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The Coalition is fully supportive of the healthcare workers withdrawal of their labour because they have, in the past held prolonged negotiations with the stubborn government in demanding decent remuneration and an improvement in working conditions. The demonstrations also came after the government slashed their June salaries by $2 000 per worker. We are disappointed that the healthcare workers have not been getting decent wages and their income is not in tandem with the soaring inflation and high cost of living.

In this light, we take note of the intervention by the government of Zimbabwe on Wednesday afternoon by introducing a US$75 Covid-19 allowance for all civil servants while their monthly salaries have been increased by 50%.

We also support the decision by the healthcare workers in rejecting the Covid-19 allowances and demanding that the salaries revert back to the 1^st of October 2018 digits that were quoted in USD which is a stable currency that cab store value on that salary.

We therefore urge, the Health Services Board to immediately act to avert this unnecessary strike by presenting a new serious offer to the healthcare workers.

Thus, we are calling on society and all the progressive forces to support this strike and calling on the Health Services Board to go back to the negotiating table with a settlement offer.

As CiZC, we have noted in the past with concern that the government of Zimbabwe government is unwilling to accede to these demands without waging a savage anti-worker campaign of intimidation, arrests and without unleashing the barbarism of police violence on workers.

We value human life and would not want the strike to lead to unnecessary loss of lives hence the need to resolve the underlying issues urgently.

More importantly, we take this opportunity to call on the government of Zimbabwe to seriously address the rampant corruption that has caused devastating effects on the country’s economy. The government of Zimbabwe should, therefore, urgently call for an all stakeholders dialogue as a way of unlocking the multi-faceted socio-economic and political crisis facing Zimbabwe.

The national dialogue the process should seek to safeguard citizens’ interests through the restoration of the social contract between citizens and the government.

This national dialogue process must not be restricted to political parties but should rather bring on board a cross-section of stakeholders including civic society, labour, religious groups, business among other critical stakeholders. Its main focus should be premised on a set of agreed reforms to the economy, social and political governance.

Post published in: Featured

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

Which four states do not recognize Juneteenth as as either a state or ceremonial holiday?

Hint: The governors of two of the states announced June 19, 2020, would be a holiday but failed to create an annualized tradition.

See the answer on the next page.

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

As much as we’d like to think we’re the most original and creative lawyers out there, so much of what we do, even what we do well or in a special way, has been done before. Indeed, if you’ve practiced for any length of time, or work with others, the chances are that when you look at your current work obligations, you know someone who has filed that kind of brief in that jurisdiction, or examined that kind of expert, or handled that kind of evidentiary issue.

Rely on that. While we need to learn our work for ourselves as any professional or artisan must, the work of those colleagues or those in our network can be crucial to helping us figure out the best way to get a job done efficiently and win for our clients.

But you can’t stop there. Don’t get simply the “cuff law” (the off-the-cuff recitation of the rule according to that lawyer). Don’t take the template brief and plug and chug the names even if the law and the issue seem identical and even if you’re in the same court.

In complex trial work — in any kind of trial work — no two cases are identical. And that’s great. Each case can be an adventure for the lawyer. If we’re willing to work this hard, we can make money other ways.

That adventure is one of the gifts of our work and makes it special. That adventure, that difference in each case, also obliges us to treat each case individually.

Hear the cuff law. Use the template. But do your cross-check. Ensure the law is up to date and really on point. Call the clerk’s office. Have someone who didn’t give you the brief template read the final brief to make sure she thinks it makes sense. Rely on the prior work as well as the thoughts of others, just not too much.

We need to rely on our colleagues and their wisdom and experience. But to win for each client, we still need to treat each client and each case as unique.

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John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

When it comes to studying for the bar exam, it can be easy to become overwhelmed just deciding what resources to use. You’ve likely heard advice about doing a lot of practice questions, but maybe you aren’t sure where to find them or which ones are best. Well, luckily for you, BarPrepHero has you covered.

BarPrepHero is an affordable online self-study bar prep program, and they know that practice questions are the very best thing you can do to be prepared for the bar exam. In fact, they have developed an entire bar prep program around them! Recently, BarPrepHero launched a new premium product, and we had the opportunity to check it out. Let’s start with the features. The following are included in BarPrepHero’s UBE premium program:

• 1,715 official MBE questions
• 500 MBE-like questions from BarPrepHero’s personal question bank
• On-demand access
• 42 premium tests
• Single-subject and mixed subject tests
• More than 1,800 flashcards covering 12 subjects
• 15 detailed email consults
• 200-question MBE Exam Simulator
• MBE Passing Probability Analytics
• UBE Pass Guarantee
• 23 years of MEE (downloadable questions and analyses)
• 23 years of MPTs (downloadable questions and analyses)

That is a lot of features considering BarPrepHero’s incredibly affordable price tag (we’ll get to that later). Let’s unpack a few of these features and discuss how they can support you in your bar prep journey.

2,200+ MBE questions

You’re probably starting to pick up on a theme here that practice questions are the key to passing the bar exam. It isn’t enough to just do a few practice questions and call it day. You have to do a lot of practice questions, like thousands of them, and BarPrepHero has you covered with that. They not only have 1,715 licensed questions from the National Conference of Bar Examiners, but also an additional 500 questions written by BarPrepHero. This is a great feature because it will expose you to different formats of questions and give you ample questions to practice.

23 years of official MEE/MPT questions from past bar exams

Don’t think that practice is only important for the MBE portion of the exam. It is equally as important to practice for both MEE and MPT. For the MEE, practice questions help with issue spotting, timing, and even learning the law. For the MPT, practice questions allow you to become comfortable with different formats and timing. BarPrepHero has included all 23 years of officially released past bar exam materials for both the MEE and MPT. That should keep you busy for a while!

Single-subject and mixed subject tests

As we’ve already discussed, doing a lot of practice questions is crucial to bar prep success. But it isn’t just the number of practice questions that are important, it is also how you do them. Single-subject practice questions are great to help you drill down in a specific area of law and really learn the subject. Mixed-subject questions are great for simulating exam-like conditions and can help you identify strengths and weaknesses. BarPrepHero was smart to include both options in their program.

Email Consultations

One of BarPrepHero’s unique features is the 15 email consults with the UBE premium program. Many self-guided or supplemental bar prep programs do not include any access to ask questions. Most programs like this give you the materials and send you on your way. BarPrepHero, on the other hand, offers 15 email consults for you to ask questions and get answers. This can be really helpful when you run into an explanation that you don’t understand and need a little clarification.

Pass Guarantee

Let’s face it, no one wants to go into the bar exam thinking that they’ll have to retake the exam. Studying for the bar exam is a stressful experience, and whether it is your first time or third time, you want it to be your last. However, BarPrepHero’s pass guarantee can offer a little peace of mind in the event that you don’t pass. BarPrepHero offers a full refund to anyone who finishes their program and does not pass (you can review the complete details on BarPrepHero’s website). This pass guarantee is great because it incentivizes you to complete the program and has you covered just in case you don’t pass.

The best news? All of this is only $449. It is basically unheard of to find this many practice questions available for under $500. This makes BarPrepHero an affordable self-study option and a particularly great resource for a repeat bar exam taker who is looking to access tons of practice questions but doesn’t need a full program. In addition to the UBE Premium program, they offer an MBE-only plan where you would only get access to all MBE questions.

So, if you are studying for the bar exam and are in the market for a bar exam program that gives you access to a vast number of practice questions and doesn’t break the bank, you should check out BarPrepHero’s Premium programs. Learn more about them here.

Since the murder of George Floyd last month, I’ve read a lot of Biglaw statements about racial justice. And in compiling what I’m sure is a non-exhaustive list of statements, it’s clear that not every statement is a great one — or even a good one. While some have been well received, others have been criticized as shallow or even cringeworthy.

What makes a good statement from Biglaw? Well, as Lia Dorsey, newly elected President of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals and Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Dentons, noted, it should come from the actual leadership from the firm since a firm’s culture, particularly as it applies to diversity issues, comes from the top down. The more successful statements were also earnest and spoke from the heart instead of being a “very special message from the firm.”

There are also some seemingly small things the convey a lot — like a firm’s unwillingness to come out and say Black Lives Matter (or even mention the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Armaud Arbery, or any other victim of racial violence). Or only using quotes from white men about the importance of racial justice (talk about centering the wrong thing). Or statements that focus on the ways everyone is diverse instead of the very specific issue at hand. Or statements that place undue focus on property damage instead of the life and death fight.

Covington’s response to the recent protests has also been publicly called out as ringing hollow compared to the experiences of lawyers at the firm. Yolanda Young, who unsuccessfully sued the firm for racial discrimination, pointed out on Twitter that the firm’s statement in the wake of the George Floyd protests was very different than what she experienced working at Covington.

Cleary’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests was criticized by its New York black associates, who sent an office-wide email in response (available here in full — and it’s absolutely something you should read). It called out the firm’s response as lackluster rhetoric that failed to provide concrete steps to directly support black associates at the firm. The associates recommended the following: acknowledge the pain of black associates, actively check-in and adjust, give grace, provide targeted mental health support, targeted pro bono efforts, effective mechanisms for addressing anti-blackness, educate, listen, and take action.

And concrete action is definitely a good thing, like specific dollar amounts firms are donating or their pro bono hours, for example Pillsbury’s impressive commitment to donate $1 million in cash and $10 million in pro bono and volunteer work to social justice causes over the next three years. And Sidley is already doing some high-profile pro bono work on this subject.

Today is Juneteenth and a record number of Biglaw firms have declared the day a firm holiday, which is a great step in the right direction. But Above the Law is also hearing at that at a bunch of these firms, after the fanfare of the announcement, associates are being pressured by the partners they work for to not take the day off, quite literally making it a second-class holiday. It’s a poignant reminder that saying the right thing simply must be followed by doing the right thing.

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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).

I’m all for heavily compensating whoever comes up with an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19, but our existing setup seems designed to encourage scamming and grifting. For years, we’ve talked about the evil that is the Bayh-Dole Act, which encouraged universities to patent every damn thing (most of which was funded from federal government grants) and then sell off those patents to industry. While it’s made a bunch of people rich, it’s been such a disaster in so many other ways. First it’s done massive harm to university research (rather than the opposite as its backers promised). It significantly decreased information sharing and collaboration (keys to innovation breakthroughs) because universities kept demanding ideas be kept secret so they could patent them and lock up the output of any (again, mostly taxpayer funded) research.

A key result of Bayh-Dole is that many, many universities all set up “tech transfer” offices, in the belief that they’d be able to cash in on all these patents being licensed to industry. But, of course, like so many patent holders, universities vastly over-estimate the value of the patent, and under-estimate the value of actual execution. So almost all (with just a few limited exceptions) university tech transfer offices have been dismal failures, and lost universities money, rather than being profit centers. Of course, that created an opportunity… for patent trolls. One of the world’s largest patent trolls, Intellectual Ventures, was literally built off of this scam: swooping in to “rescue” desperate tech transfer offices at universities, buying their patents off them for pennies, and amassing a huge collection to shakedown actual innovators. And of course, some universities — including the University of California — got directly into the patent trolling business themselves.

If you want to see a case study on how this works in the age of COVID-19, look no further than the story of the antiviral therapy called EIDD-2801. My and your taxpayer money helped fund the development of the drug (taken in pill form, originally for the flu), by a grant from the federal government to Emory University for $30 million (only about half of which has been spent). But, just as the COVID-19 situation heated up, there was a recognition that pharma firms might be eager to find new drugs to treat the disease. George Painter heads Emory’s tech transfer operation, and also (coinkydinks) holds some patents related to EIDD-2801. In what lots of people considered to be a weird move, he quickly sold off the rights to EIDD-2801 to a “biotherapeutics” company called Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, that didn’t seem to have much in the way of, well, anything:

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics had no laboratories, no manufacturing facility of its own and a minimal track record when it struck a deal in March with Emory University to license an experimental coronavirus pill invented by university researchers…

What Ridgeback did seem to have was close connections to the Trump administration. And a wealthy couple who “founded” the firm.

Wayne Holman, who holds a medical degree from New York University, is a hedge-fund manager with a long track record of investing in pharmaceutical stocks. He founded his fund Ridgeback Capital Management in 2006. Wendy Holman, chief executive of Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is a former investment manager who was named to President Trump’s advisory council on HIV/AIDS in 2019.

The Holmans live on Miami’s exclusive Star Island, where they bought two mansions for a combined $47 million in 2014 and tore one of them down. Ridgeback Capital’s headquarters is in a small office building not far away in Coconut Grove, near a private school where Wendy Holman serves on the board of trustees.

The story of Emory and Ridgeback came to attention only because of Rick Bright, the whistleblower who was removed from his job as the director of the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for challenging the US’s approach to dealing with COVID-19. Among the things he blew the whistle on was Ridgeback’s sketchy and insistent push for a lot more money from BARDA, despite not even drawing down the remaining $14 million of the existing grant:

Ridgeback’s involvement burst into the broader public sphere in early May, when Bright, the ousted head of BARDA, filed his explosive whistleblower complaint. Bright alleged that he clashed with Robert Kadlec, the Health and Human Services assistant secretary for preparedness and response, over demands that he award BARDA contracts to well-connected companies. HHS has said it “strongly disagrees” with Bright’s allegations.

In his complaint, Bright cited attempts to secure money for EIDD-2801 — first by Painter in November 2019, and then by Wendy Holman in early April — among episodes of alleged political pressure.

Bright said he rejected requests to fund EIDD-2801 because Emory had already received pledges of $30 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Department of Defense to cover development of the drug, including human safety testing. Without first seeing safety results, Bright said, it did not make sense to back the drug with new infusions of federal cash.

The story includes quotes from a series of emails that Holman sent pushing for more taxpayer funds to run clinical trials.

Bright said in his complaint that Ridgeback had been seeking $100 million to further the drug’s development. In an April 13 email, a BARDA official said the proposal from Ridgeback could obligate the government to pay the company more than $300 million. The contract official objected to the outlay because Ridgeback had not followed proper application procedures.

Even so, it appears that Ridgeback was able to cash in by flipping the rights to EIDD-2801 to pharma giant Merck after just about two months:

That wager paid off with extraordinary speed in May when, just two months after acquiring the antiviral therapy called EIDD-2801 from Emory, Ridgeback sold exclusive worldwide rights to drug giant Merck.

Nice work if you can get it.

And, again, I’m all for investing in the development of a successful treatment of this disease, which remains a massive threat. But, let’s go back to the basics here: the research was paid for by taxpayers. But the benefit seems to be accruing to private companies entirely, and where the incentives get sketchy super quick. It seems that a much better system is to not involve patents and sketchy licensing deals that give off the appearance of self-dealing. Why not just offer massive prizes, along with some initial incentive grants to do the necessary work, and then whoever comes up with a treatment can claim a massive prize, along with the promise that the actual treatment be made widely available for free or at a nominal price. That seems a lot more effective with much less risk of arbitrage and flipping, and privatizing that which was paid for by public funds.

Profiteering Off Publicly Funded COVID Treatments

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I struggle with the juxtaposition of instilling hope amid my constant fear for the safety of my black son, daughters and stepsons. I’m not talking about that common separation anxiety experienced by all loving parents. This is an uncommon fear reserved almost exclusively for the parents of black and brown children, who themselves have been subject to blatant and unconscious acts of racism in their own lives. Parents living in this perpetual state of fear and worry that, at any given moment, our child will face a chance encounter with a real or faux police officer. And that a misconstrued word, sudden movement, slow movement or involuntary twitch will lead to tragic or fatal consequences. …

Rest assured that as your father MY MISSION IS TO KEEP YOU SAFE. I vow to forever stand with you and push back strongly against any forces that imperil your safety.

— A. Michael Pratt, a litigation partner at Greenberg Traurig, in a letter written to his son upon his college graduation. Pratt’s letter was originally supposed to be “a lighthearted celebratory missive,” but in the wake of the latest officer-involved killing of a black man, and after seeing his son’s “pain, despair, fear, hurt and anger,” Pratt switched gears. The Biglaw partner hasn’t lost hope for his son’s future, writing, “I remain prayerful that these emerging multiracial collaborations are sustainable and that our America will finally find a solution to contain those racist elements that hold such life or death power over its black and brown citizenry.”

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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.