Category: News Feeds

Today, bitcoins and the like are literally useless for any purpose other than losing money. But what if, five years from, young people begin demonstrating against “injustice and corruption” and begin supporting those causes it deems beneficial? (Wildly speculative, we know.) And let’s say the U.S. government believed there was a military role for shutting that down, and that the military itself did, too? (Farfetched, yes, but go with us.) Well, said military fears, in such a scenario, bitcoins would become quite useful, indeed.

Karen Dunn and Bill Isaacson may work in D.C., but when people think about the blue chip clientele these litigators bring to the table, there’s a bit of a West Coast vibe. The pair boast clients from a wide array of industries, but are perhaps best known for representing Apple in its throwdown with Qualcomm and their recently announced move to Paul Weiss is likely to bring significant business from Oracle and Uber as well.

So it should come as no surprise that the unveiling of this lateral move was packaged with an announcement from firm chair Brad Karp announcing a planned expansion to the Northern California market.

“We have been thinking about entering the Northern California market for a while,” Karp said. “This is an exciting first step in that direction.”

To date, Paul Weiss has focused on its New York and D.C. presences, with an outpost in Wilmington for good measure. Taking the firm to the West Coast will be big news when they eventually put the plan in action.

And one that coincides with the West Coast downsizing of Dunn and Isaacson’s former firm, Boies Schiller. The firm has experienced a number of high-profile departures over the last several months, with many of the moves flowing out of the West Coast offices. This does generally track the message from Boies Schiller’s leadership, which has said that the transition from a firm based around the named partners would see big changes in the footprint of the firm and a revamping of its compensation model. Losing Dunn and Isaacson was probably inevitable in this reorientation process — whether getting out of this area sets up the firm better in the long-run remains to be seen of course.

For now, Paul Weiss is casting its eyes westward and the Bay Area mainstays will soon have a new kid on the block to deal with.

Earlier: Everyone Seems To Be Overreacting To These Boies Schiller Departures

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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.

Earlier this month, Harvard Law announced that thanks to the pandemic’s uncertainties, the elite school was planning to go fully remote for the Fall 2020 semester. During this time, tuition will remain flat at $65,875 for 2020-2021 academic year, and the school will be eliminating the pass/fail grading used during height of the coronavirus outbreak, resuming regular grading. Needless to say, many students are less than pleased with Harvard’s choices.

In fact, during a webinar the school hosted yesterday about how students can have a successful online semester, in response to concerns about inadequate spaces to study due to home environments unsuitable for remote work, a member of the administration reportedly advised students to take out extra loans and “rent office space” to study from. The school, of course, has no plans to lower tuition to accommodate this ridiculous suggestion. Harvard may be one of the best law schools in the country, but telling students who will be graduating with upwards of $200,000 in debt to take out more loans to rent office space so they’ll be able to do work during a pandemic is absurd. How are students taking this COVID-19 studying advice?

They obviously found it “tremendously insensitive and tone deaf,” and in response, they’ve drafted a petition to appeal Harvard Law’s decision to host an online-only semester, in favor of implementing a hybrid semester. We’re told that more than 400 students have signed on to the petition thus far. Check it out, below.

We reached out to Dean John Manning for his thoughts but have yet to hear back.

Best of luck to all Harvard Law students in search of safe spaces to study this fall. Unfortunately, with options like this, it may now cost you even more to do so.

Earlier: Harvard Law School To Hold All Fall 2020 Classes Online Due To Coronavirus

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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.

Well, this is simultaneously unexpected and great. Fresh off an early statement on the murder of George Floyd, Skadden Arps — one of the most prestigious law firms in the country — has made another move in the battle for social justice.

Today, the firm’s managing partner, Eric Friedman, sent an all-employee email announcing that Juneteenth will be observed as a firm holiday.

Skadden is pleased to announce that next Friday (June 19) we will observe Juneteenth as a Firm holiday.  Juneteenth is a national day of celebration memorializing the end of slavery in the United States.  It was in 1865, on June 19^th, that enslaved black people in Texas learned that the Civil War had ended and that they were free, more than two years after the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.

We hope this day will provide an opportunity for us to pause from our daily routines to reflect on issues around racism and its impact on our country.

In the grand scheme of fighting systemic racism in this country, is this a relatively minor step? Yes. Is it an awesome thing? Also, yes.

Celebrating Juneteenth is a good thing. Too many kids grow up never even learning about the holiday. The fictional character of Dre Johnson on Black-ish even said the country acknowledging the day almost feels like “an apology.” I wouldn’t go quite that far (seems like there’s a lot more work to do to atone for slavery), but it does serve as an important reminder that our country is built on a legacy of slavery — and that legacy is part of the daily lives of black people in America.

Listen, Biglaw is noted for being a cutthroat place where the bottom line is *the* most important thing. Taking a step back from legal work to commemorate the day and encouraging all employees to reflect on the legacy of slavery sends a important signal from the top of the firm that this is an important issue. Yes, other firms have tried to celebrate Juneteenth in the past, but to Above the Law’s knowledge, this is the first time a major Biglaw firm has declared the day a holiday.

Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

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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).

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are just the latest manifestation of profound injustice in our society. They have given rise to an urgent conversation about how to address longstanding, systemic inequality in our nation.

Law firms have responded in a forceful manner by donating millions of dollars to support organizations that are battling inequity in the trenches. While we applaud their efforts, we believe that more needs to be done.

Law firms must actively increase their commitment to diversity and inclusion. With COVID-19 threatening the financial health of many law firms and in-house departments, we fear that, as was the case in the last economic downturn, diversity and inclusion initiatives will be the first to go as austerity measures are instituted.

We cannot let that happen.  Equality, the rule of law, and justice are at the core of who we are and the industry that we serve.

We embrace the words of Arthur Ashe: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

Our Commitment

At Lateral Link, we commit to working with our law firm and in-house clients to bring them talented and experienced lawyers of color, women lawyers, and LGBTQ+ lawyers. It is a commitment that we don’t take lightly. Many of us are former practicing lawyers, so we know firsthand the importance of diversity in law firms and in-house departments.

We commit to having difficult conversations with regard to diversity and inclusion, even when it is uncomfortable — especially when it is uncomfortable — and to deal with the issues head-on. For example, we need to know if your lateral partner integration plan takes diversity into account. We need to understand the relationship between your firm’s origination credit and partner compensation system. We need to hear where you may have fallen short on diversity in the past — as well your success stories regarding women and minority partners.

Our commitment to diversity reflects our longstanding commitment to the broader legal community. In 2015, our founder, Michael Allen, established the Lateral Link Scholarship Fund at his alma mater, Harvard Law School. Ten percent of the fees earned from Lateral Link’s placement of HLS alumni go into the fund, which supports scholarships at the Law School for financially disadvantaged students, many of them from diverse backgrounds.

Our Team

In order to help law firms and in-house legal departments recruit the best diverse lawyers, recruiting firms must embrace diversity themselves.

Lateral Link fields one of the most diverse legal recruiting teams in the industry. Almost three-quarters of our recruiters are women, minorities, or LGBTQ+. Women of color hold leadership positions and sit on our Executive Committee. Here are just four of our diverse leaders at Lateral Link (who are black, black and Latina, Asian American, and Asian American and LGBTQ+, respectively):

* Monique Burt Williams, CEO of Cadence Counsel, a Certified Women’s Business Enterprise, specializing in in-house recruiting;

* Gloria Sandrino, Global Chair of Partner and Group Recruiting and member of the Executive Committee;

* Gloria Cannon, Managing Director of the California Legal Recruiting Team and member of the Executive Committee; and

* David Lat, Managing Director, who will receive the Dan Bradley Award, the highest honor of the National LGBT Bar Association, at the 2020 Lavender Law Conference and Career Fair.

The stories of the candidates that we work with are our stories as well.  We bring credibility to our legal recruiting efforts because we understand the often difficult paths of diverse lawyers making a lateral move in the private sector or to an in-house department.

Our Call to Action

If you would like to work with a legal recruiting firm that walks the walk as well as talks the talk on diversity and inclusion, please reach out to us. You can contact Monique Burt Williams for in-house searches, Gloria Sandrino for partner searches, and David Lat for associate searches. We are eager to work with you on recruiting superb, diverse attorneys into your law firm or corporate legal department.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Gloria Sandrino, Global Chair of Partner and Group Recruiting, and David Lat, Managing Director at Lateral Link.

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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.

As many of us are preparing for an impending return to our respective physical offices for the first time in over three months, now seems like an apt time to share my personal focus as I resume the daily routine of navigating the crowded New York transit system and of fitting my own microcosm of life into the greater medley that is the daily hubbub of New York City. That focus is to be exemplary.

This idea did not come out of nowhere. I was not brushing my teeth this morning when all of the sudden a lightbulb went off over my head and I said to myself, “I should focus and strive to be exemplary.” I was inspired.

The first of the inspiration came from a colleague of mine’s feedback. The colleague — who has decades more experience than me and whom I hold in high esteem — referred to me as exemplary after I worked long hours over a holiday weekend to make headway on a discovery project. This acknowledgement admittedly felt great, and I can still hear with crystal clarity the excited delivery of the accolade.

The other recent inspiration came from the exemplary of the exemplary: Thurgood Marshall. I recently watched Chadwick Bosman’s portrayal of the mythical man in 2017’s Marshall. It reminded me of what a privilege it is to be able to practice law, as well as the power that the practice affords. In our profession, we not only can change the course of individual lives, we can change the course of history. Of course, not all of us will have the opportunity to argue seminal cases in the Supreme Court and have our names echoed throughout history, but that is not the point. The point is, regardless of the capacity in which you or I are currently practicing, we are all part of the brilliant legacy of American jurisprudence. We should be aware of that and act accordingly.

And it was that acknowledgement, the happy hurl of the word e-x-e-m-p-l-a-r-y from a colleague in describing my work, that has been ringing in my ears, and a keen understanding of the privileges and responsibilities that come along with our work, that I want to keep in the forefront of my mind as I re-enter my daily routine.

It is very easy to find yourself in a bubble as an attorney, especially as a litigator when a trial is in full swing. But even when the temperature is not all the way up on our work burners, it is still possible to find ourselves in a bubble, pushing other elements of ourselves and our lives to the side to focus on the task at hand.

My challenge to myself, and one worth noting more broadly to all readers here, is to actively not fall into that bubble as I settle into my new work routine. I want to be tuned in to doing my part: wearing a mask, offering a seat to an older passenger, and planning around leaving at peak times to avoid turning the 2 and 3 lines into a can of sardines at 9 a.m. I want to be tuned in to the energy of what is happening right now on the streets because I think it is an important moment in history. I do not want to be the faceless man in a suit too busy staring at his phone, responding to an email now instead of 10 minutes from now, who let history pass before his eyes, or the person who missed the opportunity to offer his seat to another. Let’s be exemplary in our work, and to each other on our way there.

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Timothy M. Lupinek is an attorney at Balestriere Fariello who represents companies and individuals in state, appellate, and administrative courts of Maryland. He focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation with thousands of hours of civil, criminal, and regulatory trial experience. You can reach Timothy at timothy.m.lupinek @balestrierefariello.com.

Down on the Georgia-Alabama border there was an election this week that brought an end to an amazing string of events. Local elections don’t get national attention all that often, but if any race could pique national interest, it would be the one for District Attorney in the Columbus, Georgia, in the shadow of currently Confederate-named Fort Benning.

Daniel Nichanian of The Appeal (sign up to get his newsletter for more local DA election news too) broke down the whole election on Twitter.

The video from Jawga Boi is a pretty straightforward campaign ad — name the candidate, explain a couple of his positions, tell people to vote.

But it does have a car doing donuts in an empty parking lot. This shot that lasts only a few seconds of the video kicked off a whole lot of controversy.

Mark Jones himself was also arrested on felony charges of creating a danger to the public… in an empty parking lot. The ad did not have a permit to film in the lot which is certainly an infraction, but to turn it into a felony took some prosecutorial chutzpah. The government claimed that it would take $306,000 to repair. In other words, it’s very good to be own a powerwasher in Columbus, Georgia because the city is willing to accept ANY quote you give them.

Jones turned himself in pursuant to the arrest warrant.

If this seems like the sort of injustice that fuels a defense attorney’s campaign for DA, you’d be right.

“So [Incumbent Julia] Slater proved the point that I was trying to make all along, which is that they are wasting our time prosecuting frivolous cases, particularly against minorities in Columbus, and that’s true,” Jones told about 75 supporters gathered outside his First Avenue law office. Jones is white, but the other two suspects are black.

“Don’t think for a minute that she didn’t have some sort of knowledge or involvement in this,” he added. “She’s the district attorney, and if she didn’t, what does that say about her, if she didn’t know what’s going on?”

In the three weeks since the video was shot, Jones has kept busy representing the peaceful protesters that were arrested in the area. It was a fitting run to the end for a guy who made his campaign about fighting overcriminalization and unwittingly became a personal example of the office’s overzealousness. But he was facing an incumbent politician while he had a felony charge hanging over his head.

A comfortable win when all said and done.

But the felony charges unfortunately remain and for obvious ethical reasons, even the changing of the DA guard isn’t going to make them go away (Slater’s office — soon to be the Jones office — already recused itself). The underdog victory was quite the climax, hopefully the denouement will prove just as happy.

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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.