Category: News Feeds

The year is almost over, and with Biglaw firms looking forward to leaving 2020 in the rearview mirror, they’ve been dropping bonus announcements to remind associates that working hard through a pandemic that included austerity measures like salary cuts still allowed them to reap some rewards.

Last month, Stoel Rives — a firm that came in 132nd place in the most recent Am Law 200 rankings, with $236,541,000 in gross revenue in 2019 — announced not only that the firm would be retroactively restoring base compensation for attorneys, but that bonuses were on the way, and 2020 bonus pools, which are larger than they’ve been in any other year, would be left intact. (If you recall, in April, the firm decided to implement discretionary-only bonuses in lieu of hours-based bonuses.) Those bonuses were paid out last week, but now the firm has even more good news for its lawyers and staff: more bonuses! Here’s a note that was sent to everyone at Stoel Rives:

As the year-end approaches, we expect the Firm will finish the year strong, in large part due to the hard work and perseverance of our lawyers and support staff across our national platform. To show our appreciation, the Executive Committee has approved a special COVID supplemental bonus in addition to the performance bonuses that are already being paid to non-partner attorneys and staff. For associates, of counsel and staff attorneys this will result in an approximately 25% increase in their overall bonus. In addition, the Executive Committee has approved a special 2020 year-end bonus of $1000 for every non-partner attorney and each staff member at the Firm.

Congratulations to everyone at the firm. Not only was Stoel Rives able to bound back after bracing for the worst, but it’s now sharing its successes with its employees.

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.

There are certainly difficult questions in law, but the constitutionality of the practice of civil asset forfeiture should not be one of them. After all, the Fourth Amendment guarantees that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” and the 14th Amendment confers this guarantee onto the states. Yet, the practice of civil asset forfeiture allows the government to seize property (including cash) from citizens without ever having to prove probable cause or that a crime has been committed. The reason we have this sad and abusive reality is that the Fourth Amendment’s plain language carries little weight in our nation’s courts. The result of asset forfeiture is that more than $68 billion has been taken from the American populace since 2000.

I could spend this entire essay relating to you the horror stories of asset forfeiture where innocent people have had their lives ruined. Moreover, the negative impact is not felt evenly by everyone but has been shown to disproportionately effect minorities. During the Obama administration modest proposals were implemented at the federal level in reforming asset forfeiture with many states going even farther to enact reforms in order to curb the abuse. But, as is so often the case, the once better-looking times only lasted until the man who willingly paints himself orange was elected president. In particular, once the “doughty bigot” Jefferson Beauregard Sessions became attorney general not only were the modest reforms at the federal level abandoned, but ol’ bigoted Beauregard ensured that promising state reforms could be bypassed through what’s called the adoption program.

As Radley Balko has explained, under the adoption program:

[A] local police department or prosecutor need only call the local branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, or other federal law enforcement agency and ask them to join the case. Even minimal federal participation makes the investigation federal, which means the forfeiture policy will now be governed by federal law. The federal agency will then return a large percentage of the federal proceeds back to the local police agency.

To be blunt, the adoption program is a way for the federal government to ignore state reforms to asset forfeiture. If, for example, a state reformed its laws so that police could not seize cash unless they proved a crime was committed, well, then all an officer would have to do is call a fed, have them take the cash and wait around for the federal agent to give it back to the state.

And there is a perverse incentive for state police to utilize the federal adoption program, even if the seizure violates their own state laws, as asset forfeiture operates as a slush fund for police departments. Basically, the problems with asset forfeiture are legion, and the damage being done is pervasive. Enter Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan.

Amash has introduced the “Civil Asset Forfeiture Elimination Act,” and it is as glorious as it sounds. The bill would ban the forfeiture of “any property, real or personal, pursuant to a civil forfeiture proceeding, including a nonjudicial civil forfeiture proceeding.”

The first thing that came into my head when reading this bill was why in the world the Democrats have not introduced this? Being they are the opposition party to the current president who has increased civil asset forfeiture and with the senate at stake in Georgia. Then again, Amash has a storied history of putting the Democrats to shame. Perhaps more importantly, and also more worrisome, incoming president Joe Biden does not have an ideal past when it comes to criminal justice issues. On the campaign trail, Biden did propose modest reforms, but on political gimmie criminal justice issues like legalization of cannabis, which is widely supported even in deep red states, Biden remains woefully behind.

The good news is this House of Representatives has shown itself capable of taking historic votes that could ultimately push drug warriors like Biden in the right direction. But will this Congress make a similar push when it comes to asset forfeiture and pass Amash’s bill? Only time will tell. What is certain is that asset forfeiture is an abused, ineffective, and (should be) unconstitutional practice. Passing Amash’s bill is all it would take for the horrors to end.

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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.

When it comes to collaboration, the quarantine era simply accelerated what we already knew:

Legal teams need better technology to conduct their work anywhere.

But what sets a great collaborative environment apart from a mediocre one?

In this special report, Everlaw, a leading provider of cloud-based case management software, explores the ways technology can foster true collaboration — and how this will be critical to success during the pandemic and beyond.

You will learn:

• The increased importance of collaboration.
• Tools that make remote collaboration possible.
• Keys to creating a modern shared space.

Fill out the form to download this report!

By submitting the form below, you are opting in to receive communication from Above the Law and its partners.

Kirkland & Ellis is, by a healthy margin, the richest law firm going. Their revenue numbers are just ridic. But rather that offer lockstep bonuses that share the wealth in a transparent fashion with associates, they offer individualized bonuses. But, K&E also has a reputation for repeatedly beating market bonuses. Indeed, that above-market compensation is a key recruiting point for the firm and allows them to kick ass in the lateral market as well.

But 2020 is a year full of upheaval, and we all were wondering exactly what bonuses at the mega firm would look like.

In an associate town hall meeting, the firm began the hype machine touting the bonus numbers, and that almost everyone was going to crush it. But when actual individualized bonuses started to come in, not everyone was impressed. Sure, they were above market, but, again, that’s kinda Kirkland’s thing. We’ve gotten word from tipsters that some were left disappointed, and that, particularly when you factor in other firms’ special bonuses this year, (which K&E pointedly did not participate in) this year’s bonuses simply didn’t wow. From some insiders:

Mid-level in corporate, with class, 24-2500 hours, about 35% above market on the year-end component, but only 25% above market all in. Either way, I’ve had higher multiples in past years with materially lower hours. And given what was said on this morning’s zoom call that multiples were greater than ever, etc., the general consensus is that associates aren’t super thrilled. The firm took the opportunity to rave about killer bonuses but could only (misleadingly) do so by factoring in the one-time special COVID bonus and otherwise lowering what the year-end component would have been in any other year. All things considered, these aren’t market shattering bonuses by any stretch of the imagination (and certainly not worth the hype they were given this morning), and I think as a result, this will be the beginning of a mass exodus of associates, whether shortly after they’re paid out or after the firm’s financials come out showing another year of significant revenue and PPP growth.

we got our K&E bonuses and they’re terrible. I’m a junior and they kept telling us how big our bonuses would be and “substantially above market” and we would be so happy and me and everyone I know got barely above market. We’re all incredibly pissed since we’ve been billing insane hours.

But proving it’s all a matter of perspective, others are still happy with whatever above-market bonus they’re taking down:

Individualized, no memo, but they’re huge. Made up for not paying the special bonus in the fall. Mid-level in transactional group with high hours and I received 2x the DPW full year (fall + winter) scale

here’s a tip on Kirkland bonuses – individual bonuses were announced yesterday with all associates in good standing (99% of associates) receiving above market bonuses + pandemic bonus. Extra high bonuses were awarded this year, and even more for high hours – Im in 2014-2016 class range and received 50% above market for the normal bonus, plus the regular pandemic bonus. The firm treated everyone well and were so supportive throughout the year with the pandemic (understanding of personal challenges, child care, etc.), this just ends the year on an even higher note! People are happy!

Kirkland crushes bonuses. Automatic special Covid match. No billable requirement and automatic above NY market firmwide. 5th year, >2400 hours, >$140k.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). 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, 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.

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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).

When I became a lawyer, I was inundated with all sorts of tips and tricks of the trade. The pearls of wisdom ranged from what clothes I should wear, to why suits are the only option, to how to build an air-raid shelter filled to the ceiling with coffee.

I found the shelter much more helpful than the other advice, but, as I gained my own experience in the field, I found out that a few major things had been overlooked in the ocean of advice I was floating in. I’d like to dive into those by further discussing three conversations I had on my podcast.

So, without further ado, let’s appreciate this first gem because it’s a rare one. Now, being a lawyer, I rarely use words without purpose; in this case, I chose the word “appreciate” for a very good reason. Appreciation, in the legal sector, is more elusive than Bigfoot, but Lauren Zajac — chief legal officer of Workhuman — is adamant that it is one of the most underestimated tools in the law process.

Why is it so useful?

Because it’s far more common to come across the inverse of appreciation. The only thing with less leeway than the law is lawyers, themselves. Obviously, that is not true in all cases, but I myself was skeptical about the so-called Culture of Recognition — in spite of the fact that I had initiated this conversation with Lauren. For the unbelievers, like me, here is a brief overview of its benefits:

• Betters post-negotiation relationships
• Creates a breathing space, and helps you process during the acknowledgment
• Rewires neural pathways to be more geared toward recognizing the value
• Turns “business-impeding lawyers” into strategic partners who add greater value
• Creates psychological safety and, consequently, improves confidence, innovation, and risk-taking
• Supports diversity and inclusion by building relationships across the board — even extending out to other firms/businesses

Overall, recognition establishes a positive culture, fostering healthy relationships that inspire superior performance. You can listen in on the conversation here:

 

Hyperlinks are not the only links that take you and your stakeholders to new places. LinkedIn does just this, as well. LinkedIn is a social media network designed for corporate relationships. It is a platform that combines marketing and digital personality creation in interesting ways. Neil Greenbaum has been very intentional about building his LinkedIn following, and, if his results are anything to go by, then everyone should be going the Neil Greenbaum route.

He started out doing 30 videos in 30 days but recommends giving 10 videos in 10 working days (two weeks) a shot, which would make it a little more manageable. He emphasizes videos because they create familiarity and differentiation. You’re not just marketing your skills, you’re marketing yourself, as well. A 40-to-60 second video explaining one concept is his sweet spot, but he provides even more insight in this interview:

The last tool is something I have touched on before but in a different context. I looked at the Law/Fusion Paradigm once, but Sarah Feingold has dug deep into the intersection between art and law, learning some cross-disciplinary lessons. She mentions some practical “transferable skills” — things that help wire your brain in a way that sets a pattern of thought, regardless of the area. Metalworking is her favorite pastime, and so she is used to the process of envisioning something and then seeing how it plays out. This journey from envisioning to enacting is an unavoidable iteration in law — a lesson complemented by patience and the beginner’s mindset, both of which she learned about through the medium of art.

On the flip side of that, Sarah also talks about the law through the platform of theatre, an original and brilliant idea she discusses in more detail here:

There are many gems unknown to the modern lawyer. Just dig a little deeper down, and you might find them.

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

Everyone is stressed out about trying to make law school work during a pandemic. That includes the professors who are attempting to reinvent the wheel on the fly too. This has created some turmoil with three professors teaching one Civ Pro class (and reportedly forgetting to cover estoppel in the handoff) and more than one school accidentally sending the exam out early and requiring professors to craft new tests overnight. So we feel for professors letting the stress get to them.

But, you know, don’t ever write emails like this one.

An SBA representative at UCLA Law wrote Professor Taimie Bryant after hearing concerns from 1Ls that the remotely administered final exam would be shoehorned into a 3 hour and 40 minute window:

I will admit that I am not well versed in the finals decisions that each professor makes and the overall process that goes on at the law school, but, from my understanding, I thought professors were strongly recommended to have a 24-hour window for students to take their exams in this semester. This is in order to take into account that students are in different time zones, students may have different peak hours of internet connectivity depending on the other members in their households and their internet usage times, and students may have different hours of availability as I know students are juggling a lot right now with managing parental duties, managing sick family members (as I know, personally, there are students who have family members currently battling covid), and other things that pop up.

Excellent points about virtual testing, connectivity issues, and the importance of flexibility in a crisis. And the fact that other professors seem to be adhering to this advice is also compelling. In response, the professor wrote:

Thank you for your representation of some students in Section 2. I appreciate your comments but I will not be changing the window.

Faculty were told initially that all exams were scheduled at times that Records and IS staff could assist students with technical problems. That is, all exams were scheduled to begin in the morning. This would accommodate students in different time zones in the United States, and if someone were in, say, Europe or Asia, special arrangements could be made. As it stands now, a student on the east coast can begin any time between 12:30 pm PST and 4:10 pm PST. Starting as late as 4:10 pm puts them outside the window for technical support not long after the exam begins. A student on the west coast can begin any time between 9:30 am and 1 pm. This is fully within the window for technical support.

“Sorry, but we’re doing this to guarantee everyone has technical support, and I feel like that’s the most important thing I have to ensure for the students,” is an entirely reasonable response. Had the email ended here, student government could report back to its constituents that there is a reason for the window, even if it seems harsh, and everyone could go on about their day.

But instead what happened was…

While I do not mind giving reasons for many decisions I make, I do mind being told that “other faculty are doing things differently than you.” I gently recommend that you not rely on such reasoning in this day and age (after Mr Floyd’s murder) when people are trying to think conscientiously about their decisions so as not to be mere thoughtless followers.

I’m sorry, what?

Somehow the prospect of an overnight exam window doesn’t feel as though it’s of a moral equivalency to standing by while a man is slowly choked to death. It’s like she took the “if everyone jumped off a cliff” logical fallacy and decided to dial it up a notch by injecting some fresh racial trauma. And as offensive as that should be in any circumstance, that a white woman would pull this bizarre analogy out of her bag of tricks to respond to a Black woman carries this well over the line.

Maybe Bryant’s got some sort of explanation for how this makes sense to her. But this is one of those cases where the document speaks for itself. Whatever rationalization might exist, this is the artifact that she chose to freeze in time and certainly the one that she expected the audience of a Black law student to read stripped of any semblance of a justification. Not that I can imagine one.

Besides, objectively speaking, it is not a strong argument in most cases because it depends on there being a persuasive underlying reason for those others to be doing what they are doing.

“Not a strong argument”… you mean, precedent?

Because citing the practices of other professors is just persuasive precedent. If anything it’s exactly the sort of argument that law school is designed to drill into students as paramount. There’s a distinction between the argumentum ad populum fallacy and precedent and, yes, it’s partially about a “persuasive underlying reason,” but there’s also value to learning from the experience itself. To wit, if everyone jumped off a cliff… and survived because it was only a 1 foot cliff, that’s important to your decision.

Here, it’s all about understanding that the student isn’t saying the professor should offer flexibility just because other professors have, but that based on the experience of other professors, Bryant can feel secure that there are minimal risks and that students can and have successfully dealt with it.

I’m not persuaded by the time zone rationale for reasons I explain above. Also, as a law-trained person, I gently suggest that you refrain from statements like this: “l know your students have been diligently studying for your exam and are not using the extended window to somehow get an advantage.”

Actually, no… you do not know what all students are doing, and such a statement affects your overall persuasion and credibility in two ways. First, that thought had not occurred to me until you wrote it, as I was focused on the technical support issue. Raising that idea actually weakens your argument by suggesting an additional reason that might cause someone to remain even more committed to their initial decision.

Actually, as someone who litigated instead of joining a law school faculty the year after getting a J.D., let me suggest that lawyers should foreground and address the other side’s best arguments rather than hoping to hide the ball. That the professor wasn’t thinking about the impact this might have on the sanctity of the exam until the student raised it is unfortunate but probably says more about the professor in this case. She goes on to argue that it’s impossible to really know that students wouldn’t abuse the extra time as if law students aren’t placed in the situation of 24-hour take homes all the time without the credibility of legal education collapsing. Somehow, the bulk of the entire email is devoted to making ultimately defensive arguments against this point.

Again, I appreciate your willingness at this busy time to expend energy and time to assist others. I could tell from your beautifully written email that you invested much time and thought crafting it. I acknowledge you for this and believe that it indicates a strong moral compass. In recognition of that, I have similarly invested energy and time in responding to you.

I think she genuinely believes that she’s done that here. Except… she didn’t. The email was certainly long, but not particularly responsive. Despite all the digital ink spilled, there was never an answer to the family care issues or the general sentiment that flexibility is valuable during a pandemic. The entirety of the SBA rep’s argument was reduced to “time zones,” which was the only part where the professor had a good answer and, then the reply devolved into this “taking advantage” hypothetical and making absolutely inexcusable comparisons to how joining her colleagues in offering flexibility is of a kind with complicity in killing unarmed Black people.

If this represents investing energy and time into crafting a response, might I suggest that next time the professor give herself a 24-hour window to get her thoughts together first?

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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 far, the returns on Steve Cohen’s purchase of the Mets on the team’s fans have been pretty meager. To be sure, being rid of the Wilpons and their parsimonious and maddeningly petty ways, and to have in their place a responsive and shockingly empathetic-seeming billionaire who might actually get it is, to a Mets fan, priceless. Still, James McCann behind the plate in place of Wilson Ramos is not quite the sort of upgrade they probably had in mind when they suddenly found themselves possessed of the sport’s richest owner.

I served as a volunteer in an “election protection” project during this year’s election. Volunteers staffed phone lines answering calls from people nationally who had questions about how to exercise their right to vote: Were they registered? What was their polling place? Could they vote in person if they’d requested an absentee ballot, but preferred not to use it? The stuff you’d expect.

We weren’t acting as lawyers, just “trained volunteers,” to be sure we didn’t create any attorney-client privilege. Thus, anything said in those calls was not legal advice.

I had one caller, from Ohio, who said that she had voted, and nothing flagrantly wrong was happening at the polling place, but she was curious about something. The poll workers had posted on the wall behind them the names of all voters in the precinct, the voters’ addresses, the voters’ party affiliations, and whether or not the voters had yet voted. My caller asked if this was proper.

The answer to that wasn’t on my “frequently asked questions” sheet, so I had to text-message the election gurus who were fielding questions from rookies like me.

My caller’s question stumped even the gurus for a while, but eventually they told me that all of the information posted on the wall was public information, so there was nothing wrong with displaying it.

My caller, a smart woman, said: “The amount that I owe on my mortgage is public, too, but I’m not sure that people should post it on a wall.” In the end, she accepted my answer, and we agreed that any solution was legislative.

I mentioned this to a law-professor buddy of mine, and he instantly saw this as far more sinister than I had: “That’s gotta be a remnant of Jim Crow. Poll workers would post the names and addresses of people on the wall. If any Black people had the nerve to vote, the local KKK would know whose house to burn.”

Shame on me. I hadn’t considered that.

Even in merely hyperpartisan times, it strikes me that poll workers should not post voter information on the wall. But in times that go beyond hyperpartisan, this is wrong indeed.

The elections of 2020 revealed some problems in the process by which we vote. I assume that someone will think about how to solve those problems.  And maybe my caller’s issue should be added to the list: States should prohibit poll workers from posting publicly certain identifying information about people who choose to vote.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

* A company that claims its app is “the world’s first robot lawyer” is facing a class action. Wonder if the class representative is named John Connor… [Tech News World]

* The top lawyer for the City of Chicago has resigned over a botched police raid. [Guardian]

* A new lawsuit alleges that an inmate in a St. Louis County jail died of treatable leukemia despite asking his guards to see a doctor. [NBC News]

* Rob Gronkowski and Floyd Mayweather are facing a class action for allegedly endorsing a supposedly fraudulent teeth-whitening brand. [Yahoo News]

* Since Above the Law has not had a “Lawyerly Lairs” segment in a while, wanted to note that David Boies has put his $23 million California ranch on the market. [Fox News]

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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.