Category: News Feeds

Jamie Spears should be removed as conservator because it is in [the] best interest of the conservatee. We will be moving promptly and aggressively for his removal. The question remains, why is he involved? He should step down voluntarily because that’s what’s in the best interest of the conservatee. My firm and I will be taking a top to bottom look at what’s happened over the past decade.

— Matthew Rosengart, a partner at Greenberg Traurig who is now representing Britney Spears in her conservatorship, in comments given to the press outside the courthouse following her latest hearing. Rosengart is a veteran entertainment law litigator, and has been referred to by client Sean Penn as “a tough as nails streetfighter with a big brain and bigger principles.”

---

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.

Being a lawyer can be stressful and taxing, even in the best of times, and the result can have severe and detrimental impacts on attorney wellbeing. There are many efforts to address this growing concern, including Lawyer Assistance Programs and initiatives such as the creation of Attorney Well-Being Week. Some states require attorneys to enroll in wellness-related continuing legal education courses in categories such as substance abuse and mental health. Most other states will accredit wellness programs as ethics credits.

Combating the epidemic of attorney fatigue requires structural change at law firms and other legal workplaces, and in the justice system writ large. For individual attorneys, however, there are skills you can learn to manage stress on an everyday basis. If you’re looking for some new strategies to manage and care for your own mental health, check out one of Lawline’s top five Attorney Wellness CLE programs, designed to be practical, enjoyable, and most importantly, to help you deal with the daily struggles every lawyer is familiar with:

1. Overcoming Compassion Fatigue: Attorney Wellness When Working With Clients in Trauma. Many legal matters occur at times of acute stress, and attorneys who work with clients who have faced trauma frequently experience secondary trauma during their representation. This course provides techniques for preventing and managing secondary trauma, including specific advice on listening to traumatic stories, and self-care practices.
2. Depression: An Occupational Hazard of the Legal Profession. This program goes beyond the statistics on lawyer depression and substance abuse, providing a comprehensive overview of risk factors and symptoms of depression and intervention strategies for attorneys with colleagues in need of support. It also outlines the resources that are available to attorneys who are struggling.
3. Striving for a (Realistic) Attorney Work/Life Balance in 2021. Setting and maintaining a realistic work-life balance is particularly important for attorneys. Fortunately, this is a skill that can be learned. This course provides information on identifying the early warning signs of impairment and burnout, as well as well-being strategies that really work.
4. Developing Resilience and Achieving Well-Being in Times of Challenge and Chaos. As law firms and other workplaces re-open, any “return to normal” must include a reckoning with the struggles and trauma of the last year, and this means building cultures of resilience and well-being. This course will use case studies to teach attorneys and law firm leaders specific techniques to develop mindfulness, resilience, and reduce workplace stressors.
5. Stress Management for Attorneys: Ethical Traps for the Unwary. This informative and interesting course focuses on the effects of chronic stress and how these impair a lawyer’s ability to practice law. The program uses neuroscience to describe the impact of chronic stress and teaches evidence-based strategies to manage it. One viewer called it the “best and most useful ethics course I have ever taken.”

Interested in more Attorney Wellness content? Check it out here.

Related Content:

1. Stress Management for Busy Lawyers: Six Strategies to Avoid Procrastination
2. Saving Your Sanity: Four Wellness Tips from Leading Legal Educators
3. Risk, Regulation & Resilience: Linking Malpractice, Competence, and Attorney Well-Being

In 2016, electric automaker Tesla acquired solar energy installer SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Now, a shareholder derivative suit turns on the question of whether that was a fair bargain for Tesla, or a sweetheart deal meant to pad the pockets of a few select insiders.

If you need a little refresher, a shareholder derivative action is a lawsuit brought on behalf of a corporation. Derivative suits often target corporate insiders, like directors or officers, who other company leaders may be reluctant to sue. Typically, to bring a derivative suit the corporation itself must have refused to pursue a colorable legal cause of action. Then, if the shareholder who brought the derivative action succeeds, the corporation gets the proceeds.

Originally there were seven Tesla shareholder lawsuits over the SolarCity acquisition. These suits were eventually consolidated into one case alleging that Tesla directors breached fiduciary duties by acceding to CEO Elon Musk’s demands to purchase SolarCity. 

At the time of the deal, Musk owned about 22 percent of both Tesla and SolarCity, the latter of which was founded by his cousins. Late last summer, a $60 million settlement, paid by insurance, resolved the claims against the directors on Tesla’s board without any admission of fault.

However, there was one exception to the settlement: Elon Musk. Musk refused to settle, leaving him as the sole remaining defendant, and leading to the trial that kicked off this week with Musk himself taking the stand.

The first day of questioning elicited several entertaining exchanges of the type you’d expect in a trial involving Elon Musk. 

When asked by shareholder attorney Randall Baron whether the Tesla board vetted his self-granted title change earlier this year to “Technoking,” Musk said, “It generated a whole bunch of free press and Tesla doesn’t advertise and it’s helpful to general sales.” 

Musk called the Technoking title a joke, and added, “I think I’m funny.” 

For what it’s worth, so do I.

Musk also called Baron “a bad human being” from the stand. 

Now, I don’t know the guy, but just judging by the fact that Baron is a plaintiffs’ lawyer, Musk probably has a better than 50-50 chance of being right on that one. 

As many sparks flew in Musk’s second day of testimony as in the first. 

“Your questions are so deceptive,” said Musk in another exchange with Baron. 

At one point, a member of Baron’s legal team vomited in the courtroom, forcing a brief recess. Substantively, Musk admitted that he recommended $28.50 per share as an acquisition price for SolarCity, but pointed out that the board ultimately decided to offer the lower price range of $26.50 to $28.50 a share. 

“They don’t listen to me, obviously,” quipped Musk. 

Musk also argued that the cash flow from SolarCity’s previous solar installations was itself sufficient justification for the purchase, calling the deal “a no-brainer.” Ultimately, Musk did recuse himself from some of the negotiations concerning the SolarCity acquisition, and he did not participate in the SolarCity vote.

After two days of intense questioning, Elon Musk’s testimony is over, but other witnesses will follow. When the trial ends, Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights of the Delaware Court of Chancery will have several months to make a decision.

Even if Musk loses and has to pay personally for the entire SolarCity deal, $2.6 billion won’t really hurt the man who is currently the world’s third-richest individual (he has an estimated net worth of approximately $163 billion). Although it would certainly seem to be to Elon Musk’s chagrin to know that even one penny of his fortune was going to line the pockets of Randall Baron in a contingency fee eventuality.

As to this Tesla shareholder’s opinion, well, I acquired my shares right around the time of the SolarCity deal, and they’re up something in the neighborhood of 1,300 percent since then. Musk and the Tesla board must be doing something right.

---

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Emily N. Litzinger back to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

Being a lawyer is about working well under pressure. You are expected to achieve favorable results with very little effort. The client wants success without much investment. The firm wants a time commitment and near-perfect work product.

Being a mom is very similar in the sense that you certainly have pressure to perform. Your kids want you to do all the things for them. In the early years you essentially serve as a lifeguard trying to keep everyone safe. As a mom, you are expected to be active, engaged, and volunteer for your kids’ activities.  Then after the children’s bedtime, your spouse wants (and deserves) some of your attention.

These are all priorities to you. Your job, your spouse, and your children are important, so you give, and you give, and you give until you are pouring from an empty — let’s be honest — a bone-dry cup.

If you are anything like me, a type-A lawyer mom, you somehow seem to barely fill up your cup and inexplicably give some more. You volunteer for room parent, you join the PTA, and sign your kids up for all the after-school programs whilst also trying to build your own business, be an active community member, and grow as a practitioner of the law. But what happens when you are thirsty, and there is nothing left to pour from your empty cup?

Is This Really What I Signed Up For?

The art of self-care is just that, an art and a learned skill. I’ve never been good at self-care. My friend (err, enemy) “guilt” is always standing closely behind me when I attempt to carve out time to just be, be for me (and I don’t mean grocery shopping alone). I want to do and be all the things for the people in my life and feel an immense amount of guilt for not meeting my obligations (or those expected from me).

It’s my fault, right? I signed up for all these things. I overcommitted. I am trying to “have it all.”

But I Can’t Help To Question — Is It Really My Fault? 

I did not create this model for myself. I saw it, and I heard it. I listened to others and watched as women were praised for the herculean efforts. I started my legal career on the heels of a nasty recession and faced challenges getting my foot in the door. Once I did, I took off. I was told to just “lean in,” and I will be able to have it all. A career, motherhood, and a healthy marriage.  So, I did, I have, I continue to lean. But after a year of pandemic parenting three small children and practicing law from my closet/office, I am leaning so hard I can barely stand, I have a crick in my neck, and I need help. But those who told me to lean in are nowhere to be found. Society has essentially “dined and dashed.” It has received the benefits of my efforts and done very little to support me in the process. The pandemic has, on so many levels, magnified the already systemic gender inequality in the workplace and the legal profession.

This system is not working anymore. The system is broken for parents, and notably, for women, specifically women of color, who are three times more likely to be caregivers and bear the burden of household obligations in heterosexual relationships. If the last year (or so) has taught us anything it is that the world and workplace are changing. We’ve all been through this once-in-a-lifetime trauma.

Why Should We All Keep Leaning In To Meet These, Quite Frankly, Damaging Expectations? 

As the workplace changes this is the time to change our way of thinking.  Running yourself ragged should not be praiseworthy — it’s stupid, it’s irresponsible. It’s the source of some of the deep mental health issues that plague the legal profession. Saying “no” should not be frowned upon. We usually have no idea what others are struggling with outside of the workplace.

As we crawl out of this pandemic, it is essential that we as women lawyers change our mindset and the image of success. We must switch out the lens to one that views finding and continuing to work toward that delicate balance that fits your life — not the expectations of others. Flexibility should be normalized. Parents should be supported. Women deserve equality in the workplace. The unspoken “expectations” of our grandfathers should be forgotten. It’s time.

Often, I must remind myself that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s life. It’s meant to be enjoyed, savored, and met with peace and a happiness that you create without anyone’s judgment.

---

Emily N. Litzinger is a partner in the national labor and employment law firm Fisher Phillips and practices out of the Louisville office. Emily is a trusted adviser and experienced litigator who counsels and defends employers through the intricacies of labor and employment law and works with her clients to develop preventative strategies to ensure compliance and avoid costly litigation.  As a mother of three energetic young daughters, Emily is passionate about the advancement of women in both the legal profession and the workplace. Emily has written and presented extensively on the pandemic’s impact on women in the workforce and is an advocate for gender equality in the workplace.

I don’t know if this rings true for everyone, but when I went in-house, I received exponentially more opportunities to speak — whether it was as a panelist, moderator, or on a podcast. And recently, one of my mentees, who is also in-house, shared her hesitation, discomfort, and reluctance with speaking opportunities — which inspired this blog post.

This may not work for everyone, but here are my tips on how to be a successful panelist.

Choose Opportunities Wisely

First, it’s important to accept opportunities carefully. Is the topic something you’re deeply passionate about? Are you a subject matter expert? Or is it something with which you are only vaguely familiar? Will have to do a lot of preparation and learn or research the topic in order to speak confidently? While I am not opposed to “stretch assignments” at work, I personally don’t take this approach when it comes to speaking opportunities. I find that if I don’t know the subject well, it affects my confidence and my ability to engage with the panel, the moderator, and the audience. I understand that some may disagree and believe that all opportunities should be accepted when given, but I’m just in a different camp because I think credibility and authenticity are important, especially when it comes to personal branding.

Prepare

While I know and admire people whose charisma and knowledge may not require preparation, it is a nonnegotiable for me. The preparation gives me extra confidence and also allows me to be very intentional about what I want to share. It’s the difference between just giving any answer and giving the best response I can. Preparation probably looks different to different people, but my process is taking the list of questions that will be asked of me and setting aside an hour or two to really think about my responses a few days in advance. My goal as a speaker is not simply to share my opinion but provide substance where everyone in the audience will take away something tangible to implement or will gain a new way of looking at something. And then an hour or so before the actual event, I review the questions and responses. For some opportunities, the entire panel will practice together, and while I’m happy to participate, I have found that sometimes we lose the organic, authentic conversation, and it can end up being a little rehearsed or, worse, we forget to make the points we discovered together in the prep session.

Be Present

This tip comes more easily with practice, but it’s important to get out of your head during the speaking opportunity and be present with the panel. One of the perks of preparation is that it should help you resist the inner panic of “what am I going to say when it’s my turn,” and instead — it allows you to really listen to the moderator or the other panelists and authentically engage in the conversation with the audience, lending to eye contact (even if it’s just with your camera), authentic reactions and, in this Zoom world, to engaging in the chat. Despite my preparation before the panel, I won’t actually have my notes with me because I find that I’ll want to read what I wrote instead of having a conversation. I will, however, have a pen and notepad in case I want to jot something the moderator or other panelists have said so I can share my thoughts.

As with anything in the law, it’s all practice — but hopefully these tips will help you be more successful at your next speaking opportunity.

---

Meyling “Mey” Ly Ortiz is in-house at Toyota Motor North America. Her passions include mentoring, championing belonging, and a personal blog: TheMeybe.com. At home, you can find her doing her best to be a “fun” mom to a toddler and preschooler and chasing her best self on her Peloton. You can follow her on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/meybe/). And you knew this was coming: her opinions are hers alone.

Now that more and more Biglaw firms have announced their office reopening plans, with policies that include more and more autonomy and remote work options for attorneys, it’s fair to say that firms that previously notified associates that the office would return to being their “default” ball and chain have a few regrets. At least this seems to be what’s happening at Paul Hastings.

Back in May, the firm notified lawyers and staff that as of September 7, they “should be working from the office.” The firm then went one step further, stating that “by default, we should work from the office when we are able.” Needless to say, this did not go over well, prompting much talk about immediate lateral moves.

Late last month, Paul Hastings sent out a second memo, in an attempt to clarify their return-to-office plans. The “by default” terminology was notably absent from the firm’s second memo, replaced by statements about the firm’s prior accomodations for remote work, and its intention to remain a flexible workplace in the post-pandemic world. The American Lawyer has additional details:

While the firm didn’t outright walk back from its earlier stance, the more recent memo stated that the firm “has been an innovator and market leader in flexible working arrangements for over a decade, and we plan to remain a leader.”

In the most telling portion of the memo, the firm stated that it was issuing another statement to “allay any potential concerns or misperceptions about our September 7 return to work plan” and that firm leaders “want to reinforce that remote work and increasing levels of flexibility in our work arrangements will remain hallmarks of how we operate.”

Paul Hastings is the first firm we’re aware of that has made an about face when it comes to their office reopening plans as far as remote work is concerned.

What has your firm announced as far as a reopening plan is concerned? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.

Paul Hastings, After Internal Pushback, Clarifies Office Return Stance in Second Memo [American Lawyer]

---

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.

Winnebago County, WI Circuit Judge Scott Woldt was suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court for “impatient, undignified, and disrespectful speech.” Oh, and his penchant for displaying his handgun.

As reported by the ABA Journal, the Wisconsin Judicial Commission’s allegations of misconduct includes some doozies:

• In 2009, Woldt told a victim of domestic abuse who asked for leniency for her boyfriend during his sentencing hearing that he was “sick and tired” of victims who called the police when they were distressed but later told the court, “Oh no, this person’s an angel.”

• During a 2015 sentencing hearing for an 18-year-old who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl, Woldt interrupted defense counsel who said the defendant was confused by the situation. The judge responded sarcastically that when he’s “paralyzed by fear,” the first thing he does is demand sex from a girl. He called the defense counsel’s argument “stupid” and later said that attorneys who come before him need to “shut their ‘pie holes’ and get to the point.”

• In 2015, Woldt said during a postconviction motion hearing that he wanted the defendant to be found guilty and to give him a year in jail for wasting his time.

• Also in 2015, Woldt “gave a rather lengthy soliloquy about his views on courthouse security” during a sentencing hearing in a burglary case. At one point, he pulled out a handgun from under his robe, ejected the magazine and bullets and presented it as a “prop” to those in court. “You’re lucky you’re not dead because, if you would have come into my house, I keep my gun with me and you’d be dead, plain and simple,” the judge told the defendant.

• In 2016, Woldt also displayed his handgun to a group of high school students after one of them asked him a question about courthouse security during a Government Day event.

• Also in 2016, he used profanity when berating an attorney during a custody/placement modification hearing.

The commission suspended Woldt, who has been on the bench since 2004, for seven days, without pay. They wrote, “We conclude that a short suspension is necessary in this situation to assure the members of the public that judges will treat them with dignity, fairness, and respect when they enter the courtrooms of this state, and to impress upon Judge Woldt the seriousness of his misconduct and the need for him to change how he treats the jurors, lawyers, litigants, witnesses, victims, and staff with whom he interacts.”

Woldt disputed the characterization of several of the incidents, for example saying that he displayed the gun to show sympathy with burglary victims, not to intimidate the defendant. In Wisconsin, judges are permitted to carry concealed weapons, but, the commission noted, “that Judge Woldt’s comments, when combined with the unnecessary display of his personal handgun during the sentencing proceeding, constituted a failure to observe ‘high standards of conduct.’”

---

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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).

It’s an eventful week on the Ken Starr beat. Perversion of Justice (affiliate link), an upcoming book from the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown on the Jeffrey Epstein case, will identify Ken Starr as the “most powerful force” in the effort to let Epstein avoid prison when originally caught. This came out in advance of the book’s release when Brown took to Twitter to address just a fraction of the revelations in former Starr acolyte Judi Hershman’s Medium mea culpa detailing how she went from working with Starr to allegedly having an affair with him to realizing that he’s dedicated his professional career to providing cover to serial abusers.

So, not a great week for Ken.

Brown’s claim that Starr was the driving force behind Epstein’s plea deal (I wonder what Alan Dershowitz would say, since he’s on record saying the deal wasn’t lenient enough) has put a new spotlight on his involvement in the case, though we were talking about his role way back when Epstein was still alive, because even then, Starr’s deep involvement with Epstein was completely predictable.

As Hershman’s Medium piece explains, Starr’s career from prosecuting Clinton’s impeachment to standing behind Donald Trump during his impeachment, places him as the Forrest Gump of high-profile abuse.

And in between he zealously took up the cause of a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault, Jeffrey Epstein, a Baylor University football player accused of rape and even a schoolteacher in suburban Virginia found guilty of molesting 5 young school girls.

Time after time, he’s there to bail out abusers. Starr’s Baylor University tenure disintegrated in epic fashion as Pepper Hamilton was brought in to investigate Starr’s role in presiding over an extensive series of sexual assaults and responding with a blind eye at best and an active cover-up at worst. After the investigations and his subsequent firing, he tried to play defense regarding his tenure… badly.

But Hershman’s got years’ worth of anecdotes about Starr’s willingness to go to bat for misogyny.

I had met Kavanaugh in 1998 when he was a 33-year-old member of then, Independent Counsel Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton, and I was a 39-year-old strategic communications consultant hired to help prep Starr to present Congress with his legendary report detailing President Bill Clinton’s sexual interactions with a Monica Lewinsky. One day after a meeting at the independent counsel offices, I was alone in a conference room collecting materials when Kavanaugh entered. He began berating me and invading my personal space in a deranged fury that sent me into flight around the table.

Hershman claims Starr blew off the incident noting that Kavanaugh could well end up on the Supreme Court. When powerful people are willing to carry enough water for you… anything is possible!

After sketching out the general contours of an affair with Starr, she talks about the first time she heard about Jeffrey Epstein.

… he asked me, if on my next visit to South Florida, I could extend myself to counsel a “very wealthy, very smart businessman who got himself into trouble for getting involved with a couple of underage girls who lied about their ages.” I confess I did not recognize Jeffrey Epstein’s name at the time, but I knew what statutory rape was and I couldn’t understand why Ken Starr would be involved with him. “Is this a church thing?” I asked. “Are you trying to ‘cure’ him? Why would you do this!”

It’s really something to read someone finally put all the pieces together. Hershman’s just taking every time Starr boosted a colleague like Kavanaugh, or defended a pedophile on the grounds that “[h]e promised to keep it above 18 from now on,” or got drummed out of a university in disgrace for systematically mishandling sexual assault reports, or terrorized an intern to settle a political beef with Bill Clinton… and finally seeing it all line up like the end of The Usual Suspects.

Hey, maybe it’s not an accident that this guy is always at ground zero of this behavior?

Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me [Medium]

Jeffrey Epstein’s Arrest Forces Us To Ask: Which Dirtbag Lawyers In This Case Will Face Their Own Music?

---

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.

No desire to go into the office? No problem. Wouldn’t it be nice if all law firms had office reopening policies like this? Try not to be too jealous.

This seems to be what’s happening at Gibson Dunn, which announced its return-to-office plan earlier this week. The firm will throw open its doors on September 13, and according to a memo sent by managing partner Barbara Becker, lawyers will be free to make their own office schedules.

“You are free to work remotely whenever it is appropriate, taking into account the needs of our clients and your teams, and you should feel comfortable doing so,” Becker said in her email to attorneys. “The ability to structure our schedules in a way that is responsive to the needs of our clients and teams, as well as our essential personal and family priorities, is key to a vibrant and sustainable career,” she noted.

But associates — especially junior associates — should be aware they’ll need to have a presence in the office from time to time. The American Lawyer has details:

Becker acknowledged the benefits, both to the firm and to attorneys’ professional development, that accrue from working collectively in an office setting.

“We do not want anyone to miss out on the immense training, mentorship, and professional development benefits that come with being together in person,” she said. “And we know that we learn and grow from working together. This is especially true for our most junior attorneys and those who are new to the firm, who must not only develop substantive legal skills and expertise, but also thrive in a variety of professional situations that cannot be replicated in other settings.”

But Becker added that the flexibility to work remotely when necessary is crucial to fueling “full, well-rounded, happy lives.”

Gibson Dunn is allowing its attorneys to create their own schedules because management “implicitly trust[s] the judgment of our lawyers to do what’s best for their clients, their teams and their personal lives.” Perhaps other firms should adopt policies like this — it’ll make their attorneys feel a little more like autonomous adults instead of mere billing machines.

What has your firm announced as far as a reopening plan is concerned? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.

Gibson Dunn’s Flexible Work Policy Hands Autonomy to Attorneys [American Lawyer]

---

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.

Above the Law has already reamed Justice Stephen Breyer for staying on the Court in his advanced age despite the Democrat in the White House and in control (tenuous as it may be) of the Senate, but we are resigned to it. (See, resignation isn’t difficult.) So, the latest breathless headlines about the justice aren’t a surprise. But, for the sake of completeness, here they are.

Justice Breyer went on CNN last night and officially said he hasn’t made a decision on retirement. Which is the epitome of an obvious nothingburger. Though he did note he was especially gratified in being the senior liberal on the Court. How nice for him, I guess.

Looks like seeing Amy Coney Barrett in RBG’s seat isn’t as traumatizing for Justice Breyer as it is for some of us.

---

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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).