Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
Two Biglaw Firms Hand Out Staff COVID Appreciation Bonuses: Will others follow?
What’s the WORST Zoom Failure? Vote now!
Orrick’s Awesome New Policy: Billable credit for actual vacation.
Let’s Look Outside Of The Box: When it comes to U.S. Attorneys.
What’s In A Font? A lot, if you don’t want to piss off the D.C. Circuit.
A different Nathan Bedford Forrest statue (Brent Moore/CC By SA 2.0 [Creative Commons])
Who in the year 2021 is actually defending the Ku Klux Klan?
That should be a rhetorical question, but sadly it is not, since members of the Tennessee legislature are fighting mad that the state’s Historical Commission relocated a bust of the Confederate General and Klan Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest from its place of prominence in the capitol to the Tennessee State Museum.
“In our culture today it seems there is a desire to cancel history, cancel culture, cancel narratives that are just based on fact. I think that that’s a dangerous precedent,” Tullahoma Republican Senator Janice Bowling told Nashville’s WTVF. The Senator failed to explain why it was imperative that the government perpetuate a narrative embodied by an infamous racist who slaughtered hundreds of Black and White Union troops at the Fort Pillow Massacre and went on to symbolize the vicious repression of Blacks in the postbellum South.
“Forrest represents pain, suffering and brutal crimes committed against African Americans, and that pain is very real for our fellow Tennesseans as they walk the halls of our statehouse and evaluate how he could be one of just the nine busts elevated to a place of reverence,” Republican Governor Bill Lee told the Historical Society when he testified in support of removing the statue.
And yet, members of the state’s upper house are so furious that they’re seeking to dissolve the Historical Commission in its entirety and replace it with a new body more to their liking. While the current Commission is comprised of 24 members, including the state’s historian, librarian, archaeologist, archivist, and commissioner of environment and conservation, with the rest being gubernatorial appointees, they’ve proposed a bill to create a new, twelve-person Commission with nine members appointed directly by state legislative leaders.
This bill removes the present law requirement concerning the academic credentials of certain appointees to the commission. This bill also removes present law that encourages the appointing authority to appoint members who are diverse in age and racial background.
Nice, huh?
The measure has support in both houses of the legislature, which are under supermajority Republican control. It passed out of the Senate Government Operations Committee yesterday on a 5-4 vote and is scheduled for debate on March 23 in the House Departments and Agencies Subcommittee.
Because the past is never dead, it’s not even past.
Bill would remove all members of the historical commission [WFTV]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
According to a Bloomberg Law survey of 1,554 law firm and in-house lawyers, how many hours, on average, do attorneys work?
Hint: What’s more, the 6 percent of respondents with the lowest job satisfaction work even more hours. The most dissatisfied in-house lawyers clock in at an average of 60.9 hours, while the law firm attorneys most dissatisfied report working an average of 57.8 hours a week.
See the answer on the next page.
In the present healthcare landscape, with patients reluctant to come into the clinic and high unemployment leaving them slow to pay, doctors are considering all options to protect their practices.
These include increasing partnership with hospitals, management services organizations (MSOs), clinically integrated networks (CINs), private equity investment and working for primary care companies such as OneMedical.
“We’ve seen a lot of consolidation, a lot of people talking about ‘I have a lot of cost on overhead, but now that Covid hit I don’t have any patients coming in my office for those couple of months, how do I survive?’” said Michele Madison, partner at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, in a virtual session organized by the American Bar Association last week.
While consolidating in times of extreme uncertainty may be wise business, such relationships can also leave physicians and providers under increased regulatory scrutiny and leave hospitals open to potentially devastating consequences such as antitrust violations, the loss of 501(c)(3) status and even closure.
Provider-system deals can open up a Pandora’s Box of liability under the Stark Law, Federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and False Claims Act (FCA), along with state law. How can you protect your business from both the Covid economy and the world of healthcare regulation?
Start With A Simplified Stark Analysis
“The old adage applies here: Pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered,” said Baker Donelson’s Michael Clark in a phone interview, “which is to say if the promised return on investment seems excessive, it might draw scrutiny, so you need to honestly evaluate, is this valuation realistic or not?”
Clark says it’s best to start by analyzing whether your agreement implicates the Ethics in Patient Referrals Statute, commonly referred to as the Stark Law. Intended to keep physicians from making money by referring patients to entities with which they or their family has a financial relationship, Stark is implicated whenever a doctor sends business to a practice that is reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid.
In the ABA presentation last week, Clark explained the pre-eminence of this regulation.
“Stark is the critical one in my book because the near miss is a complete miss,” Clark said. “Some things that are OK in a non-hospital setting, when they get put into a hospital setting may be transformed into a Stark Law issue unintentionally, but essentially you look at 11 categories of what are called ‘designated health services’ that are statutorily set out.”
Through an analysis of these categories, potential medical business partners can determine whether their agreement would fall under one of the statute’s many “safe harbor” exceptions.
But be wary of shortcuts: Physicians who try to “carve out” their practice from the application of Stark by refusing to accept any government payment for services and only accept private patients are in for a stark surprise, according to Willamette University College of Law Prof. Bruce Howell.
“The carve-outs were maybe fine five, 10 years ago but based upon recent case law, then recent trials and prosecutions by the government, the carve-out is not 100% guaranteed success,” Clark told ABA presentation listeners last week.
Carve-outs also fail to protect practices from fraud and abuse liability. He explained that many potential clients come through his door saying that they don’t intend to work with the government because the pay is low and there is an enhanced risk for fraud and abuse. Their belief is that fraud committed against a private payer isn’t as actionable as against the government. But that is a false understanding of law.
“You know, we have as part of HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996] the enactment of the health care fraud statute, which was predicated on the traditional mail fraud wire fraud model.”
Clark explained this statute is “very broad based,” and he had represented clients defending themselves in what he calls “standalone private-payer fraud cases” where the courts are no longer tethering prosecution to the presence of a bill to Medicare or Medicaid.
Pandora’s Box of Kickbacks and Fraud
Even if a deal receives safe harbor under a Stark analysis, it might not pass the sniff test under the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute, especially if a physician involved in the practice wants to invest in the newly structured entity. While the physician’s receipt of a portion of the practice’s value is an “investment relationship” under Stark, it is also a potential “kickback” under AKS.
Further, even if the original agreement as written and signed falls within the law, regulators can find noncompliance if its day-to-day operations do not line up with those terms.
Even if your deal is found proper under the Anti-Kickback Statute, which requires that one of the parties to the deal “knowingly and willingly” fails to comply for a violation to be found, once the False Claims Act is brought in, the government stops caring if you willingly disregarded the law. Instead, the Department of Justice will prosecute based on “actual knowledge, deliberate ignorance or reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of information on which the claim is based.”
That is exactly what happened in the “Tuomey case.” There, the government argued that a hospital offered physicians an excellent deal in exchange for the promise of future referrals, which the court determined to run afoul of both the Stark Law and FCA in a civil whistleblower case.
Fear the False Claims Act (FCA)
While Stark has been clarified to protect many of its previously unwitting victims, the FCA has only gotten more precarious to navigate, and easy to find liability under.
“You have to find at least one of the individual employers has all the relevant factual information to satisfy the knowledge standard on the False Claims Act; that means you just need to find one individual who knew that it was submitting claims to Medicare that were false,” Clark said. “Pretty easy burden here.”
In Tuomey, a group of 19 specialists made a deal with Tuomey Healthcare Systems to perform surgeries at the hospital as employees with full hospital benefits while retaining their practices. A 20th specialist, Dr. Michael Drakeford, declined the hospital’s offer and instead filed a Qui Tam suit. Drakeford successfully argued that the hospital’s compensation package in this deal was above Fair Market Value.
In its ruling, the federal jury found that Tuomey Healthcare Systems violated Stark Law and the False Claims Act by submitting $39 million in false claims to Medicare from January 2005 through November 2006. A federal judge calculated $237 million in fines — higher than the annual revenue of the hospital. In the end, Tuomey agreed to pay the federal government a total of $72.4 million and undergo compliance reviews for five years in exchange for release from further FCA liability. Tuomey merged with nearby Palmetto Health. After other mergers, the company is now called Prisma Health.
In a phone interview, Clark said: “Doctors aren’t trained in fraud and abuse laws, that are really traps for the unwary; I’ve had clients who get caught in the trap, down the looking glass, what’s gone on with my world?”
In Tuomey, “good lawyers had done the analysis but the court found it was not sufficient,” Clark said.
Further, even if your agreement is found compliant with Stark, if found noncompliant with the False Claims Act, you can still face crippling damages under the Civil Monetary Penalties Law, thanks to the “Escobar case.”
“The Escobar case stands for the principle that if an arrangement behind an invoice to the government is not compliant, then the invoice, no matter if it is letter perfect, is a false claim,” Howell said in his Wednesday presentation. However, if the government knew about the billing imperfection and kept paying, the Supreme Court said, then the falsehood becomes immaterial.
“False claims are not just healthcare,” Howell said, “they can be government contracts, they can be NIH grants; and so if you’re looking for how the courts are looking at the False Claims Act it, it’s wise to cast a wider net.”
Don’t Forget the State!
State licensing agencies have their own set of requirements, which run in parallel to these. As long as federal law does not preclude their application to your case, they will apply.
Some states have “Blue Sky” securities laws that regulate the offering and sale of securities, intended to protect investors from fraud. Many states that have these laws apply something called the “Howey test,” outlined by the Supreme Court in SEC v. Howey, to any contract, scheme, or transaction, regardless of whether it has any of the characteristics of typical securities.
“If I’m relying on somebody else’s efforts to get increased value in my investment, then it is probably going to be a security,” Howell said.
If it walks like a security and quacks like a security, it’s a security under Howey.
How to Protect Your Deal
In a phone interview, Clark said the best ways to protect yourself from falling prey to one of these many traps is to be conservative in marketing, allocating value, and aligning incentives between the providers and the healthcare system — and get an independent consulting group to deliver a written opinion letter on the deal’s fair market value. Even then, if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.
Given the range of state laws that might apply, Clark and Howell recommend having one set of attorneys address the federal issues and another tackle the state before getting engaged, let alone married.
“There can be a lot of nuances here,” Clark said, “and if you’re not licensed in that jurisdiction it’s a risk that I just don’t think is one that I recommend taking on.”
The referenced cases are:
U.S. ex rel. Drakeford v. Tuomey Hospital System, 976 F.Supp. 776; NO 13-2219 (4th Cir. (2015))
Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, (579 U.S. __, 136 S.Ct. 1989 (2016))
Securities and Exchange Commission v. W. J. Howey Co., (328 U.S. 293 (1946))
Photo: JamesBrey, Getty Images
When entrepreneurs launch a startup, they can find dozens of high-quality , affordable online resources to create the types of documents and agreements needed to start and operate a business. Some of the best known free offerings from biglaw firm, Orrick or payment processor, Stripe Atlas include incorporation documents and employee agreements. And many enterprising attorneys have set up online shops like the Contract Vault, the Contract Shop and AWB Contract Templates which sell attorney-drafted and approved form contracts, website terms of service and other agreements at affordable prices.
Yet there’s no comparable contracts and form agreements for lawyers.
Perhaps it’s assumed that lawyers – because they are lawyers – can simply draft agreements themselves. But unless a lawyer represents small businesses, chances are that they don’t have much more experience in drafting an agreement than a non-attorney business person. And while lawyers can certainly take a CLE or find training on drafting agreements, that can be time consuming and delay them from bringing business in the door.
What about bar associations? Don’t they have resources for lawyers. Well, yes…and no. Many bar associations offer standard retainer agreement templates, as do malpractice insurance vendors malpractice insurance vendors. Unfortunately, these agreements are generally in PDF format which makes them less convenient to “plug and play.” Meanwhile, some of these agreements haven’t aged well and don’t include clauses to account modern practice trends such as outsourcing, cloud-based platform use or digital document storage.
Moreover, while bar associations and vendors cover agreements that lawyers need to work with clients or even other attorneys, they don’t cover the kinds of business agreements that law firms need in their capacity as law firm owners. Yet for these types of contracts – such as an LLC operating agreements, website terms of service and independent contractor arrangements, generic business models aren’t sufficient because they don’t reflect lawyers’ ethics obligations. You can check out my video on that topic here.
Nine years ago, I created a digital product, The Art, Science and Ethics of the 21st Century Retainer Agreement that identified many of these shortcomings and offered clauses to address them. But the product fell short in that it did not offer comprehensive sample templates or more general business agreements adapted for lawyer use.
With the passage of time, I questioned whether a need for such a product existed – and if it did, why it hadn’t been filled by someone else. But no one stepped up, and one of the top ten search terms for MyShingle continues to be “retainer agreement sample” which suggests demand remains. And so I’m happy to announce that on MONDAY MARCH 22, 2021, I will be opening The Law Firm Clause-It (get it?) where lawyers can purchase the 85-page Art, Science & Ethics of the 21st Century Retainer Agreement ebook, along with 30+ form documents from Client Policies to Independent Contractor and Intern Agreements and a law firm LLC Operating Agreement (see list here ), a master retainer agreement and 25+ special clauses that can be included. All documents are in word editable format.
I want to get this product into the hands of as many attorneys as possible to make their lives easier and enable them to protect themselves and their business. So for the first week after launch, the entire product will be available for a special introductory rate of $97.00. The product will never again be available at that rate. To receive a reminder and special link to purchase at the reduced price, please sign up below (no payment required)
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
[It’s like] a proctological exam of the highest order. The level of review is unprecedented in Trump’s corporate history.
— Michael Cohen, former fixer and personal attorney to Donald Trump, commenting on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s investigation into the former president. Cohen, who was convicted of campaign finance violations and fraud in 2018, seems to believe Trump will wind up behind bars and serve time.
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.
The D.C. Circuit has made an important announcement to litigants — don’t use Garamond. Yup, the font. They announced this week they’d really like you to use Century or Times New Roman and stay the hell away from Garamond. Though, strictly speaking it isn’t a rule, just advice… advice you should probably take.
According to the proclamation, the issue is legibility and Garamond’s smaller appearance is the reason it’s being shunned. Though Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32(a)(5) already requires all typeface be in 14 pt fonts, which would seem to mitigate the smaller stature of Garamond, but, I digress. Others point to the illegibility of italics in Garamond, and that the section symbol, which obvi comes up a lot in legal writing is ugly in that font.
But Garamond is pretty popular, particularly in pop culture, and switching to it could save the federal government gobs of money, not that it seems to matter to the D.C. Circuit:
Consider the gauntlet thrown down. The font, often described as elegant and traditional, dates back to the 16th century. Created by French engraver Claude Garamond, the typeface is still popular today: You can find it in Neutrogena’s logo, Harry Potter books, and the Hunger Games series. In 2014, one Pennsylvania student proposed the font as a cost-saving, printer-efficient typeface that could save the government some $400 million in printing costs.
But as it’s been pointed out on legal Twitter, the displeasure of the D.C. Circuit might just be worth it if you’re butting up against a hard page count:
Hogan and Lovell partner Sean Marotta thinks the D.C. Circuit’s font stance is a subtle way to call out the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Appellate staff, as an entity that “(semi-famously) uses Garamond in its briefs.”
Regardless, it’s useful to have the court’s preferences, for whatever they’re worth, out in the open. To paraphrase a famous usage of Garamond, may the fonts be ever in your favor.
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).
Thomas Girardi
The antics (and I think that’s the proper word to use) of the State Bar of California fascinate me. I can’t avert my eyes from its latest train wreck.
The most recent fiasco giving the bar a black eye is the righteous furor over of the conduct of Tom Girardi, a well-known plaintiff’s tort lawyer here in Los Angeles. For those who don’t know who Tom Girardi is, he’s the husband of Erika Jayne, one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. (No matter that the Girardis don’t live in Beverly Hills or even close to there, remember it’s Hollywood.)
But what isn’t Hollywood and is all too real is the ethics/morality play that the bar finds itself in. Girardi allegedly made off with settlement funds due to plaintiffs he represented in several cases. When asked about payment, he stalled, didn’t respond to legitimate discovery requests, promised to pay (you know, the old “check is in the mail” saying) and wound up in the crosshairs of the federal district court in Chicago which, among other things, has referred Girardi to the United States Attorney’s Office in Chicago for possible criminal charges.
Girardi’s brother has filed for conservatorship of Girardi, saying he has Alzheimer’s and is unable to understand what is going on. Pardon my skepticism.
That’s the same reason that former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca used when he was tried and convicted for, among other things, interfering with a federal probe into the jail and then lying about it. Perhaps it’s something in the air out here, but really? Is the Alzheimer’s defense readily available to all old folks? Is this anything like “the dog ate my homework” defense?
Girardi’s brother has offered to surrender Tom Girardi’s license to practice here in California. Last week, the bar finally woke up and said that he is ineligible to practice. He can’t surrender his license, they say, with disciplinary charges pending. (I wonder if the front page Los Angeles Times investigative reporting on Girardi had anything to do with the timing. You think?) The bar opposed the conservatorship, but lost, so the temporary conservatorship remains in place at least until June 30.
The bar has a client security trust fund that can pay out legitimate client claims. I would guess that application will be made by a number of his clients, but I also guess that there will not be enough money in the fund to make clients whole.
The problem is that the bar’s awakening comes too late for the clients and others he stiffed. His firm is no more, and I sympathize with those in his firm who knew nothing about what was going on, and according to reports, Girardi was the only one who did know all that was going on. He controlled everything.
Ironically, just recently, the bar established an ad hoc committee to look at the disparity in the disciplinary actions meted out to white male lawyers and Black male lawyers. Do you think that any disparity exists? Could lawyers facing discipline for trust account violations create a “Girardi” defense? Does the hands-off attitude toward Girardi for years create a precedent for state bar discipline in the future?
To further pile it on, the state bar is presently looking for BOTH an executive director and a chief trial counsel (the former runs the bar, the latter runs the discipline process). What would management consultants say about these vacancies? I don’t think it’s an attractive place to work these days, given how snake-bit everything about the bar seems to be. And by the way, the chief trial counsel must be confirmed by the state Senate.
What aggravates me most of all is the black eye the profession has once again due to the escapades of a lawyer who had been well-respected in the Los Angeles legal community for years. In fact, when word started seeping out above Girardi, one lawyer who I have known for years and highly respect was stunned and didn’t believe it at first. She believes it now. Girardi betrayed the trust of so many people, not just his clients, but his firm and colleagues in the legal community.
Our profession sucks reputation-wise. People think that we are unethical, only out for ourselves, and right now, those words ring true. However, most lawyers here and across the country are ethical and hardworking, trying to do the best for their clients. Will clients no longer trust accountings for disbursement of settlement funds? Will clients now follow the advice of the former President Ronald Reagan to “trust, but verify?”
I am dismayed. Not just with Girardi, although I have plenty of distaste for him, but with the state bar, a few of its staff, a terminated former executive director, and members of the judiciary who didn’t think it was any conflict to attend his lavish gatherings. I can’t wait for the Legislature to weigh in, given the bar’s obligation of public protection enshrined in the Government Code and the public floggings that the Legislature has given the bar over the past few years.
I don’t recall that in all the 44 years that I have been a member — whoops, licensee — of the bar that there has been anything of similar explosiveness. Yes, there have been ongoing issues surrounding the state bar with discipline and its backlog, but nothing like this. Hopefully, if or rather when it happens again, I’ll be taking a dirt nap.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
It’s NCAA March Madness time again, and that means it’s time for ATL March Madness. Well, let’s just call it ATL Bracket Time since we don’t want our balls cut off.
Every year, we come up with something ridiculous for you all to vote on. We’ve crowned the Worst Law School in America and declared the The Greatest Work Of Legal Fiction Ever.
Well, not every year. Like a lot of traditions, this one fell by the wayside as we spent last March furiously updating the audience on bar exam cancelations, furloughs, law school plans, and overall chaos. But we’ve made it through — or almost through — and it’s time to look back and laugh as best we can. Well, mostly laugh. Some of these Zoom fails are unfortunately serious.
We have a shorter tournament this year than in the past because there aren’t as many stories like these to fill out a 64 or even 32 entry bracket, but what we lack in quantity we make up for in quality.
You have until Thursday, March 25 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern to cast your vote.
(1) Lawyer Tells Judge ‘I’m Not A Cat’ In The Best Zoom Court Mishap Yet vs. (16) Miami Judge Reminds Attorneys To Wear Pants For Zoom Hearings: I feel like Lawyer Cat needs to be on upset alert the further we get into this tournament. Yeah, lawyer cat is all of us these days, but there are some fails that have receded into our distant memory that are probably better. And the bottom seed is a great story that we only get second-hand. A Miami judge scolding attorneys to stop showing up from bed or poolside, though we never get details on those anecdotes.
Loading …(2) Jeffrey Toobin Makes A Great Poi–OH MY GOD, HIS DICK’S OUT!!! vs. (15) Doctor Operates On Patient During Zoom Traffic Court Trial: Lawyer cat may have gone viral, but don’t sleep on the most recognized legal analyst in America losing his job after having his dick out during a work call. On the other side, the term “routine surgery” took on new meaning as a doctor decided to multitask and appear at his own hearing while putting someone under the knife.
Loading …(3) Supreme Court Oral Arguments Include Toilet Flush In World’s Greatest Metaphor vs. (14) Is This Attorney Naked During A Criminal Hearing?: Did you forget about how this whole remote hearing thing started with a Supreme Court justice hitting the head mid-argument? Because that most definitely happened. On the flipside, we have our first — but definitely not our last — lawyer captured in a state of undress.
Loading …(4) Yep, That’s A Lawyer Having Sex On Camera During A Hearing! vs. (13)
Lawyer Says ‘Sneaky Bitch’ Before Judge Reminds Him He’s Not Muted: Sex. On camera. During a drug gang hearing. That’s some serious gumption. Meanwhile, the latter lesson in the importance of muting your mic tumbled in the seeding because the lawyer offered up a not-so-bad excuse.
Loading …(5) Spicing Up Zoom Client Meeting With Oral Sex vs. (12) Zoom Civil Procedure Conversation Interrupted By Naked Man: There’s likely a naked guy involved in both of these, but for the first one we don’t know what he got up to under that desk. Home Owners’ meetings, like civil procedure, are so boring.
Loading …(6) Man Attends Zoom Court Hearing From His Victim’s Home, Gets Arrested vs. (11) Guy Attends Suspended License Hearing From Inside Car: This is the Judge Jeffrey Middleton and prosecutor Deborah Davis pod. Both of these incidents happened in the same courtroom with the same prosecutor within a matter of weeks. But there can be only one victor.
Loading …(7) Lawyer Fails To Turn Off Camera, Starts Shoveling Down Lunch On Call With Top Government Official vs. (10) Lawyer: Requiring Me To Wear A Tie Is Egregious! Judge: Sir, You’re Wearing Pajamas.: Eating on camera may not seem like a big deal, until you realize he’s doing it in front of the Solicitor General of a nation with over a billion citizens. To put it in perspective you would’ve had to do that to Noel Francisco 3 and a half times to be as embarrassed. On the other hand, we have the lawyer who opted to double-down. Unsatisfied with the court’s dress code, he fought the law! The law won.
Loading …(8) Shocking Video Of Law School Professors Making Racist Comments Goes Viral vs. (9) Harvard Law School FedSoc President Brings Gun To Class: This is a bit of a law school pod. Georgetown Law was shaken when law professors were captured discussing grading and musing about grading Black students in a way that should have set off alarms about unconscious bias. The other entry goes back to the very beginning of the pandemic when we were all just waiting for the first “FedSoc gunner does something offensive to own the libs” moment.
Loading …So here we go. Get those votes in:
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.