerful and creative minds in American capitalism put their minds together (well, not really, but you get the idea) to tackle the very biggest problems facing society, specifically the problem of healthcare? Why, exactly what you’d expect: nothing.

* New York State and a group of restaurants were unable to resolve a lawsuit over the closure of restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe sharing a meal would help the sides reconcile, oh wait… [WIVB]

* Check out this article on new laws that are taking effect in 2021. [CNN]

* Porn star Aria Lee is defending herself pro se in a defamation lawsuit filed against her. [Page Six]

* Lawyers supporting President Trump in election cases may face professional discipline. [Bloomberg]

* A new lawsuit alleges that a Maine salmon producer made false claims about sustainability. The plaintiff must have known something smelled fishy… [Press Herald]

---

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 Vault’s annual associate survey, which Biglaw firm scored top marks for technology and innovation?

Hint: The firm now boasts over 1,100 lawyers and was started in California in the late 1800s.

See the answer on the next page.

Free advice for all Biglaw firms: you will be held accountable in the court of public opinion for the work you and your partners do. That’s a lesson Jones Day is well acquainted with. As is Porter Wright. And King & Spalding. And Hogan Lovells. You get the point. So if a partner at your firm plays a prominent role in one of the most shocking phone calls in American history, well, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do.

Of course I’m talking about Foley & Lardner partner Cleta Mitchell’s participation in Donald Trump’s harassing of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to just “find 11,780 votes.” It seems that the never-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project has turned their attention to Biglaw over the incident.

There are already murmurs of Foley losing business over Mitchell’s  involvement in the debacle, and tweets like these from The Lincoln Project only ups the pressure.

And they aren’t the only PAC paying attention to Biglaw. MeidasTouch — remember they are the ones that actually drew first blood in the campaign against Jones Day — has turned their attention to Foley & Lardner. One the the PAC’s founders, Ben Meiselas, partner at Geragos & Geragos, has been very vocal about the firm’s involvement, specifically when Foley attorney Jason Villalba tweeted (though he’s since deleted it) about the now infamous phone call without condemning Mitchell’s involvement.

For their part, the firm has made a statement about Mitchell’s involvement, saying they’re “concerned” by it:

Foley & Lardner LLP is not representing any parties seeking to contest the results of the presidential election. In November, the firm made a policy decision not to take on any representation of any party in connection with matters related to the presidential election results. Our policy did allow our attorneys to participate in observing election recounts and similar actions on a voluntary basis in their individual capacity as private citizens so long as they did not act as legal advisers. We are aware of, and are concerned by, Ms. Mitchell’s participation in the January 2 conference call and are working to understand her involvement more thoroughly.

But critics are not impressed by it:

Listen — the firm has been on notice about Mitchell’s extremist political leanings for a long time. (She was famously part of an anti-gay rights crusade, attended the Amy Covid Barrett nomination celebration (without wearing a mask, natch), and worked to keep the Steve Bannon PAC donor rolls secret. And just this past November, she went on Fox News to tell tall tales of voter fraud. It’s past time they decided what they’re going to do about it.

---

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).