Category: News Feeds

There’s good news at Dorsey & Whitney! The Am Law 100 firm, which underwent a series of COVID-19 austerity measures, has reversed course.

The big news is that the pay cuts that defined the firm’s austerity measures are a thing of the past, effective this month. That means for associates, who took a 15 percent pay cut, their yearly compensation will be 95 percent of their base. And, as the email from Managing Partner William R. Stoeri notes, there is the ability for associates to earn their full compensation — if they bill enough:

For associates and others with the true-up option, that option remains but starts at 95%; you will get 95% of salary regardless of hours and if your guideline hours come in above 95%, you will receive a corresponding proportion up to and including all of the remaining 5%.

You can read the full memo on the next page.

Reactions from insiders at the firm has been pretty positive — who doesn’t want to see their firm recover from the economic ravages of COVID, especially since the firm had to make attorney layoffs as part of its austerity measures? But there is a downside. A tipster reveals what’s been going on with year-end bonuses at the firm:

The downside is the firm is still hemming and hawing on whether any bonuses will happen. Of course, as a midwest cow-town firm (albeit one with NYC presence and once or twice making the Vault 100 ranks in ancient history), no one was expecting bonuses right now but associates seem unwilling to work any harder unless there’s a guarantee that there will be bonuses as per the internal (although still very black-box) mileposts and guidelines in effect prior to COVID-19. As of now, associates seem to have no incentive to work any harder than meeting the minimum hours.

Overall, though, people are really happy and appreciative of this decision. We are finally the best firm in Minneapolis. We don’t need mega mergers to prove ourselves and try too hard. Midwest side till I die….

At least insiders seem to see the upside in all this.

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

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

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

There’s no older or more successful trick in the fraudster’s playbook than selling something worthless and/or nonexistent to a credulous senior. And so when the fast-talking cosmopolitan lawyers at Jones Day were charged with selling off a German pipe maker about to go belly-up, they (allegedly) knew exactly who to turn to.

Berkshire Hathaway… led by Warren E. Buffett, is suing Jones Day, the law firm that represented the owners of the pipe maker when it was sold to a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary in 2017. The lawsuit, filed late last month, accuses Jones Day of helping to trick Berkshire Hathaway into paying five times what the German company was worth…. The lawsuit accuses Jones Day of withholding documents that would have exposed Wilhelm Schulz’s perilous financial state and calls the firm a “co-conspirator” in a “massive fraud….”

Wilhelm Schulz “was the corporate equivalent of a house about to go into foreclosure,” the lawsuit says. But Precision Castparts never knew about the revised loan agreement because Jones Day withheld it, the lawsuit contends.

Jones Day also did not disclose a report by the consulting firm KPMG, commissioned by Schulz, which concluded that the company faced an “imminent liquidity crisis,” according to the lawsuit. Nor, the suit says, did Jones Day inform Precision Castparts that a German lawyer had warned Wilhelm Schulz managers that they were legally obligated to declare bankruptcy.

Berkshire Hathaway Says Blue Chip Law Firm Aided Fraud [NYT]

* Peloton has been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit by a competitor. It’s not like they “reinvented the wheel” or anything… They must be “cycling” through legal fees… (I can go all day!) [Business Insider]

* A federal judge has overruled the rejection of New York residents from programs run by the Department of Homeland Security that make it easier to process through airport security. [Minnesota Lawyer]

* A law firm, which bought a practice from a retired lawyer who then passed away, has been approved to use the deceased lawyer’s name on its letterhead. Sounds a little like Weekend at Bernie’s… [Bloomberg Law]

* A U.S. Attorney in New York has announced that he will be stepping up efforts to clamp down on violent crime in New York City because crime rates in the Big Apple have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [Daily News]

* A couple has been charged for allegedly attacking a teenage worker at Sesame Place for enforcing a mask policy. People need to stop acting like Oscar the Grouch… [Philadelphia Inquirer]

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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.

A highly regarded tech focused mid-market law firm is looking for a mid-level M&A associate to join its Boston or NY office.

Must have experience representing public and private company buyers and sellers in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Associates get responsibilities above their class years and have direct client contact.

Must be barred in NY or MA and have excellent academic credentials as well as big law firm experience.

To be considered, please submit your resume to jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com.

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

What are the 5 freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment?

Hint: Sure, it’s a bit of a “gotcha” question — though not intended as such, seeing as it was asked by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse. Maybe Judge Amy Covid Barrett should have had some notes with her.

See the answer on the next page.

A website launching today aims to be the most complete global directory of commercial legal technology, listing legaltech tools, consultants, jobs, events, awards, resources and more from throughout the world in a single, unified resource.

The site, Legaltech Hub, is the creation of the husband-and-wife team of Nicola Shaver and Chris Ford, who developed it as a side project to their full-time jobs. Shaver is managing director of innovation and knowledge at the law firm Paul Hastings. Ford is chief marketing officer at the legal technology company ZERØ.

In August, Shaver, who was recently a guest on my LawNext podcast, was named 2020 Innovative Leader of the Year in the International Legal Technology Association’s Distinguished Peer Awards. In addition, her firm, Paul Hastings, was named Innovator of the Year.

“Our mission is to democratize legal technology,” Shaver told me. In her job at Paul Hastings, she regularly has to search for technology tools, but found there was no easy way to do that. As she talked to others in similar roles around the world, she realized this was a global problem.

Shaver and Ford began working on the site about six months ago, scouring every resource they could find to come up with what they believe is the most comprehensive directory anywhere of legal technology. As of today, it lists 1,581 tools.

The site includes only commercial legal technology, meaning products intended for law firms and corporate legal departments. It does not index access-to-justice, legal marketplace or consumer-facing tools.

Robust Search and Filtering

In addition to its comprehensiveness, a key feature of the site is its robust search and filtering capabilities. Shaver and Ford developed their own taxonomy of 74 legaltech categories — from “ALSP and “App Development” to “Work Allocation” and “Workflow Automation” — to allow users to search for tools with specific functionalities.

Search results can be narrowed using various filters.

Searches can be further narrowed using any combination of eight filters:

• Functionality, including both primary and secondary functions.
• HQ, the country where the vendor is based.
• Offices, countries where the vendor has a physical presence.
• Practice area, the area of law to which the tool is targeted.
• Platform language, meaning both the language of the interface and other languages with which the tool can be used.
• Target entity, meaning whether the tool is for larger law firms, smaller law firms, barristers, corporate legal departments, or small businesses.
• Deployment, whether it is cloud, web or on-premise.
• Integrations, other tools with which it is designed to integrate.

When a user views a particular product, the listing page also shows similar results, pointing the user to other products with similar functionality.

The site will be updated once a month, with new tools added and current listings verified. Later, the site will allow vendors to claim listings for any of their own products and provide updates.

Eventually, product listings will include a rating system and user reviews. Before launching this, Shaver said, they want to be sure they will be able to both verify reviewers and maintain their anonymity.

Other Features of the Site

In furtherance of its mission to be a comprehensive resource for legaltech, the site will eventually include listings beyond just products. Plans for the site include searchable listings of:

• Events. A directory and calendar of legaltech events and conferences throughout the world.
• Awards. Listings of major legaltech and legal innovation awards worldwide, along with submission dates.
• Courses. A directory of legaltech courses, diplomas and degrees available at universities across the world.
• Resources. A directory of blogs, publications, podcasts and more covering legaltech.
• Consultants. A directory of legal consultants, legal engineers, and legal designers across the world, highlighting expertise and jurisdictional focus.

The site also includes a set of regional snapshots designed to provide at-a-glance overviews of what is going on in legaltech in various regions of the world. These snapshots include listings of all legaltech companies headquartered in the region.

Free to Search, Free to List

Shaver and Ford say they want to democratize access to legaltech information and will therefore keep the site free to search and free for companies to list their products.

Eventually, they will enable companies to purchase enhanced listings with features such as videos and email contract information.

They also will sell advertising sponsorships on the site. Further down the road, they plan to add in-depth content that will be accessible on a subscription basis.

The site is launching today with sponsorships from two companies: iManage and Litera. Stephanie Vaughan, global legal practice director at iManage, believes the site fills an unmet need.

“LegalTech Hub fills an unmet need in the legal technology industry, empowering legal professionals to directly identify and learn about the technologies that enable and impact their work most, rather than always having to use their IT teams as intermediaries,” she said.

Julian Morgan, chief marketing officer at Litera, said that anything that helps legal teams discovery the right technology is a good thing.

“The legal tech marketplace is highly fragmented, and there are many solutions that convert manual processes into technology-supported ones,” he said. “This can make it difficult to know what to look for, so taking a directory-style approach makes a lot of sense.”

For Shaver and Ford, a side benefit of building this site has been greater insight into how legaltech tools and markets emerge and evolve around the world.

For that reason, they think this site will also prove useful for startups and emerging companies in legaltech.

“They can get the lay of the landscape,” Shaver said. “They can take a global view.”

Nicola Shaver of Paul Hastings, ILTA’s ‘Innovative Leader of the Year’

I was “Diana in Queens.” Like Cher or Madonna, I had one name. And then all of a sudden, it just disappeared. Like, overnight.

— Diana Gianturco, whose full-time per diem business in Queens Supreme Court could net her up to $200,000 a year, commenting on how her business has almost completely dried up due to the pandemic and the onslaught of virtual appearances. Gianturco has switched gears and is now filming an online seminar about happiness for lawyers. She’s still available for virtual appearances.

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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.

“After 36 years, I’m fleeing what was the U.S. Department of Justice — where I proudly served 19 different attorneys general and six different presidents,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern wrote yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

In a searing editorial, Halpern says he can no longer work in a DOJ helmed by Attorney General Bill Barr. After decades as a prosecutor in the Southern District of California, he’s heading for the exit. Loudly!

Halpern calls out Barr for his blatantly partisan intervention to help Donald Trump’s friends and punish his enemies, beginning with the deliberate mischaracterization of the Mueller report, and rising to a feverish crescendo of impropriety in 2020.

Unfortunately, over the last year, Barr’s resentment toward rule-of-law prosecutors became increasingly difficult to ignore, as did his slavish obedience to Donald Trump’s will in his selective meddling with the criminal justice system in the Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases. In each of these cases, Barr overruled career prosecutors in order to assist the president’s associates and/or friends, who potentially harbor incriminating information. This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy.

There is no other honest explanation for Barr’s parroting of the president’s wild and unsupported conspiracy theories regarding mail-in ballots (which have been contradicted by the president’s handpicked FBI director) and his support for the president’s sacking of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office used the thinnest of veils to postpone charging the president in a criminal investigation along with Michael Cohen (who pled guilty and directly implicated the president).

Halpern says he would have left long ago, if not for fear that in his absence Barr would move to derail the prosecution of former Congressman Duncan Hunter, who pled guilty to campaign finance violations, but spent a year screaming bloody murder that he was being persecuted for supporting Donald Trump. (Because he and his wife accidentally used the campaign credit card to pay for tuition, vacations, dental work, and trips to Burger King.)

Confirming his scorn for honest apolitical prosecutors, Barr refers to some as “headhunters” who pursue “ill-conceived charges against prominent political figures.” It does not appear to be a coincidence that all of these prominent political figures happen to be friends of the president. However, if I’m a headhunter because I charged and convicted disgraced local House members Duncan D. Hunter and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, so be it. It’s a badge that I will wear with honor.

I remained in government service this past year at least partly because I was concerned that the department would interfere with the Hunter prosecution in my absence.

For those who don’t remember Congressman Cunningham, he pled guilty in 2005 to accepting $2.4 million worth of bribes, including living rent-free on a defense contractor’s yacht named “The Duke-Stir.” And although Cunninham was a Republican, President George W. Bush never publicly upbraided the Justice Department for bringing charges against members of his own party.

Halpern isn’t above a little snark, poking fun at Barr for supervising thousands of prosecutors when he’s “never actually investigated, charged or tried a case,” pointing out that gassing peaceful protestors could never be defended before an actual jury.

More recently, Barr directed federal officers to use tear gas in Lafayette Park to quell what were, at that time, peaceful protesters. Barr’s assertion the square was not cleared due to the president’s desire for a Bible-carrying photo op is laughable. It is certainly a case that Barr would lose before a jury (again, though, this may not be clear to him due to his unfamiliarity with jury trials).

While Halpern commends his colleagues for their commitment to nonpartisanship and impartial justice, he bemoans the fact that many of his experienced colleagues have left, and recruitment of quality replacements has been difficult as the Department’s reputation has become further damaged.

The piece is a scathing indictment, and the country is much the worse without Halpern and the dedicated prosecutors pushed out by Barr’s incompetent mismanagement of the Justice Department.

Commentary: I won’t work in Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department any longer [San Diego Union Tribune]

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

According to a report by Christine Simmons at Law.com, the Biglaw firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed has been on a “downward trajectory” over the last five years or so, and the numbers back that up. Over that time period, gross revenue is down 27 percent (from $394 million in 2014 to $288.1 million in 2019), attorney head count is also down by more than 80 lawyers, profits per equity partner is down to $1.41 million 2019 (from a high water mark of $2.145 million in 2014), and the firm’s profit margin is now ~18 percent, falling from a high of 42 percent. And as a result, its Am Law 200 ranking plummeted from 72 to 116.

And all that was before COVID-19 hit.

With the additional hardships caused by the pandemic, the firm dealt with more bad news. Hughes Hubbard took a multimillion-dollar Paycheck Protection Program loan, and then laid off more than 30 people in July (insiders say they were “blindsided” by the cuts). Later that month, 11 international trade lawyers left the firm, taking with them a reported book of business of more than $12 million.

Law firm management consultant Kent Zimmermann told Law.com:

“But if a firm’s head count and revenue and profitability are dropping precipitously, particularly if that was all happening in a good economy,” Zimmermann said, “it could cause people to wonder what would happen in an uncertain economy.”

That was about the industry generally, not the specifics of what’s going on at Hughes Hubbard, but the concern remains.

So what is going on? Simmons reports that Hughes Hubbard has long survived on big, like really big, cases:

More than a decade ago, Hughes Hubbard was engaged in multifaceted products liability litigation defending the drug giant Merck over its controversial painkiller, Vioxx, before Merck in 2007 agreed to pay $4.85 billion in a settlement.

Hughes Hubbard also watched its tobacco-related products liability work decline after former client Lorillard was acquired in 2014 by Reynolds American. Reynolds moved much of the Lorillard litigation work to Reynolds’ regular tobacco counsel at Jones Day, The American Lawyer reported in 2015, and Hughes Hubbard cut some of its Kansas City staff as a result.

In the last few years, senior counsel James Giddens’ work as trustee overseeing the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ broker-dealer unit has wound down, marking an end to a decade-long odyssey that has generated more than $400 million for the firm. During the case’s heyday, some partners were making several million dollars a year, sources said. Giddens was also trustee in the liquidation of securities broker-dealer MF Global.

More recently, Hughes Hubbard’s work for Airbus has significantly slowed down, sources said.

And as an insider says, “The issue happens when you don’t get another large case. There’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

The firm’s chair is aware of the recent ending of these big matters, but is still optimistic about the firm’s bottom line:

Acknowledging some major matters have ended, chairman Ted Mayer said in an interview the firm “went through a rebuilding” where partners began boosting up their own practices. Now the firm is seeing success, he said, as the number of partners with at least $3 million in business is the highest the firm has had.

Firm leaders also say Hughes Hubbard is seeing an uptick in international legal business, and they hint at expansion to come outside the firm’s usual boundaries.

“We feel very good about meeting our budget and ending the year strong,” Mayer said.

Mayer said he expects revenue to be flat in 2020, but that the firm continues to work on “major new litigation.” He said the process of rebuilding “takes time, and we’re seeing tremendous success.”

And the firm’s culture, along with its commitment to pro bono matters and diversity, continue to make it a robust firm:

“While some of the published metrics don’t appear as robust or positive as people would like,” said New York recruiter Alisa Levin, “the firm still has a strong culture, and many respected practices.” Not everybody has to make $5 million a year, she added.

Hopefully the turnaround Mayer envisions means attorney layoffs will be a thing of the past.

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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).