Category: News Feeds

NFL offensive lineman Ja’Wuan James tore his Achilles while working out. The normal reaction would be to empathize with his situation but find a silver lining based on James earning his expected salary while injured. However, James’ situation may be much direr due to where the injury was sustained.

On May 5, the NFL Management Council disseminated a memorandum based on several NFL teams asking about the contractual implications resulting from the fact that James’ injury occurred away from his team’s — the Denver Broncos — facility, and whether James’ $10 million salary, fully guaranteed for skill, injury, and salary cap purposes, could be stricken.

“Injuries sustained while a player is working out ‘on his own’ in a location other than an NFL facility are considered ‘Non-Football Injuries’ and are outside the scope of a typical skill, injury and cap guarantee,” states the memo. “Such injuries are also not covered by protections found in paragraph 9 of the NFL Player Contract, meaning that clubs have no contractual obligation to provide salary continuation during the year in which the injury was sustained.”

The above is distinguished from what is considered to be “Football-Related Injuries,” which include injuries sustained by a player while he is working out at a club facility.

The NFL has recognized that several players have expressed surprise over the distinction, including Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. He has a point. Why would a player be penalized for working out, regardless of the location of the workout, which in most cases would prevent injury and put the player in a position to be prepared for the rigors of participating in the NFL?

Instead of addressing the questionable purpose that supports a distinction being made for someone like James, the NFL focused the end of its memo on calling out the NFL Players Association which, as noted by former NFL second-round pick Mitchell Schwartz, has encouraged many players to voluntarily stay away from teams’ facilities during the offseason.

“Clubs are encouraged to remind players of the significant injury-related protection provided if they choose to work out at the club facility and the risks they undertake in choosing to train in non-NFL locations,” states the memo. This appears to be a statement made in direct response to players from 20 teams choosing to boycott voluntary offseason workouts at their teams’ facilities citing COVID-19 concerns.

It is not yet known whether the Broncos will attempt to void James’ salary based on the season-ending injury he has sustained. More likely than not, the NFL Players Association will fight the team if it tries to avoid its normal compensation obligations with James, probably resting heavily on the change of conditions and obligation to adjust for the concerns that remain revolving around COVID-19. However, those concerns are likely losing their probative value as vaccines continue to be made readily available to the general population around the United States.

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.

Kate Bally is Director of Labor and Employment Service at Thomson Reuters Practical Law.

Her previous experience includes clerking for the U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut, working at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and work in private practice focused on employment law.

Today, Kate offers some practical advice concerning pandemic-related employment law issues, describes new trends affecting in-house lawyers when it comes to cannabis legalization, and details how to minimize the risk of sexual harassment claims like the allegations facing Governor Cuomo.

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

JW: Can I call you Kate?

KB: Absolutely, everyone does.

Great. I took the liberty of stalking your LinkedIn profile a little before the interview, looks like after law school you had a federal district court clerkship, served a brief stint at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and then were in private practice before arriving at your current organization. Is that fairly accurate?

Yeah, thanks for doing your homework. I’m an employment lawyer by trade. I started with Practical Law in 2009. Thomson Reuters then acquired Practical Law in 2013.

What drew you to employment law?

The subject is fascinating, the law is complex, and the human element makes the subject relatable. Plus, my father was an employment lawyer, and he had great cocktail party stories. 

I guess it runs in the family. What do you do now at Practical Law?

I serve as director of a team of 23, and we write about a wide range of topics within the employment law field. We provide content to help busy lawyers practice more efficiently. As one of my colleagues says, our job is to help people get their kids to their soccer games.

We’re really providing resources that allow companies and their attorneys to more easily navigate their obligations under complex and changing laws. We provide a know-how service. We’re trying to be, for the people who need it, that lawyer down the hall who you can ask questions to.

And we’re providing a lot of context and analysis that is useful practically in getting to a result, as our name suggests. We’re answering the question, “Why does it matter to my practice?” not just quoting the statutes and the case law.

So what have you been dealing with most recently in light of the pandemic?

It’s been a busy season! There was a form of paid leave for the first time at the federal level, that’s been a remarkable departure from prior law. Federal FMLA leave has been traditionally unpaid leave, but for a portion of 2020, an amendment made that leave paid leave for the first time. There had been paid leave at the state level in some jurisdictions, and even before the new federal mandates on paid leave, content on state-level paid leave was one of the most popular Practical Law resources in the L&E space. Employers are always trying to figure out what sort of leave they have to provide.

It’s not just paid leave though, everything has changed about work. People were never working remotely so much before. This brings up privacy concerns, it affects non-competes — if you can work anywhere, what do the geographic restrictions in non-competes mean? People moving from one state into another but staying with the same employer now often have different rights regarding getting reimbursed for business expenses. Carryover for leave can vary by state.

And then there are all the things that haven’t just expanded or crossed borders, they’re here for the first time. Social distancing, temperature checks, vaccine policies, no employers had these before, so we’re getting a lot of questions in those areas. Employers want to know if they can provide employee incentives for these things, or even just mandate them.

Can employers require vaccinations?

The EEOC issued guidance that said yes, you can mandate vaccines if you want to, but you have to make exceptions for legitimate medical issues and sincerely held religious beliefs. We actually have a great COVID-19 employment law tracker that we’ve unlocked. It tracks federal laws, agency guidance, all of the state laws that are relevant to COVID. We’re providing the tracker as a service; I can send you a link to share if you’d like.

That would be fantastic. Well, we were going to try to cover a couple more hot employment law topics, and I’m already going to be at a lot of words on this one.

Sorry about that!

No, no worries, it’s interesting. Lots of words can be good. So what’s going on with Governor Cuomo? Seems like he’s in some employment law hot water.

Cuomo’s not alone. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, we’ve really been trying to address how else we tackle this problem, other than the typical sexual harassment prevention trainings and policies, some of which are pretty bad. Unfortunately, a lot of the trainings out there are people saying, “How do we just check this box?” Something like 75 percent of people who claim to be harassed say there was also retaliation for reporting the harassment. People don’t feel supported and encouraged unless they have a safe environment to make these complaints.

There was a report that came from the EEOC in 2017 with five tenets that have actually proven effective in addressing workplace harassment issues. Probably the most important of the five in my view is leadership from the top: clear, frequent, and unequivocal condemnation of harassment from the leadership roles is just critical for people throughout the organization to take harassment seriously. Accountability, consistent follow through, is another big one.

If you don’t actually do what you said you were going to do, it’s not going to help you in a legal defense or in your compliance work.  

Sound advice. Well, let’s move on to marijuana, I think we were going to cover that a bit too.

Practical Law has had a ton to say on marijuana lately, there has been so much movement in this area. New York, New Mexico, Virginia, and a number of other states have new legalization laws coming into effect. We have a tracker for new marijuana laws to help keep pace with these changes.

The culture is changing, and legislatures are changing with it. When states started to legalize marijuana, it was a light touch on what was changing. But now we’re really changing at a fast pace.

Have any examples?

As recently as 2015 there was a pro-employer case out of Colorado that left employers with the impression that terminations for positive drug tests for THC, even with a medical marijuana card, were lawful. Now you cannot even test for marijuana in pre-employment screening in New York City. In New Jersey, just testing positive is not enough for employers to impose consequences, they have to prove actual impairment at work. It’s a much higher burden on employers. In Arizona, for example, if an employer finds THC in the system of a medical marijuana user without additional evidence of impairment, that employee now has a private right of action to sue if terminated — that would have been shocking 10 years ago.

I think we’re going to see more court opinions favorable to employees. There’s thought to be a racial bias aspect to legacy marijuana laws that courts are increasingly eager to address. I don’t know that we’ll see any changes at the federal level soon, but there’s some movement there as well. Even though many states have legalized medical marijuana, there is still some reticence on recreational use. For example, we’re seeing some pushback from Minnesota Republicans right now on legalizing recreational use.

It’s too much fun, that’s the problem. I’m based in Minnesota, and we’re always the last to authorize anything fun.

The culture is changing and with it, legislatures and courts as well. They are more actively considering, “What is the harm of having THC in your system?” Even with legalization spreading and the culture changing, employers and employees have a lot of unanswered questions, and we may start to see guidance on these questions in the future. It’s confusing to employers and employees alike.

Indeed it is. Well, any parting words?

Just that we’re not done with the coronavirus yet, unfortunately. We have a lot of vaccine content, safe reopening content, that we’re updating all the time right now. Some states are considering vaccine passports, others, like Utah, are saying they don’t support a mandate around vaccination, so that’s going to continue to be an area of focus for the foreseeable future.

And thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I’m a huge fan of Above the Law, I read it all the time.

Well, thank you. Flattery will get you everywhere.

I actually did an interview with ATL about my experience as a federal clerk a few years ago.

You should save me some Googling and send me the link to that, I’ll include it for the readers.

Absolutely, I’ll do that.

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.

One by one, top Biglaw firms are announcing their plans for their eventual return to the office in the wake of the pandemic. Several other firms have already laid out three-part reopening plans, each with varying levels of flexibility for the amount of time attorneys would have to be present in the office. We now have news of perhaps the most flexible reopening plan of them all, and it comes from one of the most successful firms in the country.

Back in February, Ropes & Gray announced that it was setting its sights on a September reopening. Yesterday, during a firmwide town hall meeting, chair Julie Jones laid out the firm’s vision for a return to work for attorneys, in three phases. Here are the key points from a follow-up memo (available in full on the next page) that she sent last night to reiterate all that was said:

Phase 1 (now through the summer)—experience the office if you can. As we mentioned in our February message, our permissive, and entirely optional, use of the offices continues into September.

Phase 2 (targeted for the week of Sept. 13)—we recommend that you spend time in the office more regularly, one to two days a week.

Phase 3 (likely November through 2022)—we will look for a more regular rhythm to office life, and recommend that you spend the majority of your work week (three days a week) in the office.

For associates, these were likely the two most important sentences from Jones’s email: “No matter what phase we are in, we endorse flexibility post-pandemic. We don’t expect that we’ll ever mandate a five-day a week in-office environment.” Yes, you read that correctly. Ropes & Gray — a firm that brought in $2,192,810,000 gross revenue in 2020, placing it at No. 11 in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — is not likely to require that attorneys spend five days in the office, ever again.

For a Biglaw firm of Ropes & Gray’s stature to announce an indefinite policy like this is huge. With this announcement, did Ropes just end the five-day, in-office workweek for good? We’ll have to see if this turns into a trend that catches on across more Biglaw firms.

Sources we’ve heard from say they really appreciate the ramp-up time the firm is allowing for them to reacquaint themselves with office life, and that the flexibility being offered here is what really makes Ropes & Gray a fantastic place to work.

Congratulations to the firm for creating a reopening plan that focuses on flexibility for all attorneys, making very clear that “Ropes is about people, not place.”

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.

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.

Trademark law has been increasing in popularity and importance in recent years, particularly as businesses were forced to shift and rebrand in the last year. Unfortunately, though, there have historically been very few offerings in the way of comprehensive training for attorneys who are just starting out with trademarks.

We recently sat down with Stacey Kalamaras, a seasoned trademark attorney and the founder of Trademarkabilities, an online trademark academy designed to fill that gap and give U.S. attorneys the comprehensive instruction they need to successfully handle trademark matters. Kalamaras shared her thoughts on why trademarks are so important, how attorneys can gain the confidence to handle trademark work, and more.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how it led up to you founding Trademarkabilities.

My background is unique. I’m a second-career attorney – I spent my first career in marketing and advertising, building brands for multinational corporations, before I gave that up to go back to law school full time. I had really fallen in love with the area of brand management and was working with in-house counsel who do what I do now, and that’s where I learned what intellectual property law was. The prospect of making a living by legally protecting brands was fascinating to me. I decided to take all the institutional and industry knowledge I had and use it to become a brand protection lawyer.

Why did you create Trademarkabilities?

When I started my career in Biglaw, I had access to some wonderful practitioners who gave me a lot of formal training. Adding that to my understanding of the business of brands from my previous career put me in a great position. I started my own firm in 2009, then went in-house where I met a lot of solo and small firm practitioners who were struggling without the type of training and mentoring resources I had in Biglaw.

I went back to Biglaw in 2014 and realized that the training I had received doesn’t exist as much anymore. While I think every firm has some sort of a training program, it’s now much less formalized than it was 15 or 20 years ago. Under client pressures to control rates, junior associates were also not getting the same early experience of working on interesting trademark portfolios, which is where you really learn by doing.

That led me to the idea for a more practical education format. I just needed to figure out the technology to bring it to the market, which I ultimately did in 2020 in the form of Trademarkabilities.

How is Trademarkabilities different from other educational programs out there?

My approach is a very practical one, and it’s quite different from that of national CLE providers, for example. The practical approach really resonates with people, because it’s not just a lecture on what a case means or the latest update to some statute. It’s actionable information about what an IP attorney can do with a piece of information and how it impacts their practice.

The real idea of Trademarkabilities is to give anyone who has interest in trademark law – whether they’re brand new attorneys or someone who’s more experienced and who wants to add trademark prosecution to their practice – the opportunity to learn the practical side of practicing before the USPTO. We start with the rules, but we go beyond that with practical strategies and tips to help the practitioner understand the concepts more fully. We also provide screen shots of USPTO forms and client communication templates.

Some of our attorneys have described the program as “a trademark practice in a box.” I want to make it as easy as possible for the attorney to set up a trademark practice if they’re new to practicing trademark law. To date, I’ve educated over 3,000 attorneys on various trademark and IP issues.

Who can benefit from Trademarkabilities?

Anyone who is dedicated to trademark law. We’ve had everyone from solo and small firm attorneys to in-house attorneys to attorneys at IP boutiques or larger firms. In the firm setting, junior attorneys want to do well and advance their careers. No matter how great their mentors are, though, no partner is going to have time to devote the hours and the level of detail that we give in the course.

We go into great depth and cover the entire trademark prosecution process from beginning to end. It’s meant to be comprehensive and something attorneys can grow with, regardless of their experience level when they start.

Why is trademark education so important?

Trademarks are an incredibly important business asset. If you look at the filings at the USPTO, trademarks have been growing in popularity over the last five years, largely because trademarks are becoming more accessible to businesses of all sizes. There was also a huge increase in trademark filings during the pandemic, because people were forced to pivot and form new businesses. All this means that more and more clients are starting to ask their attorneys about trademark issues.

Any attorney barred in any state can practice trademark law in the U.S., but most lack the training to do it, so they end up referring this business elsewhere. And the fact that the U.S., unlike most other countries, doesn’t have a competency test (like the patent bar, for instance) for trademark practitioners makes it more difficult for practitioners to learn the area well. Part of the reason for setting up Trademarkabilities was to make sure that people really understand how nuanced this area is and to ensure they can represent their clients confidently.

How does the course work?

Our signature course is a 10.5-hour course. We also have an introductory course if people just want to dip their toe in. Trademarkabilities is a video-on-demand course, which means you can take as much time as necessary to complete the course on your schedule. The videos are viewed on our learning platform, which can be accessed as often as you want, via your computer or mobile devices. You also get a complete workbook of the slides that go with the course, as well as templates that can be downloaded and customized to suit your firm’s needs.

We also offer additional resources for anyone who signs on to the signature course, including monthly, live Q&A sessions that I run and a closed Facebook group where people enrolled in the course can post questions and get feedback. The signature course is CLE-certified in the state of Illinois, which says something about the level of the substance of the course.

What should people know about pricing?

The course is $2495, which I think is an exceptional value for all of the tools and resources that you’re given. There’s no other course out there of this length that goes anywhere near as in-depth as our course. Our pricing is comparable to what you’d pay for one- or two-day sessions from other providers that only give you an overview of the topic.

We offer discount pricing for additional enrollees from the same firm. I welcome any firm leaders who are interested in outsourcing their trademark training to please contact me. We do customized training for five or more people at the same firm and would be happy to speak with anyone about how we could be a resource to train junior trademark attorneys at their firm.

What can attorneys expect to get out of Trademarkabilities?

We want to help attorneys who are new to trademark law gain confidence in representing their clients and not have to turn this work away. We understand that, particularly when you’re on your own without that safety net of more experienced practitioners around you, it can be scary to learn a new area of law. At Trademarkabilities, we can be that safety net for you.

We help to build your skillset and, more importantly, confidence, so that you don’t ever have to turn away business that you want to take on. There’s no reason you can’t do trademark work, but you do need to learn the fundamentals first. We provide the fundamentals and much more.

Interested in learning more? Find all the comprehensive instruction you’ll need to optimize and grow your career in trademark law here!

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 Erin Ramey to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

I fell in love with a Marine, and that is how it began.

We were high school sweethearts and attended college together. Shortly after 9/11, he spoke with a recruiter and changed career paths. While I was studying law, he was in flight school. On Memorial Day weekend 2008, we tied the knot in our hometown — the holiday weekend gave us an extra day of military leave, and it was the perfect window of time between taking 3L spring semester finals and beginning the six-week BARBRI prep course. Our wedding day, although the date was strategically planned in true military fashion, was a very special and significant day to us, our friends, and family. It was also the day that I made a commitment to my husband … and with that promise came a promise to serve our country by his side.

Since 2008, we have moved over seven times in 13 years while growing our family (which is typical for this lifestyle), adventuring around the world, and making wonderful military friendships. What I did not know was how challenging it would be as a spouse who wanted to work as an attorney. The more that I share my story, the more I learn that my story is not unique from other milspouse attorneys and professionals.

While not wearing a uniform, military spouses work tirelessly behind the scenes keeping the military family unit together, resilient and strong, while the active duty servicemember serves, ready to fight anytime around the globe, on land, in air, on the sea, in space, and even in cyberspace.

With all the moves comes frequent interruptions in employment, the loss of job tenure, and limited promotion opportunities — sometimes starting at the bottom, if you are fortunate enough to find a firm willing to hire you. While 85% of military spouse attorneys hold an active law license, only 70% of those who work have a job requiring a law license.

An active duty servicemember attorney, on the other hand, moves to advance his or her career and earns a steady income. Military spouse attorneys bear the financial and administrative burden of meeting state (or multiple state) licensing requirements during frequent periods of un- and underemployment. After each move, this includes time and money — bar application fees, preparing documentation, waiting for licensure, procuring a mentoring attorney (as many states require), earning additional continuing education credits, searching for employment, securing childcare in a new location, and paying a substantial amount in annual licensing dues in other states.

These stresses are in addition to the routine military move tasks of packing and unpacking, turning off and on utilities, applying for passports if heading overseas, finding schools for the children, researching the best health-care providers (don’t forget the vet, too), seeking out new friends and neighbors, and locating the best take-out food and grocery stores. It all can add up and affect the quality of life of military spouse attorneys, placing a strain on the emotional and financial well-being of the military family, which may even ultimately prompt the servicemember to exit the military. The military loses a significant amount of its extremely well-trained members due to the extensive barriers to spouse careers.

This issue is so critical to military retention that the Department of Defense and White House have launched initiatives such as Joining Forces to address issues of military spouse unemployment, professional licensing, and interstate compacts, ensuring that our active duty servicemembers no longer have to choose between serving our nation and their families. The past five years have revealed great progress when it comes to license reciprocity, allowing military spouses, if qualified, the ability to temporarily work in other states without long waits for certification. However, there is still much work to do in continuing to ease burdens placed on the military family as they move so frequently.

It is promising to see the Kentucky Bar Association’s (KBA) recognition of these unique challenges that military spouse attorneys face. KBA recently proposed an amendment to Kentucky Supreme Court Rule 3.04 to include waiver of dues for military spouse attorneys licensed in Kentucky. Many state bar associations waive dues for active-duty military attorneys, but this benefit for military spouses is the first of its kind. The Kentucky Supreme Court will hear public comments regarding this amendment in mid-May. While waiving dues for military spouse attorneys in Kentucky isn’t a magic fix for all the challenges military families face, it is a step in the right direction to show we support our military families.

Call to Action: if you would like to help support this rule change, please write an email with your comments and send it to ruleamendments@kycourts.net by Monday, May 10. Helping ease burdens, such as waiving annual bar dues for military spouses, helps the military family focus on the mission at hand in protecting our country.

Erin Ramey is from the tri-state area of Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia and is a Partner at Parlatore Law Group, a new cloud-based law firm. She is a member of Mothers Esquire and Military Spouse J.D. Network. She is also a National Board Certified Teacher and has taught for Department of Defense Education Activities and Ashford University and also served as the USO Pacific Region Operations Manager. She is passionate about advocating for military families and veterans and building community wherever the military takes her to create positive change. 

Thus far, Americans have received almost 250 million COVID vaccinations, and more than half of those eligible have received one shot in the fight against the novel coronavirus. We still have a long way to go, but progress like this has inspired law firms to announce plans for office reopenings and returns to business as usual — or the new usual.

Today, we have news from a top 50 Am Law firm whose reopening plan will gently ease attorneys and staff back to work through various transition phases leading up to a full(ish) return after Labor Day.

According to our sources, Sheppard Mullin — a firm that brought in gross revenue of $867,416,00 in 2020 — has announced a return-to-office plan that will have all employees familiarized with their new office lives for a September return, on “some days,” meaning that remote work is still very much on the table for associates and staff. These are the three reopening phases that will be happening at the firm, as detailed in a memo that reiterated information spoken about during a town hall meeting yesterday (full memo available on the next page):

• Now we invite those who are Fully Vaccinated to come to the office on some days.  If you are not FV or have other reasons why RTO does not make sense for you at this point, no worries.

• Starting July 6 after the Independence Day Holiday we will move to “do your best” to come to the office on some days.  This is with the usual caveats including that you may have other obligations that keep you at home.  And of course we will apply our Intentional Flexibility concept to your individual situations.  (Remember our Summer Associates start the in-office phase of their time with us on July 6.  Please do your best with them!)

• After doing our best for the summer, we will on September 7 after the Labor Day Holiday move to an expectation that we will come into the office on some days.  This expectation including the number and choice of days in the office will involve individual and team conversations about what is best for you, the Firm and our clients and will again be based on our Intentional Flexibility concept.  We do know for most of us there will be more time, and in many cases significantly more time, spent working remotely.

“No worries”? “Do your best”? “Come into the office on some days”? Sheppard Mullin’s office reopening plan is perhaps the most relaxed one we’ve heard of to date, and that’s sure to make a lot of people very happy. We’ve also been told that the firm has announced a program for associates and staff to take each other out to lunch or coffee on the firm’s dime to get back into the flow of office life.

Congratulations to Sheppard Mullin on creating what seems to be an incredibly easygoing reopening plan for all employees — a plan that fully embraces remote work because “work life will never be the same in our industry or in our Firm.”

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.

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.

UPDATED FOR 2021! We didn’t update this guide for 2020 because at the time we were locked in our homes, schools were trying to figure out what Zoom School of Law would even look like, and graduations were getting canceled right and left. Which is a shame because while those were definitely more pressing stories, graduates needed a little bit of joy and recognition for their accomplishments.

The law school odyssey is coming to a close for many students this year, and before the focus shifts to studying for the bar exam and staring blankly into the middle distance contemplating disappearing job prospects, these graduates deserve some gifts.

Obviously, the best gifts for a newly minted J.D. would be “comprehensive debt relief,” “job offers,” or “straight cash, homey.” Unfortunately, you may not be able to deliver these gifts — at least not in amounts that anyone wants — or you may just not care that much about the graduate.

So we’ve compiled some gift ideas, ranging from serious to specious, for you to consider.

Before we begin, a quick policy statement: ATL is not being paid to promote any of these products, but when available from Amazon, the products are featured with affiliate links, meaning that ATL receives a small commission from Amazon if you buy something through that site.

I broke things down into categories. You can jump to a section through this table of contents, or you can scroll at your leisure:

Office Equipment
Gizmos
The Case
Toys & Games
Booze
Non-Alcoholic Drinkers
Jewelry
Books
Clothes
Art

Office Equipment

Levenger desk set via Amazon

Unless your graduate is heading to Sullivan & Cromwell, it’s a safe bet that some degree of working from home is in the cards. So maybe spruce up the home office with a standing desk. And if the young lawyer wants to stay in shape while staring blankly at a screen, consider a companion treadmill.

If your graduate is lucky enough to have a job lined up for after the bar exam, consider office accouterments. A bare law firm office is one of the saddest scenes in the world. Levenger makes a handsome desk set that can be purchased in whole or in part to spruce up an office. The “bomber jacket” theme rests comfortably between modern and throwback. And they can decorate this set with their personalized pen set. Which they can use on their Ruth Bader Ginsburg stationery.

For a slightly more “old school” look, here’s a burgundy oak set from Amazon. This set is a little cheaper and includes a letter opener, and what gift is complete without a sharp object?

On the lighter side, there’s the Legal Decision Maker Desk Paperweight that allows a lawyer to cede all decision-making to the Fates. And here’s something for the nagging client asking for something for free.

Gizmos

Samsung Gear via Amazon

A lot of people have Apple Watches. But those are kind of cheap looking. Here’s a smartwatch that looks professional. And yes, this is actually a picture of a smartwatch.

What about a Livescribe pen that captures both audio and digitizes notes as they’re written.

Does your grad want to stay in shape but not look like an 80-year-old woman? Either this FitBit accessory or this one from Kate Bracelet will do the trick.

The Case

The classic law school gift is a briefcase. But the days of the hard-sided rectangle of doom are in the past. A soft-sided, elegant bag that can store a laptop with room to spare is the order of the day. Here’s a nice distressed tan messenger bag.

And I’m not a big believer in gendered bags, but here’s a computer bag designed for women’s fashion.

And if you feel compelled to purchase a hard-sided briefcase, Alpine Swiss offers an expandable briefcase with pockets for modern essentials like a smartphone.

One more option is the iPad case. For example, this leather iPad Pro case from Snugg. Or if they’re on the Surface Pro 6 train, here’s a case.

Toys & Games

Lawyer Morty via Amazon

People love Funko Pops and there are some available for your fictional legal heroes. Like Lawyer Morty. Or there’s the soon-to-be Disney+ famous She-Hulk in lawyer attire. There’s obviously the forgotten Netflix famous Matt Murdock too.

And, of course, there’s Passing The Bar, the board game designed to help Kim Kardashian. There’s Blind Justice: The Game of Lawsuits, and an intriguing new option this year I dissent.

Maybe golf is your grad’s game? If so, there are legally-themed golf balls and divot repair tools out there.

Booze

Wine glass via Amazon

Lawyers like to drink. They don’t call it a “JD” for nothing. But as a graduation gift, a case of PBR tall boys seems a bit gauche. It’s time to drink classy.

Is a lawyer having a good day or a bad day? This wine glass will let everyone know.

It is an indisputable truth that “Bourbon is a great way to alcohol.” Caskers, a spirit distributor founded by Harvard Law grads, offers a Whiskey Club, providing a selection of craft whiskeys.

You can also get your law grad a commemorative flask!

Non-Alcoholic Drinkers

SCOTUS Mug via Amazon

If the grad’s liquid drug of choice is caffeine, there are some cute legally-themed coffee mugs out there. For example, this Supreme Court case mug displays famous cases when cold, and shows only shortened names when filled with hot liquid. It’s like the blue mountains on a Coors Light in reverse! Another mug with the same qualities is the Disappearing Civil Liberties mug, which shows the Bill of Rights when cold and erases those getting compromised daily when filled up and hot.

Or for the more honest out there, we have this World’s Okayest Lawyer Mug.

Jewelry

This is, admittedly, not my best category to set up since the only scenario where I’d wear a ring is if I’ve, in fact, won a Super Bowl. Thankfully I have colleagues who can help me out on this one.

Here’s a scales of justice charm with an inspirational graduation message. There’s also this one for the grad who believed she could.

Books

The hackneyed option is Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, which is, you know, one of the non-racist Seuss books. But come on, let’s get original. Maybe it’s my newfound interest in the legal significance of Dr. Seuss, but I’d go with Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. The tale of Yertle’s unrealistic demands at the expense of the minions he trods upon is just the thing to prepare the grad for a career in Biglaw.

Now this book is awesome! All the author’s New York bar exam notes illustrated with delightful cartoon stick figures. The New York Bar Picture Book may not replace their bar prep course, but it’s a fun and useful study aid.

How about the collected wit and wisdom of Mark Twain on lawyers?

There’s also The New Yorker Book of Lawyer Cartoons if your grad is the sort who wants to say, “Hey, I’m a lawyer, and I’m also pretentious.”

You can also, of course, pick up Supreme Ambitions by our old founding editor David Lat.

Clothes

Everyone needs socks.

Look, the law school graduate probably already has some professional attire — they did interview after all — so maybe you should get them something to wear when they relax. For a day every six months or so.

Like this Better Call Saul t-shirt. For It’s Always Sunny fans, they can proudly proclaim their specialty in bird law. And while many law grads shuffle off to an Am Law 200 firm, for the small or solo inclined, here’s a Nelson & Murdock shirt.

Art

How about lawyer refrigerator poetry? Perhaps you feel this is more literary than artistic, but admit it — your refrigerator poetry is more for show than publication isn’t it?

Look, when it comes to art, nothing tops dogs playing poker. Thus, I bring you “dogs being lawyers” in Breach of Promise Suit.

‘Breach of Promise Suit’ via Allposters

It doesn’t get classier than that.

Feel free to email us other suggestions!

Most of us have at best ambivalent feelings towards the coronavirus pandemic, and usually regard it as a particularly unpleasant year-and-change taken from us. Not so Elizabeth Holmes: While she may not exactly be having the time of her life, what with not being a billionaire anymore and all, she’s certainly made good use of it, getting conveniently knocked up by her 20something trust-fund baby husband (who needs to be a billionaire after all?). But, most importantly to Liz, we have to imagine, which is what she’s not been doing, and that is to say, going to court on those pesky fraud for allegedly lying about Theranos’ not-all-that-revolutionary and not-all-that-accurate blood tests, which could send her to the pokey until her unborn child is ready to drop out of Stanford him- or herself.

* A new lawsuit alleges a New Jersey family ate feces-covered food at a McDonald’s. One heck of a special sauce… [Patch]

* Harvey Weinstein has sued his former lawyer to recover supposedly unearned legal fees. [Hill]

* San Diego County will provide lawyers to immigrants facing deportation proceedings. [Minnesota Lawyer]

* A man has been convicted of stalking a high-profile Texas attorney. [Dallas Morning News]

* Rudy Giuliani’s allies are allegedly asking that Donald Trump’s team help pay Rudy’s legal bills. A family that pays together, stays together…[Hill]

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.