Category: News Feeds

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a pernicious effect on law departments, whose organizations have seen shrinking revenue as new legal challenges have continued to arise, according to a new survey.  

The Altman Weil Chief Legal Officer Survey notes that, in the fall of 2020, 66% of respondents said their organization’s revenue fell, while 77% said their law department’s workload increased. Employee layoffs occurred at 11% of the law departments surveyed. 

The report also reveals that more departments now have legal operations managers — 50% of respondents said they had a professional administrator in 2020, and 46% said they had one in 2019.

In an interview with Law360, Altman Weil’s James Wilber said that there were no reported layoffs in legal operations positions that focus on cost savings: 

So, to me, that shows wisdom on behalf of the chief legal officers who realized that these people are more than paying for themselves, and they can help us find ways to remove waste, maybe get better value or more cost reduction out of outside counsel, better leverage of technology.”

While legal operations may be playing an increasing role in law departments, the field’s signature benchmarking study is set to be published in the coming weeks. 

The Blickstein Group’s 2020 Law Department Operations Survey will be introduced Dec. 8 in a “virtual summit” that provides a sneak peek at its results.

Featuring Brad Blickstein and “godfather of legal ops” David Cambria, the event will explore challenges related to the pandemic, compensation and KPIs, artificial intelligence, the impact of the Big 4, and other areas. 

Click here for more.

2020 Chief Legal Officer Survey [Altman Weil]
CLOs See Less Revenue, More Work As Virus Persists [Law360]
2020 Law Department Operations Survey Summit [Above the Law] 

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Jeremy Barker is the director of content marketing for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with questions or comments and to connect on LinkedIn.

A mistrial in a federal case isn’t usually news, I mean, maybe if it’s in some notorious crime family case like in the movies, but in the majority of civil cases, these things happen without too much fanfare. But, well, when COVID-19 shuts down your case well, that’s news.

An Eastern District of Texas breach of contract case between plaintiff ResMan LLC and defendant Karya Property Management LLC and presided over by Amos L. Mazzant II has been sidelined by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, as reported by Law360. How bad is the outbreak? Well, at most recent count 13 people. Yikes:

David O’Toole, clerk for the Eastern District of Texas, told Law360 on Tuesday that the number of trial participants who tested positive for coronavirus had increased from at least seven on Friday to 13 confirmed positives Tuesday. The positive cases include two jurors, at least three members of the defense team, a “handful of folks” on the plaintiff’s team, and three or four court staffers.

The outbreak occurred after testimony in the trial had begun:

Jury selection was held on Nov. 2 and the trial was scheduled to last for two weeks. Jurors heard testimony every day last week and on Nov. 9, according to court records.

After lunch on Nov. 9, the judge advised the jurors and attorneys that a juror who had recently been excused tested positive for the coronavirus.

The judge then suspended the trial and asked participants to get tested and provide the court with results as soon as they were received. The judge advised participants to consult with their physicians about self-quarantining.

As a result there are only five jurors currently willing to continue with the trial, and the defendants aren’t willing to move forward with less than six jurors, so… yeah, Judge Mazzant declared a mistrial.

Judge Mazzant noted that this particular case seems to be an outlier — though that’s the thing about COVID: it doesn’t care how many times you did a thing in the past, getting folks together inside is a risk, every, single time:

“I apologize for all this happening,” the judge said. “We’ve done, again, seven trials without any incident, and the district, I think, has done about 20 trials without any incident, and we had issues this time.”

In announcing the mistrial, Mazzant also said that no trials will start in the remaining part of 2020:

“I’m not doing any more jury trials between now and December,” he said. “We are planning on resuming, assuming what the numbers look like, in January.”

Hopefully by then Texas will have the virus (slightly) more under control. Our best wishes to everyone impacted on their COVID recovery.

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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).

There’s no question that technology has changed the way we practice law. Smarter legal software has ushered in a new era of legal practice. This change was already well underway as we entered 2020 — the unprecedented demands of the pandemic only accelerated it.

Today, legal organizations are relying on technology more than ever. Technology providers like LexisNexis, in turn, are focusing on smarter legal software solutions to help support these shifting behaviors and allow the legal industry to thrive in the face of uncertainty.

Rapid Change to Meet New Demands

If 2020 has shown us anything in the legal technology sphere, it’s that we’ve fast forwarded the adoption of tools that allow for remote work and collaboration far faster than most would have thought possible. Even law firms and corporate legal departments who just eight months ago were not even considering remote functionality have implemented a whole host of new solutions with incredible speed.

The result of all of this is change that’s happening right before our eyes. Smarter legal technology opens up a tremendous number of opportunities for legal organizations going forward. Better collaboration is just the beginning. 

Leading organizations right now are looking for applications that are designed for the new normal, not the old normal. That’s why legal software providers like LexisNexis are designing around the need for maximum flexibility. For Lexis+, the comprehensive new solution from LexisNexis, that means an increased emphasis on important integrations within the LexisNexis universe of products, a seamless user experience, and the ability to customize workflows, among other things.

The big risk is that legal product designers will design to the old normal, because that’s what they know. Instead, companies should be looking forward and studying the dynamic changes that have happened because of remote work. The practice of law next year will look very different than it did coming into 2020.

Lexis+ Is Leading the Charge to Smarter Legal Software

In designing for the new normal and determining what legal users need going forward, it’s critical to incorporate feedback from those users. While clients often can’t describe what they want or need, they can describe the problems they have. By focusing more on what their clients are trying to do and accomplish and where they encounter unique challenges or difficulties, LexisNexis is able to translate that information into new product ideas, like Lexis+.

In and of itself, this isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that isn’t followed often enough. LexisNexis is a big believer in the framework that underpins the design thinking movement known as a jobs-to-be-done approach. Smarter legal software places an emphasis on the job its users are trying to do, not just features they’ll use — and the jobs they’re trying to do have changed fairly significantly in recent months.

What used to take place on paper now takes place entirely electronically. How teams work together to draft shareholder agreements or pleadings has changed dramatically with remote work. In parallel with Practical Guidance, Lexis+ incorporates a range of machine learning capabilities that allow users to parse vast data sets, quickly find market standards, and visually view the results in a way that allows for greater insights. Similarly, research around motions or briefs is enhanced in Lexis+, as users are automatically guided to additional insights beyond case law in Legal Research, Brief Analysis and other Lexis+ experiences.

This is just one example of the superior integrations in the Lexis+ ecosystem. Clients wanted to see better connections between what were once stand-alone products. As a result, Lexis+ integrates tools that were once separated to give users the best path to finding the most comprehensive answers to important legal questions, more efficiently than ever before.

Another key aspect of Lexis+ is that its workflows can be customized to specific practice areas or practitioners. Litigators and corporate attorneys will likely approach data and tasks very differently, so Lexis + customizes the data it presents based on factors like the user’s type of law practice. The result is a bespoke set of analytics tools and data review capabilities that are tailored and customizable for each user.

All of this is part of the intention for Lexis+ to provide a superior user experience and introduce new benefits for everyone who uses it. Users were clear that they wanted a better user experience, similar to that which they get with consumer products, and Lexis+ brings that to the professional world. Lexis+ offers a modern user experience that’s comparable to any product experience in the consumer realm. The focus is less on the individual products in play and more on the questions the user is trying to answer or the task they’re trying to accomplish. Users can start anywhere in Lexis+ and be guided to the best possible insights, wherever they exist in Lexis+ or other Lexis products, without having to do additional work.

Lexis+ is smarter legal software, but it also allows users to understand exactly how it’s smarter. The product removes the “black box” that has long existed around much of legal technology by incorporating features that allow users to both understand how their searches are being run and help them control and adjust the search experience. This is just one more way that Lexis+ has turned the user experience on its head.

Looking Forward

LexisNexis is increasingly focusing its thinking on how it can continue to evolve Lexis+ to expand and support the legal industry’s changing work behaviors. In the development of Lexis+, the emphasis was on capabilities like collaboration, because it was clear that the new way of working was going to last for the foreseeable future. Now, LexisNexis is looking forward and continuing to design for the new normal. They’re constantly creating more integrations and focusing on solutions that are customizable and easy to use.

Legal technology providers need to recognize that clients are working differently than they did in the past. Smarter legal software is necessary to support that shift and whatever additional shifts may arise, so that users have the tools they need to practice law not just in the new normal, but in the future as well.

Try Lexis+ with a free trial today.

At yesterday’s batshit presser, Sidney Powell croaked out fantastical accusations of global conspiracies as brown trails of mascara (???) streamed down from Rudy Giuliani’s sideburns. If these two got on your bus, you’d hop out at the next stop. And yet here they are representing the leader of the free world in a court of law.

Team Trump dropped several pleadings yesterday on U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann’s docket explaining why the court should enjoin the certification of Pennsylvania’s vote count scheduled for Monday. Astonishingly, none of them mentioned a globalist conspiracy launched by Hugo Chavez and bankrolled by George Soros to “flip” votes for Joe Biden. In fact, there were exactly zero allegations of fraud associated with this election.

Instead, the Trump lawyers argued that thousands of ballots reflecting the will of qualified, registered voters were illegally counted and must now be thrown out according to a handy formula supplied by Guiliani et al.

Instantly, if discovery is granted, prior to the hearing, Plaintiffs will examine these envelopes to determine the percentage of mail ballots that were illegally counted – of which Democratic Candidate Joseph Biden won approximately 75% and President Trump 25%, a 50% margin for Biden. Plaintiffs, through statistical expert analysis will then extrapolate this percent to the 1.5 million mail ballots. This simple exercise will determine whether Plaintiffs can prove their case – i.e., that sufficient illegal ballots were counted that changed the election result. If so, the Court should set aside these votes and declare Trump the winner.

Easy peasy!

Now, a stickler might argue that tossing out some Rudy-defined percentage of absentee ballots will necessarily have an impact down ballot, since an illegally cast vote is illegal for all races, not just the top of the ticket. But don’t worry, because “Plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin the certification of any other Pennsylvania election.” If the court will just allow them to use Trump Math to disenfranchise the voters and award Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to Donald Trump, the plaintiffs will be on their way and won’t cause any more trouble.

The motions for injunction and for leave to file another amended complaint are long on conclusions and short on evidence. Decrying the “partisan” Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which held on Tuesday that elections officials had discretion to set their own procedures for poll watchers, they insist that “Defendants violated the Due Process Clause to favor Biden over Trump in a system which was so porous so as to violate Due Process on its face,” and demand to recanvass all the votes counted when Republican poll watchers were “excluded.” (They were not excluded.)

The plaintiffs make liberal use of unsubstantiated allegations, writing that “Secretary Boockvar has long advocated state officials should count more mail ballots than the law allows” and accusing her of giving different advice to Democratic and Republican county officials. As proof they cite to guidance issued on October 21 for allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were facially defective to vote provisionally in person, and a November 2 email explicitly permitting officials to release results of the pre-canvass to party officials so they could round up their voters to cure defective ballots. Both of which went to every single county election board.

Rudy and the Super Friends have requested to file another amendment putting back all the allegations that got nixed after the Third Circuit ruled there was no standing for a candidate to sue to enforce state election law. But that request hasn’t yet been granted and, as Secretary Boockvar noted in her reply motion, Trump’s lawyers are basing their claim for relief on allegations which are found nowhere in the current suit. “The First Amended Complaint is operative and cannot be ‘amended’ through an opposition brief that alternatively and unfairly cites to both the original complaint and the amended complaint.”

The tone of the Secretary’s filing can be described as strangled exasperation. And after a week of reading these gobbledygook pleadings and listening to that gonzo hearing, trust me, I feel ya.

Perhaps choosing an attorney who hasn’t entered a federal appearance since 1992 and instead spends all his time screaming nonsense on YouTube was a bit of a strategic error?

Ah, well. We stand corrected.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar [Docket at Court Listener]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Last week, Baker McKenzie shocked the Biglaw world with its early announcement of year-end bonuses. It may be one of the highest-grossing firms in the country, but it’s not known as a compensation leader, so everyone was shocked by the move. Thus far, the firm’s announcement has been met with resounding silence; not a single other firm has matched. Associates at Baker McKenzie are pissed — and not just because the bonus scale is the same as it’s been for years across most large law firms.

Associates are angry about another set of bonuses that the firm has promised.

As you may recall, when Baker McKenzie first instituted its salary cuts in May due to the coronavirus crisis — 15 percent for all attorneys and business professionals making over $100,000 in the U.S. and 10 percent across the board in Canada — the firm promised it would hand out special bonuses for “exemplary performance” during the pandemic. The firm later conducted a round of layoffs in the U.S. and Canada, driving remaining associates to bill like crazy in fear of losing their jobs as well. When the firm announced its year-end bonuses, it also announced an end to those salary cuts on November 30, and once again reminded associates about those special bonuses. At that time, no mention was made of reimbursing anyone for the wages they lost as a result of the salary cuts they endured for seven months.

As it turns out, those bonuses may not be bonuses at all. Sources have told us that these bonuses may be used as a means to address lost compensation, and not everyone will get them. At this point, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of other firms that cut compensation due to the pandemic have already reinstated and reimbursed, or are working to reimburse, full salaries for all affected employees.

Here’s a memo that associates in the Toronto, Canada, office of Baker McKenzie received regarding their special bonuses, where associates are reportedly “furious”:

Please keep in mind that this plan may be limited to the firm’s Canada office. We’ve reached out to Baker McKenzie for comment on whether the firm intends to reimburse its U.S. associates through similar “special bonuses,” or whether it will do so via other means, like lump-sum payments, and received this statement:

The announced bonuses are our year-end bonuses, paid per our usual schedule in January. We also plan to recognize and additionally reward our top performers whose practices have been impacted by the recession, as well as to others demonstrating exemplary performance in the face of increasing demands on their time this year. We will make those determinations after the end of the year.

We have not yet made a final decision on the details of “special bonuses” to compensate for salary reductions in North America. As stated previously, these would be separate and distinct from annual associate bonuses.

Hmm. We suppose we’ll see what happens, but we remain hopeful the firm will repay associates and offer true special bonuses instead of offering bonuses in name only.

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.

This story is brought to you by The Daily Upside. For more crisp and insightful content, you can sign up for the free Daily Upside newsletter here.

You may have noticed banks are offering fairly anemic interest rates on savings as of late.

But at least they aren’t negative.

For the first time in China’s history, its government has sold debt at an effective negative interest rate.

In plain English – investors are paying China to take their money.

What’s Happening?
The Chinese government sold $4.7 billion of euro-denominated bonds primarily to institutional investors from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Last month, husband and wife tech team Chris Ford and Nikki Shaver launched an important new technology resource: Legaltechnologyhub.com. Legaltechhub (LTH) is a curated database of legal technology tools, which is enhanced with extensive and careful tagging and taxonomy. The founders are well known throughout the legal tech community. Ford is CMO at the tech company Zero, and Shaver is a former practicing attorney and renowned KM and innovation thought leader. According to Ford and Shaver, LTH took almost a year to build. It was clearly a labor of love in which they made a large personal investment of both time and money. LTH currently includes descriptions of 1,621 products from 84 countries. The database can be searched, filtered, and browsed.

This is a platform that makes me slap my forehead and shout, “Why didn’t I think of that!”

The press release described LTH as “addressing a need for an updated, user-driven resource to find the right legal technology anywhere in the world. LTH is a free resource for users and offers free listings to vendors. Tech companies can opt for fee-based enhanced listings which will include more descriptive content and even  videos.”

Yes, there’s Google, but a Google search for legal technology will deliver a hideously bloated and imprecise list of “hits.” I searched for ‘legal project management” software on Google and in .53 seconds it serviced up a truly useless 811,000,000 results which were both repetitive and unreliable. A similar search in LTH delivered 18 product descriptions which I was able to refine by applying additional filters. Which approach works better for the busy IT or KM professional? The developers of LTH were all too familiar with the pressures and pain points of law firm tech professionals.

Legaltechhub is loaded with functionality you can search or browse. The top of the screen includes tabs for products, events, and awards. The product listings are “the main event.” A look at the descriptive features suggests the care invested in helping users get to the best product.

Here is a list of the descriptive information gathered about each product:

• Vendor Name — the organization that produces the tool
• Tool — the name of the tool
• HQ — the country where the vendor is based
• Offices — countries where the vendor has a physical presence
• Functionality — the primary function of the tool (see taxonomy below)
• Sub-Functionality — secondary functions (if any) of the tool
• Practice Area — the area(s) of law to which the tool is targeted
• Platform Language — language(s) of the tool interface
• Linguistic Efficacy — language(s) in which the tool can be utilized
• Target Entity — either small law (solo up to 50 lawyers), law firms, corporates (in-house departments), or barristers
• Deployment — cloud, Web, or on premise
• Integrations — other tools with which the tool is designed to integrate
• Website
• Description

The search results can be filtered by functionality and subfunctionality metadata, HQ location, office, practice area, platform language. deployment, and integrations.

The Graveyard Of Dead Tech Toys

A feature I particularly appreciate in LTH is called “The Graveyard” or the land of lost and broken technology products. Anyone who works in legal tech knows of the continual churn in the tech marketplace. Startups sometimes fade quickly or get merged into other platforms. The Graveyard feature will not only shorten the search for a dead products but will also serve up a list of alternative products with similar functionality.

The Functionality Taxonomy. I counted 85 technology types currently listed in the taxonomy. The list includes the usual suspects such as ediscovery and enterprise search but also more specialized offerings such as term sheet analysis, robotic process automation, and structure diagrams.

Additional features include: Regional Snapshots which provide an overview of legal tech in different geographic regions, Legal Tech Resources which directs users to blogs and websites that cover legal tech issues, and Tool of the Month will highlight a tool from the directory on a monthly rotation.

Ongoing Development. According to Ford, they plan to add a compare feature in the future which will provide side-by-side data points for similar products. The Events area is being built out and  will include information on large technology conferences. The Awards  area will list legal tech awards and details about application and submission dates. Upcoming additions to the platform will include listings for Consultants (specializing in legaltech, legal innovation, knowledge management, legal business strategy, legal design, legaltech design, and legal engineering) and associations and groups for networking, learning, and university/higher education programs that offer legal tech education.

Keeping the Site Green. One of the biggest challenges they face is avoiding dead links. Dead links would probably be the quickest route to discrediting the value of LTH. Ford and Shaver plan to oversee a once-a-month check to validate that all of the links are live and correct.

Although LTH takes a thorough approach, they are clear about their mission. The website states “we deliberately set out to create a useful resource for professionals working in the commercial legal space. Both in-house and in practice.” The website states that they do not cover tools for nonprofit or government legal needs.

Democratizing Legal Tech. In addition to providing a very valuable tool, free to the legal community Ford and Shaver have developed a pro bono plan for the proceeds of paid listings. A portion of revenue will be donated to causes which offer access to justice, education and development.

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Jean O’Grady is a knowledge strategist/librarian/lawyer with over 30 years’ experience leading the transformation of research and knowledge services in Am Law 100 law firms. She is the author of the Dewey B Strategic blog, which monitors the evolving landscape of technologies and companies that are transforming the business and practice of law.

Democracies rely on lawyers and their ethical duties to protect unpopular clients from government abuse. For decades, however, lawyers have invoked the principle that “everyone deserves a lawyer” to subvert and attack democracy itself. Somehow, under the cloak of democracy, American lawyers have gotten away with serving clients like Saudi Arabia’s despot Mohammed bin Salman or a Ukrainian oligarch. The lawyers’ real motive is profit.

This month, Jones Day, King & Spalding, and several other firms have faced criticism for supporting outgoing President Donald J. Trump’s attack on a legitimate election. In response to the lawyers’ assault on democracy, the public has demonstrated outside of their firms and demanded that other clients denounce their lawyers. People are angry that coastal lawyers are pouring over absentee ballot rules in Georgia to overturn election results.

As the post-election events should remind us, lawyers import corruption and strengthen authoritarianism in less obvious ways as well. After all, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of dirty money does not launder by itself. As Jack Blum, a former investigator for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, says, “[t]he door is open and American lawyers seem quite willing and able to assist authoritarian kleptocrats who want to hide dirty money inside the United States. Too many people are now engaged in importing corruption into the United States. This is drawing Americans into a game where they make money by entering into corrupt networks around the world and provide them with professional services which can establish them as players in the United States.”

Lawyers need to recall what their ethical duties entail. There is a difference between law firms seeking ways to invalidate thousands of election ballots and, say, representing an indigent client in criminal defense. Law firm support for Trump’s baseless claims further fractures the rule of law in this country whereas public defense expands access to justice (even though the criminal justice system needs greater reform).

The role of Trump’s lawyers in this election underscores that solutions to promote democracy lie at home, not abroad. The American defense department spends billions of dollars every year to “stop” autocrats like those in Russia. I have to wonder whether autocrats would thrive as they do without their American lawyers and our laws that enable their regimes.

As the incoming Biden administration fights Trump’s lawyers, it behooves the administration to realize that we can weaken autocracy and protect democracy (in ways that military alliances fail to) by examining the role of America’s legal profession.

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[L]aw firms need to think about ways they can help lawyers further along in their careers continue business development activities remotely. And for all lawyers, law firms need to remain focused on mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic impacts not only the physical health of attorneys, but also their mental health, as they could be dealing with anxiety, isolation, financial hardship, personal losses and any number of other mental health challenges. These are issues many law firms have not tackled head-on yet, likely because law firm leadership has hoped (like the rest of us) that we would all be back in the office by now. But as we are staring down months more of working from home, it is time for law firms to take this issue more seriously and come up with a plan to make sure their young lawyers do not fall behind.

— an excerpt from an essay written by the Young Lawyer Editorial Board of the American Lawyer, assessing how Biglaw firms have fared in their response to the pandemic. “Firms have largely done well by young lawyers during the pandemic,” they write. “But as it continues, changes are needed.”

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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.

If you’re a corporate associate with top credentials, you probably accepted an offer through on-campus interviewing from a prestigious, Chambers-ranked practice. It’s equally likely that nobody told you to take a serious look at elite Emerging Companies/Venture Capital (“EC/VC”) practices at Gunderson, Cooley, Fenwick, Goodwin, and the other top “Tech” firms.

While you may not have heard all of these names or the term “EC/VC” during law school, you almost certainly have now, and there’s a reason why. These growing Tech shops have extremely cool work, clients, and cultures, and the sector in which they operate has been experiencing tremendous and consistent growth. Take it from someone who practiced in Gunderson’s Corporate group and is constantly working with folks trying to enter into or pivot within the EC/VC space. (For a bit more on my background, check out this interview I did with my colleague David Lat.)

For those who want more information on these practices and firms, I strongly encourage you to reach out to me at sdamato@laterallink.com. In the interim, here is a high-level rundown on substance, clients, development, culture, and how/when to get in the door:

Substance

• The typical model of an EC/VC practice is to (1) serve as quasi-in-house counsel to startups and emerging companies throughout their life cycles and (2) advise top VC firms on their formation, operations, and investments.
• In practice and on the corporate side of the house, this means forming the company, managing the capitalization table (“cap table”), staying on top of governance matters, leading venture financings through which these companies receive funding from institutional and private investors, negotiating commercial agreements, and generally working hand-in-hand with the business principals to steer the company toward an exit (e.g., an IPO or sale).

Clients

• The client base ranges from a cool startup recently founded by young Harvard or Stanford grads to unicorns (i.e., privately held startups valued in excess of $1 billion) to public tech giants.
• Compared to their colleagues in other practice areas, associates in EC/VC practices can have meaningful business development opportunities. For example, after less than a year at Gunderson, I was able to bring on a friend of a friend’s LA-based startup as a client, then took the lead on their Series Seed financing.

Development

• These practices enable their associates to work directly with C-Suite executives and other major players on business teams.
• This often takes the form of explaining material terms of a venture financing to the board and existing stockholders so that they understand their respective rights and obligations.
• It also involves cluing in the founders on stuff they really care about, like the extent to which they’re being diluted by a financing or equity grants to new hires and highly-valued employees (remember the scene at the end of The Social Network when Eduardo Saverin smashes a laptop on Mark Zuckerberg’s desk?).
• One of the key and purposeful byproducts of the nature of the work and extremely lean staffing is that associates can get an intimate look under the hood of their clients’ businesses from day one – something that not only makes a lawyer’s role more rewarding, but yields the best quality of work. Associates can witness the bigger picture firsthand and understand the practical implications of changes they’re making in documents.
• Because EC/VC lawyers work closely with their clients and truly learn their clients’ businesses, they are often the first candidates the client will consider when starting or growing a legal department – so if you want to go in-house eventually, the EC/VC space is one of the best launching pads.

Culture

• Based on my experience, the best way to describe the culture at the top Tech firms is that the vibe feels more like a startup than a law firm.
• You’ll rarely see people in business formal attire, and both associates and partners actually use the common areas to hang out and have conversations that surpass “what are you working on?”

How/When to Get In

• These practices have been extremely busy, and many are hiring now with 2020 and 2021 start dates.
• At the same time, there is a ton of demand in the market for associate positions at the top Tech firms, so you’ll absolutely need to have a good firm and law school on your CV.
• On timing, if you’re in a corporate group (ideally a deal lawyer) and do not have EC/VC experience, you’ll want to start seriously considering a pivot in the middle or end of your second year – largely because it’s ideal to retool sooner rather than later.
• If you do have EC/VC experience, the main consideration is whether your firm is feeding you the right development opportunities and a wide enough range of work (e.g., make sure you’re getting some M&A and IPO experience and not just pure venture financings, and vice versa).

If you can’t already tell, I’m a huge advocate for the Tech industry and the top EC/VC practices. In a world where a lateral move on its face may seem like a riskier proposition than usual, it’s smart to think about whether staying the course is in reality a greater risk than pursuing a role in an extremely active and growing space.

If you’re a Biglaw corporate associate with superb credentials and an interest in EC/VC work, please drop me a line at sdamato@laterallink.com. I’d be happy to expand on this overview and give you more specifics, provide you with a market overview and tell you which Tech firms are hiring, and explore specific opportunities with you if you’re interested. Thanks!

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Stephen Damato, a Director based in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in placing attorneys into law firms across the United States. Prior to joining Lateral Link, Stephen practiced law as a corporate associate in Gunderson Dettmer’s Boston office and an M&A and private equity associate in Jones Day’s New York office. Stephen holds a J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an avid D.C. sports fan (Washington Capitals above the rest) and is forever working on his golf game.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.