Category: News Feeds

You get 10 minutes to cry sometimes. Every single day there was news about somebody getting the coronavirus, someone being shot, riots, election news. Every single day it was distracting. It was hard to just unplug and not pay attention to those things. I needed to find someone who would help keep me accountable. I heard from other people who took the bar that getting out of the house talking in the fresh air helps with memorizing things.

— Abigael Hood, a 2020 graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law who took and passed the state’s in-person July bar exam, offering some tips on how to stay focused and succeed in your studies during these incredibly stressful times.

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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.

Mike Corbat may not have much cared for his job as CEO of Citigroup, but he was still supposed to stick around for another couple of years and give Marianne Lake a fighting chance of convincing Jamie Dimon to become Secretary of Commerce or run for mayor or light an M-80 behind him and let his heart take care of the rest and allow her to take her rightful place as the first female leader of a major U.S. bank. Unfortunately, Citi’s woeful risk management infrastructure did what it does, over and over and over again, and reminded regulators that Citi and Corbat hadn’t really done all they promised, sotto voce, to do to fix those systems, and that maybe a highly public reminder to do so was in order. And since Citigroup replaces its CEOs when its regulators take public notice that they’re not up to snuff, Lake’s rendezvous with destiny took a wrong turn, almost as if Citi was processing the transaction.

Everyone knows diversity is a worthwhile goal, but the actual process of getting there can be fraught. One mechanism to encourage diversity in the legal sphere that has gotten a lot of traction is the Mansfield certification process.

For those who might not be tracking, the idea was formed in 2017, at a Diversity Lab event to really hold Biglaw firms accountable for their lofty diversity goals. Modeled after the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview a minority candidate for head coach or general manager vacancies, the idea was to create a system to encourage Biglaw firms to consider women or minority candidates for leadership roles at the firm. The rule — named for Arabella Mansfield, the first woman admitted to practice law in the U.S. — asks firms to consider two or more candidates who are women, LGBTQ+, or attorneys of color when hiring for leadership and governance roles, promotions to equity partner, and hiring lateral attorneys. To be considered “Mansfield Certified” by Diversity Lab, a firm needs to show that 30 percent of the candidate pool for these positions are diverse.

“The goal of the Mansfield Rule is to boost the representation of diverse lawyers in law firm leadership by broadening the pool of candidates considered for these roles and opportunities,” Diversity Lab said in a news release. “Firms participating in the Mansfield Rule are making great strides in diversifying their leadership.”

And the statistics seem to reflect those ideals. As reported by Law.com, those firms that have dedicated themselves to the principle of diversity are seeing a real change in the composition of their leadership:

On the inaugural list of Mansfield Certified firms there were 42 entries, and last year 64 firms could claim certification. This year, we see another upward tick, with 100 firms now Mansfield 3.0 Certified. And next year looks bright as well — 117 firms have already signed up for the Mansfield 4.0 process.

So, which firms are now Mansfield certified? Here are the 100 firms — and those with an asterisk are Mansfield Plus certified, which means the firm’s leadership roles are at least 30 percent racial minorities or women.

Akerman

Frost Brown Todd

Nutter McClennen & Fish

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld*

Goodwin Procter*

O’Melveny & Myers*

Allen & Overy*

Goulston & Storrs*

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe*

Archer & Greiner

Greenberg Traurig

Paul Hastings*

Arent Fox

Haynes and Boone

Perkins Coie*

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer *

Hoagland, Longo, Moran, Dunst & Doukas

Polsinelli

Baker Botts*

Hogan Lovells*

Porter Wright Morris & Arthur*

Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz*

Holland & Hart*

Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch

Baker McKenzie*

Holland & Knight*

Reed Smith*

Beveridge & Diamond*

Hunton Andrews Kurth*

Robins Kaplan

Blank Rome*

Husch Blackwell*

Robinson & Cole

Boies Schiller Flexner

Jackson Lewis*

Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck*

Jenner & Block*

Schiff Hardin*

Brown Rudnick

Katten Muchin Rosenman

Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis*

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner*

Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck

Severson & Werson

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney*

Kean Miller

Seyfarth Shaw*

Clifford Chance

Kutak Rock*

Shearman & Sterling

Cooley*

Latham & Watkins*

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton*

Covington & Burling*

Littler Mendelson*

Shipman & Goodwin*

Cozen O’Connor

Locke Lord

Stinson Leonard Street*

Crowell & Moring

Manning Gross + Massenburg*

Stoel Rives*

Davis Wright Tremaine*

McDermott Will & Emery

Stoll Keenon Ogden

Day Pitney*

McGuireWoods*

Taft Stettinius & Hollister*

Dechert*

Merchant & Gould

Thompson Coburn*

Dentons*

Miller Canfield*

Thompson Hine

DLA Piper*

Miller Nash Graham & Dunn*

Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders*

Dorsey & Whitney*

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius*

White & Case*

Eversheds Sutherland*

Morris, Manning & Martin*

Williams & Connolly

Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath*

Morrison & Foerster*

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr*

Fenwick & West*

Much Shelist

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati*

Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner*

Munger, Tolles & Olson*

Winston & Strawn*

Fish & Richardson

Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg

Womble Bond Dickinson*

Foley & Mansfield

Nixon Peabody*

Fredrikson & Byron*

Norton Rose Fulbright*

Congrats to the firms on the list — and we look forward to it being even longer next year.

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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).

PDFs have long been a staple of legal practice, but one that has caused more than its fair share of unnecessary headaches. The thought of dealing with PDFs causes many lawyers an immediate sense of dread. But what if I told you that PDFs are actually easy to edit, but you’ve just been using the wrong software?

Put your basic PDF reader aside and meet the folks at Foxit. Foxit has upgraded PDF technology and transformed it to meet the needs of today’s lawyers. With Foxit PhantomPDF, working on PDFs feels like using the word processing programs you’ve come to know by heart.

PDF viewing, editing, creating, commenting, collaborating, converting, OCRing, Bates stamping — they’re all not only possible, but easy with Foxit PhantomPDF. With the right tool in your arsenal, you’ll never see PDFs as a roadblock again.

The PhantomPDF Basics

The overall user interface of Foxit PhantomPDF is similar to what you’re seeing in Office or other Microsoft products, with a file menu for creating or importing documents, the main functions organized in tabs along the top, and a navigation panel on the left side of your document.

You can also add stamps that are customizable to include any text you want, such as names, dates, times, and more. The stamps are actually small PDFs in their own right, which are applied on top of your main document, and you can use templates to create and save stamps for future use.

All of these reading and commenting features are available with the free version of Foxit’s PDF Reader. PhantomPDF, though, comes with so much more, and it’s worth the investment.

The Bells and Whistles

With Foxit PhantomPDF, you get far more functionality than you probably thought was possible with PDFs. It truly does feel like you’re working in a word processing program.

For starters, there’s a wide variety of ways to convert almost any file into a PDF. You can create your PDF from one or multiple files at the same time, scan it in, copy it from your Windows clipboard, import it from your computer, or directly convert a webpage. You can even combine all these sources and convert it all to one PDF with a single click. Conversion in the other direction is just as easy — when you’re done, you can take your PDF files and export them into any of 15 different file types, including most Office types, many image types, plain text, and html.

Foxit has put a lot of time and effort into its PDF editing features, and it shows. Any PDF can include text, which you can freely edit in all the ways you’re used to (changing font, adding bold or underline, changing font size, etc.). Even better, when you delete an item, the program understands what you did and your entire document re-flows — it even recognizes paragraph and outline numbering and renumbers your items if you delete one of them in the middle.

Objects and images are just as easy to edit. You can move them, rotate them, edit their properties, and more. All the details of your PDF can be edited and formatted, which is a far cry from the days when converting a document to PDF meant your formatting was guaranteed to be off. This is especially useful when formatting really matters, like when you’re complying with filing rules for margins and spacing.

Also critical for lawyers are two key functionalities — OCRing and Bates numbering. PhantomPDF’s OCR functionality lets you to run OCR in both searchable text mode and editable text mode in over 20 languages, and allows you to clarify any text that OCR couldn’t read. Bates numbering is also incredibly easy. You just select any number of documents, add them to a list, select where the number should go and designate your prefix and number format, and PhantomPDF will assign the numbers, continuing through all the documents in your list.

Of course, no program would be complete for use in the legal world without the ability to redact. You can redact your documents right within PhantomPDF by drawing over the area to be redacted and then applying the redaction (a two-step process so nothing is redacted accidentally and lost forever). You can add custom text to the redaction box, indicating reasons for redaction, statutory sections, or replacement text like “Person A.” If the redaction is recurring, you can use the search and redact function, which will locate every instance of the designated text and do a batch redaction with your replacement text.

When it comes time to finalize your document, PhantomPDF allows you to freely reorder, insert, extract, duplicate, and rotate pages. It’s easy to apply custom watermarks, backgrounds, headers, and footers, all with settings you can save if you want to apply the same marks each time. You can tag documents, add bookmarks, and even make PhantomPDF generate a table of contents or table of authorities from the text you’ve entered.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what you can do with PhantomPDF. The list of useful features and functionalities is endless – you can set alternative text for images, apply read-aloud and other accessibility tools, take snapshots of documents, add password protection, add digital certificate protection, require digital signatures, and so much more. Phantom PDF fully integrates with a wide range of other best-in-class software, including DocuSign, iManage, Dropbox, NetDocuments, OneDrive, Google Docs, and more, without having to open a separate program or browser.

With PhantomPDF, you can also use the portfolio tool to create curated packages of many different documents. Unlike combining documents into a single PDF, this functionality enables you to access and display each document separately while maintaining the collection as one discrete file. There are countless useful applications for this tool within the practice of law, including creating collections of evidence, amassing legal authorities, preparing omnibus motions, or creating complete case files – essentially any situation where you need documents to exist separately but be kept together. It’s also particularly handy for collections of documents that you want to present from your tablet in the courtroom, be they exhibits or case law.

In short, PhantomPDF does everything you never knew a PDF could do, and then some.

PDFs for the Modern Era

Technology has changed the practice of law, and Foxit has brought those advances to once-dreaded PDF with PhantomPDF. With friendly and flexible terms, perpetual licensing, and available upgrade assurance, you can find the pricing and package that works with your budget. If you’re still not convinced, you can even do a free trial.

It’s the 21st century — PDF’s can help eliminate the word processing headaches of the past. Foxit PhantomPDF is the only PDF tool you’ll ever need again.

On September 7, Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and held various high-level government positions before and since, tweeted the following:

Tesla forced all workers to take a 10 percent pay cut from mid-April until July. In the same period, Tesla stock skyrocketed and CEO Elon Musk’s net worth quadrupled from $25 billion to over $100 billion.

Musk is a modern-day robber baron.

A couple days later, Elon Musk tweeted this pithy retort:

All Tesla workers also get stock, so their compensation increased proportionately. You are a modern day moron.

In the time we’re living in, considering the garbled word salad our president vomits onto Twitter on a daily basis, that qualifies as rapier wit.

So why do Robert Reich and Elon Musk apparently have beef? Near as I can tell, there is no pre-existing reason really — it seems Reich just randomly decided to call out Musk on Twitter because Musk is a popular public figure and putting his name in things gets lots of strong reactions. People put Elon Musk’s name in headlines for articles that have little to do with him all the time (yeah, I’m guilty of that too).

But does Reich have a point? Well, Musk is indeed a billionaire. There is a certain swathe of voters who find “billionaire” synonymous with “robber baron.” But the real situation is a bit more nuanced than that.

Musk did not dispute the COVID-related pay cut, but accurately pointed out that Tesla employees are able to share in the gains of Tesla stock, which is not a benefit that publicly listed companies universally provide. Furthermore, the compensation Tesla provides to its production employees is not grossly unfair. The available data’s a bit old, but as of 2018, the median Tesla employee made $56,163 annually, which was 81 percent more than the median American. That lagged the median employee compensation for automotive competitors like Ford and General Motors, but it exceeded the median employee compensation for some automakers, like Fiat Chrysler, and it was more than the median compensation at some other well-to-do (and more consistently profitable) tech companies, like Apple.

Tesla’s CEO famously refuses to accept a salary from the company, although he does have one of the handsomest performance-based stock option plans in corporate history (which, of course, only pays out for him if the company does very well, which it has in the past several years). Robert Reich followed up his original tweet with some commentary about Musk discouraging unionization at Tesla’s auto plants — but what CEO welcomes in a union chief with a big bear hug? I think a tweet suggesting Tesla’s employees already have it pretty good and so would be wasting money on union dues is a far cry from the gangs of armed mercenaries the real robber barons of the Gilded Age tasked with literally smashing union resistance.

While Musk is obviously a very rich, very powerful man, he just seems like an odd target for Reich’s ire. What about the Walton family, who pay the average full-time hourly worker at Walmart just $14.26 an hour? How about the Sackler family, who amassed a fortune poisoning thousands of Americans with highly addictive opioids and then sucked $10.8 billion out of their company Purdue Pharma to try to shield it from the coming wave of meritorious lawsuits? Or maybe take a look at the DeVos fortune, which came from a multilevel marketing scheme in the first place and then was used by one DeVos sibling to start a shady mercenary army and by another to become Secretary of Education so she could undermine public schools.

Musk is far from perfect. But at least he spends his money in a lot of good ways. Musk has signed The Giving Pledge (along with such other business titans and philanthropic luminaries as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates), which is a promise to contribute a majority of his fortune to charitable causes over his lifetime. And unlike a multitude of other billionaires you could name off the top of your head, Musk’s money doesn’t come from doing something horrible (actually, producing vehicles that don’t pollute the air is a plus, in my book), and it doesn’t come at the expense of his workers, who are doing relatively well.

So, I don’t think Reich is really a modern day moron, but maybe he did overshoot a little on this one. Elon Musk is a flawed genius, and a rich man, but a robber baron? I think not.

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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.

Just how much is a former Supreme Court clerk worth? How much are Biglaw firms and prestigious boutiques willing to pay to woo associates with supreme intellect and inside insights about how the nation’s highest court operates and how certain justices think? Back in 2018, we reported that $400,000 was the prevailing rate for signing bonuses for former Supreme Court clerks. Yes, you read that correctly: former SCOTUS clerks were making almost double their Supreme bosses’ salaries in bonus money just for signing on the dotted line, on top of their base salaries and regular bonuses.

We know of several firms — off hand, those firms are Jones Day, Kirkland & Ellis, Orrick, Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Gibson Dunn, and Susman Godfrey — that have offered $400,000 bonuses to their SCOTUS clerk recruits in the past. Two years later and with the economic upheavel of a pandemic to deal with, has anything changed?

According to Michael Scanlon, hiring partner at Gibson Dunn, “the signals that we’ve seen to date indicate that the market remains at a $400,000 bonus level.” In this morning’s Supreme Court Brief, a National Law Journal newsletter, Tony Mauro provided the following evidence about how the $400K bonus has persisted:

> Kathryn Mizelle, a 2018-2019 clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who has been nominated to a district court judgeship in Florida, reported in her financial disclosure form that she received $400,000 as a hiring bonus in 2019 from Jones Day, the firm that has harvested dozens of clerks in recent years. For 2020, at least the months up to the filing, her salary at Jones Day was identified as $333,333. Court filings in a discrimination suit against Jones Day show a Supreme Court clerk bonus in 2017 was $350,000.

> In August Michael Francisco, said to be the first clerk from the 2019-2020 class to start working at a firm, also acknowledged that the market has been steady. “Clerks are getting hired at pretty traditional places, in pretty traditional numbers,” Francisco told NLJ. “I don’t particularly care to be talking about compensation and money, but in the general sense, the market hasn’t changed very much.” Francisco is a partner at McGuireWoods in Washington.

> If there are bonus fluctuations, one reason may be a growing trend among Supreme Court clerks, said Carter Phillips, the Sidley Austin partner and longtime appellate advocate. More and more are working at law firms before they clerk at the Supreme Court, he said. “Those people will feel like ‘lateral’ associates to some law firms and my guess is a lot of firms have a hiring freeze on lateral associates. That might explain some hiring issues.”

While the market seems to have settled at $400K, longtime appellate advocate Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin isn’t exactly thrilled about how high the bonuses have climbed. Phillips was one of the first lawyers to offer signing bonuses for Supreme Court clerks, and back in 1987, the bonus was just $10,000. He says the firm “learned the hard way” that offering an off-market bonus wouldn’t work for SCOTUS clerks, telling Mauro that “no one was willing to accept an offer with the lower bonus.”

Jones Day tends to corner the market on Supreme Court clerks each year, and Phillips made a wry comment about it in light of the expected six-figure bonuses. “Maybe Jones Day will successfully recruit 30 clerks this year. If so, God bless them,” he said. That would be $12,000,000 in signing bonuses alone for a group of new hires who may wind up taking the money and running after just a few years at the firm.

If you know that your firm is paying $400,000 for SCOTUS clerks (or more), email us (subject line: “SCOTUS Clerkship Bonuses”) or text us (646-820-8477), and we’ll compile a list of every firm that’s paying so generously for supreme talent.

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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.

As recent graduates are about to enter their sixth month of preparing for a bar exam that may or may not happen and/or kill them, most jurisdictions can’t overcome their own intellectual laziness to address the mounting concerns over the licensing process. But a few states — mostly out West, but notably including Louisiana — have approached the matter honestly and offered a diploma privilege option for the class impacted by an unprecedented global pandemic (and, it’s worth noting, Oregon applicants would have had to test during raging wildfires too — California might want to pay attention).

The DC Court of Appeals filed an order yesterday informing applicants that it might be offering its own form of diploma privilege, which it’s calling “emergency exam-waiver admission” to address the crisis.

But it’s not exactly clear who will be receiving this waiver if it happens. The order commits to releasing further guidance on September 28 “expanding temporary practice under supervision and potentially providing for a form of emergency exam-waiver admission for certain qualifying applicants.” Not exactly a clear path, but it’s a declaration that goes hand-in-hand with the announcement that the date to request a refund from the online exam registration is extended until September 30, so anyone who is covered by whatever system DC adopts can get their money back.

Whatever happens, it’s safe to assume that it’s not going to be a broad-based diploma privilege regime. It may offer a clarification of how the jurisdiction treats applicants from newly minted diploma privilege states or a carve-out for those with conditions that might prevent them from taking the online exam as it currently exists. But until we know for sure, we’re at least hoping for a model that tracks Louisiana’s offer of diploma privilege — covering most of the expected examinees in the upcoming administration.

(Full order available on the next page.)

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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.

Can a user cheat on the upcoming online bar exam and ruin the curve for everyone? It’s an overriding concern for applicants who understand that — despite the claims of bar examiners — the exam does not test “minimum competency” as much as ensure that around 20-25 percent of applicants fail. Without leveling the playing field with a full open-book exam that mirrors the actual practice of law like Indiana offered, allowing someone to have access to their fully fleshed out notes would put every other grad in a hole.

Thankfully, ExamSoft has a proctoring regime that can stop that. Unless you’re a BIPOC who can’t be easily picked up by its facial recognition software, of course. Or a diabetic. Or unwilling to piss yourself at your desk. But there’s something out there to prevent users from looking at their notes, right?

There is, and its the requirement that test-takers not avert their eyes from the screen at any moment while ExamSoft’s platform locks them out of the rest of their computer.

Except, as Apple purists know, when a user has their iPhone and MacBook on the same network, text copied on the iPhone can be pasted onto the MacBook. Meaning someone with notes available on their phone could pop them into their ExamSoft answer at the push of a button — or, well, two buttons because they have to hit Command-V. A video showing this concern showed up on Twitter:

Now, how likely is this to be used? Probably pretty unlikely. In fact, one Twitter user pointed out that the people who may have more risk here is the NCBE who could see their precious testing material copied on the platform and then pasted into the phone despite all their efforts at confidentiality.

But as for cheating by applicants, ExamSoft does, in theory, record keystrokes meaning an orphaned Paste should trigger an alarm. That said, if something was copied within ExamSoft and then the phone registered a copy and then the paste was applied to ExamSoft, that might well appear as a straightforward Copy and Paste within the system by the keystroke recording apparatus. Assuming the keystroke grabbing system actually works and isn’t just a latter-day panopticon that we all just assume is holding back cheating.

But still, who really has a usable set of notes that they could surreptitiously grab off their phone without breaking eye contact with the screen that will necessarily help them on an unpredictable question? And would risk getting caught over this slim edge? The platform doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect to deter specific cheating strategies.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that there’s a fundamental lack of faith in a system that already struggled through the Michigan exam with a proctoring partner that suffered a massive data breach and every technical exploit discovered by users underscores that this whole process is being made up on the fly. For a test that applicants have poured their lives and neuroses into for going on five months, having faith in the sanctity of the test is as important as the test itself. Instead, we have a system that still hasn’t undergone a full-scale stress test, and courts that refuse to even consider having one, preferring to rely on ExamSoft’s claim that a Saudi Arabian exam serves as proof of concept even though that was apparently a multiple choice exam with none of the complications that come from an essay section. All of this coupled with reports that ExamSoft tries to squelch criticism, this doesn’t inspire confidence.

Online exams were a laudable goal. Preparing an online examination at least showed basic concern for the applicants during a pandemic. But we’re at a point where it’s clear this isn’t the right answer and it’s time to redraw from scratch. Whether it’s an open book exam that genuinely passes applicants based on demonstrating minimum competence or a diploma privilege system, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and design a system that provides everyone trust.

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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.

As some close readers of my articles may know, to get through the monotony of the quarantine, I have watched The Office pretty much every night for the past six months. There is something soothing about viewing the happenings of employees at a fictional paper company that has made the quarantine a little more bearable. Watching this show repeatedly (and listening to The Office Ladies podcast) has weirdly put paper on my mind, especially stationery and paper products that people use in the legal profession. With all due respect to the Dunder Mifflins and real paper companies of the world, many lawyers still cling to antiquated paper products that can be dispensed with to embrace the increasingly paperless way most attorneys practice law. In any case, attorneys should ditch a few types of paper products in favor of efficiency and cost savings, especially since many firms have been electronically serving and filing most papers recently to due to COVID-19.

Bluebacks

Many litigators understand what bluebacks (also called “legalbacks”) are, but transactional attorneys (and lawyers in certain states) may not know what this common legal paper product is. A blueback is a piece of heavier and longer paper that is typically stapled to the back of legal documents. A blueback usually includes stock language relating to practicing law in a given jurisdiction and contains some information about a given case (and the document to which it is attached). I am unsure why bluebacks are still used. Maybe it is because they make it less likely that papers will be damaged, or maybe it is because bluebacks make papers look more professional. In any event, many court rules and individual practices in certain jurisdictions still require that bluebacks be stapled to the back of legal papers.

Using bluebacks is extremely annoying. When I first started my own firm, I had a case in a jurisdiction that required bluebacks for many types of legal papers. I had to order bluebacks from a legal supplier, and they cost about 50 cents a pop which (not to sound cheap) seems like a lot for a piece of paper! I couldn’t find a fillable form for bluebacks online, so I had to create one in Word to fill in the spaces on the blueback. (And I wasted many bluebacks trying to get the formatting right!) Also, you have to be very particular when stapling the blueback to the papers to be sure that you align everything correctly. Papers look a little more professional when they are “bluebacked,” but I do not think it is worth the trouble.

Now that courts and litigants are adopting electronic service and e-filing en masse to meet the challenges of COVID-19, I think it is time to ditch bluebacks for good. Indeed, one of the states in which I practice (New Jersey) does not have widespread use of bluebacks, seemingly suggesting that we can survive without bluebacks. The one benefit of bluebacks I can discern is that some firms adopt their own colors other than blue for their legalbacks so you can tell if papers are from these firms just by the color of the backs. I don’t want to name names, but many New York City lawyers know which notable firm often uses pinkbacks! In any case, bluebacks should probably be trashed as the practice of law becomes less reliant on printed material.

Legal-Size Paper

As many attorneys know, legal-size paper is 8.5-inch by 14-inch paper that is significantly longer than standard paper. Lawyers should absolutely ditch legal-size paper entirely for the standard paper that we all know and love. The longer legal-size paper does not fit into most file folders and other accessories related to the practice of law, and legal-size paper makes it extremely difficult to scan items. Legal-size paper is so old school, and I almost exclusively see legal-size paper when reviewing ancient wills, deeds, and the like. In fact, the use of legal-size paper seems very generational, and in my experience, old-school lawyers are far more likely to use this paper than younger attorneys. However, we should be more consistent with how we use paper in the legal profession, and if there is some bona fide reason why legal-size paper should be used (other than rules in certain jurisdictions) please feel free to reach out to me, I’m interested!

Red-Lined Paper

Many lawyers use red-lined paper (also called “red-ruled” or “pleading” paper) for pleadings, some contracts, and other documents. Red-lined paper is called this name because there is a red line running vertically down the left side of the paper. Often, lawyers use special red-lined paper for the first page of a document that includes the firm’s contact information, and then simply paper with a red line running down it for all other pages.

Red-lined paper is old school and super annoying. It forces you to adjust the margins in a document so you do not print over the line. Also, red-lined paper is much more expensive than normal paper, and I am unaware of any discernible benefit to the red line other than creating space for notations in the margins. Of course, some jurisdictions require numbers in the margins and other practices, and lawyers need to follow the rules of the jurisdictions in which they practice. Nevertheless, since the practice of law is becoming increasingly paperless, we should dispense with using red-lined paper.

All told, even though many lawyers have stopped using certain paper products more recently, numerous lawyers still cling to antiquated paper products. Nevertheless, attorneys should ditch certain types of paper products in order to embrace the increasingly paperless and standardized world in which we practice law.

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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.

New Jersey has become the fifth state in the United States to pass legislation allowing college athletes to commercially exploit their names, images, and likenesses for monetary gain and have the bill signed into law by its governor. However, as is the case with the four other bills signed by governors, these rights will not be provided to New Jersey’s college athletes for some time.

In fact, the “New Jersey Fair Play Act” seems to be the slowest of the bunch to give college athletes the same right that all other students on campus currently possess — the right to exploit one’s publicity. The final provision in New Jersey’s very briefly crafted bill indicates that the act shall take effect immediately, but it will only first be applicable “in the fifth academic year following the date of enactment.” Thus, it appears that college athletes in New Jersey will not actually possess the right to be compensated for use of their names, images, and likenesses until 2025, at the earliest.

Florida has a similar law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, that becomes effective on July 1, 2021, at which time college athletes may begin to earn compensation for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. The compensation must be commensurate with the market value of the authorized use of such publicity rights.

In Nebraska, any postsecondary institution can actually begin allowing its athletes the ability to exploit their publicity rights for commercial gain as soon as today. However, no schools have decided to take advantage of the provision in its “Nebraska Fair Pay to Play Act.” At the latest, the law requires postsecondary institutions to recognize such rights for college athletes by July 1, 2023.

The other states that have passed bills and had their respective governors sign them into law — California and Colorado — each have effective dates in 2023.

In the meantime, the federal government has been continuously setting up committee hearings to learn more about various college athlete national name, image, and likeness proposals; discuss what role the NCAA should have in the development of national name, image, and likeness rules; and often boast about their prior experience as college athletes themselves. The most recent hearing was held on September 15 by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. Overall, Capitol Hill seems to still be failing to grasp the situation at hand, with some politicians seemingly not being able to understand that, in many sports, athletes cannot simply decide to play professionally in the United States whenever they wish (i.e., NFL and NBA).

With little faith that the federal government can or will prioritize the debate of actual legislation surrounding college athletes’ name, image, and likeness rights, the task will likely be left to the states or the NCAA itself. New Jersey is now the fifth state to sign legislation on the subject, and over 30 more states are considering similar legislation. While New Jersey’s delay in providing rights to college athletes may not put a lot of pressure on the NCAA to take immediate action, the association is staring at the July 1, 2021, effective date in Florida and wants to do whatever it can to avoid Florida schools having any advantage over other member institutions in other states.

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Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.