Category: News Feeds

Are you ready for the next bit of COVID austerity news? Yes, these stories are coming fast and furious, but in the rapidly changing environment that’s necessary to get a full picture of what’s really happening out there in Biglaw.

All employees at Venable received an email this afternoon from chairman Stuart Ingis, laying out the “Proactive Financial Measures to Respond to Disruption Caused by the Coronavirus.” The email laid out the steps that the firm is taking to tighten their belts during this tumultuous time. That includes a sliding scale of pay cuts across the firm– those making over $190,000 will see a 20 percent decrease, and those under $60,000 will see 0– as well a furloughing some staff members that primarily support the firm’s physical locations.

Here’re the details:

The firm will:

Reduce Compensation for Lawyers and Staff.  The firm will implement the following salary reductions based on compensation level, with greater reductions associated with higher compensation:

Salary Level	Percent Reduction
Above $400,000	20% on all compensation plus 10% of compensation above $400,000
$190,000-$400,000	20%
$120,000-$189,999	15%
$75,000-$119,999	10%
$60,000-$74,999	5%
$59,999 and below	No Reduction

For lawyers and exempt professional staff, those staff on a fixed salary, these reductions are effective beginning tomorrow, April 4, and will be reflected in full in the April 17 payroll payment.  For non-exempt professional staff, those staff that are paid on an hourly basis, the reductions are effective beginning one week from tomorrow, April 11, and will be reflected in full in the May 1 payroll payment.  The firm has previously communicated to equity partners actions that affect their compensation in similar ways.

Furlough Certain Professional Staff.  We will furlough certain professional staff, primarily those involved in positions that support facilities and in-person operations when our offices are fully open, until Friday May 29, 2020.  The firm will pay for medical and dental benefits for furloughed individuals during this period and they will be eligible to apply for the expanded unemployment benefits enacted last week by Congress.  We also have prepared materials to assist those that are furloughed and will have staff and lawyers available to help with applying for benefits available during the furlough period.

We will be regularly assessing events and will update these decisions and our firm’s response as appropriate.  Thank you for your understanding and your ongoing commitment to Venable.  We have and will continue to have a great firm.

When reached for comment, the firm had the following statement:

“Venable entered this period of economic and societal disruption caused by COVID-19 with a solid start to the year that continued through the first quarter. The diversity of our practices, the quality of our attorneys and professionals, and our relationships with our clients are very strong.

Because the extent and duration of the disruption and its impact remains uncertain, we have taken steps to tailor staffing needs to the current environment and prudently prepare the firm for the future. Our actions include postponing certain distributions to equity partners, implementing tiered compensation reductions for attorneys and staff, and temporary furloughing certain staff in roles that primarily support office operations.”

Hopefully this will prove the only cost-cutting measures the firm needs to take and everyone really is back at work, as the firm anticipates, by May 29th. Fingers crossed on that one.

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.

---

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).

“The notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” the nation’s First Son-in-Law lectured America’s governors from the White House podium yesterday. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”

That Jared Kushner is a regular polymath, equally conversant on topics as diverse as federalism, the opioid crisis, the Middle East peace process, and emergency management. Which is to say, he’s willing to hold forth at length on a multitude of sh*t he knows nothing about. And the nation’s emergency reserve supply chain is no exception.

As Law & Crime’s Aaron Keller notes, the government’s emergency stash of supplies isn’t the “federal stockpile” at all. It’s the Strategic National Stockpile, as described in 42 U.S. Code §247d–6b, and it belongs to the entire country.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services is responsible for maintaining a supply of “drugs, vaccines and other biological products, medical devices, and other supplies” sufficient to “provide for and optimize the emergency health security of the United States, including the emergency health security of children and other vulnerable populations, in the event of a bioterrorist attack or other public health emergency.” In case of such an emergency — say, for instance, a viral pandemic that crashes the American healthcare system — the Secretary shall “in consultation with Federal, State, and local officials, take into consideration the timing and location of special events, and the availability, deployment, dispensing, and administration of countermeasures.”

So, it’s not “our stockpile,” as the MBA Princeling so ineptly put it. It’s OUR STOCKPILE. It exists for the express purpose of being dispensed to the states in a national emergency. And up until this morning, the website for the Strategic National Reserve said exactly that. Here’s the landing page language from 9am:

Strategic National Stockpile is the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.

When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously.

And here’s how it reads now:

The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.

Receipts courtesy of CNN’s indefatigable Daniel Dale:

The new arglebargle about supplementing the states and use as a “short-term stopgap buffer” may be consistent with Trump’s protests that the federal government doesn’t want to be a “shipping clerk” for the states. But it’s not remotely consistent with actual federal law. Because congress is often dysfunctional, but no one in their right mind would force the states to bid against each other, driving up the price of supplies during a national emergency.

But, as is so often the case in the Trump administration, reality and law must give way to fantasy and dogma. So the website gets memory-holed, and the states compete against each other to see whose citizens get ventilators that will keep them alive.

Jared, you’re doin’ a heckuva a job.

Jared Kushner Bungled the Law Which Requires an Emergency Stockpile of Medical Supplies [Law & Crime]
HHS Website Changes Strategic National Stockpile Definition, Now Fits Kushner’s Legally Dubious Description [Law & Crime]

---

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

The hits just keep on coming.

If you thought being perennially in the Am Law 100 rankings would somehow shield a Biglaw firm from having to make tough cuts during economic hard times, well, the coronavirus is here to laugh at your hubris. Here at Above the Law, we’ve been inundated with reports of firms making tough cost-cutting measures in order to weather the economic downturn, and it’s clear even large national firms are feeling the pinch.

The latest Biglaw firm to make cuts in Nixon Peabody. Though the firm hasn’t lowered the boom on attorneys (so far), an astonishing ~25 percent of staff members have been furloughed. The furlough becomes effective on April 6th and will remain in place “until further notice.”

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.

---

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).

It seems like these days our news feeds are only filled with stories of COVID-19 diagnosis, deaths and maybe even some recoveries. Every click, every channel, maybe even thought, surrounds this pandemic, which has all individuals, not just officials and health care workers,  fixated.

Other newsworthy events must be occurring, although none seem to be capturing our attention, or fear, as much as COVID-19. But there are other tragedies and there are other deaths. One need not be a trusts and estates attorney to learn that individuals are still dying, for a host of reasons. In reaction, people are attempting to mourn in uncertain and unusual circumstances. Given the current state of the world, recent decedents may not have public funerals. They may not be properly eulogized and their survivors may not be able to practice traditional mourning period.

As is the case with all legal proceedings, probate and estate cases have slowed as our communities and courts react to the current situation, regardless of whether COVID-19 directly or indirectly was the impetus for death. Perhaps this halt in life and court proceedings is felt the deepest by the decedents’ survivors, especially the survivors of those who have passed away as a result of a crime. It is these decedents whose deaths affect not only their immediate family, but the greater community and civilization at large.

On Sunday, amidst the litany of COVID-19 deaths  Rabbi Josef Neumann, of Rockland County, New York, died, at the age of 72. Neumann was a victim of the December 28, 2019, attack on a Chanukah party held at another rabbi’s Monsey, New York, home. Allegedly, Grafton Thomas attached six individuals with an 18-inch machete at the holiday gathering. Neumann was stabbed in his skull, which damaged his brain and left him in a coma for almost two months. He underwent several operations before his death.

Thomas was charged with five counts of attempted murder and federal hate crimes.

Now that Neumann has passed away, Thomas could face an upgraded murder charge. The Rockland County district attorney’s office plans to present evidence for a charge of second-degree murder, although the hearing is currently unscheduled because of COVID-19.

Thomas pleaded not guilty to the 14-count charge brought against him by the Rockland County district attorney’s office. Additionally because of the nature of the crime, there is also a 10-count federal indictment charging him with injuring five victims while trying to kill them because of their religion. It also charges that he obstructed the free exercise of religion in his attempt to kill the individuals. He pleaded not guilty to the federal charges as well.

It has been reported that Thomas had anti-Semitic  books and that he also internet-surfed for potential targets prior to the incident. His defense attorney has argued that he suffers from a history of psychosis. A defense-hired psychiatrist has supposedly found Thomas incompetent to stand trial. Two prosecution experts disagree and have found him competent. A judge has not yet ruled on this issue.

While the courts are essentially at a standstill, it seems that the New York State legislature is trying to recognize Neumann and the significance of his tragic death. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed legislation equating hate crimes with domestic terrorism. The law will be called the Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act, and it will be voted on by the legislature this week, as part of the budget.

During this time of uncertainly, it feels like the wheels of justice are moving incredibly slowly, if at all. Moreover the limitations that we are undertaking to protect our families and communities makes processing tragedies like the Chanukah party attack and Neumann’s death all the more difficult. When we emerge from the current COVID-19 crisis, issues like hate crime will remain. We owe it to ourselves and to our communities to follow the example of Cuomo and New York State in proactively remembering all people in need during this unsettling time and memorializing in some way the impact of their loss, not just on our families but the community as a whole.

---

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com.

---

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.

As businesses locked their doors, and cities shut down around the globe over the past month, I was fortunate to not have to worry about how I would handle my job when the time came for New York City to issue its stay-at-home orders. My firm’s chief of staff has always ensured that our teams are prepared to work remotely at any time, for any reason. From cloud-based files to remote-access workspaces and shared drives, I knew that we were structurally and procedurally ready for when the day came for prolonged work from home orders. However, I had not considered whether I was mentally or emotionally ready.

I have always been someone who works best in the quiet of a private office, behind a closed door, so the concept of working alone for an extended period of time did not faze me. Yet, I have come to appreciate the interpersonal aspects of office life — Monday morning firm-wide meetings that set the tone for the week, miniature pep talks with colleagues while grabbing coffee in the kitchen, face-to-face brainstorming, and team debriefings. While I admittedly thrive in solitude in many ways, I find myself missing those daily interactions, which I now realize breathe life into a law firm. Those moments make the difference between feeling like a brief-writing machine and feeling like an invigorated advocate. As the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

With New York still in something of a lockdown, in addition to my firm’s regular Monday morning meeting being moved to video call, we have a Friday afternoon video check-in as well. I find myself looking forward to, and being energized by, these calls, as they remind me that we are part of a team with common goals and that we can still support and learn from each other at a distance.

During this uncertain time of office closures and social isolation with no guaranteed end, it would be easy to slide into a mechanical state of production, churning out research and writing and lengthy email chains to get the job done. With employees being removed from the physical office space, phone calls and emails suffice for the bulk of communication regarding expected work product and deadlines. But there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction, especially when it comes to teamwork, motivation, and morale. And there is no substitute for having firm-wide leadership who understand this. Staying connected while working remotely cannot be underestimated.

---

Megan E. McKenzie, a recent graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, works at Balestriere Fariello while her admission to the bar is pending. She works with her colleagues on all aspects of domestic and international complex litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach her by email at megan.e.mckenzie@balestrierefariello.com.

All the law school deans were able to get together to offer their thoughts on how New York should handle licensing in light of COVID-19, so it makes sense that the student governments of the New York schools would join forces too.

Student leaders from the 15 New York law schools have drafted a letter — a spiritual follow-up to the original mass law student letter — calling for a modified diploma-privileged admission system at best and a temporary waiver with the requirement that graduates take the exam within two years at worst. They’re asking students to sign on through this form.

The modified diploma-privileged regime the students outline, drawing a great deal from the work done in this paper, which they call “Diploma Privilege Plus,” shows a great deal of consideration into balancing the needs of the current crop of heavily indebted students stepping out into the unknown and the duty to ensure that licensed attorneys meet a high threshold of competence.

● Completion of online courses or exams that the state has developed to supplement the UBE. Both the MPRE and NYLE serve as models for the administration of such a program.
● Affidavit from an employer or externship supervisor that the candidate possesses the knowledge and skills to practice law with minimum competence. Law schools have developed rubrics for externships and clinical courses that could be used to guide that assessment.
● Completion of CLE programs. New York could, if desired, specify programs in areas of particular client need and/or avoidance of common entry-level pitfalls.
● Completion of specified CALI lessons. The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, “CALI,” maintains over 1,000 lessons on legal principles, including all subjects covered by most bar exams.

In past posts on this subject, I’ve off-handedly offered enhanced CLE requirements and apprenticeship models as the sort of supplements that a diploma system could require. The students have fleshed out those ideas into a real framework for consideration.

As for practice waivers — the proposal that seems to have support across the board at this point — the students note that it resolves the short-term problems they face, but puts an unfair burden on some down the road:

We note, however, that not all students will be well-positioned to negotiate the time off to study for the bar exam, putting them in the unenviable—perhaps impossible—predicament of preparing for the bar exam while working full-time. That disadvantage will likely fall heaviest on international graduates, as well as those employed by government, public interest organizations, and small law firms. Therefore, we repeat our call for this Court to adopt a diploma privilege plus rule to accommodate the qualified and hardworking members of the class of 2020 who would otherwise be left out in the cold.

The whole letter is 11 single-spaced pages long and has 36 footnotes — because law students have to law student — but don’t let the Law Review Note style distract you. There are solid, thoughtful arguments in here that the Court of Appeals should seriously consider.

Implementing such a drastic break from the bar exam process that we’ve taken for granted for decades is hard. But when you come to a crossroads like this, that’s the ideal time to open your mind to new, potentially better ways to achieve goals. Is the drive to postpone the exam in this case driven by the need to keep it around in its current manifestation or are we just uncritically tethered to tradition?

Mentally throw everything out and ask, “how do we ensure that licensed attorneys have the knowledge and practical skills — or at the very least a clear path to achieving each — to serve clients?” and work from scratch. My guess is the bar exam, at least as we know it, doesn’t make it into that exercise.

And whatever does can go a long way to forging the right solution for the class of 2020.

Earlier: Law School Deans Call For Major Changes To Bar Admission
Over 2,000 Law School Students Sign Letter Seeking Diploma-Privileged Licensure

---

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.

Are law firms laying off associates and staff as a sword or a shield in this COVID-19 pandemic? This question predicates on whether we are headed for another protracted recession a la 2009, or if ultimately this is just a short-term blip. The answer is a moving target; ultimately, we do not know how the virus will play out. Optimistic models hope for a swift return to normalcy, while more pessimistic counterparts forecast many more months of lockdowns. Regardless of the ultimate answer, firms are preparing for the worst case scenario, as they hope to avoid the same pitfalls that toppled Howrey and Dewey & LeBoeuf during the last recession.

Although the financial crisis is more closely associated with 2009 for Biglaw, the crisis actually started in the spring of 2007. It took time for the full brunt of the downturn to propagate to Biglaw. As we can see, the ratio for lateral moves to lateral leakage (attorneys existing Biglaw altogether) hit its nadir for partners in 2010, declining year for year starting in 2007.

Despite hitting its low point three years after the recession again, the market quickly resurged the following year as lateral movement increased relative to leakage. Associate movement is often a more sensitive barometer for market conditions as associate laterals take less time to execute and swarms of partners are insulated from recessions if they have strong portables or are in key practices. If we look at just associate leakage, and add further granularity to the best fit model, we see that market conditions actually started improving in 2010.

There is one caveat, this “growth” was driven not by an increase in appetite, but rather a decrease in associate layoffs.

Data supports the consensus that 2009 was the year of mass layoffs, as March of 2009 saw over 1,400 attorneys leave Biglaw altogether. Though associate movement increased a paltry 25 percent, compared to the 128 percent from 2010 to 2011, but the mass exodus of attorneys in 2009, seemed to assuage the concerns of most firms on their financial position.

The question on everyone’s minds is, what will firms do this time?

Generally the consensus is split; some firms are opting for austerity measures in the form of pay cuts and frozen partner distributions. These moves suggest that those firms believe this is a short-term crisis, and are deferring risk onto its members in a bid to avoid a repeat of 2009 style layoffs. The less optimistic firms are already resorting to layoffs and furloughs for associates and staff in hard-hit practice areas like M&A.

There will not be a one-size fits all approach, and the firms more diversified, especially in counter-cyclical practice areas like L&E, restructuring, litigation, and tax, are better equipped to weather the storm. Firms like Hueston Hennigan with strong litigation pipelines have actually announced bonuses instead of cuts, on top of their market-busting bonuses. Hueston Hennigan doesn’t need to address slowing corporate practices with highly paid M&A associates and partners waiting for deal flow.

We generally expect to see firms with entrenched corporate practices suffer the most. White-shoe firms like Simpson Thacher, Cadwalader, Davis Polk, Cravath, Goodwin, Wilkie, Ropes & Gray, Shearman & Sterling, will be hard hit by an extended recession as their large domestic corporate footprint exceeds 40 percent of their domestic practice share.

We expect many of these firms to begin retooling their associates – something Lateral Link’s very own Jon Kahn experienced when corporate work dried up at Fried Frank when he started in 1990. Firms will continue to bolster practices with stable demand, and we expect to see the lateral market resemble a mosaic as demand increases for certain specialties (especially among partners) and demand otherwise slows for other practices and level of experience niches.

For those that don’t have the capabilities or flexibility to retool their associates, we expect to see layoffs as associates represent a fixed cost for the firms. Because partners are the profit drivers in the Biglaw model, and associates are either profit sources or cost centers depending on their billable revenue generated, firms will protect their partners as much as they can while coveting other firm’s profitable partners. Additionally, layoffs represent a proven financial tool to weather declines in profitability that saw success in the 2009 crisis.

A precipitous drop was avoided in 2009 as firms boosted their PPP by laying off associates in dry practice areas. The reduction in partner profits was offset by the reduction in fixed costs in the form of associate pay. Nonetheless, the move has long-term consequences as it handicaps the profitability and strength of a firm’s practice once it ultimately re-engages its cyclical practices. Though some firms have a head start on layoffs, ultimately we expect firms to opt for a more conservative pruning relative to the deep Edward-Scissorhandesque cuts we saw in 2009 to minimize the opportunity costs associated with hemorrhaging attorneys right before the market reopens.

With such granular demand that differs by specialty and experience, your best bet for making a lateral move right now is to team up with an experienced recruiter who can help you navigate this mercurial market. If you are a partner or firm chair interested in discussing the state of the market, I am happy to discuss what our full-service recruiting firm is seeing in the trenches. If you are a partner, counsel, or associate looking for lateral opportunities, our recruiters are happy to help you take advantage of unique market conditions to achieve your career and lateral goals.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is the CEO of Lateral Link. He is based in the Los Angeles office and focuses exclusively on Partner and General Counsel placements for top firms and companies. Prior to founding Lateral Link in 2006, he worked as an attorney at both Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irell & Manella LLP. Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego before earning his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

---

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

It’s worth repeating for the folks in the back: the FCC’s hugely unpopular, facts-optional and fraud-slathered repeal of net neutrality did a lot more than just kill “net neutrality.” It gutted the FCC’s already dwindling authority over giant telecom monopolies, shoveling any remaining authority to an FTC that lacks the authority or resources to police the US telecom sector (the whole goal of telecom lobbyists). As a result, you’ve now got ISPs free to engage in problematic behavior (like bullshit fees, or charging people “rental fees” for modems they already own) that the government is incapable and unwilling to address.

And the government’s decision to ignore the public and pander to the telecom lobby has deeper ramifications as well. As telecom lawyer and former FCC staffer Gigi Sohn writes in an editorial at The Verge, there has been a multi-decade effort to kill telecom oversight under the (clearly false) claim that the miracle of the free market will somehow magically fix a sector that’s been clearly broken for decades:

“This digital divide did not happen by accident. It is the result of years of scorched-earth deregulation and consolidation pushed by large cable and broadband companies and a government that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, believes that somehow the so-called “free market” will take care of the unconnected.”

Of course the telecom Utopia that’s promised never actually arrives despite decades of this game of deregulatory theater. Deregulated telecom monopolies, too big to fail, fused to the NSA, and constrained by neither government oversight nor competition, just wind up doubling down on the same bad (or worse) behaviors. There’s a segment of telecom policy “experts” who enjoy denying this factual reality, but the facts on the ground (more than 50 million Americans lack access to more than one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps, and US consumers pay some of the highest prices for data in the developed world) don’t lie.

Deregulation can certainly spawn innovation when you’re talking about functioning, competitive markets. But U.S. telecom, where a handful of giants dominate most U.S. markets and all but own state and federal lawmakers, has never been that. That we keep pretending otherwise is a stunning level of denial driven largely by partisan ideology. Sohn goes on to note that the FCC’s decision to neuter itself at telecom lobbyist behest left the FCC to adequately police the sector during a pandemic:

“One might think that during a national emergency, the chairman of the FCC wouldn’t have to plead with broadband providers to do what is necessary to ensure that every American is connected. But in 2017, at the behest of cable and broadband companies, the Trump FCC abdicated its responsibility to protect consumers and promote competition in the broadband market when it repealed its network neutrality rules. Not satisfied with simply eliminating the rules, which prohibited broadband providers from blocking, throttling, and otherwise favoring certain internet content and services, the Trump FCC blithely threw away its legal power to oversee the activities of these companies by reclassifying them as unregulated “information services” rather than regulated “telecommunications services.”

So while certain folks like to make claims like “the internet didn’t implode therefore repealing net neutrality wasn’t important,” that’s a simplistic, dumb, or just plain disingenuous way of framing what actually happened. This is what actually happened: the FCC ignored the public, ignored rampant fraud, and ignored all hard data to neuter itself at the behest of giant telecom monopolies. That should never, ever get lost in the partisan bickering over policy.

With less authority than ever, the FCC was forced to recently resort to a sort of stage play to try and keep ISPs from ripping off financially-constrained broadband customers during a pandemic. That included a recent FCC “Keep Americans Connected Pledge” that involves ISPs pinky swearing that they won’t kick U.S. telecom customers suffering from financial hardships offline during the COVID-19 quarantine for 60 days. But while the promise isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s entirely voluntary, and the FCC has no real authority to police ISPs that don’t behave. It’s policy theater, Sohn notes:

“A voluntary pledge isn’t adequate to ensure that Americans can work, learn, have access to health care, and communicate during this trying time. Without legal authority over broadband providers, the agency cannot hold any of those companies to their promises — they can simply walk away after 60 days or before. Nor can the FCC require broadband providers to take critical steps beyond the pledge, like relaxing data caps, providing low-cost or free connectivity, or other steps that would help those desperately in need during this crisis, if even on a temporary basis. The Communications Act of 1934 gives the FCC a great deal of flexibility to ensure that the public is protected during a national emergency. But when it comes to broadband internet access, this FCC is powerless.”

On the Libertarian end, this neutering of the FCC is usually applauded alongside ample fear mongering that a potent FCC would run amok. But decades of U.S. broadband policy has never supported this empty assertion. For a generation now the U.S. FCC, under both parties, has (with a few exceptions like Wheeler) almost uniformly pandered to the interests of U.S. telecom monopolies, stripping away authority and consumer protections under a steady parade of promises that never materialize. For most of us (especially the less affluent), the end result of feckless telecom oversight and ceaseless pandering should be fairly obvious.

Again, with neither competition (a problem opponents of Sohn’s arguments simply ignore or downplay at their convenience) nor regulatory oversight, telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast have been free to charge some of the highest rates in the developed world, engage in clear and repeated billing fraud, deliver some of the worst customer service in history (with no pressure or incentive to fix it), be utterly non-transparent, crush or acquire competitors through mindless consolidation, engage in rampant privacy abuses (again with little or only tepid repercussions), and so much more.

Folks claiming it’s the FCC that is running amok or has too much power in this equation are engaged in some potent head-in-the-sand denialism. These companies are so powerful they’re literally writing state and federal telecom law with an exclusive eye on protecting their revenues from accountability and competition. That was a problem during the best of times, but it’s going to be doubly so as America enters a protracted crisis where broadband connectivity has shifted from “nice to have” to utterly essential to survive.

Pretending the U.S. broadband market isn’t broken, and that regulatory capture and rampant corruption didn’t play a massive role in that dysfunction, is disingenuous, dangerous folly whose multi-decade tenure as a dominant policy paradigm needs to be put out to pasture.

Ex-FCC Staffer Says FCC Authority Given Up In Net Neutrality Repeal Sure Would Prove Handy In A Crisis

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Judge Benchslaps Cops And Courts For Turning Law Enforcement Lies Into ‘Objectively Reasonable’ Mistakes
Senator Loeffler’s COVID-Related Stock Trades Looking Even Worse, While Feds Start Investigating Senator Burr’s
Senator Blumenthal Is Super Mad That Zoom Isn’t Actually Offering The End To End Encryption His Law Will Outlaw

Before Better Call Saul, there was Mr. Show. The brainchild of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, who would go on to another legally themed show in Arrested Development, Mr. Show produced some of the greatest comedy sketches of all time. And one of their greatest centered on a pair of ad executives pitching GloboChem, a soulless multinational, on a series of ads to shore up the company’s image that all followed the hackneyed style of contemporary advertising… but with jarringly unnecessary profane. The last one just zoomed out to show the Earth from orbit — the image corporations unimaginatively embrace to convey either a worldwide approach or because their contribution to environmental and human misery is less visible from there.

That skit is top of mind after seeing GloboChem’s real-life Biglaw analog, Jones Day, put out an introductory video on their website. Roll On Friday has a shot by shot breakdown that cannot be matched, so you should definitely read that. But in a nutshell, Jones Day clearly hired some ad executives who asked what exactly it was that Jones Day did and when they heard it was stuff like this, and this, and this, they responded, “Well, screw that, let’s just put entirely random stock footage together and hope it flies.” And then they contemplated the existential dread that follows first learning about Jones Day.

Why are they watching the Space Shuttle? As well-oiled as the revolving door between Jones Day and the Trump administration is, NASA is one of the agencies their alumni aren’t running. See what I mean about the superficial corporate imagery? Mission control is a team, so this conveys that Jones Day is a team too! In a way that actual Jones Day footage never could because… stuff like this.

Just to be clear, Jones Day is just a 5-year-old boy being asked what they want to be when they grow up. It’s a fitting homage to how Jones Day likes to say anyone can be firefighters, like when Jones Day partner Kevyn Orr took over Detroit in an undemocratic coup executed by Michigan’s governor and filled the drastic loss of experienced firefighters by rush training a bunch of people. Very meta.

There’s a symphony orchestra in there for some reason too. What a glorious acid trip we’re on together!

The only thing it’s missing is a cute, non-threatening mascot like Pit Pat. Where’s Don McGahn when you need him?

Bonkers Law Firm Website: Jones Day goes large [Roll On Friday]

Earlier: Investigation Into Jones Day Reveals ‘Endemic Culture Of Sexual Inappropriateness’
Jones Day Files For Sanctions In Ongoing Gender Discrimination Lawsuit
Jones Day Responds To Critics With Standard Petulant Hissy Fit
Donald Trump’s Amazing Cease & Desist Letter
Lawsuit Alleges Jones Day Doctored Firm Picture To Make Attorney Look More Caucasian