Category: News Feeds

Ed. note: This is the latest in a series on the changing practice of law in varied areas.

Imagine one day your phone lights up, your inbox is crammed, and it seems like every client you have is contacting you at the same time. That describes the situation for labor and employment attorneys at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“On a typical day there is a random portion of my client base that reaches out to me for advice, even clients I didn’t plan to hear from that day,” said Nicholas M. Reiter, partner and co-chair of the labor and employment group at Venable LLP, resident in one the firm’s new York offices. “But when the COVID pandemic came every client reached out, every client needed advice, no one was immune to COVID. Everyone needed to make really big decisions.”

These decisions may have involved safety protocols in the workplace and the attendant liability concerns, furloughs, layoffs, and wage reductions, remote work, insurance coverage, and the navigation of federal programs. While these decisions certainly drew in other practice areas, employment attorneys were central.  

“I don’t think anybody’s surprised that labor and employment attorneys were in higher demand as a result of the pandemic,” Reiter said. “We had a flurry of new laws and regulations issued at a fast pace at the federal, state, and local level. Our clients needed advice on these, and how to deal with others issues like shutting down offices and keeping up worker productivity. Those were fast paced times for everyone and now we’ve settled in.”

Workplace Safety

Perhaps first on many an employer’s mind was its obligation to its employees. 

According to Gabrielle Wirth, a partner in the California and Montana offices of Dorsey & Whitney LLP, who has handled numerous employment disputes across the country, “an employer always has a common law duty to keep the workplace safe.”

Speaking at a recent webinar on pandemic related-liability hosted by her firm, Wirth noted that processes become extremely important for companies whose employees must work on site, especially if any of them have conditions that make them more susceptible to COVID. Employers may need guidance on how to reasonably accommodate people.

“The important thing for employers is they have to have the conversation, they have to take the steps,” Wirth said.

Reiter said the labor and employment group at his firm has been advising clients on the development of COVID safety protocols, from how employees should conduct themselves inside the workplace to something as granular as a questionnaire to assess risk.

“Most of our clients have a questionnaire, a certain number of questions that must be answered before someone can enter the workspace,” Reiter said. “For example, if people tested positive they shouldn’t be entering the workplace, or if they live with someone who tested positive.”

In developing these protocols, attorneys are often following guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control as well as state and local health departments. In the early days, the guidelines changed from day to day. For example, Reiter said the minimum number of quarantine days for someone who may have been in close contact with an infected person rose from 10 to 14.

“The pandemic is still less than a year old,” Reiter said. “The CDC and state and local departments are still evaluating best practices.”

Katie Pfeiffer, of counsel in the Minneapolis office of Dorsey & Whitney, also speaking at the webinar, said she would advise employer clients to have their employees sign off on written rules about steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of contamination.

“The best practice right now is to have temperature checks of employees if they’re on the premises,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s not that temperature checks are a sure thing, but they do help. There is a lot of evidence indicating that if you have a rise in temperature, the likelihood of an infection is greatly increased.”

Litigation Risks

Of course, no matter how much advice an employer may seek, there will be lawsuits.

“A labor and employment lawyer needs to be a good counselor and advise clients, but also be a good litigator,” Reiter said. A lawyer might help a client develop an employee handbook, or draft a confidentiality agreement. The same lawyer needs to know how to use those documents as exhibits during a trial.

“If a labor and employment attorney has the skills to do one, then they have the skills to do the other,” Reiter continued. “One benefits the other.”

Reiter said he’s been advising clients on unsafe working environment allegations during the pandemic, but he hasn’t seen an explosion in suits.

“There have been some cases where workers sued employers for injunctive relief, saying our employer is not doing enough, we would like a court order. What we haven’t seen — and what some people anticipated — is a lot of class action cases or similar cases related to actually contracting the virus, the reason being the difficulty of establishing causation.”

While he doesn’t know whether such cases will eventually heat up, “it’s reasonable to say we would have seen it by now.”

According to Shevon D.B. Rockett, a partner in the New York and Philadelphia offices of Dorsey & Whitney, also speaking at the COVID liability webinar, for a while it looked like a federal liability shield was going to be included with the most recently passed COVID relief.

“Ultimately that was not included, but many states have adopted their own liability shield, either through executive orders or through statutes or laws.” 

The statutes have common characteristics that cover actual and potential exposure but don’t protect against willful or reckless or intentional conduct. “Other than that, state shields vary tremendously,” Rockett said, noting that a failure to substantially comply with public health guidance may preclude a business from gaining the benefit of a state’s liability shield.

Rockett’s colleague, Wirth, reported that there were a number of claims last March and April, “because many employers couldn’t get their hands on masks and other gear that they otherwise would have issued their employees. And so, you can also have a separate cause of action for failure to provide a safe environment.”

Wirth also noted that if employers fail to follow the state and federal regulations, a jury is going to be very sympathetic to an employee who brings a claim, or families who have lost loved ones or been severely harmed by COVID. Employment attorneys have to “keep in mind that the motivation behind a jury will be to punish people who didn’t act reasonably during this time.”

Reductions in Force

Aside from helping clients maintain a claim-proof safe workplace during a global pandemic, employment lawyers have also been busy helping clients avoid liability traps when it comes to terminations, layoffs and furloughs, and salary and wage reductions. Not a few employers have had to resort to these measures as the pandemic took its economic toll.

“Our clients were looking at ways to manage costs,” Reiter said. “There was no shortage of RIFs (reductions in force).”

One significant issue during the pandemic was the need to parse the unforeseen business circumstances exception to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, commonly called the WARN Act, a federal law designed to protect workers from sudden and unexpected losses of livelihood.

Whether the WARN Act applies will depend on the size of the RIF and the size of employer, Reiter said. “If an employer has to conduct a reduction that would otherwise trigger a WARN Act notice,” Reiter said, “the notice period can be shortened if COVID is the trigger.”

Wirth reported that conflicting signals from the federal government didn’t make it any easier. “They left employers totally confused by the various announcements. . . . Of course, in the beginning of the pandemic, employers sometimes had to do things hastily, which created problems.”

The method used to select employees to be laid off or furloughed is another potential minefield that has had companies seeking legal advice.

“You have to make sure there’s no disparate treatment. That’s an issue,” Reiter said, referring to a type of discrimination claim—an allegation that an employer intentionally selected someone because of their characteristics, a violation of the law if that person is part of a protected group.

Disparate impact is another type of discrimination claim, “when a disproportionate number of a particular protected class was selected for a reduction in force,” Reiter explained.

Sometimes these claims can arise even when a company is trying to keep its employee’s safe. For instance, “some employers, very rightfully from a moral standpoint, worried about their older workers or workers who were obviously disabled, that they would be more susceptible,” Wirth said. “But you can’t treat people differently because of their disability or their age.”

She emphasized that any action an employer takes must be an interactive process, not a blanket rule. Companies need to be very careful about taking personnel actions that could lead to discrimination claims.

Employers have so much to consider that it’s no wonder that employment attorneys have been on the frontlines of pandemic legal work. 

As noted by Wirth, companies have had to evaluate their procedures, look at their risks, and stay abreast of what has been coming out of various governmental entities. In other words, good legal advice has been crucial.

“Unprecedented” is sponsored by Practising Law Institute, which features a variety of timely offerings on employment law topics. These include the programs Understanding Employment Law 2021 and Employment Discrimination Law & Litigation 2021, as well as the publications “COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Business and Legal Challenges” and “Employment Law Yearbook 2020.”

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Elizabeth M. Bennett was a business reporter who moved into legal journalism when she covered the Delaware courts, a beat that inspired her to go to law school. After a few years as a practicing attorney in the Philadelphia region, she decamped to the Pacific Northwest and returned to freelance reporting and editing.

Oh, no, it’s cancel culture again!

Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch and Ben Shapiro and Josh Hawley warned us about woke groupthinkers murdering the First Amendment and telling us what we could and couldn’t say. Sure all their examples were of private companies, so they had exactly zero constitutional implication… butbutbut slippery slope! One day a publisher is canceling a book deal because the author incites a murderous mob, the next day the government is telling you what to say, or else.

And it turns out, they were right. Well, kind of.

In response to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s decision not to play the anthem before the first 13 home games, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has just announced the Star Spangled Banner protection act, AKA SB4, to mandate patriotic chanting at all public events receiving taxpayer subsidy.

“It is hard to believe this could happen in Texas, but Mark Cuban’s actions of yesterday made it clear that we must specify that in Texas we play the national anthem before all major events,” he said. “In this time when so many things divide us, sports are one thing that bring us together — right, left, black, white and brown. This legislation already enjoys broad support. I am certain it will pass, and the Star Spangled Banner will not be threatened in the Lone Star State again.”

O say can you see … a facially unconstitutional government enactment?

In 1943, Justice Robert Jackson authored the Supreme Court opinion holding that children could not be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance in school, writing “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

And when it comes to pettiness, Dan Patrick is second to no official.

“Your decision to cancel our National Anthem at @dallasmavs games is a slap in the face to every American & an embarrassment to Texas,” he tweeted from his fainting couch. (Presumably.) “Sell the franchise & some Texas Patriots will buy it. We ARE the land of free & the home of the brave.” Because failing to play an unsingable, repurposed English drinking song is exactly the same as urinating on the flag at center court after the second quarter.

Setting aside the unconstitutionality of the law, its practical implication would be virtually constant chanting in an effort to avoid losing government subsidy, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser points out.

Woohoo, kegger at ZBTahiti! Come by midnight so you don’t miss the anthem.

In any event, legal action won’t be necessary. “With NBA teams now in the process of welcoming fans back into their arenas, all teams will play the national anthem in keeping with longstanding league policy,” the NBA said Wednesday. After which the Mavericks immediately announced that the anthem would be played before that evening’s game, but released this statement from Cuban:

We respect and always have respected the passion people have for the anthem and our country. But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been. Going forward, our hope is that people will take the same passion they have for this issue and apply the same amount of energy to listen to those who feel differently from them. Only then we can move forward and have courageous conversations that move this country forward and find what unites us.

Meanwhile Texas state legislators are still trying to cancel culture Mark Cuban.

“The stadiums, subsidized by the taxpayers, which host the Mavericks should either condemn @mcuban’s anti-American decisions and override him; or, return all tax subsidies they have received,” tweeted Texas House member Dustin Burroughs.

Because social justice is “anti-American.” True patriots ignore the First Amendment and 70 years of American jurisprudence.

Land of the free, and home of the brave.

Dan Patrick makes “Star Spangled Banner Act” a legislative priority after the Mavericks go 13 games without the national anthem [Texas Tribune]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.;

Musical week at Above the Law continues! We had Edelson’s rap videos and a Texas Family Court judge channeling King George, now we conclude with the whole state of Delaware.

Judge James McGiffin Jr. recruited lawyers and judges to perform an original ditty about coping with COVID. Then the folks from Profund Bono, the Official Musical Theater Group of the Delaware Legal Community — who also put on a biennial musical to support legal services to Delaware’s disadvantaged communities — pitched in to make the video a reality!

For the record, it was

I loved my spouse I love my kids
For either now I’m taking bids

That broke me.

Amazing. We’ve got singing and dancing judges, a cat, and real instruments being played. Don’t worry Judge Medinilla, we won’t tell anybody we saw you.

Finally, a reason to be thankful that our country’s entire business operation runs out of one state.

Earlier: Family Court Judge Warns Attorneys To Wear Pants In Hilarious Parody Video
Law Firm Busts Out Two New Rap Videos
Federal Judges Releasing Music Video About COVID Is Officially The Last Thing You Expected From 2020

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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 the FCC gets closer to restoring net neutrality, a new and bizarre GOP talking point has emerged. It goes something like this: if you’re going to restore some modest rules holding telecom monopolies accountable, you just have to dismantle a law that protects free speech on the internet! This of course makes no coherent sense whatsoever, but that’s not stopping those looking to demolish Section 230, a law that is integral to protecting speech online.

Take FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, for example. Despite having a post at the nation’s top communications regulator, Carr is literally incapable of even acknowledging that US telecom monopolies exist. Or that said monopolization is directly responsible for the high broadband prices, spotty coverage, terrible customer service, and/or sluggish speeds everybody loathes. His tenure has been spent rubber stamping the every whim of Comcast and AT&T, yet, for no coherent reason whatsoever he’s emerged as a major voice in the conversation about Section 230 and social media.

This week, Carr had this to say at the INCOMPAS policy summit:

While there certainly are moments these worlds collide (like Amazon AWS or Google Fiber) this is not a good faith argument, and conflating net neutrality and the debate over 230 into one incoherent ball is a tactical strategy, not a real legal or policy argument.

Like it or not, net neutrality was simply an effort — in the absence or real US broadband market competition — to create some baseline rules preventing natural, physical telecom monopolies from abusing their market power. Power they attempted to abuse time, and time, and time, and time again. The Trumpist GOP assault on Section 230, by contrast, is the brain fart of an unqualified and corrupt ex-president, designed largely to bully content platforms into carrying hate speech and political disinformation, cornerstones of modern GOP power in the wake of changing US demographics and a sagging electoral base.

The latter is dressed up as something more noble and patriotic than it really is. But there’s absolutely nothing meaningfully tethering one policy debate to the other. Well, aside from the blistering hypocrisy required for FCC Commissioners like Carr to claim that FCC efforts to hold telecom monopolies accountable was “socialism” or “government run amok,” then pivoting on a dime to support Trump’s ridiculous attempt to have the FCC regulate social media (despite having no authority to do so).

Of course this same bizarre conflation also recently popped up over at Fox Business courtesy of an anonymous “former FCC official” (possibly ex FCC boss turned cable lobbyist Mike Powell) in a piece that uses the exact same illogical framing (and even the word “holistic”):

“If Democrats want to talk about net neutrality, they’re going to have to include Big Tech,” says one former FCC official. “It has to be a holistic conversation.”

Uh, no they don’t?

There’s absolutely nothing, anywhere that fully tethers the two policies, and just claiming otherwise repeatedly won’t magically make it true. It’s clear the GOP wants to confuse the public into conflating “net neutrality” with some imagined requirement for platform and service “neutrality.” They’ve already confused “being held accountable for being a lying asshole on the internet” and “being kicked off a private service for clearly violating its terms of service” with “censorship,” and Fox is more than happy to muddy the water further:

“GOP activists and lobbyists interviewed by FOX Business concede legislation that would extend net neutrality rules to Big Tech is a long shot given the current makeup of Congress. Still, they believe they can start a debate on the matter that could focus the public’s attention on what they believe is the tech industry’s stifling of conservative voices.”

Let’s be clear: the GOP has made “big tech” public enemy number one not because they genuinely care about corporate power or monopolization, but because companies like Twitter finally started more seriously policing hate speech and political disinformation after the country almost imploded. At the same time, the GOP is literally incapable of even acknowledging that “big telecom” (1) exists, or (2) is a problem. That’s in part thanks to telecom lobbyists, who’ve been beating that particular drum for years as they attempt to grab a broader share of online video advertising by lobbying for a lopsided policy environment.

The GOP position here is about money and political power, and all else is performative bullshit.

If you really want to crack down on monopolies, let’s have that conversation and apply it to all industries, not just the one you’re currently trying to pressure for political reasons. Let’s talk about shoring up antitrust, and perhaps not rubber stamping every job and competition killing megamerger that comes down the road. Let’s talk about campaign finance reform, so giants like AT&T (or Facebook and Google) aren’t literally writing state and federal law. This is not, I can assure you, a conversation the Trump-obsessed GOP actually wants to have, despite the occasional policy wonk claim to the contrary.

Regardless, as the conversation heats back up about net neutrality, you can expect a lot of dodgy op-eds parroting this intentional conflation. Because who wants to have an honest, good faith discussion about US tech policy reform, when you can instead try to confuse the public into supporting your bad faith victimization complex?

Dumb New GOP Talking Point: If You Restore Net Neutrality, You HAVE To Kill Section 230. Just Because!

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Orrin Hatch, Who Once Wanted To Destroy The Computers Of Anyone Who Infringed On Copyrights, Now Lies About Section 230
Snippet Taxes Not Only Violate The Berne Convention, But Also Betray The Deepest Roots Of Newspaper Culture
Latest Anti-Accountability Move By Cops Involves Playing Music While Being Recorded In Hopes Of Triggering Copyright Takedowns

The replacement of the Trump Administration by the Biden Administration will bring changes to countless areas of American life, including the legal sector. Here are a few practice areas that we at Lateral Link expect to heat up over the next few years. (Thanks to my colleague Gloria Sandrino, who previously shared her thoughts on this topic with Law360, for her help in putting this list together.)

1. White-collar, investigations, and enforcement work. White-collar prosecutions fell to a record low under President Donald Trump. Over the past two years, I’ve spoken to numerous white-collar and investigations lawyers who have had to turn to civil and commercial litigation to keep themselves busy. Law firm hiring out of government also slowed significantly; with firms struggling to keep their current white-collar lawyers busy, their appetite for former prosecutors dropped significantly.

Many industry observers expect this to change under the Biden Administration. We’ve been meeting with firms right now to discuss their talent needs for the year, and many of them expect a significant increase in SEC, DOJ, and congressional investigations. Widely reported fraud related to the Paycheck Protection Program and other pandemic relief efforts is already starting to generate work, and with the change to a Democratic administration, also look for an increase in traditional white-collar work, such as Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations and prosecutions.

2. Banking and financial regulation. Related to the anticipated uptick in white-collar expect, expect an increase in banking and financial regulatory work as well. In particular, look for the new administration to reinvigorate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — and create work for lawyers and law firms that specialize in consumer finance regulatory matters.

3. Environmental. Even though he has been in office for just a few weeks, President Biden has already made clear that protecting the environment will be a priority for his administration, with an especially strong focus on addressing the climate change crisis. According to this overview from Hogan Lovells, look for the Biden Administration to “seek to undo many of the deregulatory actions of the Trump administration… [and] to strengthen environmental protections by adopting new standards, revising existing standards, and increasing enforcement.” The upshot: more work for environmental lawyers, especially those who advise companies trying to keep up with the new standards and to respond to investigations and enforcement actions.

4. Labor and employment. As noted in this analysis by Littler Mendelson, the close divide in the House of Representatives will limit President Biden’s ability to enact much of his agenda. But we can still expect significant changes, including changes that can be made through administrative action.

If it’s passed by Congress, President Biden’s proposed COVID-19 stimulus plan includes a number of L&E-related provisions, including extension of unemployment insurance benefits, renewal of emergency paid sick and family medical leave mandates from prior coronavirus relief packages, authorization of OSHA to develop a national COVID-19 protection standard, and an increase in the minimum wage to $15 nationwide. Companies will need legal help to respond to any number of these changes.

5. Private equity and venture capital. On the transactional side, private equity and venture capital should continue to be active areas, but with a shift in emphasis to focus on the healthcare and environmental sectors. Investment in the healthcare and life sciences space should remain robust, as the nation continues to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its after effects, and investment in the environmental space could see a boost from President Biden’s plan to invest $2 trillion in clean energy and sustainable infrastructure, which would be a boon for the cleantech startup ecosystem. This will also generate lots of work for project finance lawyers, especially those who focus on cleantech and renewable energy.

These are just some of the sectors that could see significant growth over the next few years. Others include state attorneys general, antitrust, and healthcare practices. A change in administration often means changes in the law, and changes in the law are good news for lawyers and law firms.

If you’re thinking about what you can do with your career to take advantage of these developments, please feel free to reach out to me or any of my colleagues to explore your options. This is an exciting time — not just for the country, but for lawyers and the legal profession — and you don’t want to miss out on any opportunities

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Here at Lateral Link, we also have some exciting news of our own for the new year: promotions.

“I am pleased to announce a few promotions for 2021,” said Michael Allen, our founder and CEO. “And as several of these colleagues are approaching fifteen years with Lateral Link, I am grateful and proud to work alongside them in what we can all say has been a rewarding career.”

MANAGING PRINCIPALS

Ryan Belville (Vanderbilt University School Of Law, J.D., 2002), now in his 14th year at Lateral Link, will remain Managing Principal. Based in New York, Ryan manages our East Coast offices and sits on the Executive Committee. He specializes in moving high-profile partners and groups into positions with elite law firms throughout the United States.

Scott Hodes (University of Florida, College of Law, J.D., 2001) is entering his 12th year with Lateral Link, where he oversees associate, counsel, and partner-level attorney placements at AmLaw 200 firms and top regional firms. Scott is based in the Southeast region and a member of the Executive Committee.

Gloria Noh Cannon (Loyola Law School, J.D., 1994) has now been with Lateral Link for 12 years. She oversees the California region and focuses on the placement of partners, counsel, and associates at law firms and companies. Prior to her promotion, Gloria was a Principal in our Los Angeles office. She sits on the Executive Committee and serves as our Chief Cultural Officer.

PRINCIPALS

Wendy Boone Jaikaran (Thurgood Marshall School Of Law, J.D., 2005) is now in her sixth year with Lateral Link.  Based in the Houston office, Wendy oversees our associate placements and client services in Texas. Prior to her promotion, Wendy was a Managing Director.

PARTNER AND GROUP PLACEMENTS — TEAM LEADERS

Gloria Sandrino (Harvard Law School, J.D., 1984), is entering her sixth year as a Principal. Gloria will remain and continue to focus exclusively on partner and group placements nationwide. Gloria also sits on the Executive Committee.

Jon Kahn (Georgetown University Law Center, J.D., 1990), is a Principal based in our New York office. After joining Lateral Link in 2019, Jon was promoted to Principal in 2020. Jon will focus on partner and group placements nationwide.

Ryan Belville (Vanderbilt University School Of Law, J.D., 2002), in addition to being Managing Principal of our East Coast offices and sitting on the Executive Committee, will specialize in placing partners and groups nationwide.

Congratulations to all!

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by David Lat, 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.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, David founded and served as managing editor of Above the Law. Prior to launching Above the Law, he worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, 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.

We’ve covered our share of the Conway family as the internal drama spilled over into a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, if not the country. But we’ve mostly avoided the topic of Claudia Conway, the social media influencer whose clashes with her mother — and a bizarre topless image allegation that brought the New Jersey police into the matter — have garnered more than a few headlines. That’s because, despite her voluntary entry to the world of influencing, we’ve more or less taken the stance that she’s 16 and doesn’t need to be dragged into the fights her dad wages against her mom’s old boss, former social media influencer Donald Trump.

But since this is a bit of good news for the Biglaw scion we figured it’s all right to turn the ATL spotlight on her.

On Sunday, Claudia will be appearing on American Idol to audition for a golden ticket as part of the show’s season premiere.

“I know that half the world sees me as a joke because of my parents and whatever bulls—. I’m just a 16-year-old with passions, and you know, trying to figure out the future. This is a really good opportunity. A really f—ing cool opportunity that I went with immediately, because if “American Idol” reaches out to you, you don’t say no,” she said.

While we’re all excited for Claudia, we have a personal stake in this too. Hopefully, the broadcast will feature a cameo from the high-stakes litigator in the inevitable soft-ball hype video before her performance.

Get excited, everyone!

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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.

“What good is first class if my brothers can’t sit? / That’s my next mission, that’s why I can’t quit / Just like LeBron, get my brothers more chips.” — J. Cole

This week, I had the opportunity to host a Clubhouse room with Chevazz Brown, TSU Thurgood Marshall School of Law alum, Jackson Walker partner, and DiversePro founder.

It’s been fantastic witnessing the number of attorneys joining Clubhouse every week. Meanwhile, some of us Texas attorneys are still struggling with Zoom. In any case, I’m prepared to move forward.

Several years ago, Brown noticed there was a dynamic market for connecting people in underrepresented, diverse, and military communities to lawyers from their respective communities who can understand and relate to them.

Three weeks ago, Brown launched DiversePro: a new, online community-focused directory that helps individual and business clients find lawyers with specific cultural, linguistic, and experiential competencies. DiversePro features 100,000+ lawyers around the U.S. in 67 practice areas and 270 specialties, including, specifically: women lawyers, lawyers of color, LGBTQ+ lawyers, lawyers with disabilities, and lawyers who are military veterans and active duty. With this community tool, clients can choose from a wide selection of lawyers with diverse cultures, languages, and life experiences whose unique perspectives and skills can enhance legal services and improve outcomes.

During our Clubhouse chat, it became quite evident how much Brown cares about this market and how much time, capital, and sweat equity he has invested in this platform. I believe Brown has discovered a strong product-market fit for his community-focused directory. And I hope after learning a bit more about DiversePro, you will create or claim your profile!

Without further ado, here is a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation:

Renwei Chung (RC): I enjoyed our Clubhouse chat and noticed that most the room was filled by your network. Why did you join Clubhouse and what are your thoughts on how networking affects one’s career success?

Chevazz Brown (CB): A colleague learned of DiversePro and recommended Clubhouse as a way for me to share it with others. She invited me to join. Glad I did! It’s a great platform to learn from people outside your usual circles.

As for networking, if done right, it can positively affect one’s career. For me, my approach simply has been to make friends genuinely and without agenda. I’m enriched by those friendships, and those relationships have helped make my professional life meaningful.

RC: You mentioned a number of affinity groups during our conversation. Are there any particular programs that influenced you?

CB: I’m influenced by all of the great programming presented by those groups. But I’m most influenced by the leadership of those groups. In Houston, we formed the Coalition of Houston Diverse Bar Associations, consisting of:

• Asian American Bar Association of Houston
• Hispanic Bar Association of Houston
• Houston Lawyers Association
• Korean American Bar Association of Texas
• Mexican American Bar Association of Houston
• Middle Eastern Bar Association of Texas
• South Asian Bar Association of Houston

The Coalition amplifies our collective voice and the great work each group is doing individually to advance their community and diversity.

One significant initiative is to help bring greater diversity to our judiciary, particularly at the federal level in Houston — the most diverse metropolitan region in America. Our judiciary is most effective in satisfying the legal needs of the community when it reflects the community it serves.

RC: Why did you launch DiversePro?

CB: I saw a problem: Consumers in underrepresented and diverse communities lack dedicated tools and resources to efficiently find cultural, linguistic, and experiential competence that they want and need in lawyers.

So I created a community tool: an online lawyer directory that helps those communities, along with the military and business communities, find lawyers who truly get them or their customers because of a shared or specific culture, language, or life experience. Featured are women lawyers, lawyers of color, LGBTQ+ lawyers, lawyers with disabilities, and lawyers who are veterans or active duty military.

RC: What type of research did you do, what surprised you, and what does success look like for DiversePro this year?

CB: I first researched how to start a business and what pitfalls to avoid. I then did research to validate the idea, consisting of market and platform validation. Very interesting. I learned:

• Technology has changed legal consumer behavior
• Legal consumers today are unpredictable, informed, connected, and picky
• They prefer self-help and research before contacting a lawyer
• 42% go online to research how to solve the legal issues themselves
• Of those who go online for self-help, over half also are researching lawyers online
• Overall, 31% of legal consumers research lawyers online
• There is significant room and demand for a platform like DiversePro
• Legal consumers view cultural, linguistic, and experiential competence as an enhancer

DiversePro’s first year will be a success if people are using the platform. In my analytic logs, I hope to see users conducting searches (e.g., immigration and Korean), using the “Message” or “Phone” feature (to contact lawyers), and using the “Share” feature (to share a lawyer’s profile with someone).

I also hope to see featured lawyers across the U.S. coming to DiversePro in droves to CLAIM OR CREATE their profile and sharing with the world what makes them and their community special.

I also hope to secure strategic partnerships with legal departments, like Coca-Cola, who may benefit from DiversePro as one of the many ways it finds diverse outside counsel talent in furtherance of its awesome diversity goals.

I want the success or failure of DiversePro to be tied directly to the success or failure of the communities it was designed to help. If I can do that, DiversePro will be a smashing success.

RC: What have you learned about yourself throughout the entrepreneur journey and during this COVID-19 era?

CB: I learned (or was reminded) of a couple things. First, I’m fortunate. I’m fortunate to be healthy and gainfully employed. So many folks are hurting right now. My heart goes out to them.

Second, I’ve got what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur –- the grit, the creativity, the problem-solving skills, the passion, and the support of friends and family.

RC: What made you want to initially enter the legal profession?

CB: Initially, tbh, Bobby Donnell -– the main character on the hit TV show The Practice. Loved him. His life as a trial lawyer piqued my interest. But, of course, I then did my research and got encouragement from a friend’s dad who was a lawyer in the Army JAG Corp. I sensed that the legal profession could open so many doors. I was sold. And I was right.

RC: What advice do you have for others who want to become partners at their respective law firms?

CB: Believe you can. Produce high-quality work product and exercise good judgment and work ethic. Do what is right. Be responsive and sensitive to the demands of your internal and external clients. Be proactive and creative in adding value to your firm. Network, i.e., make friends. Pursue leadership. And be nice.

RC: We covered Coca-Cola’s GC Bradley Grayton’s letter establishing new outside counsel guidelines for its U.S.-based firms. What are your thoughts on this?

CB: Love it. Kudos to Mr. Grayton and Coca-Cola for demonstrating leadership, resolve, and character. I hope it inspires other legal consumers to take similar steps to help move the needle.

There is an economic solution to lack of diversity and lack of professional equality in our profession. What Coca-Cola, DiversePro, and others are doing advances the economic solution.

RC: We touched a bit about the importance of mental health care in the legal industry. Can you share your thoughts about this with our audience?

CB: It’s difficult sometimes to accept that mental health applies to you. It applies to everyone. Our profession is hard. And it can take a toll. Be mindful of the need for balance, meaningful breaks, and professional help or help generally. I regret not being mindful of those things earlier in my career.

Take care of yourselves.

RC: Thank you for your time today, is there anything else you would like to share with the ATL audience?

CB: Thanks for reading. Please share DiversePro with your family, friends, and networks. And if you are a woman lawyer, lawyer of color, LGBTQ+ lawyer, lawyer with a disability, or lawyer who is a veteran or active duty military — please CLAIM OR CREATE your profile on DiversePro today.

Lastly, feel free to learn more on:

On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, I would like to thank Chevazz Brown for taking the time to share his story with our audience. We look forward to following his successes and wish him continued achievements in his career.

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Where were you when the masses combined forces online to “meme” hedge funds out of billions of dollars? If you’ve been remotely tuned into the cultural conversation the past few weeks, you’re aware that Reddit drove the price of GameStop shares halfway to the moon. If you somehow don’t know what I’m talking about, grab your popcorn and read one of the many, many explainers available online. Once you’re caught up, let’s discuss what GameStop could portend for the coming years in the legal system.

Like A Horde of Locusts With Brokerage Accounts

I see the GameStop story as primarily one about what happens when we combine broadening public access to a service with unexpectedly effective coordination of the public’s attention. The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1792, but it wasn’t until internet access became ubiquitous in the mid-90s that everyday Americans started to have the ability to meaningfully engage in the stock market. While early pioneers such as E*TRADE and TD Ameritrade are still around, they remained largely desktop-based platforms.

At the epicenter of the GameStop mania is a company called Robinhood. Robinhood is designed to be a visually appealing, phone-based experience, incorporating ease-of-use for newbies and robust analytics for the wonkier set. Rather than charging for trades like most other brokers, it lets users trade stocks and options without any fees, instead following the Facebook model of monetizing users’ data. The formula is a hit. As the pandemic kept young adults home, leaving them with ample free time and disposable income, Robinhood experienced massive userbase growth. Stock trading had become available to the masses on an entirely new scale.

What no one expected to happen was for those millions of new investors to all start working together. The stock market generally works on the assumption that its participants are “rational actors” making independent decisions. But GameStop has shown us how malleable that decision-making process can be. A few trusted names on an influential subreddit posted a strong argument that GameStop was ripe for a short squeeze. The newly empowered Robinhood investors bought that analysis, and then bought the stock itself en masse. They materially moved the market, hedge funds took billions in losses, and the retail investors celebrated their new riches.

But that was not the end of the story. As I write this piece, GameStop’s stock price is predictably coming back down to earth, and many of the retail investors who jumped in on the upward spike are now facing significant losses. Robinhood is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly preventing users from continuing to drive GameStop’s share price higher. Even with millions of new players, the basic game of the stock market remains unchanged. Some investors win and some lose. What’s fundamentally changed, however, is the number of everyday people involved, and the recognition of the massive power those folks can have if they work together.

What It Means For Us

I and many others have written about the unconscionable difficulty many individuals have with getting access to legal representation, or even basic justice. Lawyers are expensive, and many people can’t scrape together the funds for an hour of legal consultation, much less a retainer for full representation of their rights. This has been a long-standing, endemic problem in our industry, and it’s one we’re only just now starting to make concerted efforts to address. Some states, including Arizona and Utah, have begun experimenting with alternative forms of legal representation designed to get more innovation and legal services into the system, in hopes of creating new, more affordable models of legal assistance.

Although increasing access to the legal system is a good thing, we need to plan for the unexpected ways those everyday people can spontaneously coordinate their actions and place unimaginable stress on our systems. Specifically, what happens when the Robinhood of legal services comes along, and filing a lawsuit becomes a trivial task that can be accomplished during a bathroom break? Because that app may already be here.

The Horde Hits The Courthouse

Imagine that an influential Redditor posts an argument that ABC Corp. has caused millions of individuals some tiny degree of legally compensable harm. In the old days, getting that harm addressed would have required a team of class-action attorneys to gamble their time and resources on a single large lawsuit, which ABC Corp. could have defended with its own team of lawyers and eventually settled. But say the Redditor who posts their analysis also posts a link to the DoNotPay app, which I’ve profiled previously, and notes how simple it can be to file a small claims lawsuit against ABC Corp. if you just pull your local court’s forms off the app. The DoNotPay concept itself is groundbreaking, so much so that famed Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel jumped on board. But what happens when, instead of one unwieldly class-action case in a single court, hundreds of thousands of small claims cases can be filed in a few days across the nation against a single defendant?

At first glance, one could argue this would be a David-and-Goliath moment, another opportunity for the traditionally powerless to flex their collective muscle. And it may well be for people who’ve suffered genuine harm that would previously go without redress. But the answer may not be that simple –– particularly if an unscrupulous or misguided Redditor targets a business with a meritless theory or claim. Many of our lower court systems are already taxed to their limits and couldn’t handle thousands of new cases flooding in over a week or two. Many defendants, for that matter, would be bankrupted just trying to review and answer the cases filed against them, much less substantively litigate them. But those costs are only huge for the institutional actors. The retail-level litigant gets to join in the fun of taking down an internet villain for the low cost of a small claims filing fee and process server.

Whether it’s stock trading or advocating for one’s legal rights, increasing access for the everyday user is going to be an overall gain for society. The internet’s fundamental strengths are its ability to facilitate the exchange of ideas, help people do things they couldn’t previously do, and coordinate efforts in new ways. If you’ve got a great idea for a project, you can pitch it and get funding on Kickstarter. If you want to support a worthy cause, you can launch a GoFundMe page. Individuals have incredible power when they work together toward common goals, and the internet makes that easier than it’s ever been in human history.

What we need to prepare for as an industry is when that massive strength comes to bear on us or is used in unexpected ways.

The experiments in increasing public access to the legal system should without question continue and be vigorously pursued. There is little doubt much good will come from it. But post-GameStop, we must stop to think through the unintended uses of that newfound power to make sure we account for it in a way that is a benefit to all of society and fulfills the objectives of regulatory reform.

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James Goodnow is the CEO and managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. At age 36, he became the youngest known chief executive of a large law firm in the U.S. He holds his JD from Harvard Law School and dual business management certificates from MIT. He’s currently attending the Cambridge University Judge Business School (U.K.), where he’s working toward a master’s degree in entrepreneurship. James is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created and run a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

Elon Musk is famously prickly when regulatory authorities have the temerity to tell him what he can and can’t do, and isn’t shy about making his unhappiness quite clear. So we’re sure, in the wake of this fiery little hiccup, he’ll be equally blunt and forthright in the face of authoritarian impertinence towards his towering and unquestionable genius, yes?

We’ve made it to Friday, so it’s time to take stock of where we are. With an impeachment trial and the wholesale restaffing of the Department of Justice, it’s pretty clear what quote lords over a week of fast-paced legal news.

I’m here live, I’m not a cat.

It looks like the phenomenon of lawyers who are definitely not cats has spread to Florida. A quick perusal of the attorney profiles at Losey PLLC turned up a new lawyer for the firm.

OK, I’m curious. I hope that’s not an instinct that might get one into trouble….

I.M. is a cat is a human who does human work and advises human companies and human investors in early stage, venture capital, private equity, and M&A (meow and agitate) transactions. He also serves as day-to-day corporate counsel on a variety of governance and other matters, having worked with many companies throughout the U.S. and across a wide range of industries, with a focus on fisheries, aquaculture, and controlled substances (commonly known as “cat nip”).

Sounds legit. Are there puns? You bet there are puns:

He graduated summa purr laude from the University of Nowhere’s Kitten College of Law, and served as the editor of the Paw Review, receiving accolades for his seminal work Tort Consequences of Clawing and Scratching, 60 Kit. P. Rev. 1184 (2008).

Nice. Check out the whole profile for some more tidbits, including I.M.’s favorite football teams… you’ll never guess.

Good of Losey PLLC to have a sense of humor and take some time out of their busy days to do some kitten around.

Earlier: Lawyer Tells Judge ‘I’m Not A Cat’ In The Best Zoom Court Mishap Yet

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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.