Category: News Feeds

As more and more firms make moves to reverse their COVID-19 austerity measures, either in whole or in part, Biglaw associates have come to expect the retroactive payment of compensation that was cut and some have been left wanting. But at some firms, the extra work associates need to do to recoup their lost cash just doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Baker Donelson — a firm that was ranked just outside the Am Law 100 at #101, with $378,877,000 in 2019 gross revenue — slashed salaries across the board back in April and furloughed an untold number of employees. Earlier this summer (in mid July, to be precise), the firm disclosed to associates how they could go about getting retrospective pay for the months their salaries were skewered.  To be brief, associates aren’t thrilled with the firm’s plan:

Essentially, we have to collect 125% of our revenue targets (which are all based on rates that none of us are actually getting so it’s more impossible than it appears) to get all of our retrospective pay. Even though our collections are up (August was 4% above pre-pandemic budget) they’re still sending emails basically telling us to not expect anything else any time soon.

In a confidential memo, Baker Donelson listed three ways associates could earn back some of their salaries (that memo is available in full on the next page):

Last, but not least, if an associate achieves at least 110% of their hours target, as of September 30, but have not exceeded one of the pay thresholds, that associate will receive a one-time payment that will bring their compensation to 90% of base pay.

What about their future pay? Is there any end in sight for the salary cuts at the firm? According to the memo, the answer is a hard no.

At this time, no one will be paid 100% of their salary prospectively.

Best of luck to everyone at Baker Donelson as they try their hardest to collect on the compensation they’re due — it looks like they may need it.

(Flip to the next page to see the confidential memo from Baker Donelson.)

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, 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.

---

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.

It never seemed like a great idea when Texas decided to go forward with its bar exam by shoving applicants into a hotel “bubble.” Sure it was better than forcing folks to take it in a convention hall, but logistical hurdles always seemed to crop up at every turn. The examiners put out their intense and only slightly unintentionally hilarious training video, and it certainly gave the impression that they’d thought of everything. It turned out they had not.

As you may recall, a core tenet of the plan involved asking applicants to put all of their personal belongings in the closet and using a ziptie to keep the closet shut for the duration of the exam. Apparently, no one considered the floorplan before pitching this idea:

The zip tie plan for the closets didn’t work for several rooms because they were sliding closets. As a result they had to put tape on the doors which had the potential to fall off.

Well, there you go. We’ve finally found a problem duct tape can’t solve.

Another questionable strategy from the video was the keying starting and stopping off a WWI trench charge whistle. It turned out about as well as the first day of the Somme.

The whistles were an awful idea. People on my floor started the Procedure and Evidence section early because the sound of whistles carried from floors above and below. After proctors realized what happened, they switched to manually going around and telling people that the exam started.

Yet the only thing worse than hearing errant whistles was not hearing whistles at all:

We couldn’t hear any whistles, and on the first section of the exam, they forgot to give us test booklets. We were told we would get extra time to compensate, but they changed the amount of extra time twice, first saying ten minutes, then five, then ten again. One BLE employee came around our corner several times to hang out with her phone, with her mask off. The other employee in our area wore his mask below his nose. They also left test materials in our section long after the sections ended because they forgot to collect them.

At least everyone could use the hotel alarm clocks to keep on schedule…

Also, the BLE told us that each room had an alarm clock that we could move since there was no mass timer we could all see. However, we could not move the clocks as they were bolted to the nightstands. My room was so large and oddly shaped that I couldn’t even see my nightstand from my desk. I asked the hotel for a clock multiple times, and they never delivered one. So for the MBE, I ended up getting a screw driver from my apartment and unscrewing the clock from the nightstand so I could relocate it to my desk. I screwed it back on after the test! But some people literally did not know what time it was until the 15 minute warning was called on the second day.

All in all, it seems as though the test went as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, logistical screw-ups are inevitable and at least Texas didn’t actively try and kill everybody. But, as with all of these stories, we have to ask, “Was this all worth it?” Is this test so necessary that we have to put everyone through this expensive and error-filled production? Could everyone just take a couple of weeks to consider if maybe there’s a more effective way of guaranteeing that licensed attorneys are up to snuff throughout their careers than a one-off generalist exam?

Earlier: Texas Bar Exam Procedures Video Is Intense

---

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.

London had been bombed for three nights in a row in September 1940. The leader had to speak. But of course the leader didn’t want to throw the country into a panic.

The leader flipped through the draft speech. “Who wrote this crap?”

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

“That’s no good; that will make people panic. Cut that bit. In fact, forget the prepared remarks. I’ll just say whatever comes to mind.”

So the leader spoke:

“We have now been bombed by the Nazis for three consecutive nights. We have it entirely under control. We have it contained. This will all be over by Halloween.

“The days will get shorter as winter approaches. Without enough daylight, the Nazi pilots won’t be able to see London. Like a miracle, it will all end. Believe me.

“Some people have asked whether we have enough Spitfire fighters. We have plenty of Spitfires. Anyone who needs a Spitfire can get one. You don’t even have to wait in line; just hop in and fly off.

“Some people in the government have recommended the use of blackout curtains. I personally don’t like them. I just can’t see meeting foreign leaders in rooms that have blackout curtains. I’m not going to use blackout curtains.  If they make you feel safer, you can use them. I’m not going to bother with them.

“I feel the same way about bomb shelters. If they make you feel safer, you can use them. If not, go out and play in the streets.

“Hey, I didn’t tell Hitler to attack us. It’s not my fault. The economy was going great, and then, all of a sudden, what I call the Berlin virus. The invisible enemy! You can’t see it. Sometimes you hear a whistling sound and then a little bang, but you can’t see it. In fact, the bombs don’t exist; it’s fake news; it’s all a hoax. It’s really the Democrats who are bombing us.

“We can’t let an invisible enemy make the stock market go down. We have to reopen the economy. Let’s have outdoor markets at night; that’ll help the economy. We had the strongest economy the world had ever seen a year ago — Did you know that India is one of our colonies? Not everyone knows that.  And India’s a big country! Some people say it’s the biggest. Maybe we can swap India for Greenland; India’s a sh_thole country anyway — and we’ll have the strongest economy again, after Halloween, when this all stops.

“I’m doing great. No one’s ever done better. And only I can do it. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to me.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was Trump’s finest hour.’”

---

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

Back in April, megafirm Norton Rose Fulbright announced a bunch of austerity measures thanks to the economic upheaval cause by COVID-19. And it wasn’t just the salary cuts that lots of other firms also instituted — associates were also laid off as part of the measures.

Those who were left at the firm in the U.S. saw a 15 percent salary cut for all those making over $50,000. Now the firm has announced the end of those compensation hits, and their salaries will be returned to full, pre-pandemic levels.

Jeff Cody, Norton Rose Fulbright’s US Managing Partner, had this statement on the firm’s reinstatement of salary cuts:

“Based upon the firm’s performance through August, Norton Rose Fulbright US will end pay reductions for lawyers and staff and return them to full compensation on September 30. The partners are grateful for the commitment and loyalty demonstrated by all of our lawyers and staff during these difficult and uncertain times. These reductions were made in response to the pandemic, as our goal has always been to take care of our people while maintaining the firm’s health. We appreciate the ongoing commitment and loyalty of our people during these unprecedented times.”

When the firm announced its salary cuts in April, they indicated they’d only last through the end of September. Insert Wake Me Up When September Ends joke here. Now that you’ve got that song stuck in your head, it’s good to see the firm’s financial performance is progressing as expected.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, 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).

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of defunct blood-testing company Theranos who will be tried in March on fraud charges, appears to be attempting to claim a mental health defect as part of her defense.

A partially redacted, 11-page document filed in a San Jose, California, federal court Tuesday granted federal prosecutors’ motion to have Holmes undergo evaluation by a psychologist and a psychiatrist they had hired, in response to Holmes’ own request to undergo an evaluation by a psychologist she had chosen, and to have the two sessions recorded on video, despite her objection.

The Theranos founder had sought in December of last year “to introduce expert evidence relating to a mental disease or defect or any other mental condition of the defendant bearing on … the issue of guilt,” naming California State University Fullerton professor of psychology Mindy Mechanic as the expert witness in question. The top-level summary of Mechanic’s testimony was redacted, but it would be based on psychological testing and “structured and semi-structured” interviews that would cover “the period of the alleged conspiracy,” according to the filing.

An attorney for Holmes did not respond to a request for comment.

Holmes, together with former boyfriend and Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were indicted in 2018 on federal wire fraud charges in connection with Theranos. Once a media and venture capital darling that achieved a $9 billion valuation for supposedly inventing a way to conduct blood testing using only a few drops of blood, Theranos was exposed as a fraud in a series of articles in 2015 by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou.

The trial, taking place in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and presided over by federal Judge Edward Davila, was originally set to begin this summer, but was delayed until March due to Covid-19. Holmes and Balwani will be tried separately.

Federal prosecutors had requested that in addition to Mechanic’s examination of Holmes, she be examined over two days by two of its own experts, Daniel Martell – a psychologist for the forensic litigation consulting firm Park Dietz & Associates – and University of California San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Renee Binder. Holmes objected to having to undergo examination by two experts with apparently similar qualifications, but Davila overruled the objection, stating that Martell and Binder would work as a team, “Much as a physician might order bloodwork as part of a medical work-up.”

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

The trend of Biglaw firms ending their COVID-19 austerity measures continues. The latest firm to end their salary cuts is none other than Mayer Brown — a firm that came in 17th place in the latest Am Law 100 rankings, with $1,484,000 in gross revenue in 2019.

Back in May, the firm announced a series of graduated salary cuts. Effective May 18, salaries for all non-equity lawyers and staff (who make more than $200,000) were cut by 15 percent, and all other staff had salaries reduced on a graduated scale, with no reduction for those making less than $30,000. Even though at the time it was anticipated the cuts would last through the end of the year, last week they changed course. Starting September 21, salaries at Mayer Brown will be reverted to their pre-pandemic levels.

Moreover, the firm announced that in addition to their usual bonus structure (which remains unchanged by COVID), there will be discretionary bonuses for high-performing associates. Check out the firm’s full announcement at the end of the story.

However, not everyone was happy with the announcement. Several Above the Law tipsters (which admittedly only represent a small segment of Mayer Brown attorneys) expressed disappointment that there were not retroactive salary payments and that the reversal of the cuts were not immediate.

The reactions from sources at the firm:

Associates I’ve talked to (and myself) are pretty pissed. One of the first to cut pay, one of the steepest cuts (15%), and one of the last to reverse it. And it doesn’t even take effect until Sept 21.

Firm is perpetually nickel and diming associates. Even in announcing this policy they’ve botched it by not making it effective immediately. Not to mention peers like Hogan are promptly paying up the difference retroactively.

So, Mayer Brown attorneys, how do you feel about how the firm handled the salary reversal? Feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

The firm’s announcement:

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, 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).

When Eileen Murray left Bridgewater Associates last year, two things happened. For one, the former co-CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund learned (or relearned) that Ray Dalio & co. have an allegedly annoying tendency to pay women less than men. The second is that the mantle of “highest-ranking woman at Bridgewater” fell to Karen Karniol-Tambour, the firm’s head of investment research. And wouldn’t you know that she’s come to the same conclusion as her predecessor?

She made a formal complaint to top Bridgewater brass, including founder Ray Dalio and Chief Executive David McCormick, one of those people said. She asserted that men with similar or lesser responsibilities have been paid more…. What was particularly alarming to Ms. Karniol-Tambour, said people briefed on her situation, is that she made less than several men in largely operational roles at Bridgewater. At most hedge funds, investment professionals can earn considerably more than those who perform back-office tasks or liaise with clients.

* A PA lawyer has been sentenced to prison for allegedly stealing client funds to purchase (among other things) tickets to Superbowl LII in which the Eagles beat the Patriots. Maybe it was worth it to see Tom Brady lose… [Lehigh Valley Live]

* A lawyer at the Department of Labor has been reassigned after accusing the Secretary of Labor of retaliation. [Bloomberg Law]

* New details have surfaced about the Chicago attorney couple who were found stabbed to death in their home earlier this year. [Chicago Tribune]

* Senator Ted Cruz is another potential Supreme Court pick on President Trump’s most-recent list to indicate he has no desire to serve on the high court. [CNN]

* An employee at the Washington State Attorney General’s Office has been put on administrative leave after leaving a note on a restaurant check that read: “BLM pin = no tip.” [Spokesman-Review]

* A contractor is in legal hot water for allegedly fleecing a congregation of $454,000 to build a church and then performing little work. The contractor should be most afraid of getting struck by lighting or something like that… [Stamford Advocate]

---

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.

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

According to American Lawyer’s Midlevel Associate Survey, which breaks the rankings out by specific offices, the Denver office of which Biglaw firm is ranked best in midlevel associate satisfaction for that city?

Hint: The firm got a 4.583 out of 5 in overall satisfaction for their Denver outpost, which is one of 20 offices the firm has worldwide.

See the answer on the next page.