Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
The law practice management company MyCase has quietly acquired two legal technology companies in recent months, without announcing the acquisitions to the public.
On March 31, MyCase acquired CASEpeer, a case management platform for plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Around the same time, MyCase acquired Woodpecker, which provides legal document automation software for solo and small
(Image via Getty)
I think the program served its purpose which was to allow companies to keep people on the payroll that they would otherwise lay off. Now as we sit here with a booming stock market, people tend to have short memories about what the world was like back then.
— Ronald Schutz, chair of Robins Kaplan, commenting on the lifeboat that Paycheck Protection Program loans offered for law firms amid the worst of the pandemic. Am Law 200 firms received roughly $330 million in PPP loans, and 27 of them have had their loans fully or partially forgiven. The following firms have had their loans, totaling roughly $210 million, forgiven: Thompson & Knight; Armstrong Teasdale; Robins Kaplan; Bond, Schoeneck & King; Hodgson Russ; Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie; Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis; Day Pitney; Robinson & Cole; Morris, Manning, & Martin; Phelps Dunbar; Miles & Stockbridge; Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone; McElroy Deutsch Mulvaney & Carpenter; Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick; Schiff Hardin; Cole, Scott & Kissane; Ice Miller; Rutan & Tucker; Smith, Gambrell & Russell; Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff; Buchalter; Hinckley, Allen & Snyder; Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle; Arnall Golden Gregory; Williams Mullen; and Shutts & Bowen. Fifteen other firms have not yet disclosed whether their loans, totaling $125 million, have been forgiven.
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.
It seems as though most lawyers are eager to move to a hybrid work model that allows out-of-office working for one or two days a week. And they’re willing to sacrifice raises for it.
But while attorneys may be eyeing a bold new world that combines the benefits of a communal office structure with the technological gains of a robust COVID-inspired remote office infrastructure, firms are worried about how this new model will impact billing.
It’s not that firms think attorneys will bill less from home — we already learned during the pandemic that the billing doesn’t stop and may actually increase. But there are serious concerns about what working from home does to workflow and whether or not it leads associates to take on more work that would customarily be performed much cheaper by support staff.
Workflow, productivity, and profitability software company BigHand just released a report compiling the results of almost 1000 respondents from firms in North America, the UK, and APAC. And what firms are worried about is a confluence of retiring staff and associates billing for administrative tasks they’re taking on themselves.
Well, it’s not all about retirement:
Yes, firms cut back on staff during the pandemic. It’s a perverse firm tradition to wait until an economic downturn to cut back on staff as opposed to doing it in a boom when those folks can more easily find another job. From the firm’s perspective they feel they can afford underutilized staff in the good times, but that doesn’t make it sting any less when the firm downsizes in a recession.
Still, 56 percent of North America respondents and 49 percent of UK respondents expect between 20 and 40 percent of their support staff to retire in the next five years. And 61 percent of North America and 64 percent of UK firms expect to lose the same range of staff through natural attrition over the next five years.
So with staff leaving and attorneys working from home…
Hybrid working raises challenges for 30% of NA firms, 35% of UK firms and 53% of APAC firms, there are concerns regarding the need for lawyers to undertake more administrative work instead of delegating to support staff. In NA, 36% cite the difficulty of ensuring an even distribution of work between support staff, as well as 31% of UK firms and 38% of APAC firms.
It’s difficult enough to rewire a young lawyer to delegate copy jobs when the staff is sitting right outside the office. It must be near impossible to get lawyers to hand off admin tasks to someone existing in the cloud. Yet that’s going to become an issue as clients demand efficiency.
The report talks about this problem in terms of a decline in billable hours — noting that 52 percent responded that hours had either declined or stayed the same. The more dramatic figure to me is that this means 48 percent saw an increase, which makes me wonder if demand was really up or if associates just lumped more administrative tasks into their overall figures. Because as bad as associates losing billable time to preventable work might be, associates passing work over to clients that could be more efficiently handled by others would be worse.
Staying on top of that’s going to require firms to manage workflow and deliver the sort of transparency needed to please clients. But right now it looks like a lot of that is being handled on the fly.
And that’s going to be a bigger deal when everyone’s not under the same roof. Some sort of “automated reporting on the volume and types of tasks, support staff capacity and utilization and the speed of turnaround” is going to be essential at that point. If it isn’t already.
There’s a lot more in this report — that’s just what jumped out at me. You can check out the whole thing here.
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.
(Photo by Jennifer S. Altman/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The annual Above the Law “Lawyer of the Year” competition doesn’t always pick exactly who I would choose, but the readers got it right in 2018. Say what you will about Michael Avenatti, but he was absolutely the attorney who dominated 2018’s headlines.
He was representing a porn star in a high-profile defamation battle against the former president and seemed to be the first figure since election day to genuinely get under Trump’s skin. He was on all the shows. He even started flirting with a presidential run of his own.
The last point was, of course, something of a sideshow but it was all part of watching a lawyer absolutely controlling the narrative.
We spoke with Avenatti back then and he was every bit the engaging, conversation-dominating character people saw on TV. This was a guy built for the specific legal landscape of 2018.
Then came the federal charges. And the arrest. Today, he was sentenced for trying to extort Nike in a settlement hearing, though I’ve said it before and I’ll say again that those allegations seemed way less problematic — more like an obnoxiously overaggressive settlement conference — than the allegations brought on the opposing coast about supposedly embezzling client funds.
Still, it’s earned him 30 months. It was roughly 30 months ago that he won the Lawyer of the Year title.
The history of the last four years will have a lot of chapters and most will be less believable than the last. One of them should really focus on the lawyer who ran roughshod over the news in 2018.
Earlier: Michael Avenatti Charged With… A Whole Bunch Of Stuff Out Of Multiple USAOs
Michael Avenatti Charged With… A Whole Bunch MORE Stuff
Above The Law’s 2018 Lawyer Of The Year Contest: The Winner!
The ATL Michael Avenatti Interview
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.
(Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Yesterday the DC Court of Appeals issued a per curiam order disqualifying Rudy Giuliani from practicing law in the District while his license is suspended in New York.
“[T]his proceeding is hereby stayed pending the resolution of the disciplinary matter in New York,” the DC court wrote, after their New York counterparts yanked his license citing “uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.”
And although the matter is largely pro forma — DC is known for aggressively purging attorneys facing discipline in other jurisdictions — it’s clearly upsetting America’s Former Mayor.
“We stand together, in truth,” he tweeted, in response to a supporter’s exhortation that “EVERYONE should be standing behind Rudy in this fight.”
He’s also getting hot and hashtag heavy with that weird guy from Newsmax who tweets about smoking a joint in Kentucky and waking up four days later in Nairobi.
Rudy went on to retweet well wishes from his pal Bernie Kerik, who demanded to know “Where is the @gop, @GOPLeader @GOPChairwoman @LeaderMcConnell for him? #RINOs #Cowards.” Because what better character reference than an admitted tax cheat who used an apartment set aside for 9/11 first responders for assignations with his mistresses?
Although in a week when your biggest client stiffs you and a retired judge is combing through your emails because the feds raided your office in an investigation of alleged foreign lobbying hijinks, getting disbarred in a second jurisdiction is probably the least of your worries.
Especially when you’re very busy offering your opinion on the important news of the day.
Here’s Rudy actually getting corrected by a Newsmax host, who pointed out that his hypothetical antitrust claim against big tech had already been tossed out of court last week when the FTC and 40 state attorneys general tried and failed to break up Facebook and unwind deals from 2012 and 2014 that allowed it to buy up competitor companies and increase market share.
“But there was no standing, the usual excuse the court gives when it doesn’t want to hear something,” said the esteemed former counselor, failing to specify who exactly has standing if not the FTC.
“I’ll give you a perfect case that should have been brought, I think: Parler. Parler’s business was destroyed by a restraint of trade between two or three of them,” he said, before launching into a disquisition on his own amazing follower count on Twitter, which he mistakenly called Instagram.
In point of fact, Parler did allege antitrust violations when it sued Amazon in January, claiming that the web-server had colluded with Twitter to get rid of a rival company. Getting zero traction — because the claim was hot garbage — Parler dismissed the federal suit in March, only to refile an even sillier claim in Washington state court.
All of which is a long way of saying that the former head of the SDNY may have lost a step or two since he took on the Five Families in 1985, and the legal profession will probably survive without Rudy Giuliani’s participation in it. We’ll limp along somehow. At least we’ve still got Sidney Powell.
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into law school.
After thinking you’d flubbed those impossible time-pressured logic questions on the LSAT about the seating charts for the school bus, you actually made it!
Now comes some real-world work.
You probably need loans, and that means you need to decide which type is best for you: federal or private.
Read on for a guide to making the right decision for your specific situation.
The Largesse of Uncle Sam
According to Juno’s handy Complete Guide to Student Loans for Law School, most students pursuing a Juris Doctor, Master of Laws, or Master of Studies in Law who choose to borrow from the federal government obtain either Direct Unsubsidized Loans or Direct PLUS loans — also known as the Grad PLUS loans — or a combination of both.
Direct Unsubsidized Loans don’t have a credit-score requirement, and the requirement for the PLUS loans is low. Most applicants qualify.
These loans are available to U.S. citizens as well as certain eligible non-citizens, and interest rates can vary. The rates are set based on the 10-Year Treasury Note rate in mid-May and go into effect for loans disbursed after July 1 of each year — so when your schooling is over you are liable to have several federal loans with different interest rates. To take a deeper dive into federal-loan interest rates, click here.
Of the two types of loans, Direct Unsubsidized are more affordable, with lower interest rates and origination fees than PLUS. However, you can use these loans for only your first $20,500 in borrowing for a given academic year, so if you snagged an admission to one of those top-tier, private institutions, you’ll likely have to supplement with Direct PLUS which has a higher interest rate and higher origination fee.
You also need to bear in mind that both the Direct Unsubsidized Loans and Direct PLUS Loans are “unsubsidized,” which means the federal government does not pay the interest while you are in school. The interest immediately accrues and will capitalize — be added to your principal — unless interest payments are made.
This distinguishes these loans from the government loans obtained by most undergraduate students, for whom the federal government makes subsidized interest payments until six months after they graduate or until they drop below half-time enrollment in college.
Do not make the mistake of thinking your law school loans will have the same balance the day you graduate as the day you got them unless you make those interest payments.
The Private Sector
You may also choose to borrow from private banks and lenders. Each source will have its own application process and credit requirements. You might also use a free service like Juno (formerly LeverEdge), which compares and researches loans for you, and works with a broad array of lenders.
Such services use collective buying power to negotiate significantly lower interest rates than you could obtain by yourself.
Private loans can be used to fund law school upfront or year-by-year, but many newly minted attorneys also turn to the private sector to refinance their scary, can’t-believe-I’m-so-deep-in-debt loan total once they get their first job.
With pay stubs in hand — you usually need about three — such refinancing can get you a significantly lower interest rate, depending on what’s been going on in the world, of course.
As you would expect, every private lender has its own underwriting process and standards for student loan applicants that help it decide whether to give a person a loan and at what interest rate. All private lenders require a credit check to evaluate your ability to repay. If your credit score is in the high 600s, you are likely to qualify. In general, the higher your score, the lower your interest rate.
In addition to keeping your credit score high by making timely payments on all your debts, you can lower your rate even more by adding a co-signer, often a parent. You don’t need a co-signer to get a loan — especially if you have a good credit score — but it’s a good option if you’re young and haven’t had time to develop much of a credit history.
After you submit your application, with or without a co-signer, and you’re approved for your private student loan, you’ll be asked to choose between a variable or fixed interest rate, and to select a repayment term. A variable rate is often lower, initially, but there’s a chance it will rise based on prevailing interest rates in general. If you opt for a fixed rate, it will not change over the life of your loan.
Make sure the interest rates, plus any fees and incidental costs are thoroughly explained to you.
The Pros and Cons
If you’re still having trouble choosing between federal and private loans, give some thought to the advantages and disadvantages of each. (And check out Juno’s graduate student loan calculator when you want to run some numbers.)
As for federal, one pro is that these loans are easy to get.
Also, federal loans offer protection if you wind up in a low-paying job, because you can apply for an income-based repayment plan. Plus, if you choose to enter the less lucrative public-service sector — such as working for legal aid or the public defender’s office — your loans can be forgiven after a certain period. See Juno’s guide for great details on this kind of thing.
The con? Higher interest rates, mostly because of the less-strict scrutiny of creditworthiness. If you don’t qualify for an income-based repayment program or public-service forgiveness, you could wind up paying a lot more over the life of your loan.
As for private-lender loans, flip the coin. Their normally lower interest rates will often result in lower monthly payments and lower total money paid over the life of the loan. If you plan to seek employment of the more lucrative variety — say commercial litigation in Biglaw — private loans may be especially advantageous. You’ll probably never qualify for the income-driven federal programs meant to keep payments manageable. Nor will you get your debt forgiven.
On the con side of private student loans, be aware that not everyone will qualify. Banks and other private lenders will check your credit score and assess your financial situation.
So if you’re still reeling from your undergrad loans — you should likely stick with Uncle Sam.
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 Dawn Gile to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.
“It is great news for military spouses who support their families and country by service in the military and the law.” These were the comments by Reed Larsen, president of the Idaho State Bar, when Idaho became the first state in 2012 to enact a military spouse attorney admission rule. That thrilling news, culminating after many months of letter-writing and discussions with various stakeholders, did not happen overnight and did not occur in a vacuum. Idaho’s military spouse admission rule occurred due to the hard-fought advocacy and grassroots coordination by volunteers of Military Spouse JD Network (MSJDN), an organization founded 10 years ago by military spouse attorneys frustrated by setbacks to their professional careers while following their service member spouse from state to state. Since MSJDN’s founding, 42 jurisdictions have enacted similar provisions, recognizing the sacrifices of military spouses.
The military lifestyle often means that a service member must move to a new duty station every couple years, with the service member’s family invariably following. For military spouse attorneys, composed overwhelmingly of women, these moves often require an evaluation of whether to pack up and leave their career in one state to move to another state where they may not be licensed or whether to remain and live apart from their spouse to maintain their career. Most military spouse attorneys also have young children, and given they often find themselves living in new towns and cities, away from their hometowns and extended families, they lack that grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin nearby who can help with child care. Compound those frustrations with a frequently deploying spouse and the expensive costs of having to repeatedly apply for yet another bar exam, and you can see why many military spouse attorneys are unemployed or underemployed. These setbacks create a national security issue as many service members leave military service due to the incompatibility of the military lifestyle with their spouses’ professional careers. Due to MSJDN’s advocacy, more military spouse attorneys have been able to continue to practice law, ultimately keeping families together and retaining quality service members in our Armed Forces.
Since its inception, MSJDN’s mission has been to not only advocate for licensing accommodations for military spouses but also to serve as a network of support for military spouse attorneys by providing professional development training, meaningful job opportunities, and at times, a listening ear and comforting encouragement from other spouses who “get it.” Over the past 10 years, the membership of MSJDN has swelled to more than 1,000 members and supporters.
MSJDN’s focus has also expanded to other programs to support its members as well as the military community. For example, one of the biggest challenges military spouse attorneys face is building a career in the face of geographic instability. Often, military spouse attorneys end up forgoing employment when arriving at a new duty station or taking a job for which they are overqualified. To help, MSJDN identifies corporate and law firm partners who recognize the value in hiring resilient, resourceful military spouse attorneys and connects those partners with MSJDN members through publications, a jobs board, and private hiring events. This program — Homefront to Hired — has been a success story as MSJDN has seen a 24% increase in people who have found jobs through the network.
To further support a military spouse attorney’s career, MSJDN’s annual professional development conference, Making the Right Moves, provides military spouse attorneys with inspiration and guidance as they navigate legal careers. Although typically in person, last year’s conference was held virtually, leading to a turnout three times its usual size, and thrillingly, included First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, military spouse employment champion, as its keynote speaker.
MSJDN also gives back to the military community through pro bono legal services. MSJDN’s Justice for Military Families was founded to connect Gold Star families — families of fallen service members — with pro bono legal services through a partnership with Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. In 2020, MSJDN proudly forged a new partnership with the American Red Cross Military Veteran Caregiver Network to provide free legal services to wounded veterans and their families. Justice for Military Families has assisted over 250 clients since its founding, providing culturally competent legal services to this important population.
In its 10 years, MSJDN has made great strides and is excited for the road ahead as it remains committed to blazing meaningful, rewarding career paths for military spouse attorneys. To support MSJDN, visit the MSJDN website to learn more about its year-round programming and initiatives.
Dawn Gile is a licensed attorney with an active litigation practice, in addition to being an Army wife and mom of three girls. Dawn currently serves as immediate past president for Military Spouse JD Network, after having served on its Board of Directors for the last several years. Dawn is also a partner with MacDonald Law Group, LLC, where her practice focuses on complex civil litigation defense. A graduate of Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Rockford University, Dawn is admitted to practice law in Illinois, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. She enjoys spending time with her family at their home in Maryland and volunteering in her community.
The Texas bar exam will be held in three weeks.
Examinees who signed up for the in-person examination knew that the risk of COVID wasn’t completely behind the country, but took heart in the safety guidelines that the bar examiners announced:
“At a minimum… Everyone in the exam room must wear a mask.” That was the deal all the grads signing up for this administration of the test knew about.
But on the cusp of the very last minute, it looks like the bar examiners changed the deal.
Masks are allowed and encouraged, but not required
- Examinees are allowed to wear masks in the exam room and throughout the exam site. Examinees may wear their own masks. We will also have some masks available.
- Per CDC guidelines: those who are not fully vaccinated are encouraged to wear masks at all times. we will not ask anyone about their vaccination status)
On the one hand, fully vaccinated people are now allowed by CDC guidance to be indoors without a mask. But if the bar examiners aren’t going to ask about vaccination status — which they should because if any applicant quotes “HIPPA” in response to that question it should be an automatic fail — then just keep the mask mandate.
Because this isn’t the Vermont bar exam where everyone is going to be vaccinated. Texas has a 41.8 percent fully vaccinated rate, which is bad, but is even worse when you see that only 48.7 percent have “received at least one dose” and realize that it’s just not going to get much better than 50 percent.
One would like to hope that the population of examinees is far more likely to be vaccinated by now… though you never know down there.
Meanwhile the Delta variant is running rampant in Texas risking a major outbreak among unvaccinated populations. Actually, Delta risks outbreaks among the vaccinated too, though the risk is lower and the risk of serious implications or death is way lower. Still, for the vaccinated out there with an immunocompromised person at home — or a child for that matter — getting exposed can have tragic implications beyond their personal health.
But somehow despite all that’s going on, the bar examiners have decided to pull the plug on a mask requirement at the last second. Was it bullying from local politicians determined to keep the death toll rising? Whatever prompted the move, it’s left a lot of examinees who relied on that “at a minimum” language wondering if it’s worth it to risk a superspreader event.
And Texas isn’t even the worst state out there right now when it comes to rising infections. What other venue is going to try and roll the dice with an outbreak?
Good luck and get vaccinated folks.
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 one wants to be left behind when it comes to this summer’s associate salary wars. It’s all about trying to look the part, because when it comes to retaining and recruiting associate talent, money talks.
Goulston & Storrs, ranked at No. 155 in the most recent Am Law 200, with $196,380,000 gross revenue in 2020, recently decide to enter the associate raise game. Sources report that new salary information, effective July 1, was announced during a recent all-associate call, without an accompanying memo.
Yet again, we’re seeing exact matches for younger attorneys — first- through third-year associates, to be exact (plus summers!) — but for midlevels and senior associates, the firm is doing something a little different. Fourth-years on up will receive raises commensurate with the market, but on an individualized basis (i.e., +$20K for the class of 2017, +$25K for the class of 2016, etc.). Counsel will not be receiving raises right now, but like at most firms, their time will come at year end.
Congratulations to everyone at the firm!
We depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. 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’ll 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.
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.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Given the, erm, legal trouble the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg find themselves in, a lot of leftists are spending brainpower wishcasting an indictment for the former president, Donald Trump. But there are a lot of financial details in the allegations, the kind of stuff that doesn’t always lend itself to a cable news ready splashy hook.
Enter MeidasTouch, self-described as “a progressive, next-generation SuperPAC staffed solely by three siblings (and lifelong Democrats) with the primary goal of defeating Donald Trump in 2020.” The PAC was formed during COVID-19 quarantine, and one of the three brothers at the helm of the organization is Ben Meiselas, partner at Geragos & Geragos and head of their transactional and civil practice (who has represented Colin Kaepernick). The election may be over, but that doesn’t mean the PAC’s work is done.
They’ve put together a super cut of Donald Trump’s comments on tax law. See, he USED to boast about how well he understands tax law. Now that tax laws may get him in trouble, he’s pivoted. Now they’re impossible to understand. But the clips of him saying, well, the opposite, they live for forever.
Now, obviously an actual indictment requires a good deal more than these clips. But, boy, is it fun to watch.
Enjoy.
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).