Category: News Feeds

Biglaw’s 2020 bonus season is getting repetitive. Firm after firm is announcing the same bonuses, with little differentiation save for billable hours requirements for associates to take home their cash.

Today, we’ve got a bit of a game changer.

What could possibly be better than bonuses? Bonuses on top of bonuses, of course. And what could be better than bonuses on top of bonuses? Bonuses to the third power (i.e., bonuses on top of bonuses on top of bonuses), and that’s exactly what Orrick — a firm that brought in $1,158,537,000 in 2019 gross revenue, placing in at No. 31 in the most recent Am Law 100 rankings — is offering to its associates this year.

First and foremost, the firm will be matching the year-end bonus scale offered by Cravath and the special bonus scale offered by Davis Polk. What’s needed for associates to get a full market bonus? At the beginning of the year, the firm lowered its billable hours threshold to 1,950, including 100 hours of time spent on areas like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), innovation, and business development (BD), plus unlimited pro bono hours.

In addition to those bonuses, Orrick is once again offering premium overmarket bonuses to its hardest-working associates on top of its regular bonuses. Last, but certainly not least, the firm is offering another special bonus to associates to reward the “grit and dedication” that was needed from them to succeed during the pandemic. Those with hours in the range of 1,850 to 1,949 will be eligible for a special merit bonus award ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on class year.

Check out the Orrick bonus scale:

First-year associates at Orrick could receive up to $31,250 in bonus cash ($8,750 more than market) and senior associates at the firm could receive up to $180,000 in bonus cash ($40,000 more than market). That’s pretty amazing!

As if the firm’s generosity to associates wasn’t enough, Orrick is also offering special bonuses to its career associates, its analytics team, and its paralegals.

In addition to all of this bonus news, the firm’s family caregiver relief program — a benefit that will allow associates and counsel who were thrust into caregiving positions (for children, elderly parents, or both) during the pandemic to work an 80 percent schedule at full compensation for up to three months — is now underway.

Congratulations to everyone at Orrick! This is a fantastic way to boost morale for all at the firm as 2020 finally comes to an end.

(Flip to the next page to read the Orrick bonus memo in full.)

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.

Hey, did you hear that Jeffrey Toobin lost his job because he took his dick out and seemingly masturbated during a work meeting? You might have missed it while the entire world was on fire this year, but it happened. In the annals of inappropriate behavior, there are worse things out there. That said, it is still wildly inappropriate and just because he didn’t assault someone or burn the office down doesn’t make it any more acceptable. It’s sexual harassment. Full stop.

But the New York Times felt the need to devote some 2,300 words to lamenting Toobin’s fall from grace in one of the most vapid displays of the media’s obsession with itself and its luminaries of all time. This is just mind-bogglingly bad.

Now that name was a punchline, a headline, a hashtag (#MeToobin) — and a point of debate. For as many people were excoriating Mr. Toobin for lewd and inappropriate behavior in a virtual workplace, others were thinking, or even saying, “there but for the grace of God go I,” acutely conscious of all the private or potentially embarrassing moments they’d stolen in this odd new zone where we now meet our colleagues.

Wait, what?

“There but for the grace of God go I” really only applies if one has hitherto successfully jacked off while on a work call. Assuming — hopefully correctly — that very few people are doing that, they actually have nothing to be afraid of here.

The fragile boundary between screen and reality was showcased on, of all places, the cover of the Dec. 7 New Yorker, which features a woman at her computer, crisply attired above the waist; in casual disarray below.

Forgive me if this is a nuanced distinction, but I feel as though “wearing sweat shorts” on a call is not the same as “touching your penis” on a call. Maybe my failure to recognize the similarity is what’s keeping me from writing for the Times.

Still, as Condé Nast, the publisher of The New Yorker, has along with other media organizations faced criticism of elitism and tardiness around diversity, there is little room for error from even its veteran VIPs.

In June, the editor of Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport, stepped down after a picture of him in brownface surfaced on Instagram….

Little room for error. Brownface.

I’m kind of hoping this is a stylistic bit, where the authors are penning these insane juxtapositions for effect. They do also blithely note that “Mr. Toobin also has a younger son, Rory, with Casey Greenfield, a lawyer” which is burying the lede so deep it would survive a nuclear attack. If playing coy was the intention, I’d have recommended against it.

But masturbation at a remotely conducted work meeting was a new order of business.

To be clear, masturbating at a work meeting will always be a “new order of business” because most employers don’t provide the opportunity for a repeat performance. Seriously, despite all the glowing pablum about Toobin’s career in this article, he is not a special snowflake. He’s done some good work. He’s done some bland work. A network or magazine could replace him with any of a number of my cohort of legal analysts. We all went to elite law schools and worked at prestigious Biglaw firms or the government. There’s nothing but old boys’ networks and stupid inertia limiting legal commentary to Jeffrey Toobin. And it’s exactly that insular media fascination with “oh, his parents were journalists and he attended only the BEST private schools” that engenders a nonsense profile like this. An industry that wasn’t rotten to its core would have moved on from Toobin without a thought and called “next person up” from some other publication.

Besides inviting mockery of a magazine whose dignity and restraint has been part of its brand since the William Shawn years, it presented an urgent, if very 2020 human resources issue.

Good. Fucking. Lord.

I know they’re saying “very 2020” because of Zoom, but it reads as if jacking off in a meeting wouldn’t be a human resources issue if the doggone millennials weren’t so sensitive!

Speaking of the Lord…

Malcolm Gladwell, one of the magazine’s best known contributors, said in an interview: “I read the Condé Nast news release, and I was puzzled because I couldn’t find any intellectual justification for what they were doing. They just assumed he had done something terrible, but never told us what the terrible thing was. And my only feeling — the only way I could explain it — was that Condé Nast had taken an unexpected turn toward traditional Catholic teaching.” (Mr. Gladwell then took out his Bible and read to a reporter an allegory from Genesis 38 in which God strikes down a man for succumbing to the sin of self-gratification.)

Of course they found a way to jam Malcolm Gladwell into this trash heap. And of course he couldn’t engage the discussion without trying to create some pretentious Biblical connection. Looking forward to Gladwell’s next book “Wanking Point,” an overwrought listicle about eight times Western Civilization was changed by masturbation.

And that’s not even an accurate description of that passage. Theologians have interpreted that story as a prohibition on “self-gratification” but God actually was striking Onan down because he refused to impregnate his brother’s wife, which was the sort of thing Old Testament God was into.

“I think it’s tragic that a guy would get fired for really just doing something really stupid,” [Masha Gessen] said. “It is the Zoom equivalent of taking an inappropriately long lunch break, having sex during it and getting stumbled upon.”

It’s nothing like an inappropriately long lunch break. It’s like taking a lunch break, coming back to the office, going to a meeting, and waving your penis around the conference room table. How are these writers all so terrible at analogies?

Several of Mr. Toobin’s longtime associates feel he was unfairly punished. “You are a fine person and a terrific journalist and did nothing here to hurt anyone outside of yourself and your family,” Jonathan Alter, a friend of Mr. Toobin’s for 40 years, tweeted after Mr. Toobin announced his exit from The New Yorker.

“I don’t like Twitter mobs, and I don’t like bullies from the left or the right taking part in cancel culture,” Mr. Alter said later by phone. “I have trouble with the conflation of offenses. I don’t put Al Franken in the same category as Harvey Weinstein.”

Yeah, no one does. That’s why Al Franken lost his job as a United States Senator and Harvey Weinstein is going to prison for the rest of his life. THAT’S HOW YOU DON’T CONFLATE OFFENSES.

And, frankly, Jeffrey Toobin might actually understand this:

But Mr. Toobin may not want anyone’s pity. Amid the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the journalist scoffed on CNN at Republicans who said white men, as a demographic, were being mistreated. “Garbage,” Mr. Toobin said. “All this whining about the poor plight of white men is ridiculous.”

Indeed. Jeffrey Toobin, who has multiple bestselling books, some of which have been optioned in Hollywood, will be alright. He’ll start a navel-gazing (hopefully stopping at the navel) Substack and live and work comfortably for the rest of his days. Or maybe an OnlyFans. Whatever it is, he’ll be fine.

Writing for the New Yorker and going on CNN to explain what a summary judgment is to confused viewers is not a God-given right as much as they may think it is at Bumblyfuck Friends Prep Academy. “A second chance” is just a phrase the uber-privileged use to justify living with no consequences for any of their actions. What people are entitled to are second acts — to emerge from mistakes and start something different. Their old job should not be waiting for them on the other side because they done screwed up. Deal with it and move on.

And Jeffrey Toobin doesn’t need the media ecosphere bending over backward to hand him his next gig. If he wants to go out there and earn it, he’s got the skills and every advantage he needs.

Earlier: Jeffrey Toobin Makes A Great Poi–OH MY GOD, HIS DICK’S OUT!!!

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The good news is that the Biglaw firm of Cahill Gordon has announced their annual bonus structure. This year, that includes both year-end and special bonuses, and everyone in good standing should receive at least the market rate in bonus money.

But there’s still some discontentment at the firm. Well, at least with some of the associates.

You see, in the firm’s announcement (available in full on the next page), they note, “The special bonus structure recognizes the particularly exceptional effort and performance of our mid-level and senior associate classes, as well as generally challenging circumstances.” And here’s the scale:

So, yeah it looks like mid-level and senior associates have a real opportunity to make a lot more than just the market bonuses — up to $60,000 more for the most senior attorneys on the grid. But even though juniors are as well off as their peers at other firms, it still stings. Above the Law has received word from bunches of tipsters expressing their disappointment and anger over the bonus announcment:

I guess the partners are sending a clear message to the juniors. Our efforts are not particularly exceptional. We have not endured the same challenging circumstances as mid-levels and seniors during these times. I’m embarrassed at all of the hard work I put in this year in my CHALLENGING CIRCUMSTANCES. This email was pretty rude.

did they need to include the message about appreciating the work of their mid-level and senior associates? Seems very demoralizing for the junior associates to know that the firm doesn’t value them and won’t compensate them according to normal Cahill expectations.

2016 and up doing well, the Junior classes are extremely disappointed (cahill used to be a market leader)

Let’s just say there were mixed feelings.

Indeed.

It seems the firm has put a real premium on the work that mid-level and senior associates do — similar to how, in the great salary raise of 2018, Cravath matched the raises for junior associates but came over the top for their more experienced attorneys. And there’s a kind of logic to it, since the more experienced associates are a scarcer resource, with fewer of them still around firms as in-house or other non-Biglaw opportunities become available to them. And yet, there has to be a less gauche way to express that sentiment that doesn’t make juniors feel like chopped liver. But, who said Biglaw was known for being nice?

As always, we depend on you when it comes to bonus news. 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).

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided to hear a case that dates back to 2014 on the issue of whether the NCAA should be able to put a cap on education-related compensation and benefits for college athletes. A most recent decision in the case on appeal was that schools should have the option, without NCAA interference, to provide unlimited educational benefits to enrolled athletes. The highest court considering the issue could have much greater consequences for these athletes as well as the NCAA.

The NCAA would like greater restrictions to be put in place; however, the Supreme Court could conceivably hold that no form of payment, whether it be tied to education or not (i.e., payment for performance in the form of a salary), may be limited by the NCAA. In essence, an athlete-friendly decision has the potential of further narrowing the differences between college athletes and professional athletes with regard to their earning capacities.

The NCAA has issued a public statement expressing pleasure that the U.S. Supreme Court will review the NCAA’s right to provide college athletes with the educational benefits they need to succeed in school and beyond. “The NCAA and its members continue to believe that college campuses should be able to improve the student-athlete experience without facing never-ending litigation regarding these changes,” said NCAA Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy.

Therein lies the NCAA’s main objective — removing, once and for all, the onslaught and continued threat of litigation in the realm of antitrust law. It is fed up with fighting these battles and is on a mission to either have the Supreme Court rule that its restrictions fall within what is allowed under antitrust law or to persuade Congress to issue it an antitrust exemption from future litigation in this space.

“If I were writing the Supreme Court decision in the College Athlete Grant In Aid case, this would be my opening line: “Operating a $13 billion college sports cartel under the guise of education makes it no less of a cartel. Legally, it’s the same. Morally, perhaps it’s worse,’” tweeted sports and antitrust law professor Marc Edelman in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court announcing that it will be taking up the issue. In essence, Edelman believes, as do many, that the NCAA should not be shielded from the traditional application of antitrust law just because it makes the claim that its restrictions are tied to an individual’s educational experience.

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler of Winston & Strawn, has already declared his belief that the plaintiffs will prevail at the highest level, adding, “We feel very confident in our position and we’re looking forward to having this case heard.”

Oral arguments will be heard in the early part of 2021, with a decision by the Supreme Court coming in June. Florida is set to become the first state to allow college athletes to commercially exploit their publicity rights as of July 1, 2021.

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

Now in its 13th year! The annual Blickstein Group Law Department Operations Survey continues to provide law departments with a consistent platform to benchmark themselves and shed light on key trends. And this year’s report details the first real data on the pandemic’s impact on law department operations and how law department operations professionals are weathering the challenges.

Download the free report highlighting key findings, data, and analysis from the survey, including:

• The Impact of COVID-19 on Legal Operations
• Financial Impacts of the Pandemic
• Nonfinancial Impacts
• Diversity and Inclusion—2020’s Other Major Storyline
• Professionalism Continues to Grow
• NewLaw Approaches
• Looking Ahead

Additionally, this 26-page Survey Report includes more than 45 data points on the current state of legal department operations.  Sign up here!

The closer we get to the end of the cursed year that is 2020, the more Biglaw firms decide to reverse their COVID-19 austerity measures once and for all. The firm we have news on today will be wishing its employees a very happy new year by repaying all of their salary reductions in full by December 31 and paying out bonuses.

You may recall that back in April, Davis Wright Tremaine — a firm that came in 92nd place in the most recent Am Law 100 rankings, with $414,144,000 in gross revenue in 2019 — announced across-the-board salary cuts and employee furloughs, effective in May. These cost-cutting measures ranged from from reduced partner distributions and slashed salaries for associates and staff to furloughs and reduced schedules for staff. In September, the firm dialed back those cuts, restoring 50 percent of the salary reductions that were made and bringing back a number of furloughed staff (while at the same time permanently laying off others).

Now, just in time for the end of the year, Davis Wright Tremaine is committed to making the holiday season extra happy for its partners, attorneys, and staff. Here’s what the firm is planning to do by the end of 2020:

• Repay all 2020 salary reductions: All lawyers and staff who had their pay reduced this year will receive repayment of those reductions in full by December 31.
• Award discretionary year-end bonuses: Associate/counsel and staff discretionary bonuses will be awarded to recognize exceptional contributions.
• Restore equity partner distributions: We also expect to bring equity partners to 100% of total 2020 budgeted shares with the year-end distribution.

At this time, we don’t know what the discretionary bonus scale looks like at the firm. If and when we find out, we will make an update.

But that’s not all, folks. DWT has good things in store for 2021 as well:

• Fully restoring salaries for 2021: Beginning with the first pay period in January, all salary reductions instituted in 2020 will be eliminated.
• Restoring the profit sharing program for staff: This program will be restored in January, which will also reinstate partner contributions to the plan and permit partners to make contributions to the cash balance plan.

Congratulations to everyone at Davis Wright Tremaine. We’re sure all employees will be able to start 2021 on the right foot with a big, fat reimbursement payment.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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.

Something weird is happening on Wall Street. It’s so weird, in fact, that those best-placed to benefit from it are taking a step back rather than plunging in. We’re speaking, of course, about the rather lunatic valuations the market has assigned to Airbnb and DoorDash, each of which is now worth roughly twice what they were when they listed, oh, all of a few days ago, and this after both repeatedly raised their IPO range and eventually priced way above said raised ranges.

• In Zimbabwe, an estimated 7.9 million people, including 4.1 million children, will be in urgent need of life-saving health services and humanitarian assistance in 2021 due to multiple hazards, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the economic crisis.
• More than 38,000 children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) need treatment; 2.7 million people require safe water and sanitation; 4.6 million children need formal and non-formal education; and 2.2 million people in urban areas require social protection.
• In 2021, UNICEF will scale up its support to government-led national and district coordination structures to enable the provision of multi-sectoral life-saving services and efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.
• UNICEF requires US$74.7 million to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe in 2021, including US$18.9 million for emergency social cash transfers and US$16 million for the health response.

HUMANITARIAN SITUATION AND NEEDS

While Zimbabwe is expected to receive normal to above normal rainfall in the 2020–2021 rainfall season,with La Niña in the forecast, the country is at risk of flash flooding and outbreaks of diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera.

An estimated 7.9 million people, including 4.1 million children,will urgently require humanitarian assistance in 2021, due to food insecurity, health crises, the impacts of COVID-19 and economic deterioration.

Nearly 5.5 million people in rural areas are food insecure, and acute malnutrition has increased from 3.6 per cent in 2019 to 4.5 per cent in 2020.COVID-19 has reduced income opportunities and food sources for more than half of the population, and nearly one quarter of Zimbabweans are unable to access basic commodities.

With hyperinflation at 874 per cent as of July 2020,food prices are soaring, the currency is weakened and the population’s purchasing power has declined. Due to the deepening economic crisis, 2.2 million people in urban areas who were food insecure in 2020 will likely remain so in 2021.

As of 20 September 2020, Zimbabwe reported nearly 7,700 cases of COVID-19; over 200 deaths and over 5,900 recoveries.Some 7.9 million peoplewill need life-saving health services, 38,000 childrenwith SAM will need treatment, and 140,000 people will need HIV and AIDS services.

The impact of COVID-19 and the economic crisis will further weaken the country’s public health system, risking widespread strikes by health care workers demanding improved working conditions.

Some 2 million people will need safe water for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene;as schools reopen, 4.6 million children will need emergency formal and non formal education;and 2.2 million people in urban areas will need social protection.

Gender-based violence and violence against children are also on the rise. Between April and August 2020, over 4,400 cases were reported,up 35 per cent for the same period last year.

Overall, 2.2 million children will need child protection services, including psychosocial support and services addressing gender-based violence, violence against children and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse.

Post published in: Featured

Donald Trump doesn’t have a real legal team. With only a handful of exceptions, all his presidency has ever had is a propaganda ministry whose members dress up as lawyers. I’ve been writing for quite some time about how Trump’s team of liars getting to call themselves lawyers cheapens the value of a law license and stains the entire legal profession.

That line of thinking has been catching on with far more respected members of the legal community than myself now that Trump has been filing baseless lawsuit after baseless lawsuit attacking the very idea of democracy. Over the last couple weeks, the nonpartisan group Lawyers Defending American Democracy has been gathering signatures from current and former members of the bar on an open letter. This letter urges local bar associations to condemn the Trump team’s abuse of the legal system in undermining democracy, and requests that legal disciplinary authorities investigate members of the Trump legal team. As I write this, the open letter has garnered more than 3,500 signatures, many of them from former leaders of attorney disciplinary bodies. A number of retired federal judges and state Supreme Court justices, as well as past ABA and state bar association presidents, have also signed on.

I’m a little disappointed with the number of “former,” “past,” and “retired” qualifiers attached to the names on the list at this stage, but I totally get people who are still practicing being a little reluctant. I’m still practicing, and I routinely cause unpleasant problems for myself with the frequently controversial content of this very column. But some things are just more important than trying to avoid offending anyone, like saving representative democracy.

There’s also a general reluctance among lawyers about trying to get other lawyers in trouble with state Boards of Professional Responsibility. It’s in bad taste to squeal on another lawyer, unless you really have to. PR boards rarely take any serious action against lawyers within their jurisdictions anyway, except for stealing client funds, which seems to be perhaps the only truly unforgivable sin for lawyers. But isn’t using your law license to undermine millions of people’s faith in democracy by filing scores of frivolous lawsuits at least as bad as one-off fraud?

The Lawyers Defending American Democracy letter focuses on ABA Model Rules 4.1(a) and 8.4(c), which target attorney dishonesty and deceit both in and out of court. The letter also mentions Rule 3.1 though, which seems to me to be even more applicable:

A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous … .

I added the emphasis there, because Trump’s election lawsuits have been found repeatedly, by judges across the political spectrum, to lack any evidence. The people who actually show up in court for these bogus election lawsuits are far more careful with their words than Rudy Giuliani freewheeling at whatever latest embarrassment of a press conference he somehow still has the gall to show his face at. But even if a lawyer is not lying right to a judge’s face, being willing to file fact-free lawsuits in the first place is immensely problematic. If one lawsuit gets thrown out, two, maybe, you could still go into court with a straight face on the next one and say you were filing (and declining to withdraw what you’d previously filed) in good faith. But by the time the 40th lawsuit has been thrown out, with basically the same meritless allegations as the first 39? People who would put their names on such garbage should not dare to call themselves lawyers.

Commenting on the Lawyers Defending American Democracy open letter to Yahoo News, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said:

I would like my right to practice law to mean something. And if you can just use your law license to fling bullshit around, if you can use your law license to take up the time of the court, consume their resources, and undermine the credibility of the legal profession on which the rule of law largely depends in this country — then that’s a terrible thing.

This is a self-regulating profession. It is up to us to hold people accountable when they profane the credentials we all share. The lawyers who filed dozens of frivolous election lawsuits, as political theater for a man who lives in an alternate universe devoid of facts, are debasing the law licenses we all worked so hard to obtain. These lawyers need to be stopped, and made an example of.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes 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.