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The justice taught us all a thing or two about a life well lived. She was among the first mentors to tell me I could do anything — but she also told me that it would be foolish to think I could do many things well at the same time. The life lessons she imparted gave me the courage to take a step back from my own career and choose, for this moment in time, to be more present for my three children.

— Lori Alvino McGill, one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s former clerks, offering words of kindness for the late jurist who served as her role model. More than 100 of Ginsburg’s former clerks are standing guard by her casket as she lies in repose at the Supreme Court, and they will not leave her side, day or night, throughout the entirety of the public viewing. May her memory be a blessing.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Say what you will about Jeff Katzenberg and Meg Whitman—and there are a great many unkind things to say about both of them, and indeed a goodly number of those things have, in fact, been said about them—they are not stupid, and they are not illiterate. Arrogant, out-of-touch, immune to criticism, surrounded by yes men, sure. They may even be intellectual property thieves. But they can see the extremely grim subscriber numbers and, if the e-mails we get from their representatives are any indication, they can also read. And if they can read, they can read more than just articles talking about how bad their Quibi short-form video platform is flopping. Whitman, especially, would seem likely to be aware of the billions and billions of dollars splashing around Wall Street in the form of blank-check companies that literally anyone can and has launched. And perhaps one or more of them would like to buy a $1.75 billion hole filled with content no one asked for or is interested in paying for, and which may eventually be completely upended by Paul Singer? Sure, it doesn’t sound like a very attractive option, but Airbnb doesn’t seem to be available and the number of SPAC suitors in need of a mate continues to grow.

This column was going to be about Joe Biden’s proposed tax policy, right up until Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed.

I suppose my topic didn’t officially change until a few hours after RBG’s death, on Saturday, when Donald Trump vowed to fill her Supreme Court seat “without delay.” Still, from the moment of Ginsburg’s death, there was never any real doubt that Trump, goaded on by the vampire of the Senate Mitch McConnell, would disavow everything his party said four years ago when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland. The Republicans were going to try to ram a new Supreme Court Justice down Americans’ throats six weeks before an election.

Nobody reading this is unfamiliar with what happened in 2016, but if you need a quick reminder, Obama nominated the moderate D.C. Circuit veteran Garland to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Antonin Scalia. Scalia died in February of that year, months before the November election. But Senate Majority Leader McConnell, along with his many Republican lackeys, refused to hold proceedings of any kind on Garland’s appointment. Instead, they behaved as if no vacancy existed at all on the Supreme Court, until Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch less than two weeks after taking office in January of 2017.

The thrust of McConnell’s argument, in February 2016, was that it was too close to the November presidential election to fill a Supreme Court seat and that it should be up to the voters to decide who got to fill the vacancy. In addition to McConnell, at least 17 other Republican Senators who are still in the Senate are on the record in 2016 making the same supposedly principled stand in favor of a democratic response to a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year.

Now it is six weeks before a presidential election instead of nine months, and there’s no principled stand in 2020. Rather, most Senate Republicans are champing at the bit to fill RBG’s seat before Trump is frog-marched out of the Oval Office in January. To give their position the thinnest veneer of logical legitimacy, Republicans have offered a dumb excuse about this year being different from 2016 because the Senate majority shares the party of the president, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to see through that.

Tragically, for about a third of Americans, it just does not matter. Republicans do not care if their leaders say one thing, and then do the exact opposite. They don’t care that their president has told more than 20,000 documented, provable lies since taking office. “All politicians lie,” they tell themselves and anyone else who will listen. But there is a difference between saying anything you think people want to hear, truth be damned, versus misstating something, or making an earnest promise that doesn’t go as planned, or even exaggerating within the limits of good taste. There is a difference between a good excuse, and a flimsy façade. Intent matters. But in Trump-world, there’s no difference between anything. Lies, corruption, and hypocrisy simply do not matter, as long as they’re coming from your side. Republicans parrot the party line, and then take that nearly translucent justification at face value.

In October 2008, a Minnesota woman at a Republican town hall event said, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, um, he’s an Arab.” John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate running against Obama, grabbed the microphone from her and said, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about.” At that town hall, McCain defended Obama a second time as a “decent person” and as a president people need not fear. McCain was booed. And McCain lost.

But at least when McCain died 10 years later, he died with his honor intact. McCain swam against the dark tide swallowing his party. Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t correct nonsense conspiracy theories, or defend his political opponents from baseless attacks that undermine the integrity of our system of peaceful transfers of power. Trump does the exact opposite. A little over a third of our population cheers him on, and over half the Senate lets him get away with it.

The concept of honor is as foreign to today’s Republican Party as it is to a rattlesnake. With RBG gone, all we can hope for is that at least four Republican senators want to be able to look in the mirror and see something other than a power-hungry cynic, or a self-deluded liar.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Biglaw associates have been working through a pandemic for about seven months now. From their remote work environments, they’ve witnessed not just austerity measures like salary cuts, furloughs, and layoffs, but the deaths of more than 200,000 people thanks to COVID-19 in the United States alone. Anxiety and depression have set in, and Biglaw firms that aren’t being transparent with their associates are making things even worse.

How bad has it gotten? According to the American Lawyer’s 2020 Midlevel Associates Survey, more than 40 percent of respondents said they had anxiety, with three-in-four claiming their firms had negatively impacted their mental health. Summer associates who worked remotely this summer were also increasingly concerned about their mental health (about 48 percent of them said they were concerned this year, up from 39 percent last year).

What’s driving the increase in stress and anxiety is the fact that some law firms haven’t been transparent enough with their associates, which is making them feel uncertain about their job security. “Control and embargo of information [about] finances, staffing decisions, and cutbacks only breeds anxiety and reduces productivity,” said a fifth-year associate at an Am Law 100 firm in response to the Am Law Midlevel Survey. Luckily, there are things Biglaw firms can do to help their associates through these difficult times.

Transparency and communication is the most common antidote, [Anne Brafford, founder of legal well-being consultancy Aspire Legal,] said. While personal coping techniques such as exercise and mental tricks can help, the greatest influence lies in law firm leadership. That includes all partners, not just the executive committee.

“Firms that have been focusing on transparency will go a long way toward reducing anxiety,” Brafford said. “I don’t just mean firm leadership, but the day-to-day communication about what’s to being expected, how am I doing—following up.”

Firms that remain transparent with their associates — whether dealing with salary or staffing issues — will be able to provide the support these lawyers need during this time of crisis. Offer associates some certainty during an era of uncertainty. Invest meaningfully in associates’ mental health and everyone will be much happier.

The Pandemic Is Affecting Young Lawyer Mental Health, and Secrecy at Firms Doesn’t Help [American Lawyer]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Most law firms fit into two distinct categories when it comes to how they view associates. Some shops believe associates are an integral part of their team, and partners try to mentor and support associates so that they will stay at the firm for a long time. These shops typically pay associates more money, invest in professional development, and allow associates to become involved with business development and other administrative efforts. However, other firms view associates as interchangeable cogs in a machine. These shops usually pay associates less money, and there is not much potential for associates to make partner at these firms. As a result, those associates usually leave for better opportunities after a few years, and there is accordingly a high associate turnover rate at these shops. Although firms may save money and other resources with this latter approach, associate turnover is very harmful for law firms. As a result, partners should invest in their associates so they will stay at a law firm for as long as possible.

Institutional Memory

Associate turnover can substantially impact the institutional memory of attorneys at a firm. For instance, it is not uncommon for litigation and some transactional matters to take a long time to reach resolution. It is not uncommon in one state in which I practice for lawsuits to take five or even 10 years to reach a resolution (I personally was involved in several 10-year lawsuits) and over the course of time, many nuances may develop about a file. However, each time someone leaves a firm, some of the understanding of the case is lost, and it is very difficult for other people to come up to speed on the file.

For example, I once worked at a law firm that had a case which was filed when I was a freshman in high school. In my first week at the firm, I had to start preparing the summary judgment papers (the first summary judgment motion I had ever prepared by myself). I looked through the file and realized that four or more attorneys had handled the case before me. I tried to get up to speed on the case by reviewing exit memos drafted by departing attorneys, but it was extremely difficult to understand what was going on. In any case, if associate turnover is reduced, firms may be able to deliver better legal services to clients because more institutional memory about a file will be preserved.

Experience Gap

Attorney turnover can also lead to a smaller bench of experienced associates at a firm that can handle complex legal matters. It often takes months — even years — to properly train attorneys. Most of us understand how law school does not train individuals to practice law, and on-the-job training is critical to developing as an attorney. Before an associate is properly trained, they are more prone to making mistakes, and they cannot handle the same variety of tasks that an experienced lawyer can manage. Furthermore, even if an attorney has been practicing law for years, it can still take time for that lawyer to be experienced in a given area of the law. For instance, after I had worked at a few firms, I became an associate at another shop that specialized in a few mass torts matters. I had to learn a completely new set of rules in order to be effective in this role, and it took time.

In any case, constant turnover by attorneys means fewer trained attorneys at a firm. Moreover, it means that firms lose all of the investment they put into developing an associate. Of course, it takes time and effort to train attorneys, and not all of this work can be monetized. When associates leave a firm they take that experience with them, and their new shop will benefit from all of the investment that the first firm made in an associate.

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Associate turnover is also really bad for a firm’s image. When associates at a firm leave constantly, it sends a bad message about the firm, because there must be a reason why so many people are departing so frequently. People are less likely to do business with a firm if they think that a shop is a bad place to work or doesn’t treat their associates well. Moreover, many in-house representatives understand the downsides of associate turnover. When someone in-house has to communicate with different people over the life of a matter, they can probably tell that newer folks are not as up-to-speed on a matter as the associates who initially worked on a matter. Moreover, it can be frustrating for in-house staff to lose contact with people at a firm with whom they have forged a connection during the life of a matter. Of course, associates communicate with clients to different degrees at varying shops, but associate turnover assuredly looks bad to clients and others.

In the end, some firms do not mind associate turnover, since it is an inevitable result of underpaying associates, subjecting them to a pressure-cooker environment, and other unpleasant conditions. However, associate turnover can be extremely harmful to firms, and more shops should take bona fide efforts to ensure their associates stay for the long haul.

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

The Illinois Board of Admissions to the Bar, known affectionately as IBAB, found themselves in a quandary the other day. It appears as though multiple applicants writing in with technical concerns about the upcoming bar exam — a natural consequence of the state supreme court’s quizzically curt decision to block any real stress testing of the system — were informed by IBAB officials that the technical concerns might ultimately force applicants to “wait until February.”

This sparked a lot of understandable consternation among a class of applicants that have been jerked around by this exam for months now, with many depending on earning a license to get to work to support themselves and — more importantly — pay their crushing student debt.

Daniel Rodriguez, former dean of Northwestern Law, used his platform as an eminent figure in the Illinois legal profession to amplify the alarm that individual examinees were raising.

It turns out that the bar exam is not being canceled — yet, anyway — and IBAB wanted to assure everyone that this was a false rumor and that everyone should operate as if the test goes forward on the 5th. That’s the sort of message that could be conveyed by saying something like, “There is a rumor that the test might be canceled and we’re sorry if anything we’ve said contributed to this impression, but we are still going forward on the 5th and 6th and we assure you that we’re on top of any tech concerns you may have (and please let us know if you’re experiencing any issues!).”

Instead, they wrote this:

Let me make this clear. There is a time and a place for online mockery about the legal profession and it’s within the pages of Above the Law. This isn’t hypocrisy on our part — we do what we do because the profession can’t do this to itself and maintain the moral authority it requires to function. When bar examiners start doing it, they disgrace the whole profession.

“Applicants should exercise critical thinking and problem-solving skills”?!?!? I guess this is a fair criticism: applicants should have thought critically and realized they couldn’t trust anything coming from IBAB at face value. Because what’s completely missing from this statement is any sort of APOLOGY for making the statements that got everyone worried in the first place. Remember, the rumor wasn’t that the exam was canceled, it was that IBAB officials were telling applicants that they feared it might be and that applicants might have to consider waiting until February. So IBAB has transmogrified this rumor into something bigger than it was just so they could scoff at anyone who would believe a rumor they’re responsible for. Astounding.

Also, let’s not overlook that their dig at critical thinking and problem-solving skills also applies to the former dean’s comments because he’s entirely covered by this nakedly insulting response. But at least the IBAB folks gave him the dignity of responding directly. As he correctly pointed out in a later tweet, “But, hey, why did this happen just because I weighed in? Are the impacted IL examinees mere chopped liver? Disgraceful way to manage a difficult process.”

If it wasn’t clear from the earlier state supreme court battles over this, the Illinois bar examiners have nothing but contempt for the people they’re charged with testing. They don’t care about the unreasonable delays. They don’t care about the technical problems. And they don’t care about their own confusing information. They “care” to the extent that they have to perfunctorily do their jobs but they don’t worry about how their actions impact the applicants. To their mind, they put out a test and everyone should shut up and feel lucky they got to take it… eventually.

There’s a lot of folksy wisdom that boils down to “it’s not what you say, it’s what you do” and not to besmirch that as a general rule, but sometimes it really is about what you say. Illinois just showed off its true colors: they think that anyone who questions them deserves contempt and mockery. Full stop. And when it comes to “what you do,” the attitude someone takes into it means a lot to the final outcome.

This is a bad statement. They should retract it and profusely apologize.

Earlier: Everyone: Maybe We Should Test This Bar Exam Software; State Supreme Court: LOL, No.

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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.

The wheels of American justice turn slowly, inefficiently and ponderously, if at all. While this feature is often maddening to foreign companies used to their own more favorable and less predictable systems, it was certainly welcome to LVMH when it called off its plan to spend $16 billion on Tiffany & Co. earlier this month. After all, the unwanted deal was set to close on Nov. 24 and its antitrust clearance was due to expire on Feb. 3, and surely no American court could adjudicate such a complicated matter in so short a time. Why, LVMH was confident that the discovery and depositions alone would take well into next year, really rendering the whole thing moot, if you think about it.

The special fall bonuses are still making their way through Biglaw. It may be taking a little longer than the insta-matches we’ve seen in compensation before, but the COVID-19 appreciation bonuses are still gaining steam. And a Magic Circle firm just joined in.

Yesterday, Freshfields announced that they’d be giving out special appreciation bonuses to associates on October 15th. The firm noted that money will not trade off with year-end bonuses, and they expected to be competitive with the market for those end-of-the-year bonuses. They’re matching the scale set earlier by Davis Polk, meaning associates will see between $7,500 and $40,000, depending on class year, as follows:

Sources at the firm describe the mood as excited, and as one tipster said it demonstrates the firm’s commitment to the U.S. market:

I think the mood is very positive around this, given Freshfields’ continued commitment to the US and recent expansion. People are glad to see the leadership putting their money where their mouths are and being an early-adopter of this trend (especially given the number of recent laterals, from Cleary in particular).

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.

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

* A lawyer has been censured for telling a female judge that after she returned from vacation, “I better be able to see your tan lines.” [CBS News]

* Attorney General Barr has announced around $100 million in Department of Justice grants to combat human trafficking. [Albany Herald]

* An Arizona lawyer, who helped orchestrate the failure of a Toby Keith restaurant chain, has been sentenced to jail. [Arizona Republic]

* HBO has picked up a documentary about a lawyer on the frontlines of the fight for immigrant rights. [Variety]

* A new lawsuit alleges that YouTube did not do enough to protect video moderators from viewing grotesque content. Guess they can’t watch cat videos all day… [CNBC]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.