Category: News Feeds

Auret was also a former member of parliament for the opposition, MDC where he represented Harare West. He cut his political teeth in the seventies when he opposed the then ruling Rhodesian Front. He stood against the party in elections but lost.

A devout Catholic, Auret was married to Diana for 63 years and has left three sons and a daughter who issued the following statement:

A light that shone so brightly with the humility and gentleness of the Saints he so faithfully followed, has finally dimmed. Our much-loved husband, father, grandfather, uncle and brother has gone forward to light the way for us in the dark journey ahead. While our hearts are torn asunder as we face the devastation of his leaving, we celebrate a life lived with such great compassion, activism, meaning, wisdom and above all – with such great love.
Dad was never just ours. We shared him with the Zimbabwe he so loved and fought all his life for, and ultimately with all those whose lives he touched and raised up through the power of his love.

Michael Theodore Hayes Auret was meant to be a catholic priest until he met our mum, Diana, and everything changed. Catholicism, his heroes, Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis and Father Patrick Galvin were the inspiration for his transition from young white farmer trying to make sense of the Rhodesian Civil War to human rights activist. He began by holding the Rhodesian police accountable for the torture of our farm workers, thereafter joining the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP)to expose the atrocities of the senseless war. He also began to oppose the Rhodesian Front politically by standing unsuccessfully as an opposition MP in Bulawayo.
While on a CCJP trip to Rome to discuss peace efforts with the Pope, he was called up to the Rhodesian army. Knowing he could not fight for the Rhodesians he arranged for us to leave the country as refugees and he led us from Rome, through Switzerland and finally to England.

Returning to Zimbabwe at Independence, he threw himself into rebuilding the country with the church and continued his work with CCJP which led him to the work he participated in, with other great Zimbabweans, in the cataloguing of the massacres in Matabeleland contained in the book “Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace.”
Throughout his life in Zimbabwe, he continued to serve and when constitutional discussions took place he was part of the founding of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and served as its vice-chairperson in the first committee under Morgan Tsvangirai. The NCA went on to defeat Mugabe in the only democratic process the opposition was ever allowed to win, the constitutional referendum, pushing back Mugabe’s constitution in 2000.
In the same year, he stood for the opposition MDC in the 2000 elections and won his seat in Parliament for Harare Central.
After his retirement, he continued his love and service to the Catholic church in Ireland where he settled with our mum and his family. He often dwelled on the fight for Zimbabwe and wrote: “From Liberator to Dictator: An insiders account of Robert Mugabe’s descent into tyranny”.

He was always a gentleman, always loving, compassionate and humble. Married to our mum for 63 years, we are all devastated by his passing, but thank God that he chose to take him home after a long and sometimes painful journey, on this day of such significance.
Diana, Peter, Margaret, Stephen and Michael Auret and all our children

Post published in: Featured

* Michael Cohen, President Trump’s incarcerated former lawyer, has been moved to a Special Housing Unit (“SHU”) after a confrontation with another prisoner. Fans of Orange is the New Black should know what that is. [Fox News]

* The Supreme Court is facing challenges about how to function during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. [New York Times]

* A Brooklyn judge allegedly balked at social distancing guidelines in his courtroom just two weeks before he died from COVID-19. [New York Daily News]

* Actors playing “Walking Dead” zombies at Universal Studios have sued the park claiming that Universal promotes an environment that encourages guests to fight and grope the performers. [Daily Beast]

* Doulingo, the popular language-learning company, has picked it’s new general counsel. Hope he knows that money is the universal language… [Corporate Counsel]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

What university’s law school was started by a professor who would go on to almost definitely murder a man without provocation and ultimately die while involuntarily committed to a mental asylum?

Hint: Despite the overwhelming testimony, he was acquitted and carried on with his private practice because he was a white guy living in Mississippi and the victim was black.

See the answer on the next page.

David Lat defied the popular conception of who should be hit with a serious case of COVID-19. Just 44 years old, a two-time marathoner, with a young family and a successful career as a legal recruiter and journalist, and best known as the founder of the blog Above the Law, he did not fit the mold of a person at high risk.

But what started early in March as fever and chills eventually led to 17 days in a New York City hospital, six of them spent intubated and on a respirator in ICU. As two major news organizations began preparing his obituary, his family, friends and thousands of social media followers prayed for his recovery.

Over half of COVID-19 patients who go on a respirator do not survive. Lat was one of the fortunate ones. After six days, he recovered enough to be extubated and moved out of ICU. Then, on April 1, he sent out a Tweet announcing that he was about to be discharged.

Now recovering with his husband and son at his parents’ home in New Jersey, Lat — still hoarse from the intubation — joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss his ordeal and share his thoughts on what he learned going through it.

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In the second quarter of 2020 please check out:

Force Majeure and Other Defenses to Contract Performance During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This program, presented by Baker Hostetler partner Gilbert S. Keteltas and associate Kyle T. Cutts, will discuss the enforceability of force majeure clauses, and other contract defenses, to excuse performance impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The course will benefit attorneys advising clients on their contractual rights and obligations during the pandemic, as well as counsel responsible for drafting new contracts in the time of COVID-19.

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A news flash for you that has nothing to do with the continuing unfolding of COVID-19 developments: a recent study by the National Association for Law Placement and PP&C Consulting found that almost 60 percent of law firm associates do NOT (I repeat, do NOT) want to become partners at their current firms.

Is that news? It depends upon how you define news, but given the almost endless path to snagging a partnership, given the lack of diversity and inclusion, it’s not really a surprise that more than half of the associates have pulled the emergency brake on the partnership track. For those seeking that partnership at their current firm, 60 percent of Latinx associates wanted partnership, 46 percent of black associates, and 42 percent of white associates.

The study surveyed 1,394 partners and 1,079 associates and is full of interesting factoids, made even more interesting in these perilous times. Conducted last year when the word “pandemic” required Googling, some of the conclusions ring even more true in these days of layoffs, cutbacks, and compensation reductions. Only lawyers at regional, national, and Am Law 200 firms were surveyed. However, most lawyers in this country are either solos or small firms.

I am always surprised when our profession thinks that the gravy train of prosperity is going to last forever, that the bull market will always have legs, and that there will always be demand for legal services. As to the latter, “yes, but.”

We’ve been warned for at least the past decade that technology, artificial intelligence, and third-party vendors would eat our lunches. Now it’s not just those things, but a virus that has a ravenous appetite and makes no distinction between rich and poor, Big Law or People Law, where you went to law school, whether you were Order of the Coif or scraped the bottom of the class. In fact, right now, I’d like to know how many patients ask their overworked healthcare professionals where they went to med school, where they did their residencies, or any other fact that might be on a resume. COVID-19 may well be the great leveler for our profession.

I digress. Some interesting factoids from the study:

Some things never change, and nearly half of today’s partners (Boomers and Gen Xers) think that today’s associates don’t work as hard as they did when they were associates. Sound familiar? This follows the age-old pattern of parents telling their kids how they had to walk miles in the snow every day to get to school, how they had to eat everything on the plate because children were starving elsewhere, how they did chores without any expectation of an allowance, yada-yada.

Do you think that technology, AI, e-discovery vendors, and other new-fangled things may have something to do with that perception? Aside from billable hours, how do you tell? If the associate gets as good (or even better) a result in less time, what’s the problem? How about laptops and other devices that allow lawyers to work remotely? (Exhibit A in these COVID-19 times.) In the “good old days” — and that’s a matter of opinion — there was even more drudgery than there is today, drudge work so mind-numbing that you wanted to stick a fork in your head in the hopes that you would wake up to finish answering the discovery before the due date.

Another differing perception is that only a bare majority of partners think that the youngsters are as good at their jobs as they were. Really? How do you compare? What metrics were used? Do you think that memories are selective? Of course they are.

How many times have we all heard the word “entitled” used to describe today’s associates? Slightly more than a third think that younger lawyers put their own needs and interests ahead of the firm and the clients. Given the workaholic habits of us oldsters (and I include Gen Xers in that), I am not surprised that associates want more “work-life balance.” As a dinosaur, I’m tired of the grumbling about the perceived sense of “entitlement.” Times are not the same, duh. Will these impressions change post COVID-19?

More than 40 percent of the partners didn’t think that associates were as ambitious as in olden times. How much ambition is necessary to be a good lawyer? Define ambition: Biglaw, People Law, or something else?

What do partners and associates agree upon? The intellectual challenge of the work, which ranked either first or second. That’s why a lot of us became lawyers, not to make money (although that’s a nice collateral benefit for some of us) but to help solve problems by appreciating that intellectual challenge. That’s something that all we lawyers share, and the nerds among us delight in that, but just try to explain an intellectual challenge to a client in the context of giving advice, and the client’s eyes cross.

What about diversity and inclusion? The study concludes that for associates of color, “the pipeline is neither empty nor robust,” but the question remains whether firms will continue in their efforts to have diverse associates or whether their efforts will remain “meh.”

The conclusion is that most lawyers like what they do; it’s just that they would like to do a little bit less in order to have a more balanced life. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said 90 years ago, “the law is a jealous mistress.” Has anything changed?

Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

I know it’s difficult to give your full attention to immigration issues right now, what with suddenly needing to make homemade face masks and attend Zoom meetings while your children scream in the background. But if you have energy for only one immigration issue right now, I humbly suggest that it should be this one: The Trump administration is trying to kill unaccompanied immigrant minors by keeping them locked up in federally funded coronavirus petri dishes.

Not surprisingly, coronavirus has made its way to the decades-old Flores litigation, which established minimal safety standards for unaccompanied immigrant minors in federal custody. On March 26, the plaintiffs in that case filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, arguing that the federal government needed to either release unaccompanied minors or show cause for retaining custody. As of that date, the government itself was reporting that eight adults and four minors involved in the Department of Health and Human Services care system had tested positive.

Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California, who has held two presidential administrations’ feet to the fire throughout the years she’s had this case, issued the TRO March 28. It requires the government to show cause by tomorrow, April 10, why she shouldn’t enjoin them to promptly release kids who have suitable custodians. This was based on a provision of the 1997 Flores settlement that says “the [government] shall release a minor from its custody without unnecessary delay.” Sounds reasonable, right?

Not to the federal government! In a 40-page supplemental response signed by DOJ lawyer Sarah Fabian — who you may remember as the lawyer who argued that immigrant children are not entitled to soap or beds — the government makes much of the difference between “unnecessary delay” and “unexplained delay,” which is language that Gee used in part of her decision. The baby-snatchers argue that this alters the terms of the Flores settlement, which they argue never actually requires them to explain their failures to anybody. (This sudden interest in fidelity to the terms of the settlement may come as a surprise to the plaintiffs, who have been suing the government over violations for more than 20 years.)

I can think of no reason why Judge Gee would revisit her decision based on this kind of hair-splitting. But that’s okay, because the real audience for this filing is not Gee and probably not the 9th Circuit — it’s the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which has rubber-stamped so many obviously illegal moves by the Trump administration that even retired judges are starting to voice their disgust. Those justices are obviously immune to shame, so I don’t expect a different outcome this time. Call your Congressmembers.

Lorelei Laird is a freelance writer specializing in the law, and the only person you know who still has an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker. Find her at wordofthelaird.com.