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Navigate the latest changes to federal and state laws, regulations, and executive orders; ranging from Banking & Finance to Tax, Securities, Labor & Employment / HR & Benefits, and more.
Navigate the latest changes to federal and state laws, regulations, and executive orders; ranging from Banking & Finance to Tax, Securities, Labor & Employment / HR & Benefits, and more.
Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
According to data compiled by preLaw magazine, which law school had the greatest improvement in first-time test takers passing the bar from the class of 2018 to the class of 2019?
Hint: Bar passage for first time test takers went up an impressive 24.3 percent for the class of 2019 over the previous year.
See the answer on the next page.
In spite of some well-earned skepticism, Chewy.com has not precisely charted the course of its predecessors, infamous Internet bubble disaster Pets.com. A year after its initial public offering, Pets.com had been dead for three months, its very name sold off to the same company that went on to create Chewy, PetSmart. A year after its initial public offering, Chewy has more than doubled in value and is rolling in revenue from all of those people who thought adopting a pet in the middle of a pandemic was a good idea.
All in all, well done, Chewy. And now for some well-earned skepticism.
High growth expectations were probably already baked in: Chewy’s stock was already up more than 77% this year. The company also gave somewhat tepid sales guidance for the present quarter, implying flat sales to just 1.2% growth sequentially….
The company said it was able to spend less, partly because it saw a lot of organic traffic to its website. However, it expects these costs to increase over the rest of the year as it plans to ramp up marketing.
A lot of the gains were specific to the peak pandemic months. Pet foster and adoption numbers were 60% higher in March and April compared with the previous years, Chewy’s chief executive said during the earnings call late Tuesday…. By May, however, the pace of pet adoption had reverted back to pre-pandemic levels.
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While the country debates renaming military bases and statues of Confederate generals are decapitated and drowned by protestors, the state of Tennessee is sticking with Confederate General and KKK Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest.
On Tuesday, the Tennessee House Naming, Designating and Private Acts Committee voted 11-5 to keep the bust of the notorious slave trader on display in the in the state capital building. The vote was on party lines, with all Republicans in favor of honoring their “heritage” with a monument to the military commander who brutally massacred 300 mostly African American Union troops who had surrendered at Fort Pillow in 1864.
But the Klansman is not without his supporters.
“It was not against the law to own slaves back then,” Rep. Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station, no seriously) said yesterday. “Who knows, maybe some of us will be slaves one of these days. Laws change.”
Will we have slavery in the United States of America? WHO KNOWS.
Rep. Mike Stewart (D-Nashville), an actual lawyer, reacted strongly to his colleague’s comments.
“I think everybody was just astonished because it just was totally at odds with the very poignant testimony by the sponsor of the bill about how burdensome the legacy of slavery is,” he told local NBC-affiliate WSMV. “The remark is more broadly reflective of the attitude that has left that bust in place.”
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, (D-Memphis) was more blunt.
“Made his fortune on the selling of bodies, selling Black folks like we were tractors. We were considered 3/5th a person. I want ya’ll to understand what that means and what that feels like to then have someone like that be honored,” she said.
Protestors gathered at the statehouse after the vote for a movement called “I Will Breathe,” which plans to seek signatures for a petition to the governor.
In fact, the bust was only put up in 1978 to counterbalance a recently-installed statue of Union Admiral David “Damn the torpedoes” Farragut. Like most Confederate memorials, it was erected long after the Civil War during a period of civil rights expansion and African American enfranchisement. The statue of a KKK hero wasn’t a history lesson — it was reminder of who holds real power. And it still is.
But the Klan figure did suffer one minor defeat this week. Current Tennessee law requires the governor to sign a proclamation honoring his birthday. A bill making that proclamation voluntary was approved by the Tennessee Senate and passed out of the House Naming, Designating and Private Acts Committee by a one-vote margin. If the full chamber approves the measure and Governor Bill Lee signs it, he and his successors will have the right to choose whether to honor a brutal slave trader and symbol of organized racism, or not.
It was the least they could do. Literally.
Protesters want Nathan Bedford Forrest bust removed from Tennessee State Capitol [WSMV]
Bid to remove Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from state Capitol fails in House committee [WBIR]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
William Jacobson heads up the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. But his real passion is running his blog, Legal Insurrection, which provides a what can best be called “legalish” spins on the standard conspiracy theories and white persecution complex tropes of the modern conservative movement. The front page of the site right now features talk about “race-hustlers” and a Tucker Carlson quote about “bloodguilt” to give you a sense of the sandbox they’re playing lawyers in.
But Jacobson’s latest post expresses his deep concern that there’s a “movement” underway at Cornell to get him fired.
To support his theory, he cites a number of emails that have come in from alumni complaining about seeing the Cornell name attached to articles the Jacobson wrote last week pitching “accurately detail[ing] the history of how the Black Lives Matters Movement started,” by which he means “peddling conspiracy theories about a widespread anti-capitalist movement using ‘fraudulent narratives’ about police killings to generate support.” Does it also tag George Soros as the secretly bankrolling this “movement”? Oh, you bet it does!
Earlier this week, other members of the Cornell Clinical Law Faculty drafted an op-ed generally criticizing Ivy League professors using that cachet to perpetuate racist tropes. Specifically, the letter calls out the use of the racially loaded term “wilding,” a byproduct of the Central Park Five case — where, we all remember, five minority kids were wrongly convicted of a crime — which directly addresses Jacobson, who used the term in a recent headline.
None of the 21 signatories, some of whom I’d worked closely with for over a decade and who I considered friends, had the common decency to approach me with any concerns. Instead they ran to the Cornell Sun while virtue signaling to students behind the scenes that this was a denunciation of me. Such is the political environment we live in now at CLS.
Yeah… it might be the “political environment we live in now at CLS,” or it might just be that you unabashedly manage a website replete with racist rhetoric and these professors are genuinely sick of your crap and how it impacts the school? Sometimes it’s not a George Soros masterminded Bolshevik conspiracy — sometimes it’s just you.
Jacobson notes that he’s never been accused of discrimination and that may well be true, but also completely misses the point. In the pursuit of equality, that’s a floor not a ceiling. There are numerous ways to intimidate and ostracize black people and other minorities that don’t require active discrimination. Indeed, the picture attached to the article is a selfie of him performatively going down to a kneeling rally in order to mockingly stand and that’s the kind of garbage — a professor showing off how little he cares about a man’s death because he thinks it’s all part of some widespread plot against “America” as he imagines it — that gets faculty and students alike fed up. This isn’t academic freedom, it’s just disrespectful trolling.
So it’s no surprise that he demands the troll’s satisfaction: a “debate.” Which is to say less a debate than an exercise in empty sophistry. Ben Shapiro is all about these little forays into controversy theater where the whole point is to show a phony “both sides” equivalency by packing the room with enough supporters to make it all seem like an earnest discussion or to set up schoolyard “chicken” taunts if the other side wises up to the rouse. No one should ever take this bait.
BLSA and other groups are working on their own effort against me. Based on documents I’ve seen, there was consideration of demanding my firing, but it appears to have moved away from that not because they don’t want me fired, but “because calling for his firing would only draw more attention to his blog and bolster his platform, and we do not want to give him that satisfaction.” The plan is to call for “the law school to unequivocally denounce his rhetoric, acknowledge the harm caused by subjecting students to his racist pedagogy, and critically examine the views of the people they employ as professors of the law.” They plan to circulate the petition to the law school community and to “inform incoming students” of the situation.
They aren’t calling for Jacobson to be fired? Dude, that’s a win for you.
I have little doubt that many students will sign because there is no choice in this environment. BLSA has announced on its Facebook page that “Silence Is Violence.” Who would refuse to sign when failure to sign would be deemed an act of violence?
A theme is becoming rapidly apparent. At every turn the critics aren’t “real.” The professors signing the op-ed are just “virtue signaling.” The people signing the petitions are just bowing to peer pressure. The criticism is never genuine, but the product of the disingenuousness of others. It’s a common theme in conservative jeremiads borne of their refusal to accept that the free market of ideas is burying their ideology, giving rise to the foundational conviction that most of their critics can’t really disagree with them and must be cynical actors playing a part. If it weren’t happening to adherents of such a toxic philosophy, it would be a condition worthy of profound pity.
But no, Occam’s Razor still holds sway — they’re just sick of your crap.
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.
(Melinda Oliver, showing her mother her acceptance letter to DePaul University College of Law, in a tweet that has since gone viral. Oliver’s video has been watched almost 15 million times, and she’s received generous offers of support from lawyers across the country. Thus far, lawyers have offered to pay for several semesters of books, her airfare to school, as well as her rent.)
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.
As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie. But numbers don’t always count either.
Here’s what I mean. We know that the numbers tell us that millions of Americans can’t find the legal help they need, a shortfall that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. We know that the numbers tell us that discriminatory police practice persist. Yet despite the numbers, problems of access to justice and equal justice persist.
To date, numbers have not moved the legal profession to do better on either access to justice or equal justice. But maybe names will. Each of these names represents a person who deserved so much better from our system. Each name represents a gaping hole in their respective families and in the world that cannot be filled.
When we speak of access to justice and equal justice, numbers are powerful, but names more so. Numbers show us that systemic discrimination exists. Names remind us of the human element and why it’s so critical to fix our broken system now. Let’s get to work.
Attorneys general in most of the states, the District of Columbia and several territories have filed a lawsuit in federal court against more than two dozen generic drug manufacturers, alleging that they conspired to artificially inflate and manipulate the prices of topical drugs while squelching competition.
The 606-page complaint was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and is the third in a series of lawsuits filed in connection with antitrust investigations into generic drug companies. Previous suits were filed in December 2016 and last May, respectively accusing 18 and 20 generic drug companies of inflating the prices of 15 and 100 generic drugs. The latest suit names 26 manufacturers of generic dermatological drugs and 10 individual executives.
“Generic drugs are meant to provide consumers with reliable, cost-effective alternatives to name-brand medication, but because of a widespread conspiracy between these companies, consumers were left paying the bill while pharmaceutical executives lined their pockets with billions,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is among the 51 attorneys general participating, in a statement. “These companies put profits over public health, which could have resulted in millions across the country being left without the vital medication they needed.”
The suit notes that between 2007-2014, most of the U.S. market for generic topical drugs – about two-thirds – was controlled by three companies. It goes on to allege that in order to command a larger share of the market, the companies communicated with each other to raise prices and minimize competition, along with several other generic manufacturers.
The suit further notes that demonstrating generic topical drugs are equivalent to their branded counterparts requires overcoming high technical barriers, which is expensive and time-consuming, thereby limiting the number of players on the market. “As a result, the sales and pricing executives at these companies know each other well and have used those business and personal relationships as a means to collude to limit competition, allocate customers, and significantly raise prices on dozens of generic topical products,” the complaint read.
In an emailed statement, generic drug industry lobbying and trade organization the Association for Accessible Medicines said it supports competition and policies that promote it.
“AAM is fully committed to compliance with all laws and to maintaining high ethical standards in the way we do business,” the statement read. “Illegal behavior, such as price-fixing or other violations of antitrust law, is inconsistent with AAM’s rules and procedures. We seek to maintain the highest ethical standards as we work to bring medicine to patients in the U.S.”
Photo: Hailshadow, Getty Images
(Image via Getty)
Most law students dream of passing the bar exam after graduating from law school and finding a job in the legal industry as a lawyer. They don’t dream of only being able to put the “bar” in “barista” because their law school pedigree is limiting them in the job market. When you’ve got up to six figures of nondischargeable debt to service after graduation, you want to know that your résumé will make it to a hiring partner’s desk — not the nearest garbage pail.
How can you be certain that the school your law degree is from won’t be a hindrance in your job search? Are graduates of your school capable of being hired for law jobs and putting their degrees to use? Sadly, these are questions students must ask.
Law.com produced several helpful charts based on law school employment data for the class of 2019. Today, we will highlight one of the more concerning charts, the law schools with the highest percentage of underemployed graduates. These law school graduates are either unemployed, employed in temporary or part-time work, or working in nonprofessional jobs. Here are the top 10 law schools that have helped graduates land rather underwhelming positions:
1. Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico: 73.24 percent
2. Ave Maria School of Law: 48.48 percent
3. Inter American University of Puerto Rico: 39.01 percent
4. Appalachian School of Law: 38.71 percent
5. University of San Francisco: 37.82 percent
6. Western Michigan University: 37.46 percent
7. University of Puerto Rico: 35.12 percent
8. North Carolina Central University: 34.19 percent
9. Concordia Law School: 33.33 percent
10. Barry University: 33.15 percent
That’s disheartening. (Please note that this list pre-dates the pandemic. If anything, these graduates may be struggling with their employment prospects even more now.)
Click here to see the rest of the law schools with the highest percentage of underemployed graduates, plus other informative charts detailing the schools with the highest percentage of graduates working in Biglaw and in state and federal clerkships, as well as the schools with the most unemployed graduates.
Are you a recent law school graduate who hasn’t been able to find a full-time legal job or a job in the legal profession? What has your law school done to help? We’re interested in learning about your experiences — good or bad — and may anonymously feature some of your stories on Above the Law. You can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog. Best of luck in your job search!
Law Grads Hiring Report: Job Stats for the Class of 2019 [Law.com]
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.