Category: News Feeds

September brought a spate of three major acquisitions by private equity firms of companies with technology related to the management of smaller law firms. Was this coincidence or was the pandemic a factor?

The trend started Sept. 8, when news broke that the practice management platform MyCase has been sold by its owner, AppFolio, to the private equity firm Apax Partners for a whopping $193 million in cash.

Founded in 2010, MyCase had been acquired in 2012 by AppFolio, a company then new to the legal industry whose primary product was and remains a cloud-based property management platform for residential and commercial property managers. In 2015, AppFolio completed an initial public offering, raising some $74 million — one of the few-ever IPOs related to the legal industry.

The other two acquisitions both came to light last week (although both had privately closed at least several weeks earlier).

On Sept. 22, I reported on my LawSites blog that ASG LegalTech, the company that owns cloud practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, had acquired Headnote, the online payments platform that provides e-payments and accounts-receivable management for law firms.

ASG LegalTech is a relatively new company. Its parent, Alpine SG (ASG), is a portfolio company of the San Francisco private equity firm Alpine Investors. After ASG acquired Bill4Time in 2017 and PracticePanther in March 2018, it merged the two companies in February 2019 to create the unified legal technology business, ASG LegalTech. A month later, it acquired another practice management company, Merus Inc., developer of MerusCase.

The company it acquired, Headnote, was founded in 2016 by Sarah Schaaf, a lawyer who had formerly worked at Google, together with Thornton Schaaf, who was head of product at Headnote, and Matt Crampton, who was Headnote’s chief technology officer.

They created Headnote at a time when the payments business in legal was largely dominated by one company, LawPay, founded in 2005. They sought to distinguish Headnote through a mix of features that made it easy to use and ensured compliance with bar and IOLTA requirements, while charging the lowest fees in the legal industry.

The final acquisition, revealed Sept. 24, was of the practice management company Rocket Matter, which was acquired by the private equity firm Lightyear Capital LLC, which will make it part of a new company, ProfitSolv, that also includes two other recently acquired companies, TimeSolv, a provider of cloud-based legal billing and timekeeping software, and ImagineTime, a practice management and payments company serving accounting and other professional services firms.

Along with Clio, Rocket Matter was the first of the new breed of cloud-based practice management platforms, launching its commercial product on Jan. 6, 2009, just months after Clio’s launch on Oct. 1, 2008. As I wrote in 2018, the two companies “ignited a revolution in law practice management by bringing to the cloud what had always been a desktop technology.”

Is The Pandemic A Factor?

All of which begs the question: Were these three acquisitions, all within two weeks of each other, sheer coincidence, or was the pandemic a factor that led to this alignment of investments? I believe it was very much a factor, and that three pandemic-related reasons drove these acquisitions.

The first reason is also the most obvious. Not only has the pandemic accelerated the adoption of cloud technologies among legal professionals, it has also made it essential. I wrote here back in April:

In a matter of a month, any lawyers who still harbored fears of technology have of necessity come to see it as a lifeline to the survival of their practices and their continuing ability to serve their clients. Going forward, that will fundamentally reshape the legal profession’s use and adoption of technology.

While this is true of technology broadly, it is most true of cloud technology, as we have all adapted to working from home and where no clear end is in sight. Cloud companies tell me that their subscriptions have been soaring during the pandemic, and companies that have offered both on-premises and cloud software tell me they can barely keep up with converting their customers to the cloud.

In short, cloud practice management is a very good business to be in these days, and as so many lawyers adopt or convert to the cloud, there will be no going back. The pandemic has been a pivotal period, changing what had been gradual adoption of the cloud to a mass movement.

For private equity firms, this has created an appealing investment opportunity. Cloud legal tech is strong right now, and there is significant potential to grow these businesses much more over the next few years.

The E-Payments Factor

A second pandemic-related factor that has driven these investments is the need for electronic payments.

Before the pandemic, many law firms, especially smaller firms, clung to the old-fashioned method of getting paid, in which they sent out paper invoices and waited for their clients’ paper checks to arrive back in the mail.

But paper payments do not work in a pandemic. Clients do not want to deal with paper invoices and writing and mailing checks. Firms likewise do not want to deal with printing and mailing invoices, and may not even have easy access to mail delivery.

In all three of the acquisitions described above, e-payments is a significant part of their technology — and, no doubt, of their plans going forward.

The ASG LegalTech acquisition of Headnote is the most direct example of this. By acquiring Headnote, ASG LegalTech gets a modern and proven payments platform. On my LawNext podcast, ASG LegalTech’s CEO Soumya Nettimi told me that one of the aspects of this deal that she is most excited about is that they will use Headnote’s technology to build something their customers have been asking for — a fully native payment solution within each of their practice management platforms.

“So what this means is customers will have a seamless experience already built into their current workflows, so they never have to leave their practice management system in order to manage their payments,” Nettimi said.

They have already done this for PracticePanther, building a fully integrated, all-in-one payment system within the platform called PantherPayments. They will also keep Headnote as a standalone product.

MyCase had long ago offered integrated electronic payments options, starting with e-checks in 2015 and adding credit card payments in 2016.

Meanwhile, Rocket Matter earlier this year acquired LexCharge LLC, a payment processing company that specialized in handling payments for legal professionals. While it already had an integrated payments option, the LexCharge technology allowed it to create a more truly consolidated streamlined payments experience within its platform.

So not only has the pandemic made cloud technology in general more essential, it has made the specific category of payments technology more essential. As ASG LegalTech’s Nettimi said to me, in this year of the pandemic, “getting paid is synonymous with staying in business for many of our firms.”

On top of that, payments technology can be a very good business for an investor. For every payment processed, the company gets a percentage. While the amount in any single transaction is relatively small, all those legal bills getting paid by all those clients of all those firms add up.

Given this, I think it is no coincidence that all three of these acquisitions involved companies with payments technology.

“Trillion-Dollar Piggy Bank”

The third factor that has contributed to this alignment of investments, I suspect, is that private equity is sitting on what The Wall Street Journal described as a “trillion-dollar piggy bank” — a $1.45 trillion build-up of so-called dry powder, which is money that investors have committed to private equity funds but which has not yet been spent.

With all this cash at hand, private equity firms may be looking for opportunities in industries they previously paid little attention to. The pandemic presents an opportunity for new growth and even transformation among legal technology companies, and nowhere is that more so than in cloud-based legal technology.

The Impact On Customers

The combination of these factors — all exacerbated by the pandemic — have driven private equity firms to invest in cloud practice management technology. But the question I have received the most in the past two weeks is not why this has occurred, but whether this private equity ownership will be good for the customers of these companies.

With regard to both the MyCase and Rocket Matter acquisitions, the new owners have largely been mum, so we know little about their plans. However, Rocket Matter founder Larry Port described the investment as “superhero potion.”

“Rocket Matter still has the same team, the same quirky and caring company personality, and are still committed to our core purpose: ‘to make the lives of attorneys a whole lot better,’” he wrote. “And with our new superpowers, we’ll be able to do a whole lot more of that.”

The principals of ASG LegalTech have been far more transparent about their plans, and they seem fully committed to making their suite of products even better through continuing development, stronger customer service, and even more product launches or acquisitions down the road. Don’t take my word for it – I encourage you to listen to my interview with Nettimi and Schaaf and judge for yourself.

The fact of the matter is that the legal industry has changed dramatically since Clio and Rocket Matter rolled out their first cloud products a dozen years ago, and the pandemic has accelerated that change even more dramatically. For these companies to continue to develop and scale in keeping with these changes, they need money. I am optimistic that all of these acquisitions will prove to be good news for their customers.

---

Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

The autumn of Biglaw special bonuses continues!

Cooley got the COVID appreciation bonuses ball rolling (even if the firm is happy to no longer be the market leader). But Davis Polk did not come to play, and they wowed with more money and others have matched that more generous scale.

Folks at got a welcomed announcement this afternoon from the powers-that-be at Shearman & Sterling. The firm announced they’d also be joining the elite of Biglaw in giving out COVID-19 appreciation bonuses. Payable on October 30th, the firm will give out between $7,500 and $40,000 depending on class year according to the following schedule:

2019 – $7,500
2018 – $10,000
2017 – $20,000
2016 – $27,500
2015 – $32,500
2014 – $37,000
2013 and above – $40,000

You can read the firm’s full announcement on the next page.
Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

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

---

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).

The Democrats are thinking that, if they maintain control of the House of Representatives and win both the presidency and the Senate, the Democrats should abolish the filibuster. A simple majority of the Senate could then vote in favor of admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as new states.  This would basically guarantee four new Democratic senators, which would give the Democrats long-term control of the Senate.

There may be reasons to grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The residents of D.C. and Puerto Rico are American citizens; they’re drafted; they pay taxes (if not, in the case of Puerto Rico, federal income tax); why shouldn’t they have senators?

Conversely, there may be reasons not to grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. There may not yet be enough population in those territories to justify statehood; there may not be a local consensus in favor of statehood; perhaps the national capital should be administered by Congress; perhaps Puerto Rico’s economic condition weighs in the balance.

Those are rational arguments.

So they’re beside the point.

I’ll ask you to forget about all that stuff and start thinking like a politician.

Suppose the Democrats make D.C. and Puerto Rico states.

When the Republicans ultimately regain control of the Senate — as they surely would eventually, because the Democrats propose to add only four new senators — then the Republicans would retaliate. After we had the states of West Nebraska, North Montana, and East Alabama added to the Union, then the Republicans would have the upper hand for a while.

The Democrats know this, of course. The problem with political gamesmanship is that eventually the other party takes power, and the other party retaliates.

What’s a Democrat to do?

Don’t just add D.C. and Puerto Rico as new states. That would create only a small and likely temporary Democratic advantage in the Senate.

As long as you’re going to play this game, you might as well keep the Republicans out of power for a century or more.

The Democrats should naturally create the states of North, South, West, and East California, adding six more Democratic senators to the mix. The new states of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island would add ten more Democratic senators (although this might give the Republicans an edge in what remains of the old New York). You could carve major cities out of existing states! The state of Atlanta would surely elect two Democratic senators; the rest of Georgia was Republican anyway; that’s a two-seat Democratic pick-up. Imagine how the residents of the Great States of Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown would feel; finally, they gained the power they always knew they deserved!

And surely the Democrats could do better than this; they wouldn’t be constrained by my feeble imagination.

If we had about 75 states, and most of the 50 new senators were basically guaranteed to be Democrats, then the Republicans wouldn’t regain the Senate in our lifetime.

Eventually, of course, the Republicans would win back power. Either demographics would eventually yield a Republican majority or the Republicans would change their policies to appeal to different groups. When the Republicans at last reclaimed power, perhaps in the year 2150, revenge would be sweet. Republicans would naturally be duty-bound to retaliate for the dastardly Democratic deeds.

We’d soon hear about Mid-East, East, and Far-East South Carolina! Six new Republican senators right there! Each sliver of Mississippi and Arkansas would be granted statehood! (“Weather’s fine here in my state, honey. How is it over there, in the living room?”) It would be a triumph of democracy!

I’m glad I won’t be around to witness the show.

I have enough trouble remembering the names of the countries in the former Soviet Union.

---

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight features are always informative and entertaining, but his forays into law and courts are consistently among his best. This week, he discusses the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and how the pick represents the culmination of a broken political system that won’t be repaired by any quick fixes, but through a long, nightmarish slog through hopelessness.

And that description doesn’t sound like comedy, but trust us, it is.

Pay particular attention to his description of naked yoga.

Fuck this shit.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn’t even FUCKING buried yet and the GOP is already stealing not just her seat on the Court, but her name. (Yes, I know that *technically* Neil Gorsuch’s seat is the stolen one, not the one Amy Coney Barrett is poised to take over, but as the GOP is reneging on the principle that made Gorsuch a justice in order to get Coney Barrett on the high court, you best believe it still applies. Also, it is well worth noting, the seat Coney Barrett sits on in the Seventh Circuit was, itself, stolen. As Leslie Proll notes, President Obama nominated Myra Selby to the seat in 2016, but Senators blocked that nomination.)

The powers that be at the National Republican Senate Committee are selling this fugly shirt that rips off RBG’s moniker (also, why isn’t there a period after the B? Do or do not on the punctuation, there is no in between):

Hard pass on that one.

Of course, there’s a WORLD of difference in a nickname that catches fire organically and one bestowed ham-handedly by politicos trying to sell merch ahead of what is sure to be a heated confirmation process. It comes off as a thirsty af move trying to glom some popularity from a recently passed icon.

For those who may not know, Notorious RBG came to life because of a law student. In 2013, Shana Knizhnik, then a 2L at NYU Law, was pissed after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County (which, sames) and she created a Tumblr in tribute to Ginsburg’s dissent and coined the now-famous Notorious RBG name.

It’s obviously a play on Biggie Smalls’s own nickname — one the deceased rapper’s son approves of — and it took off. As Knizhnik says, “I was mostly thinking of the catchy nickname and how she was such a powerful force. Here you had this diminutive person, this tiny human, and nobody saw her as a badass. But when you see what she has done, over years, with such dignity and grace, it represented that.”

So, when you see some Republican try to trot out the name in reference to Amy Coney Barrett, but the only Big Poppa they know is their grandfather who sips sweet tea on the porch and crows, “The south will rise again!” know that’s some bullshit. Nicknames are earned and Coney Barrett hasn’t done much of anything noteworthy except have some backwards notions about reproductive freedom and be at the right place at the right time.

As for the Notorious RBG’s name, like Birdman says, put some respeck on it.

---

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).

During this time, if positions or jobs are being eliminated, I would not anticipate that there would be a complete recovery or restoration to what things were like pre-COVID. I think that it’s going to be very stiff competition in that realm of the job market. So, I would say their chances [at getting another job in the legal industry] are half now than they were before.

— Nakia Bradley-Lawson, president of legal professionals association NALS Inc. and director of operations and facilities at Gevurtz Menashe Larson & Howe PC, commenting on the post-layoff job prospects, or lack thereof, for Biglaw administrative staff whose furloughs later turned into permanent job losses thanks to the adoption of automation and outsourcing.

---

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.

Assuming Donald Trump pulls off the incredible and easily wins this election, Republicans will certainly continue to dutifully stand by him. But taking a break from fairy tale land, Trump’s current bid for reelection seems to hinge on discrediting the electoral process and hoping the right-wing of the Supreme Court and Senate Republicans will bail him out somehow. Stop some ballot counts halfway through here, refuse to certify electoral college votes received there, and pretty soon an incumbent can cobble together a hacked election.

Far be it from me to offer Trump any sage advice, but seriously man, you’re getting played on this whole Supreme Court thing.

Right-wing media outlets are already running with the talking point that Amy Coney Barrett must be confirmed before the election in order to rule on the next Florida 2000 scenario (a case she worked on as a lawyer, of course!). This facially makes no sense since there’s already a conservative majority on the Court, thus making another confirmation irrelevant. However this isn’t about making sense, it’s just bait placed right where Trump can see it and parrot it on Twitter. Conservatives don’t want this confirmation done before the election because they think it helps him win, they want it done so they can stop having to deal with him.

Rewire’s Imani Gandy put it exactly right on Twitter this morning: those thorns in Trump’s political side over at Project Lincoln are very quiet about this power grab because fundamentally Project Lincoln still revels in the idea of a right-wing, anti-majoritarian Court blocking popular calls for expanded rights and business regulation, they’re just fed up with Trump’s antics. And that’s a sliding scale that all Republicans are on, and in Amy Coney Barrett, many that still publicly side with him are seeing the end of the slide approaching rapidly.

Handing the Republicans a 6-3 majority for the foreseeable future with only two conservatives in their early 70s all but wraps up a job well done for Trump in their eyes. Why stick their necks out for a guy imperiling their national brand any longer if he’s already delivered everything they can possibly hope for? Especially if this results in Democrats pursuing a court expansion plan that can set the stage for the next Republican president to cement right-wing domination for a generation.

The smartest move Trump could’ve made is to say that Coney Barrett was who he will be sending to the Senate after the election and telling the Project Lincoln dissenters of the world to get back on the train or they’ll get nothing. Trump’s diminishing hopes of reelection rest on turning out the “independents” who are really Republicans that just won’t say it out loud and who have mostly grown disillusioned with Trump’s nonsense. In other words, the exact type of FedSoc conservative who just wants a more civilized assault on the Clean Air Act.

Given that audience, Trump should’ve taken a lesson from former Celebrity Apprentice Rod Blagojevich and realize that:

It’s a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.

Ah, the apprentice becomes the master.

Yet, this is apparently what Trump’s decided to do. Hence the marketing pitch on Fox trying to assure him indirectly that this is really not a no-strings gift to Republicans, but something he needs to do to win the election even though the Court already has a 5-3 conservative majority. And it seems to be working because Trump has opted for a strategy of “give them everything they ask for with no guaranteed return.” Not exactly something you’d expect from a guy with a book unironically titled The Art of the Deal.

On the other hand, it’s exactly what you’d expect from someone carrying over $400 million in debt.

---

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.

We had a lot of fun last week with the demand letter from the Doobie Brothers asking Bill Murray to stop using their music to promote golf shirts without paying for it. In the process, entertainment attorney Peter Paterno took us on a journey into the unknown limits of legal composition with an unorthodox yet intensely compelling letter.

Murray has now responded, courtesy of Alexander Yoffe of Yoffe & Cooper (again spotted quickly by Eriq Gardner). Befitting the response of a comedy legend to a humorous letter shared all over the internet, Yoffe brings a light-hearted approach to the dispute. But he doesn’t so much… answer the first letter.

After complimenting Paterno on the letter, Yoffe points out:

We would also like to confirm that both our firm, and the good folks at William Murray Golf, are indeed fans of the Doobie Brothers’ music, which is why we appreciate your firm’s choice of “Takin’ It to the Streets”, rather than to the courts, which are already overburdened “Minute by Minute” with real problems.

Oh, I see what you did there. Now, right after this paragraph is the part of most responses where the recipient says, “we apologize for having unintentionally used your clients’ intellectual property for commercial purposes and would love to enter a discussion about licensing it for future use.” That is… not what happens next:

I am sure that Howard King of your firm, who argued that the song “Blurred Lines” (Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I.) did not infringe on Marvin Gaye’s composition “Got To Give It Up”, would agree that your client was not harmed under these circumstances.

Except Marvin Gaye’s family won that case.

Lawyers say a lot of things while advocating for their clients, but when they lose they can’t be held to their past unsuccessful arguments. The “Blurred Lines” case was problematic in a lot of ways because it set a standard that arguably weaponized intellectual property against creative inspiration but that’s not really relevant here. That Paterno’s firm tried and failed to get a ruling that lifting a melody for a new song wasn’t infringement has little to do with whether or not artists should be paid when their copyrighted works are used in advertisements.

There may be a lot wrong with intellectual property law right now and it may have become the domain of trolls making a mockery of the spirit of this protection to harass good faith actors, but “using someone else’s music in an advertisement” is very much the core case for copyright protection.

As your client so aptly stated in this classic song in question, “What the people need is a way to make them smile”— which both Bill and the Doobies have been doing for decades, as world-class entertainers.

Please provide us with the shirt size for yourself, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, Michael McDonald, and John McFee, along with which of our client’s shirts you find the least offensive, and we will happily upgrade your wardrobes and hopefully win each of you over as new fans of the brand.

At least that’s “what this fool believes”.

Oh, uh, there won’t be any money. But when the Doobies die, on their deathbeds, they will receive free William Murray golf shirts.

So they got that going for them… which is nice.

(Letter on the next page.)

Earlier: A Jungian Analysis Of Bill Murray Getting Absolutely Blown Up By A Lawyer

---

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.

2020 is the gift that keeps on giving. Except the gift is an actual plague, wrapped in a forest fire, hiding behind the collapse of democracy. There is a lot to be depressed about, so I try to spend my time focusing on things that make me feel hopeful. 

One of those things is the upcoming October edition of the Black Legal Wellness forum. I first covered the inaugural session of the Black Legal Wellness forum back in June, when founder Miriam Lacroix, Esq. started the event in the wake of George Floyd’s death to tackle issues of systemic racism. Miriam knew that police brutality is just one product of racism and that racism is a power dynamic that affects many aspects of Black lives, including their interactions with the law. That is why she decided to use her voice and experience as a lawyer to “[P]ut on a forum that addresses this and invites the community for a free discussion about how the Black community can better navigate legal issues across a variety of areas of law. This forum is for the Black community to better understand the ways in which the legal systems are not serving them, their rights under different areas of law, and the ways that they can better protect and advocate for themselves when interacting with the law.” 

The first Black Legal Wellness forum, which covered a variety of issues, including the criminal justice system, employment law, trademark law, and trusts and estates, was a huge success. As was the second session in August, which tackled in depth the intersection between immigration and race. 

The upcoming October forum will focus on “The Black Vote Matters Because …” where Miriam invites you to “[j]oin us in finishing this sentence. With the upcoming election, October’s forum will focus on the importance of voting. Systemic racism prevents Black people from casting their ballots. Voter suppression tactics and disenfranchisement of previously incarcerated people are strategies used to block the Black vote. The goal of limiting Black turnout is clear, but we don’t have to give in to it. Recognizing that there is a motive behind these tactics is the first step in understanding the importance of voting. They wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us from voting if our vote didn’t matter. 

Voting becomes even more difficult when we feel like we have less than ideal choices, but the solution is not to give up and skip heading out to the polls on Election Day. The Black vote matters because this community can change the trajectory of this country even if it is one step at a time. 

Participants will leave this forum understanding how to be informed voters, as well as:

• Hear from elected officials about their experiences with elections
• Learn the truth about Black voter turnout and why the Black vote matters
• Understand the barriers that keep the Black community from voting and how to overcome them
• Discuss other considerations when voting. What, other than the presidency, is at stake?”

The event promises to be jam-packed with crucial information from well-informed sources, such as Westchester Deputy County Executive Ken Jenkins, New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea-Stewart Cousins, Hudson Valley Organizing Director for Community Voices Heard Juanita Lewis, and Westchester County Legislator for the 16th District Christopher Johnson.

The event takes place on October 9 at 7 p.m. EST (virtually, of course). You can register at blacklegalwellness.com.

---

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

On June 5, Debevoise & Plimpton associate Justin Maffett was peacefully protesting racial injustice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd when he was arrested and charged with breaking New York City’s curfew. That curfew violation was a class B misdemeanor and carried with it not just a potential six-month prison sentence, but if found guilty, Maffett would have a criminal record.

More than a thousand others received summonses for curfew violations, and over 60 percent were issued to Black or Latinx people, including Maffett. But unlike many of those who were arrested, Maffett had some very powerful representation. Helen Cantwell, a white-collar partner at Debevoise and a former assistant U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York, stepped up to serve as his defense lawyer, also offering her counsel to any other Debevoise employees arrested during the protests.

Although Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said his office would forgo the prosecution of low-level offenses related to the protests (e.g., unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct) the charges still remain for many, and those who were arrested for breaking the emergency curfew are still fighting their charges — but not Maffett. After a series of exchanges with the New York Office of Court Administration (OCA), his charges were dismissed.

“I can’t say whether I was treated differently. But I do acknowledge that not everyone has a former prosecutor like Helen in their corner or a billion-dollar law firm at their back. It isn’t lost on me that this played a role here,” he said in an interview with the American Lawyer, where he details his experience of being arrested while protesting. “But we didn’t advocate this just for myself, but for all of those charged, because we can do something there. And because we can, I believe strongly that we should.”

In an op-ed published in the New York Law Journal, Maffett argues that all curfew-related summonses levied against peaceful protesters should be dismissed. “It does not take a law degree” to see why it would be in the interest of justice, he writes.

Protesters should not face different legal consequences just because they were out protesting during the one week the curfew was in place. This is arbitrary and does not inspire confidence in our legal system.

For far too many New Yorkers, justice has been delayed and due process has almost come to a halt. If cases are not immediately dismissed, these arrests made by the NYPD in response to the protests will only serve to exacerbate this mounting crisis. Our court system should not be clogged with cases involving these nonviolent, low-level issues, nor should everyday New Yorkers be forced to continue to pay attorney fees, take days off work, or make arrangements for child care in order to defend themselves against such claims. The city should instead focus its limited resources toward more urgent needs.

Maffett’s court documents are currently under seal, but he has disclosed them to Above the Law, with his firm’s permission. He thinks their publication is in the public’s interest because it will provide a roadmap to other lawyers working on these curfew cases to make similar arguments. They are available on the next page.

“I believed then, and still believe today, that all of these charges should be dismissed in the interest of justice,” Maffett says. We hope that, armed with the arguments made in his own case, others will be able to get their charges dismissed as well.

After Getting His Protest-Related Charges Dropped, Debevoise Lawyer Hopes to Help Others [American Lawyer]
Debevoise Associate: NYC Should Dismiss Curfew Charges Against Peaceful Protesters Like Me [New York Law Journal]

---

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.