Category: News Feeds

 Police and soldiers patrol the streets during a nationwide lockdown to help curb the spread of Covid-19) in Harare, Zimbabwe, 19 April 2020. (Photo supplied)  Less

In an interview for a book I am writing on Gukurahundi (the 1980s genocide in Matabeleland) I got frustrated with my key informant because whenever the time came to talk about what happened to him, he would go round and round in circles or his story would be rife with inconsistencies. By contrast, whenever he was narrating what happened to his co-victims, he would be articulate, to the point and quite detailed. I ended up having to tell him we might have to bin the project or hold it until he was ready. He looked me straight in the eye for the first time and said: ‘But Mamo, how do I tell you we were raped. That they made us lick menstrual blood off the female detainees?’

On Wednesday night (13 May 2020) I woke up to find several missed calls and messages from fellow Human Rights Defenders telling me that Zimbabwe’s youngest MP, Joanna Mamombe, 27,  and her Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) colleagues Netsai Marova, 25, and Cecilia Chimbiri, 33, were missing after a demonstration they had held earlier that day protesting lockdown-induced starvation among other things.

I was told that after the protest, they had all gone their separate ways but a while later, Joanna called a colleague and told him the three women had been stopped at a roadblock by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), arrested and taken to Harare Central Police station. The colleague notified some lawyers who went to the station only for police to deny they had ever arrested the three.

Three of the abducted women, Cecilia, left, Joanna, middle, and Netsai, right. (Photos supplied)

MDC youths and their lawyers spent the whole night moving from police station to police station searching for the three young women to no avail. The Daily News ran a story by their reporter Vascoh Chaya, in which he stated that he had spoken to Police Spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi who had confirmed that they had indeed arrested the protesters. The Herald, a state-run newspaper also ran a story by their reporter Victor Maphosa who also claimed to have spoken to Paul Nyathi who had confirmed that indeed the three young women had been arrested the day before.

Where then had the police taken the three?

Nokuthula and Ntombizodwa Mpofu. (Photo supplied)

From these denials, it quickly became clear that they were being “disappeared.” This was alarming, during Gukurahundi thousands of innocent civilians were ‘disappeared’, never to be seen again.

Some rights activists including myself took to social media to demand an official statement from the police as all Harare police stations claimed to not have seen the women. ZRP issued a statement on their twitter page simply saying they did not have Joanna, Cecilia and Netsai in their custody. It became clear that the young women had been enforcedly disappeared and that their lives were in grave danger.

Zimbabwean political activists and human rights defenders proceeded to give the police and government until 13:00 hours on Thursday to produce the three but that never happened. We then resolved to take to the streets to protest until the government produced the missing women.

In the early hours of Friday morning, before the planned protests demanding their release commenced, we heard the young women had been found at Muchapondwa (which ironically means you will be beaten/murdered in Shona), Musina in Bindura South, about 87km from Harare. Their lawyers and some MDC members accompanied by police officers, went to get them.

They were horrified by the state they found the girls in. They were all distraught, the youngest, Netsai was crying inconsolably, and could not speak. They were filthy, their clothes torn and in different states of undress. Joanna and Cecilia were unable to walk. When I spoke to comrades who managed to see them and talk to them, and saw the pictures they shared with me, I also broke down in tears and posted these tweets:

“I have been unfortunate enough to lay my eyes on pictures of the 3 ladies soon after they were rescued & I cannot stop crying, My life will never be the same again, Never have I witnessed so closely, Such an uncurbed degree of cruelty, An effort to break a people. #ZanuPFMustGo”

“It is shocking, Unacceptable from all angles, That after a demonstration by men & women, Police targeted 3 women for enforced disappearance & torture. It betrays the terroristic nature of the perpetrators, The animalistic nature of those at the helm of #MyZimbabwe. #ZanuPFMustGo”

“The strategy to target women is commensurate in Zimbabwe only with Gukurahundi. When police brutalized 2 women in Bulawayo it was a shocking but isolated incident, Could have been explained as crimes by individuals. Taking the MDC3 shows it’s a pattern, A strategy. #ZanuPFMustGo”

The Zimbabwean government seems to be at war with women

The abduction, torture and sexual assault of the MDC political activists came barely a month after another horrendous and brutal ethnicised attack on 16 April, on sisters Nokuthula (37) and Ntombizodwa (30) Mpofu by six ZRP officers in Cowdray Park, Bulawayo, under the guise of enforcing the Covid-19 lockdown.

The sisters were wrongfully arrested whilst shopping at a local supermarket for allegedly breaking lockdown laws. They were forced to march through bushes to the police station and tortured and severely assaulted on the way and verbally taunted about their Ndebele ethnicity.

A video of the women circulated on social media where they explained how the police had beaten them up and refused to let them go home even after offering to pay the stipulated fine for flouting lockdown regulations. In the video, Nokuthula and Ntombizodwa told gruesome stories of torture and how the police kept hurling tribal slurs at them telling them they were troublesome Ndebele women. They explained how they had been abused over a long period and detained overnight despite having the means to pay the fine and be released.

It was clear that from the brutalisation of the women and the ethnic slurs that accompanied that the attack on them was gender and ethnically motivated.

This left many people from southern Zimbabwe angry and many said the incident reminded them of the Gukurahundi genocide when women and children were assaulted, raped and killed by Zimbabwe’s 5th Brigade army for which perpetrators, including then Minister of State Security, now President Mnangagwa, and then Gukurahundi Commander, Colonel Perence Shiri, now Minister of Agriculture, have not been held accountable almost 40 years later.

Similarly, when the MDC women were found, they also told gruesome stories of how they were beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to eat and drink each other’s excreta. They said they had been taken from Harare central police station in a black car and had their heads covered with sacks and taken to a forest and placed in a pit where the torture occurred.

ZRP insists it never arrested the three women. The police spokesman (Paul Nyathi) who confirmed their arrest has since retracted his statement claiming he was misquoted or misunderstood by both newspapers.

The Police Commissioner-General, Goodwill Matanga, was asked at a press conference where Joanna Mamombe’s car was and he claimed police were not in possession of the car. The next morning independent daily newspaper, Newsday, splashed on its front page, a picture of Joanna Mamombe’s car, parked at Harare Central Police Station, clearly confirming that she had been there before being taken away by state agents. The Minister of Home Affairs, Kazembe Kazembe, read a statement to the nation that police would investigate the “alleged abduction”.

There is everything fundamentally wrong with ZRP investigating these cases. How can they investigate themselves?

For justice to be served, there must be an independent inquiry and investigation into these matters. As we speak police officers are standing guard over the victims at the hospital subjecting them to even more trauma. The ZRP forensics team has been accused of leaking pictures of naked women and claiming it was the MDC activists in a bid to prove they are lying about having been tortured.

Hearing Nokuthula, Ntombizodwa, Joana, Cecilia, Netsai and Moreblessing’s accounts about their ordeals is like reading a page from a Gukurahundi victim’s diary.

In Bulawayo, six police officers have been arrested and charged before the courts for the abuse of the Cowdray Park sisters. Reports indicate that one of the alleged perpetrators has been assigned the task of investigating the torture of Nokuthula and Ntombizodwa. There are serious concerns about a whitewash. The station commander in charge of the police station where the two women were detained is also hardly an independent party.

What the government of Zimbabwe disingenuously tries to get people to ignore is that the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment does not limit torture to beatings and other physical assaults that leave visible scars. The ZRP and Zimbabwe National Army are notorious for using torture that leaves no visible scars. Anyone who has been arrested and beaten by police will tell you they beat them under their feet. A tactic police have mastered over the years to coerce confessions out of arrestees without leaving obvious evidence of torture.

As if that was not enough, on Monday, 19 May, Moreblessing Nyambara, a Mathematics teacher and senior member of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), who herself was abducted in September 2018, reported how on 16 May 2020, in Domboshava, she too had been severely beaten by six men, one of them in army uniform, for posting a video calling on Zimbabwean women to protest the abductions, torture and sexual abuse of Joanna, Netsai and Cecilia. She sustained serious injuries including a broken arm. Her assailants accused her of inciting women to turn against the government and wanting the country to be led by women.

What is most disturbing though, yet unsurprising, about these attacks is the similarity with the methods used by 5th Brigade soldiers in the Gukurahundi massacres. The scale notwithstanding, both these attacks bear the hallmarks, strategies and tactics of Gukurahundi. As explained by my informant, they (5th Brigade) too would rape their victims and force them to ingest human excreta, from menstrual blood to urine and faeces.

Hearing Nokuthula, Ntombizodwa, Joana, Cecilia, Netsai and Moreblessing’s accounts about their ordeals is like reading a page from a Gukurahundi victim’s diary.

Unfortunately, the similarity is not a coincidence. One of the surviving perpetrators of the Gukurahundi massacres is a man called Emmerson Mnangagwa. He is today, the president of Zimbabwe and the commander in chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and intelligence organization, today accused of torturing women for the same reasons Gukurahundi was unleashed, opposing Zanu-PF.

Only a democratic people power revolution can free Zimbabwe. DM/MC

Flatten the Research Curve

Flatten the Research Curve

Wolters Kluwer

This morning, “Full House” star Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli pled guilty via Zoom to one criminal conspiracy count in the college admissions scandal dubbed Operation Varsity Blues by the FBI. To wit, Loughlin and Giannulli conspired to pay $500,000 to get their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli into the University of Southern California by disguising them as recruits to the rowing team. Neither daughter rowed crew, and neither is currently enrolled in school.

Olivia Jade, who presumably understood why she was being posed for photos in a borrowed rowing uniform, is reportedly “devastated” at the prospect of her parents going to jail. But not as devastated as she would have been had they been sentenced to the decades in prison sought by prosecutors in the original 12-count indictment.

Under the terms of the recently announced pleas, Loughlin, who admitted to “conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud to obtain property,” agreed to just two months in jail, $150,000 in fines, and 100 hours of community service. Giannuli, who also copped to “honest services wire and mail fraud,” accepted five months behind bars, $250,000 in fines, and 250 service hours.

Good to see the couple finally practicing that personal responsibility they preach. AHEM.

The couple’s pleas are conditional on acceptance by U.S. District Judge Daniel Gorton, specifying that “If the Court rejects any aspect of this Plea Agreement, the U.S. Attorney may deem the Plea Agreement null and void.”

It remains to be seen whether Judge Gorton will sign off on the pleas, making Loughlin and Giannulli the 23rd and 24th parents to plead guilty in the scheme. Despite defense attorney William Trach’s request for expedited sentencing to give the couple “finality,” the court scheduled the sentencing date in three months.

Assuming Bill Barr doesn’t swoop in to rescue the Trump supporters from their own guilty pleas, look for defense counsel to argue on August 21 that Loughlin and Giannulli can’t possibly serve a custodial sentence during a pandemic and must be granted home confinement. Because that train is never, never late!

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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

According to data collected by ALM for their 2020 Am Law 200 ranking, which firms fell out of the top 200 ranking?

Hint: Three firms, including one that is now defunct, are off the list. 

See the answer on the next page.

Salary cuts are always shitty. I mean, hopefully, they spare folks’ jobs but they are never fun to deal with. And they’re extra annoying when announced the Friday afternoon before a three day weekend. But I guess COVID-19 doesn’t take a break for the holiday, so neither do austerity measures. And that’s exactly what happened at Troutman Sanders — no wonder we’ve gotten so many angry emails.

So, what’s going on at the firm? 20 percent pay cuts for associates and even more for partners. As a tipster explains:

We just learned that equity partners are receiving an annualized 18.5% pay cut, non-equity partners are receiving a 14% cut, and associates are receiving an 11.7% cut, but this equates into a minimum 30%, 25% and 20% cut, respectively, per paycheck going forward from June 1 through end of year.

Which considering their soon-to-be merger partner, Pepper Hamilton, has already made similar cuts, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. (Yes, the merger is still a go for July 1.) But that doesn’t mean folks at the firm aren’t pissed. Here’s a sampling of some of the reactions we’ve received about the pay cuts:

This is across the board, taking no consideration of whether a group is busy or not. I’m extremely upset as an associate in a group that has not slowed down, but is just as busy or busier than before— yet I’m expected to work that amount above expectations at 20% less pay? We keep being told our firm is healthy financially and better suited to weather the storm than others, yet we just got a cut that’s at the very top end of what other firms are doing. There is no insight into how they will compensate us for that, but we already know the Troutman bonus structure is already a total joke, so I’m not expecting that the right thing will be done then either and I’ll likely be making a move. Oh, and we are still merging with Pepper Hamilton in July 1…

TL;DR: everyone is pissed and management needs to take a course on how to deliver bad news to people.

Everyone is livid.

We reached out to the firm for comment, but have yet to hear back.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, 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.

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).

My latest mental exercise is what I call the Five-Second Rule. The Five-Second Rule is that I only want people working for me if they would pass the following test, which I call the Five-Second Test because I am not especially creative today:

(1) A wizard, angel, genie, dragon, or other magical creature that is both credibly capable of granting wishes on a whim and has a reputation for capriciousness, walks into the room the subject is in.

(2) The magical creature offers the subject a choice between two options:

(a) At the subject’s request, the magical creature snaps his/her/its fingers, in which case there is a 1 in 1,000 chance that the subject will become one of the 10 best people of their generation at whatever they wish. Lawyer, baseball player, rock star, scientist, whatever they like. The other 999 out of 1,000 cases, the subject will instantaneously and painlessly die.

(b) The magical creature doesn’t snap any fingers, the deal is off the table, and the magical creature will not return.

(3) To pass the test, the subject must request that the magical creature’s fingers snap within five seconds or less after the creature finishes explaining the terms of the choice.

This is, importantly, not a test of one’s work ethic, dedication, or even whether the person likes being a lawyer at all. It’s instead a test of complacency, status quo bias, risk tolerance, and the ability to make important decisions quickly.

I’m still figuring out a way to work this into job interviews, as I figure if I ask people outright, they’ll just tell me what I want to hear. So, I need some way to simulate it, but realistically I’d probably need at least a smoke machine and some very elaborate costumes, and if nothing else, this would never play over Zoom.

Why The Five-Second Rule Is An Important Test

I’d be willing to be flexible here in some circumstances — as people get older, they tend to lose their edge for various reasons, plus the cost-benefit structure of the magical creature’s deal shifts — but attorneys in the first few years of practice really have no excuse. And it’s a great test because it hits four separate character traits that are important in order to be a good litigator.

First, the Five-Second Rule most directly tests complacency. No one wants lawyers — or anyone else — who are satisfied with mediocrity. As always in life, you have to go big or go home. You goals need to be total victory.

Second, it tests status quo bias. The expected value of asking the magical creature to snap his, her, or its fingers over not snapping them is objectively higher. Really, it’s all upside from the subject’s point of view because if they lose, they’ll be dead and will never know. But the test is set up so that the lower expected value position is an easy default to fall back on. Part of the magical creature’s presence in the test is to sell the credibility of the offer, but it’s also to shock the subject out of their comfort zone. Someone with an overly strong status quo bias will instinctively retreat to the safety of the default position, failing the test.

Third, the Five-Second Rule tests risk tolerance. Someone who is risk-averse will instinctively overweight the value of the the safe choice of no finger snapping, instead of correctly weighting the risk of each. Such people also will likely underweigh the cost of the years, even lifetime, of regret if they turn down the offer.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the Five-Second Rule tests the subject’s ability to make decisions quickly. Five seconds is recognized by multiple other scientific rules as the time in which the human brain effectively makes quick decisions unhindered by further analysis. This also dovetails with Dan Kahneman’s System 1 versus System 2 thinking. And quick decision making is, of course, a crucial skill for litigators.

Applying The Five-Second Rule To Your Practice

Another great thing about the Five-Second Rule is that it’s easy to apply to your own practice. While a practical test is especially difficult in these times, you probably know your staff well enough to make an educated guess at how they would respond if put to the test. If you think they’d fail — or if you think you’d fail — take this opportunity to make some adjustments.

Matthew W. Schmidt has represented and counseled clients at all stages of litigation and in numerous matters including insider trading, fiduciary duty, antitrust law, and civil RICO. He is a partner at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at matthew.w.schmidt@balestrierefariello.com.

These are challenging times for the legal profession, especially Biglaw firms and lawyers. But in-house counsel are not immune from the downturn, with many lawyers at major companies losing their jobs as well.

Contrary to the view of some Biglaw lawyers, in-house life is not some sort of professional paradise. In-house lawyers face many of the same challenges that their counterparts at law firms face, including layoffs.

That said, there will always be many Biglaw attorneys who wish to jump to the client side. Even during the current crisis, there are some in-house jobs out there. And once the current tough times are behind us, there will be even more such opportunities.

How can you get an in-house legal job? Here are three tips.

1. Network, network, network.

Yes, this advice is clichéd, but that’s because it’s true. Many of the best in-house positions get filled through networking. Sure, a Fortune 100 company looking for a general counsel might hire a headhunting firm to fill the role (and here at Lateral Link, we are happy to help companies find in-house talent). But a startup or emerging company looking for its first GC — a job that many Biglaw lawyers view as their “dream job” — will often fill it with someone known to a founder or someone in the founder’s network.

As longtime ATL columnist and in-house lawyer Mark Herrmann correctly points out, networking is no guarantee that you’ll find that job, but it certainly increases the chances. So even if you’re fairly happy at your current law firm, you should let your network know that you would be open to the right in-house opportunity if it came along. If your network doesn’t know, then they might not mention it to you when they see a great in-house job, thinking (erroneously) that you are firmly planted at your firm.

And when thinking about who’s in your network for this purpose, don’t draw the circle too tightly, e.g., by limiting it to your closest friends. Research shows that people frequently find new jobs through their weak ties as opposed to their strong ones. And of course you should try to expand your universe of connections — through networking.

2. Check the major job sites on a regular basis.

Whenever I meet an in-house lawyer, I ask her how she landed her job. And despite the importance of networking, as just discussed, you’d be surprised at how many in-house attorneys found their positions through responding to online postings — on sites including but not limited to LinkedIn, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) jobs board, GoInhouse, Monster, and Indeed.

Not every in-house legal job gets posted on such sites, but the ones that do get posted are (for the most part) real jobs. When I helped a friend of mine, the GC of a small but publicly traded pharma company, find a deputy GC last year, I posted the position on both LinkedIn and ACC.

When you’re slammed at work because of a deal or trial, it can be difficult to remember to check these sites. But the problem is that sometimes the best in-house opportunities are advertised online only for a limited time. Set a calendar reminder for yourself to check for online in-house jobs at a certain time each week or every other week and try to stick to it, even if you’re extremely busy.

3. Situate yourself at an in-house “feeder firm.”

When it comes to sending their lawyers into in-house jobs, not all firms are created equal. And perhaps surprisingly, it’s not the most prestigious firms that are the best at generating in-house exit options.

In fact, many of these firms are rather poor at preparing their lawyers for the in-house jump. These firms often engage in highly specialized work, while many corporations want their lawyers to have some breadth in their knowledge and skill sets. Also, the top firms often focus on “bet the company” deals or cases — but companies are often looking for lawyers who have familiarity with the more typical events in a company’s life cycle.

So if you’re at a firm that doesn’t seem to send many lawyers into in-house positions, consider moving to a firm that does — i.e., an in-house “feeder firm.” One of the most common ways for a Biglaw lawyer to make the transition to in-house life is to join a client, and in-house feeder firms are those with the best track records of sending their lawyers to clients (or to similar in-house opportunities). A knowledgeable legal recruiter can help you identify — and get hired by — an in-house feeder firm, so you can eventually move into the in-house job of your dreams.

If you’re already in-house and looking to add to your legal department, whether on a permanent or temporary basis — in times of tight budgets, hiring temporary lawyers on a contract basis can be especially attractive — recruiters can help as well. For assistance with your in-house hiring needs, please reach out to Monique Burt Williams, who recently assumed the role of CEO at Cadence Counsel, the in-house division of Lateral Link. She would be delighted to help you find top talent, especially candidates who would enhance the diversity of your organization to reflect a global economy, and she looks forward to hearing from you.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. David Lat is a managing director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

Things are changing in a big way over at Irell & Manella. According to an in-depth report at Law.com looking at the future of the firm, Irell is pivoting to focus on its intellectual property litigation practice, with most of the rainmaking falling on partner Morgan Chu and eschewing their transactional practice.

It seems the firm’s back was again the proverbial wall. Since 2014, the firm has lost 48 percent of its attorneys, down to just 82 lawyers from 159. That change has coincided with plummeting gross revenue from $247.5 million in 2014 to just $151.6 million last year. So yeah, some sort of change is needed.

“The writing was on the wall,” as one former Irell partner put it, when Jonathan Kagan, a member of Irell’s executive committee and chair of its hiring committee, wrote in an internal memo in early February that the firm would now focus solely on high-end IP and commercial litigation, abandoning most of its transactional practices.

It wasn’t an entirely deliberate pivot, as interviews with former partners, legal consultants and Kagan himself indicate. These sources describe a firm that has been struggling for years to define itself and trying to rebuild after a devastating spinoff that has led some partners to explore potential merger opportunities.

The struggle to define what is next for the firm is real. Kagan notes:

“For years we’ve been trying to evaluate what the options are for us,” he says. “There is a difference between exploring options and making actual decisions.”

He adds, “We’ve been gradually moving in this direction, then people figured out what we were doing.”

This isn’t the first time in fairly recent memory that the firm has had to switch up its strategic vision. In 2015, the firm lost ~1/6th of its attorneys over a two-day period when the litigation boutique of Hueston Hennigan was born.

The spinoff put Irell at a crossroads of sorts, with three paths emerging: It could have grown its transactional and commodity litigation practices, merged with another firm or retrenched. At the time, [former Irell executive committee member David Siegel] hinted to The American Lawyer that there was disagreement among the firm’s partners about the right approach: “Some of us would prefer to focus now on growing but doing it in a careful way,” he said. “Most of us—but not all of us—have that mindset.”

Since then, the firm’s strategy toward lateral partners is described by Law.com as “piecemeal” and that’s resulted in a partnership revolving door, with whatever attempts the firm made to build its transactional practice being thwarted. There’s been downward pressure on the firm’s revenue (though their profitability has remained stable at around 65 percent) and so, a change in direction and focus is needed.

Firm leaders remain optimistic about the new and improved focus, particularly in light of COVID-19:

The recent changes may leave the firm in a better position to weather the economic storm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, sources say. As of early May, Irell had avoided cutting pay or staff like many larger, higher-grossing law firms have done. The pandemic has affected some of Irell’s cases—Kagan says one of his trials was postponed—but every attorney at the firm is busy, which might not have been the case had Irell kept its transactional practice, Kagan says.

“In light of the coronavirus and the dislocation of the economy, Irell might have the last laugh on this whole thing,” one former partner says.

Best of luck to the firm as they try to weather the latest changes.

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).