Category: News Feeds

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 Kim Felton to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

As I sit finishing this article, it’s early in the morning and my coffee is already cold. My children are home from daycare due to a COVID-19 scare, my husband is off to work, and I’ve barely slept. I’m vaguely reminded of my days in law school as a new mother: Sleeping on the floor of the nursing lounge, I would try to get 30 minutes of rest between classes. I had a 4-week-old at home and the immigration sector of law was beginning to come under fire. It was the beginning of my journey as a mom and halfway through law school. By graduation, I was pregnant with baby number two, while carrying my 1-year-old across the stage with me. Once I stepped out of the law school environment and into post-graduate life, I was awakened to everything women before me had been saddled with.

There is a lot of discussion amongst the profession that law school doesn’t prepare you to practice the law. I equate it to baby books — what happens after the books tell you what size fruit your baby is? The other side of parenting that they don’t teach in those baby books is what comes next. Motherhood hit me like a truck going 190 mile per hour. Similarly, post-graduation reality caught me off guard. The truth of the profession smacked me in the face and shattered my rose-colored glasses. My path to licensing was not linear, and it wasn’t immediate successful. By this point I was pretty seasoned on what to expect when you’re expecting. But what about what to expect when you’re lawyering?

I went into the job search determined that my credentials would outshine my big belly. I refused to admit to myself that I had a physical indicator that eliminated me as soon as I walked in the door. I was in denial even after experiencing interviews where they seemed very enthusiastic about me, but then seeing their eyes fall as they size up my growing belly. Usually, they would change course of the interview and suddenly they were going in a different direction, or they would just ghost me altogether. Eventually I found a job when I was 30 weeks pregnant, but it became an experience that further illuminated the large problem deeply ingrained in the legal field. This was never meant to be a place for women.

It’s almost impossible to meet billable hours when you’re trying to pump with one hand and type with the other, or when your 2-year-old gets hurt at daycare and needs to immediately be examined for a concussion. I regularly was so tired that I’d forget to grab my hands-free pumping bra or even eat lunch. It led to the end of my breastfeeding journey a lot earlier than I wanted. Despite trying my hardest to maintain this balancing act, I was beginning to slip. I didn’t last long in that firm, and I was never going to. This wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, expectations of tucking in my children and driving back to the office, choosing between being present for newborn shots or not pissing off my boss.

This revelation of the true legal profession almost made me quit. I was either going to leave this lifestyle behind or I was going to change it from the inside out. Resourcefulness under pressure brought me to a point where I finally found my stride and forced me to innovate a way to have both my career and presence for my children. Suddenly I was working for myself and I didn’t have to lose sleep over whether I was doing too much “momming” and not enough “lawyering.” I have built my business model based on the need for a culture where you don’t have to worry about needing to go pick up your sick child, or wanting to attend a school function. I don’t want anyone spending their evenings tallying up billable increments. My decision to open a virtual firm was due to my desire for something better. It needs to be better in order for women to advance further, stay in the profession longer, and to feel satisfied in their careers. My career took off when I stopped trying to fit into a model that isn’t inclusive.

There are many nights where I am typing on my laptop with my 2-year-old son resting his head against me while sleeping. There are also occasions when my 4-year-old asks me why I work so much, or his brother runs up and shuts my Macbook while I’m typing. Truth be told, running a solo firm is demanding, and without proper systems in place, it can get pretty chaotic. I have to remind myself that my mission is not for perfection, but to foster a culture where we don’t have to choose between our incomes and our responsibilities as a parent. I still experience mom guilt, despite knowing that it’s illogical. I think it’s only because I am on a constant mission to improve in each aspect of my life. I’m fortunate that I have a really spectacular spouse who does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to parenting and caring for our home. His support is essential to me being able to get this far. But for those who don’t have that there has to be a better way. So, as I stumble my way through motherhood, I have the added challenge of trying to change years of indoctrination by outright rejecting it. Law school taught me how to be an attorney, but motherhood showed me what being an advocate is all about.

---

Kimberley Felton is an immigration attorney and the founder of Onward Immigration, a virtual immigration law firm that uses technology and creative thinking to better serve the immigrant community. She is also the founder of Innovation Litigation that focuses on providing contract legal services to other immigration lawyers, and free up their schedules. In addition, Kim is interested in legal technology as a way to provide better service, building trust, and closing the gap on affordable services. As a mom she is on a mission to change the landscape of work-life balance. She is the proud mother of two rambunctious little boys and married to her best friend. Without his unending support, none of these successes would be possible. Hang out with her on: Instagram: @Legally_Mommed, Twitter: @Legally_Mommed, Clubhouse: @Legally_Mommed, Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberley-felton-esq-687a4949/ 

Ninety-two percent of law firms worldwide say they were completely or somewhat prepared for full-scale remote work at the pandemic’s onset, a survey released this morning finds.

Even so, most firms plan to increase their budgets for technology and process software and adopt more cloud-based technologies, the survey reports.

Published for the fourth consecutive year by Aderant, a global provider of business management software for law firms, the Business of Law and Legal Technology Survey was conducted during August and September 2020.

The survey drew responses from 201 business and legal professionals at firms worldwide, ranging in size from 25 to more than 500 attorneys.

This year’s survey had 33% more respondents than the 2019 survey and more responses from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

For the second year straight, respondents ranked operational efficiency as the top challenge facing their firms, followed by technology adoption and cybersecurity. Also ranked as top challenges were retaining business, pricing pressure and change management.

On the question of preparedness for remote work due to the pandemic, 26% of firms described themselves as having been “completely prepared” and 66% said they had been “somewhat prepared.”

Of the remainder, 7.5% said they were “somewhat unprepared” and had to make minor adjustments to operations. Only .5% said they were completely unprepared and had to scramble to enable work from home.

The survey asked firms about their investment priorities over the next three-to-five years. Nearly three-quarters (70%) said they will spend more on process improvements and roughly half (48%) plan to spend more on software.

In contrast, almost two-thirds (64%) plan to spend less on real estate and office space.

A common belief regarding the pandemic’s impact on law firms is that they will move more of their technologies to the cloud. While the survey bears out interest in moving to the cloud, it suggests the execution may be slower in coming.

When asked the top technologies firms would like to move to the cloud, the top-ranked, at 64%, was financial/practice management. However, just 38% said they actually plan to move their practice management to the cloud within the next year or two. More than half (55%) said they have no plans in the foreseeable future to move practice management to the cloud.

Other technologies firms say they most want in the cloud are document management (53%), portals/intranets (35%), business intelligence (31%), secure external collaboration (29%), time capture (27%), and e-billing (23%).

The survey asked several questions about law firm billing, including what firms consider the most difficult aspects of billing and invoicing.

The two aspects ranked most difficult were e-billing requirements (54%) and compliance with outside counsel guidelines (43%).

Firms were also asked the percentage of their invoices they submit through e-billing systems. Just 12% of firms submit more than half their invoices through e-billing systems, while 40% submit between 25-50% of their invoices and 41% submit less than 25%.

In a concluding section of the survey, Aderant says that the pandemic opened Pandora’s Box for law firms, mostly in the form of operational inefficiencies that firms had overlooked for years.

Yet the pandemic also forced firms to face their inefficiencies and to begin a phase of massive technology adoption, the survey suggests.

“The year 2020 was pivotal for law firms and technology,” Aderant concludes. “Under duress, firms transformed themselves and began a modernization process that will continue for many years to come.”

Download the full report from this page.

Bryan D. Huffman is Senior Legal Counsel at Prime Therapeutics. Headquartered in Eagan, Minnesota, the company manages pharmacy benefits for nearly 33 million members through its relationships with health plans, employers, and government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.

Hear about how Bryan’s efforts in public service honed his legal skills, and ultimately allowed him to meet a career goal with an in-house position.

(This interview had been edited for length and clarity.)

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. Why don’t we start with sort of your career path that brought you to Prime Therapeutics.

During law school I worked for the City of Minneapolis. I was also working toward getting my master’s in public policy. That background and experience helped me get a job at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, and not only did it help me get the job, it allowed me to really hit the ground running when I got there. I was in healthcare licensing, we represented agencies responsible for regulating pharmacies, nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professions. We provided a wide range of advice. Sometimes we’d get calls saying, “The FDA is staging a raid, what do I do, what can I say?” I really enjoyed that job. Before I went to law school, I thought really seriously about going to pharmacy school, it was cool to deal with the pharmacy licensing board and get back to that interest a little bit.

I bet. Sounds like you were well-qualified, although it was hard for any new attorney to get a job at that point.

We graduated at a really terrible time for the legal job market.

We sure did. What did you do after you left the AG’s office?

I left that position, and went over to Saint Paul Public Schools in an in-house counsel role for the school district. I knew that ultimately, I wanted to be in-house, and this role provided me with some great experience. It was a really small office at the St. Paul school district, when I started there it was just my boss and me and one paralegal.

After about a year we added one more lawyer. That is a huge organization though, that had a three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar budget at the time.

By necessity, we really were generalists in the purest sense of the word. We dealt with issues like contracts, intellectual property, real estate, family law, you might have an employee being harassed by a parent. Everything there came back to education, but there is lots of infrastructure you don’t really think about when it comes to the legal needs of a school district.

That position really helped me be agile. There’s no way you’re going to be an expert on everything, but that job really helped me learn what questions to ask, how to reach a solution that furthered the organization’s interests, and to develop an answer the best way I can even in an area of law I’m not initially familiar with.

How did you get from being in-house at a school district to Prime?

I really enjoyed working for the St. Paul school district but was looking to get back into healthcare. I had some networking connections at Prime and found an opportunity to join the company as a legal counsel. 

Initially, my role solely focused on litigation management, third-party subpoenas, and government inquiries. My responsibilities have grown over the past four years to include supporting our licensing team, government affairs, and leading our eDiscovery team.  

Are you finding Prime Therapeutics to your liking as compared to being at a firm or your other past work experiences?

I’m really enjoying Prime, I’ve been there for around four years now. We have a really great team of nine attorneys, and the general counsel has really taken the opportunity to mold the team. The organization as a whole is great.

Prime is a great place to work, it’s a great organization. Culture is huge, and Prime has a really strong culture. You feel very supported from a professional development standpoint.

One example: Prime has supported my goal of obtaining my MBA, which will be complete this summer. Some places are worried that might make you leave, or make you want to leave for a promotion from your current role.

Here, though, I’ve talked to the general counsel about my long-term career goals, and everyone has been so supportive and encouraging. It’s a big organization, there are around 3,500 employees. But you still feel really supported and part of a team.

How has the pandemic changed your work?

I was actually back in Tennessee visiting family for a wedding in March of last year, and I got an email saying, “Nobody come back to the office, we’re going remote.” It’s basically been like that ever since. I haven’t worked from a physical office since March 9, 2020.  

Even after the pandemic?

When things return to normal we will be moving toward a hub and home model.  Minnesota employees will “hub” out of our headquarters in Eagan, Minnesota, but moving forward we’re looking to be working from home about 75 to 90 percent of the time.

There have been adjustments in how to do things most efficiently. It hasn’t been atypical to have 10-15 people on an email chain, or to explain things without a face-to-face. But we’re all getting used to working remotely, and it’s been so effective in other ways that it’s going to be around for the foreseeable future.

Do you have a favorite, and a least favorite, thing about working in an in-house role?

My favorite thing is it’s about being a good business partner. Litigation management is a little less adversarial than being the litigator. I like helping to establish strategy, working to liaise, to establish those business relationships, and protect/further the company’s interests from a business standpoint. I like helping the business.

I don’t know if I have a least favorite thing. There’s nothing I really don’t like about in-house work. I really like the collaborative aspects of it. For the most part, you don’t get into the nitty gritty aspects of practice, the research, the writing, you’re not having to come up with your particular legal theory. It’s really about advising the business. For me that’s great work. With that said, I do enjoy the opportunity to develop creative litigation strategies and work with outside counsel to execute them. 

Do they listen to your advice?

Sometimes in-house legal counsel can be viewed as the “no” people. So you have to work on really developing relationships and establishing equity as a business partner. You can’t just always say, “Well, you can’t do this or we’ll get sued.” Approach it as how to get to goals rather than just being a barrier, and yeah, they’ll listen.

Well, seems like a sound approach. Thank you for taking the time to chat today, I really appreciate it.

No problem. It doesn’t seem like it’s been 10 years since we graduated, it’s been good to catch up.

---

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

Associate compensation is once again a hot topic in the highest echelons of the legal profession, and young lawyers at some firms are finally reaping the benefits of the 2018 salary hike that brought starting salaries to $190,000. By the time this wave of salary increases is over, we may finally see a somewhat uniform salary scale across the majority of large law firms, all across the country.

The firm announcing salary increases this time around is Holland & Knight, ranked 38th on the Am Law 100 with $1,044,337,000 in 2020 gross revenue. The firm has been in the news recently for its potential merger with Thompson & Knight, but now, the firm is making news by offering lockstep salaries in each and every one of its U.S. offices. Here’s what the new salary scale looks like at the firm, effective July 1, 2021 (full memo available on the next page):

Steven Sonberg, the firm’s managing partner, noted that H&K is also “reviewing [its] annual associate bonus program to ensure it is market-competitive” and that any changes made “will not impact the special bonuses that were announced in April.” (That’s because for the firm’s bonus program to remain market-competitive, nothing can impact those bonuses.)

Congratulations to everyone at Holland & Knight who just got a raise, and to everyone who will see increased market bonuses at the end of the year.

(Flip to the next page to see the full memo from Holland & Knight.)

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!

---

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.

Ed. note: Please welcome Meyling “Mey” Ly Ortiz to the pages of Above the Law, where she’ll be writing about her experiences as an in-house attorney.

Confession: I didn’t plan for this.

And while I am sure many of you are rolling your eyes in disbelief at the thought that I never planned to “live the dream” and work in-house at the amazing company I am now, it’s 100% true.

In fact, looking back, I specifically remember being asked during my interview for Biglaw whether I was only wanting to join Biglaw so I could make the jump in-house –- and I feel like such an idiot now for my immediate response then -– which was, “What do you mean in-house?”

Because when I worked in SmallLaw (is that even a coined term?), I didn’t work with in-house lawyers. And when I use SmallLaw, I really mean small.  There were only two partners and one secretary, and I was the only associate. And my lived experience as a young lawyer at that time was working directly with business owners, so I didn’t understand that being a lawyer at a company was even a thing.

I also distinctly remember going into law school with one goal –- to work in an office setting and make at least $50K. And while that may also be met with some skepticism, it may make better sense as you learn more about me.

First, I am first-generation American, and proud to be the daughter of refugees from the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. This means that my early life experiences included translating for my family when filling out school and doctor forms, paying for groceries with food stamps, taking public transportation because it was our only option, and watching my parents work really hard — doing work that some would never do — for not a lot. And while my parents eventually fared better, owning and operating a gas station/convenience store as I started middle school, they still work seven days a week, 365 days a year today. I basically grew up behind the counter of a Mom & Pop gas station in a small country town, where we were the only Asian Americans.

The reason why I’m sharing this is because it may explain why my lens may be different than other in-house counsel –- and may even appear to be more naïve than others, as I share my insight with you on what being in-house is like for me.

Second, there is a why to my column name –- The Meybe on In-House Life.  The Meybe is a play off of my nickname -– Mey and “maybe.” But I also intentionally love the word “maybe” in this space for two reasons. One is because it is a juxtaposition of what people think lawyers do (dispense black letter law) and what we actually do (start most advice with “it depends”). The other is that in contrast to the hierarchy of career progression at most firms, which can be very ladder-like, the career path to in-house and when you’re in-house is not as clear –- and it necessitates being open to the maybes, the possibilities.

‘Cause that’s how I landed this dream job in-house. It wasn’t planned. I didn’t have a five-year strategy. I just had a really bad day in Biglaw — and out of anger and resentment at my situation, I got online and applied.  For the networkers out there, I hate to disappoint you as I share that I didn’t know anyone at the company. I didn’t know anyone I interviewed with. And I didn’t believe that I had 100% of the qualifications. I literally just applied.

And while that may invite yet another eye roll, I think my lack of strategy of how to get in-house and my lack of expectation with what in-house life should be, really allowed me to be open and experience it for what it is.

As we explore the Meybe on In-House Life together, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, on Twitter, or at themeybe@gmail.com, especially if you have any questions on in-house life.

---

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

If you thought Justice Scalia got testy when the majority offered the slimmest recognition of the basic humanity of gay people, then you should’ve seen him in parent-teacher conferences. A 1989 letter, unearthed by Rachael E. Jones in her new article in the Journal of Supreme Court History titled Rosenberger’s Unexplored History, reveals that in the run up to the 5-4 decision against the University of Virginia in Rosenberger, Justice Scalia — the deciding vote — was furious with the school, declaring that he would not accept the school’s prestigious Jefferson Medal in characteristic Scalia style (“Not now. Not ever.”).

Cancel culture is real, I guess:

Look, when you have a bunch of kids, some of them are going to turn out to be duds.

Just ask the Duggars.

To clarify, it’s not that all of Scalia’s nine children were arbitrarily turned down by UVA — former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia went to the school for undergrad, for example. Scalia’s whining because two of his nine children didn’t get in. The chutzpah, it knows no bounds.

But Scalia also unintentionally proves the importance of the policy of affirmative action that he spent his entire legal career trying to dismantle. He expected no special consideration for his children… but the idea that his white kids wouldn’t get in must be a conspiracy against him. That’s the whole deal with affirmative action, it exists because what white people see as “no special consideration” is an order of the universe where every one of their precious snowflakes are given everything they feel entitled to get.

As UVA’s Professor Micah Schwartzman points out on Twitter, Scalia would ultimately accept the Jefferson Medal in 2008. I guess “Not now. Not ever.” meant “Not now. Not for 19 years.”

That must be some original public meaning of “Not ever” that the rest of us just can’t divine.

---

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.

Now that it’s mid-May, Biglaw firms have realized that it’s time to get in gear when it comes to planning a return to their offices in the wake of the pandemic. One of the largest law firms in the country by head count and gross revenue has entered the scene to announce a course of action that sounds relatively familiar at this point.

Baker McKenzie, the law firm that made a huge impact by kicking off Biglaw bonus season in 2020, is expecting that employees in North America will come back to the office in the beginning of September. With that, the firm echoes the vast majority of post-Labor Day reopening announcements that have already been made.

Colin Murray, the firm’s North American CEO, said that work from home will undoubtedly be a part of Baker McKenzie’s path to the future, but that a bit of in-person contact will be critical going forward. He elaborated on that in a recent interview with the American Lawyer:

“We enjoy interaction with each other,” Murray said. “We enjoy the culture of interaction with our clients, and at some level, there have been challenges, because you’re not bumping into each other in the kitchen, you’re not stopping into each other’s office to say ‘Hi,’ so there is an aspect of it that leaves us now eager to get back in.”

At the same time, Murray acknowledged that the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic had fundamentally altered how his firm, and others, will operate. But Baker McKenzie will not yet be joining the small list of firms that have expressed an openness to fully remote partners or associates.

“We don’t always need to have in-person meetings. We can now do things virtually, and I think that will continue,” he said, but adding “I don’t see us evolving towards a model where our people are scattered all over the place. We’ve got 16 offices in North America, and I think we’ll have an expectation that, if you’re affiliated with an office, that’s your home base of operations.”

Just how much time will Baker McKenzie afford for associates to work at home? That remains to be seen, but at other peer firms, lawyers can at least expect an end to the five-day, in-office workweek. If you have any details on how these plans are shaping up at the firm, please reach out to us and let us know.

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

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

Baker McKenzie Plans September Return, Eyeing Mix of Virtual and Office Work [American Lawyer]

---

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Listen, before we dig too deep into this one, let’s get some stuff straight: Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, doesn’t have inside intel on any of the criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump. But he’s a former (federal) prosecutor from Manhattan, so he has some pretty good perspective, particularly for what’s happening with the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation.

In an interview with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, Bharara points to some “signaling” going on by Cy Vance’s office that he says bodes poorly for Trump. And, high on that list of signs that things are getting serious, is hiring Paul Weiss attorney Mark Pomerantz (he’s currently on leave from the Biglaw firm while he’s working with the Manhattan DA’s office).

Here’s what Bharara said about the, erm, signals Vance is throwing out there:

I don’t know because I’ve not been in the grand jury, I’ve not interviewed the witnesses. Cy Vance doesn’t call me up and tell me stuff, but there is some signaling going on. Cy Vance is not running for reelection. Vance is, as they say, a lame duck. As a lame duck, he’s done certain things, including hiring an outside forensic accounting firm, which is not super unusual but it’s not that common. He’s done something else that is less common, which is hire an outside lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, who’s a very distinguished, well-respected lawyer in New York. I’m not going to put too much weight on it, but it seems like the kind of move you make when you believe that there’s going to be a charge or there’s a good likelihood of a charge, because it’s a pretty public thing to do. It also risks alienating people in your own office. It’s just a gut feeling that I have that taking these actions indicates to me that that office believes there’s a decent likelihood of a charge, and so that’s the one I’d be watching.

It doesn’t sound farfetched to think, “Well, when it suited him, Donald Trump inflated the value of his holdings. Otherwise he understated the value of his holdings.” Both of which can incriminate him criminally and subject him to exposure. That all sounds like it makes sense. There’s also the reporting that Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who was prosecuted by SDNY, has met with prosecutors and investigators with the DA’s office like a gazillion times.

All of those things, again, they’re not dispositive, but they all indicate to me that it’s a very serious undertaking. They’re taking it very seriously. They’re spending a lot of resources on it, and you don’t do that if it’s a long shot, I don’t think.

Of course, there’s still a lot that can happen and it’s far from a guarantee… but it sure is nice to think about.

---

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 Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System needs to make money. Like, a lot of money. A lot more money, in fact, than the 7.25% it assumes it will make, if the $6.1 billion it’s gonna need from its younger teachers and taxpayers this year is any guide. This is why, over the last 13 years, PSERS has poured more and more of its money into hedge funds, private equity funds, prison payphone systems, Kurdish oil fields and many other things falling under the rubric of “alternative investments.” These now make up an absolute majority of the pension’s investments.

* To-go alcohol from restaurants and bars has been made permanently legal in the Lone Star State. Time to order some Texas-sized cocktails to go… [People]

* An Orlando lawyer allegedly left her kids at home to run an SUV into their father’s house. [Miami Herald]

* A Central Pennsylvania lawyer, who is accused of threatening to kill United States Senators and shoot his wife, has been disbarred. [Patriot News]

* The top federal prosecutor in Chicago was hospitalized recently after suffering stroke-like symptoms. [Chicago Tribune]

* A lawsuit has been filed over a failed sale over the domain name “bird.com” and other URLs. The buyer should have known a bird in hand is better than two in the bush… [Domain Name Wire]

---

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.