Category: News Feeds

Everyone has come to the conclusion that they can’t start on the regular date, which is the middle of May. There’s a lot of concern about having people travel to summer programs and get on planes. There’s a general feeling that people don’t want to spread the virus from city to city.

Everyone is waiting for someone to lead it off. That’s true all the time, but really more now.

— Peter Zeughauser, a legal strategist, commenting on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on this year’s summer associate programs. He expects that many law firms will announce the final decisions on their summer programs — whether it will be delayed, held virtually, or held at all — sometime this week.

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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.

Getting paid is the bane of most lawyers’ existence, but clients have good reasons to stay on the ball too. Joe chats with Aaron Pierce, GM of CounselLink, about why clients benefit from staying on top of the billing process. In a nutshell, with CounselLink, clients generate a wealth of knowledge from their billing data — efficiencies revealed, new payment models considered, and, yes, the relationship with outside counsel strengthened.

Last week, Gilead Sciences made significant adjustments to the Phase III trials of its drug remdesivir in hospitalized patients with Covid-19, leading to some speculation that the company may have lowered its expectations for the drug. Two investigators in the trials weighed in on what the changes could mean, as well as some of the challenges they have encountered in enrolling patients in the trial.

Foster City, California-based Gilead launched the two randomized, but non-blinded trials – comparing remdesivir and standard treatment with standard treatment alone – last month. One was a 400-patient study in severe disease that measured the proportion of patients with normalization of fever and oxygen saturation over two weeks. The other was a 600-patient trial in moderate disease measuring the proportion of patients discharged from the hospital in the same time frame.

But on April 6, the company increased the enrollment targets to 2,400 patients for the severe-disease study and 1,600 for the moderate-disease study. In addition, it changed the primary endpoints to measure patients’ odds for clinical improvement after 14 and 11 days on a seven-point scale that ranges from the patient dying to being well enough not to require hospitalization.

A Gilead spokesperson wrote in an email that the enrollment targets were adjusted to increase access to remdesivir and provide additional data, but did not address the question of why the endpoints were changed except to say that the change was unrelated to the enrollment target increase.

“The way I interpreted that is that they wanted to provide access to remdesivir while they were analyzing the data from the first part of the study,” said Dr. Debra Poutsiaka, an infectious disease physician and lead investigator of the study for Tufts University in Boston, in a phone interview, referring to the enrollment increase. “That’s how it was conveyed to us.”

In a note to investors, RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams gave some potential reasons for why the endpoints were changed.

“We believe the changes improve alignment to the latest understanding of COVID-19’s course and should maximize sensitivity to detect any potential treatment effect, though they also imply that – perhaps based on data the company may be observing from ongoing experience with the drug – the magnitude of benefit, if any, is likely to be modest,” Abrahams wrote. He added that it would align with the view that like other drugs in development for COVID-19, remdesivir is more likely to have incremental benefit rather than being a panacea.

But Dr. Prashant Malhotra, lead investigator of the studies for New York City-area health system Northwell Health, said in a phone interview that the new endpoints still reflect the information sought for the ones that were previously used, with measures encompassing the spectrum of the patient dying to being well enough for discharge, along with some based on “statistical finesse.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into the change,” Malhotra said.

Despite the changes, Abrahams wrote that data from the Gilead trials is still anticipated in May.

But while it’s unclear whether it would affect the timing of trial data, both interviewed investigators said enrollment in the moderate-disease trial has been slower at their centers than that in the severe-disease trial, for several reasons.

The Gilead spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about study enrollment. Neither investigator had the current enrollment number; Poutsiaka said the last figure she saw showed the moderate-disease study was less than one-third enrolled, but that was “weeks ago.”

Poutsiaka said that it appears many patients with moderate disease are simply staying home rather than going to the hospital – hospitalization is a requirement for taking part, and the drug is administered intravenously – even if they fit the study’s criteria for enrollment. The drug is intravenous, and hospitalization is required for trial participation.

“I think that the people who come into the hospital are by definition sicker, and that’s why we’re seeing more that would qualify as severe disease in the Gilead trials,” she said.

In New York, Malhotra said, the issue is that because of the extraordinary pressure the disease is exerting on hospitals – including being asked to increase capacity by 50% – some patients who would ordinarily be admitted for observation are instead being discharged or transitioned to home observation, thereby disqualifying them for enrollment into the trials.

As of Tuesday morning, New York City, a major epicenter of the pandemic, had 106,763 cases and 7,349 deaths, with the U.S. total far surpassing half a million.

But another factor slowing enrollment in the moderate-disease trial and even the severe-disease trial, Malhotra said, is that thanks to the publicity around the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, patients who are admitted to the hospital are frequently put on those drugs and thus rendered ineligible for the remdesivir trials. Both studies’ exclusion criteria include participation in other clinical trials for Covid-19 treatments and “concurrent treatment with other agents with actual or possible direct acting antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2” less than 24 hours before remdesivir dosing. Malhotra explained that patients in the remdesivir studies must have received a positive diagnosis no more than four days prior to randomization, and together with the need to be off the other drugs thus shortens the window for possible enrollment.

“It’s anecdotal, but I do think it plays a role,” Malhotra said, adding that he had heard similar accounts from investigators at other centers.

Consenting patients has also been a challenge due to the need to avoid direct contact with them and concerns that the traditional paper forms could act as fomites that could spread the virus. Poutsiaka said Tufts has adopted a completely remote process involving the investigator, an impartial witness, the patient and any family members and friends getting on the phone to coordinate consent, though the logistics of a phone call with four or five people are the “most difficult part” of the study. Northwell has adopted workarounds like calling patients’ legal representatives.

Photo: Ulrich Perrey, Pool/AFP, via Getty Images

It’s pretty clear the economic impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic is pretty bad. Biglaw’s been reeling — instituting salary cuts, reductions in partner draws, furloughs, and even layoffs to maintain their cash flow to weather the coronavirus storm. But beyond the prudent financial decisions most in Biglaw are willing to admit to, there are whispers and rumors that more is going on.

That’s right, it looks like stealth layoffs are coming back to Biglaw. Made popular during the 2009 recession, firms often feel it is a way to save face and cut costs at the same time. But while what we’re hearing is still in the rumor stage, Above the Law thought it best to give everyone a refresher on the insidious nature of stealth layoffs to help you spot it when it happens at your firm.

What are stealth layoffs:

Due to their, well, stealthy nature, they’re a little hard to define. But basically it’s when a firm wants to cut headcount but doesn’t want blowback from announcing actual layoffs. So, they’ll give the associates X number of months/weeks to find a new job and the firm may even couch the reductions in performance review terms, making those let go doubt their lawyering skills.

When are they used:

Well, pretty much all the time. But they’re the most prevalent during economic downturns. Rather than signal some perceived weakness, a firm tries to cut overhead without making a splash.

Why are they awful:

It’s not us, it’s you. That’s the message of the stealth layoff. Often the attorneys who find themselves suddenly out of work have not previously had a negative performance review. Despite that history, the firm decided they were the chaff that needed to be cut, never mind that in robust economic times they’d continue to receive good performance reviews.

Are firms using stealth layoffs now:

If the ATL tips line is anything to go by, hell yes. Some firms, in assuring associates that purely economic layoffs were not forthcoming, seemed to signal that headcount reductions in guise of performance review were on the table.

But the challenge is confirming exactly where they’re happening. The firm’s go to media response is that there are no economic-based layoffs (because they believe the line that they’re only letting go of associates because of performance issues). And by refusing to acknowledge to the fired attorneys that economics beyond their control are fueling the employment decision, they’re creating a sense of shame the firms depend on to keep news of their stealth layoffs from circulating. No one wants to tell the world they were fired for being a crappy attorney and that’s what firms are depending on when they feed that fiction.

So, please keep Above the Law in mind when attorneys are suddenly let go and the firm insists there’ve been no layoffs. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477). Even if we are unable to verify the move, we are listening.

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.

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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).

Hey, Counselor No Pants, cut that out! No one on earth wants to see you at a video conference in your jammies, least of all Judge Dennis Bailey of the Broward County Circuit Court.

“One comment that needs sharing and that is the judges would appreciate it if the lawyers and their clients keep in mind these Zoom hearings are just that: hearings. They are not casual phone conversations,” His Honor wrote in a letter posted to the Weston Bar Association’s website. “It is remarkable how many ATTORNEYS appear inappropriately on camera.”

“ATTORNEYS?” Do tell!

“We’ve seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in bedrooms with the master bed in the background, etc,” he continued. “One male lawyer appeared shirtless and one female attorney appeared still in bed, still under the covers.”

So many questions! Were Mr. Sunsout Gunsout and Ms. Florence Nightgown at the same hearing? Would it have been preferable for the female attorney to get out from under the covers? If the Court objects to “ill-grooming” in April, exactly what does it expect will happen in May when we’ve all been cruelly separated from barbers and hair salons for two straight months?

And where besides the bedroom are parents of small children supposed to lock themselves for a few seconds of peace and privacy during a hearing? Not outside by the pool, apparently!

“And putting on a beach cover-up won’t cover up you’re poolside in a bathing suit,” Judge Bailey warned. “So, please, if you don’t mind, let’s treat court hearings as court hearings, whether Zooming or not.”

“I would want [attorneys] dressed showing some respect for their recognition that this is a court hearing,” the man who shows up for work every day of the year in a shapeless black smock told the Miami Herald.

In conclusion, no muumuus, no stubble, no PJs, no visible bedroom furniture, and NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO SERVICE.

A Letter from the Honorable Dennis Bailey [Weston Bar Association]
Broward judge tells lawyers to get out of bed and wear a shirt for Zoom hearings [Miami Herald]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

While Utah is on track to become the first state to shift to “diploma privilege plus” because of the logistical hurdles presented by the COVID-19 crisis with other jurisdictions openly considering following their lead, it was inevitable that we’d hear from the NCBE — the folks with the biggest vested interest in maintaining the bar exam. The organization that’s dominated the bar exam game since the 1930s released a report last week entitled “Bar Admissions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evaluating Options for the Class of 2020,” and surprising no one, they take a dim view of anything that impacts their monopoly alternative licensing paths.

After offering the requisite lip-service to the plight of students who will enter the workforce without having an opportunity to take an exam and then be forced to leave their jobs  to prepare for a future test — which could be long off due to space restrictions — the NCBE proceeds to violently attack a bundle of straw they’ve heaped together.

Why, they muse, some diploma privilege proposals are silent on character and fitness review! Probably because these proposals all assume that existing character and fitness procedures remain unchanged… and have nothing to do with the NCBE anyway. How can attorneys move to a new state without the UBE!? Attorneys managed to survive without the UBE for the first couple centuries of American legal practice, so they’d probably find a way to survive afterward.

As those charged with the important responsibility of regulating the legal profession understand, public protection remains a priority even in this time of crisis. Diploma privilege in effect removes the public protection function vested in the courts and places it with the law schools, but with no independent, vetted, objective, or consistent final check on whether graduates are in fact competent to provide legal services. The public, and certainly legal employers, rely on passage of the bar examination as a reliable indicator of whether graduates are ready to begin practice.

No, it doesn’t. It removes the subject-matter competency function of the NCBE and local bar examiners and places it with the law schools. The courts would still evaluate character and fitness and, in many models of diploma privilege, the outcome of the applicant’s supervised practice period as part of executing the public protection function. And while subject matter competency plays an important role in public protection, the bar exam has always been a clunky way of ensuring it. Corporate lawyers cramming Family Law minutiae into their heads for a summer and promptly dumping it? Trusts & Estates lawyers showing their mastery of search and seizure caselaw? Law schools may fail to turn out “practice-ready” attorneys — because it’s impossible to do through subject matter instruction alone — but the bar exam does no better on that score.

In a thrilling victory for the power of tautology, the NCBE contends that the ABA’s accreditation process could never successfully replace the bar exam because the ABA wouldn’t be able to use bar exam results to make accreditation decisions. Of course!

Admittedly, law school accreditation would have to markedly change if the bar exam were replaced in the long-term. Coincidentally, this is what Wisconsin has already done — setting high, core competency standards for UW and Marquette and then allowing graduates diploma privilege admission. In fact, one could plausibly argue that the reason we have diploma mill schools out there ripping off students is because regulators have largely abandoned (or at least been sidelined) rigorous law school accreditation because they shrug and say, “we’ll let the bar exam sort it out” after students are $100K+ in debt. But for the bar exam’s insistence that it’s better than law school at creating lawyers, we’d have a better law school regime.

While this is not the place to respond to the unfounded and unsubstantiated criticisms that some commentators are directing at the bar exam….

I feel seen. Not to give the NCBE a little practice tip, but when you throw in adjectives like that it only risks flagging that you think the coming argument is too weak to stand on its merits. There’s a time and a place for adjectives and adverbs in adding flair, but when they just sit like puds — redundant ones at that — they’re better skipped.

In this case, they were unconsciously correct — the argument was weak. And more than a little racist and sexist.

Regarding disproportionate impact, it is true that differences in average performance on the bar exam tend to be observed across racial/ethnic groups. However, the same or greater differences in average performance across racial/ethnic groups also tend to be observed in performance in law school (law school GPAs), on the LSAT, and in undergraduate GPAs…. To say that the bar exam disadvantages particular racial/ethnic groups ignores the bigger picture of educational pipeline-related differences in performance that are observed in law school and prior to law school. These differences are not eliminated, nor are they exacerbated, by the bar exam.

Yes, academic achievement differentials have a great deal to do with disparities further up the pipeline. Throwing students under the bus in first grade compounds it and it’s difficult if not impossible for students to catch up by throwing more resources into higher education. But… what does this have to do with the outlined criticism?

The bar exam is functionally distinct from the other examples. Undergraduate GPAs, the LSAT, and law school grades are measures of relative achievement that exist because there’s some actionable value to the distinction — someone goes to Yale and someone doesn’t. But there is no Bendini, Lambert & Locke out there only hiring the person with the best bar score. The bar is a minimum competency test. The pool of applicants is roughly smooth by this measure. These are all law school graduates and even if there are lingering advantages and disadvantages that could be charted on a letter grade scale (an if that should not be given the sort of blanket treatment shown in this report) it doesn’t matter in a test when clearing the, pun intended, “bar” here. If there’s a marked difference in result here, it’s either the fault of the exam or the fault of predatory schools — which, as described above, exist largely because of the bar exam’s outsized importance to our licensing schemes.

The social responsibility concerns ring so hollow. Earlier in the report, over the span of two paragraphs, the NCBE goes from arguing that supervised practice would grossly discriminate against “first-generation law students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families” to arguing that it’s a perfectly fine solution as long as it ends in a bar exam. It’s almost as if the concern is less about those students than in maintaining the exam. Which, of course, is the whole point to this report.

Oh, and “for the ladies,” apparently you suck at taking multiple choice tests:

Similarly, gender differences in average performance observed on the bar exam are also observed in law school and on the LSAT: men tend to perform better, on average, on multiple-choice exams (like the MBE and the LSAT), and women tend to perform better, on average, on essay exams (like the MEE and MPT portions of the bar exam).

So it’s just too bad the results of multiple choice tests make up the bulk of the bar exam, a fact that a few pages earlier was hailed as the value of the bar exam because law schools and their essay tests lacked “quality and reliability.” Also, you know what the practice of law isn’t? A multiple-choice profession! Reliably testing the competency of a new attorney would require the complex problem-solving and argument crafting skills displayed by essays. But that would be too hard to test, so I guess the women have to suffer. Assuming there’s a value to this distinction they’ve casually tossed out there without citation, which we should not concede.

America isn’t ready right now to permanently move to diploma privilege admission. Sure. However, we’re more than capable of doing so with thoughtful adjustments like those proposed by the “diploma privilege plus” regime and that’s what has the NCBE so concerned that it turned out this screed. They understand that if the diploma privilege experiment manages to work, it casts doubt on the whole logic of the whole bar exam model. Maybe there is a continuing role for a bar exam, but it’s irresponsible at this point to just shrug off an opportunity to critically reconsider the licensing process from the ground up.

Earlier: First State Opts For Emergency Diploma Privilege Plus Admission

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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 world enters an indefinite state of quarantine due to COVID-19, remote work has become the new norm. From Slack messages to Zoom meetings, cloud applications have become the lifeblood of business communication — accelerating their adoption rates like never before. Business leaders have had to think fast to keep operations afloat, and for many, rolling out these new technologies has been the key in doing so. 

But rapidly onboarding new tools at such a monstrous scale has created mass amounts of new data to govern. And governing data, even without remote work vulnerabilities, isn’t easy. The systems we stood up so quickly and the data we’re creating now, we may come to find are insecure and unpreserved in a couple of months. But before that happens, there are plenty of measures you can take to prevent this problem — and we’re here to tell you how.

The current situation 

Lucky for us, we can still operate anytime, anywhere with the use of cloud applications like Slack, Office 365, GSuite, Zoom, and more. We can send a message, share a file, or join a call at the drop of a hat. Yet, every time we perform an action within these applications, we produce data. Even under normal circumstances, enterprise data can accumulate fast. Now, take a mandatory quarantine forcing hundreds of thousands of businesses to work remotely? You can pretty much guarantee data production will skyrocket. 

Not only is our data accumulating rapidly, but it’s also accumulating in a ton of different places. From our chat platforms to our file-sharing platforms, to even our personal devices, our information is scattered, leaving it unorganized and undiscoverable. Put simply, it’s already easy for enterprise information to slip through the cracks, but our current situation makes it even easier. 

So what?

The bottom line is that our world went into crisis mode overnight. As a result, businesses may have missed certain configurations from these newer, non-traditional data sources that are vital to compliance and eDiscovery. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to address any gaps. From future discovery requests to the rising heat of GDPR and CCPA, enterprises need to ensure their data is secure, accessible, and useful now more than ever. There’s no time to slack on due-diligence — the actions enterprises take now, will dictate their ease of data management in the months to come.

Step-by-step: How to establish control over your enterprise data

So how do we stop this runaway train of enterprise data? If you follow the steps below, you’ll be well on your way to securing, organizing, and finding the data you need amongst your newly adopted collaboration tools. Let’s get started:

1. Assemble the right team

The first step in tackling this initiative is assembling the right team. When managing this new surge of enterprise data, you’ll need a fair mix of IT and legal folks to create your “COVID-19 task force.” Recruit team members you know will be responsible owners of your new data sources throughout this time and beyond. These are the people who will act as liaisons between support teams and legal teams, ask the right questions, build processes, and assess the solutions that will make your tech stack enterprise-ready.

2. Outline security policies

To ensure your employees are using their new collaboration tools with security in mind, you’ll want to outline a company security policy. These are simply guidelines on how to use these tools within company security standards. Some guidelines might include how login credentials are shared, how sensitive information like PII is shared, password strength, and setting up two-factor authentication. Some tools are more vulnerable to security threats than others, so making sure employees understand these vulnerabilities is critical. If you already have a security policy outlined — great! As a next step, we recommend hosting a company-wide security training on all of your new tools to mitigate risk and make sure everyone’s on the same page.

3. Get to know user permissions

Different tools have different user permissions, and your new data sources are no exception. Whether you’re an admin, a super user, a member or a guest, each tool has their own take on user titles and the permissions they’re granted. Understanding what each user permission means from the get-go is key to understanding who has access to what. Not only is this important for efficiency’s sake, but it’s also crucial to data loss prevention (DLP), combating security breaches, and is a compliance must-have. When it comes to company-wide collaboration tools, responsible IT teams follow the Principle of Least Privilege, or only giving users the access they need to do their job. This reduces a company’s risk of compromising sensitive data, and is a good rule of thumb when it comes to user permissions.

4. Understand retention settings

Depending on the tool, there will be different default settings for data retention. Retention periods can last anywhere from five minutes to five years, so you’ll want to address this area as soon as possible to ensure it’s aligned with your company’s data retention best practices. With the surge of data being created, it’s important to outline the criteria for data to be preserved, archived, and deleted. Whether retention criteria is based on the age of the data (ex. five years old), the type of data (ex. Microsoft Teams messages), or a mixture of both, make sure it’s being enforced within your new tools to prevent data loss and compliance issues.

5. Understand data dynamics

Cloud collaboration tools have countless unique capabilities, therefore, they have unique data. When you think about everything you can do in Slack for example, there’s a lot to unpack: direct messages, channels, threads, file sharing, emojis, edits and deletes, and so much more. Typically, the more unique tools’ capabilities are, the more complex their dataset is to process and search across. However, by learning the ins and outs of your new tools now, you’ll be able to gauge how hard it is to find the information you need. You may come to find that you need to connect to Slack’s APIs for example, or outsource help for processing and search, but it’s better to find out now than six months down the line. 

6. Set up an eDiscovery plan

The data your company is creating at the moment could be relevant to an eDiscovery request in the coming years or even months. To make sure you’re prepared for what can be a tedious and expensive process, it’s a good idea to begin exploring the eDiscovery options your new collaboration tools offer. Don’t be surprised if a few fall short in the EDRM process, or require extra steps to process all that complex data we talked about previously. Luckily, there are plenty of eDiscovery softwares for new collaboration tools. Whether it’s Slack eDiscovery or Box eDiscovery, we recommend choosing the solution that’s compatible with most of your tech stack. This way, you’ll save time and money, and you’ll feel confident knowing you can collect from your new data sources when the time inevitably comes.

These steps toward enterprise data control may take time, but they’re time well spent. By doubling down on your preservation, security, and eDiscovery efforts now, you’ll feel more in control of your data throughout this tumultuous time, and come out on the other side better than before. 

About Onna

Onna is a data integration platform that centralizes enterprise information from today’s most popular emerging cloud apps. Built with a powerful API infrastructure, we help some of the biggest names in tech secure, access, and search across their information in an easy, streamlined way. Search across multiple apps at once, personalize retention policies, set compliance actions, collaborate in workspaces, export data into the review platform of your choice, and so much more. Once connected to Onna, your data is limitless.

If your organization has recently onboarded new cloud applications, we’re here to help you gain control and access of your data. Download our eDiscovery Guide for Emerging Applications to learn more or go ahead and contact us!

The hits keep coming for Biglaw firms thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, and this time, an Am Law 200 firm has found itself battered and bruised.

Sources tell us that Ballard Spahr, currently ranked at #91 in the Am Law 100, recently announced firmwide salary adjustments in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. We’ve been told the firm is cutting salaries by 10 to 15 percent for all employees, except for those who make less than $75,000 annually (i.e., staff members). Specifically, staff members will see a 10 percent pay cut, while associates will see a 15 percent pay cut. Partners are also bearing some of the brunt here, reducing their draws by 25 percent. In perhaps the worst news of all, we’re told that the firm will not be issuing its annual raises in July.

We reached out to Ballard Spahr several times for comment, but have not received a response. We will update this article if and when we hear back from the firm.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, 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.

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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.

Just like that, another firm bites the dust when it comes to COVID-19 salary cuts.

Sources tell us that Am Law 200 firm Kelley Drye has instituted firmwide salary cuts to ensure its “economic vitality” during the upheaval that’s been caused by the coronavirus crisis. Kelley Drye is the 179th highest grossing law firm in the world, but as we know all too well, high revenue is no match for a pandemic.

Here’s an excerpt from an email (available in full on the following page) that all Kelley Drye employees recently received from James Carr, the firm’s chairman:

The economic impact of the coronavirus crisis is beginning. Our clients are focusing on their business needs first, as is expected, and we are seeing a slowdown in payment of our invoices. As a result, and given the uncertainty around when we might return to our offices and when all businesses will be operating at full capacity, Firm management will take the following steps:

• Equity partners’ draws will be reduced on a proportional basis by as much as 20%, effective April 30;

• There will be an across-the-board, prospective salary reduction of 10% for all other lawyers and employees earning over $100,000, effective May 15, 2020. Please note that no one subject to this reduction will be cut below $100,000 annually; and

• The July 1 administrative staff salary increases will be postponed.

Kelley Drye did not immediately respond to requests for comment. We will update this article if and when we hear back from the firm.

In his memo, Carr notes that these salary cuts come in addition to the firm’s earlier cost-cutting measures, including shortening its summer program, deferring the start date of their incoming first-year associates, and postponing the hiring of non-essential employees. Perhaps most importantly, according to Carr, “We hope to be in the position to revisit and possibly restore salaries to pre-COVID levels at some point in the future, once the crisis abates and our practice returns to its normal rhythm.” On that note, one distraught source said, “They’re never going back.” Ouch.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, 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.

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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.