Category: News Feeds

[I]t’s a lifetime appointment. I’m not going to try to change that at all.

There’s some literature among constitutional scholars about the possibility of going from one court to another court and not always staying on the Supreme Court. But I have made no judgment.

— Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, in response to reporters’ questions as to whether he supports term limits for Supreme Court justices. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) recently proposed a bill that would limit future justices to 18-year terms on the Court, ending life tenure via statute, not Constitutional amendment.

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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.

“It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate, and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” the president said yesterday. “I don’t believe that. So we’ll see what happens.”

President Trump failed to mention exactly which of “our laws” would be broken by delaying the declaration of a winner to count all the ballots. After all, the 1887 Electoral Count Act allows 41 days for states to name electors to the Electoral College for an official vote.

It took six weeks for the New York City Board of Elections to declare Rep. Carolyn Maloney and City Council member Ritchie Torres the victors in their respective primaries, and democracy didn’t come to an end. Nor did anyone sue alleging that counting all the absentee ballots somehow violated “our laws.”

Nevertheless, the Trump campaign is currently using its very limited dollars on dozens of lawsuits to limit the number of ballots counted. Yesterday it sued Clark County, Nevada, demanding the elections registrar turn over the signature on each ballot as it comes in, along with the signature on file with the county. It’s probably a coincidence that this would allow the state Republican party, which is also a plaintiff in the suit, to scan party rolls at its leisure and challenge every Democratic ballot as it comes in.

The campaign is also demanding the names and party affiliations of all poll observers, by precinct and shift. And while they’re at it, they’d like “any other official, representative, candidate or delegate from the democratic [sp] party regarding the 2020 election.”

You know, just your standard public records request, not harassing litigation meant to get as many votes tossed in deep blue Las Vegas as possible.

That’s in addition to a different suit the campaign and local party filed against Clark County seeking an injunction prohibiting it from beginning to count mailed ballots. Why Trump is going all out in a state where Biden has led consistently for months is unclear. Nor is it clear how these suits will help ensure a result on November 3, in accordance with “our laws.”

Although the argument seems to hold sway with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who theorized in a meticulously researched (AHEM) opinion that it was more important “to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter” than to actually count the votes.

Aaaaaand, even as we type, the president is at it again.

Here on Planet Earth, we’ve never had certified vote tallies on election night. But if we do get results on the evening of November 3, the president is not likely to be very happy about it. Pennsylvania and Michigan will probably take several days to tally their votes. But after the 2000 hanging chad debacle, Florida overhauled its laws to allow speedier processing, including preparing mail-in ballots for tabulation before election day. So, if we know who the next president is in the wee hours of the morning on November 4, it’ll almost certainly be because Trump lost Florida, all but obliterating his path to 270 electoral votes.

As Politico reports, the president is deploying thousands of lawyers and poll “observers” to challenge the result of this election and generally gum up the works to bring the result into doubt. The GOP is clearly gearing up for another Brooks Brothers Riot. So it’s pretty ironic that the previous preppy uprising sparked changes in state law which may put down the planned rebellion before it even gets started.

Maybe “ironic” is the wrong word. How about … fitting?

Trump campaign, Nevada GOP sue Clark County for detailed records on ballot counting process [NVIndy]

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

The United States receives considerable criticism over its lack of regulations when it comes to assisted reproductive technology, especially sperm donation. As a small break from reflecting on our own flaws, today we focus on a peculiar case revealing that other countries, too, have issues.

Donating For Discounts

Neil Gaskell and his wife endured 14 years of trying to conceive before finding success with IVF in Australia. When the British couple moved back to the United Kingdom, they sought out additional fertility treatments, hoping to conceive a second child. Gaskell’s sperm must have caught the attention of someone at their IVF clinic because, after a first failed round of IVF, Gaskell was approached by the clinic to become a sperm donor and told his sperm had “superman strength.” In exchange, the clinic would reduce the fees for the couple’s next round of IVF to £1,200 from £3,500.

Wait. What?! In the United States, most donors are paid $50 to $100 per donation. By contrast, Gaskell was offered a discount of £2,300 — throw in the exchange rate, and you’re at about $3,000. Ironically, it is illegal to pay sperm donors in the United Kingdom more than their expenses. However, clinics are permitted to offer discounts on treatment in exchange for donations. I’m not sure I understand the policy underpinnings of this system. If we are worried about money being coercive, offering discounts to couples in the especially vulnerable position of needing fertility treatment would seem even more coercive than the American system — advertising to college kids who are looking to upgrade their ramen for a few nights. Maybe U.K. sperm clinics are desperate for good product?

But that isn’t even one of the legal issue in this case.

Not For Same-Sex Couples

Gaskell agreed to donate in exchange for the discount. However, when donating, he specifically noted that he required that his donations not be given to same-sex couples. Gaskell made the clinic staff “write that down.” And he later explained that he also did not want his sperm going to single women, but didn’t think he had to explicitly state that, since the clinic described his sperm as going to families (which, to him, evidently did not include single women).

Apparently, the clinic did not say something like “oh you know what, we actually have all the sperm we need now so never mind.” Instead, they didn’t object. This was not an illegal requirement, after all, at that moment. However, a mere few months later, the Equality Act came into law in England, which prohibited discrimination against same-sex couples.

How Many Families?

Gaskell recounted how the clinic assured him that his donation would be used for only two or three families. And, anyway, the regulations prevented the donations from being used with more than 10 families. Spoiler alert: the clinic was really trying to really get its money’s worth from Gaskell.

Moreover, as frequently happens in these cases, the donor’s wishes were not exactly followed. An official audit of the clinic by the UK’s fertility regulator — the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority — revealed that Gaskell’s sperm had helped three same-sex couples have five children, and three single women have four children. An additional four children were conceived with Gaskell’s sperm by heterosexual couples, resulting in a total of 13 children.

The clinic disclosed the findings to Gaskell. And Gaskell sued.

Not A Bigot

Gaskell has publicly explained his strenuous objections to his sperm being used to help same-sex couples, and that his lawsuit is not an indicator that he is “homophobic” or a “bigot.” He asserts that such accusations “couldn’t be further from the truth.” (Oh?) He says: “This wasn’t about discriminating against same-sex couples … but you can’t argue with biology. It takes a man and a woman to create a child, and it’s my view that if children are being born with my sperm, they must have a mother and a father.” After a four-year legal battle, the clinic recently settled with Gaskell, with Gaskell walking away with a five-figure out-of-court settlement.

(Non-)Informed Consent

I spoke with U.S. assisted reproductive technology legal expert Catherine Tucker on the case for perspective. She was more sympathetic to Gaskell’s cause. “What we have here is the intersection of two important medico-legal concepts — informed consent and nondiscrimination.” Informed consent simply means that a patient knows what he or she is getting into when agreeing to donate a body part, whether it be sperm, eggs, blood, a uterus, or something else, and the patient voluntarily chooses to participate. A key component of informed consent, Tucker explained, is understanding what your bodily donation will be used for — whether that be research, education/training, or for another patient. So here we have a situation where informed consent and nondiscrimination concepts conflict. And informed consent trumps nondiscrimination every time. With proper informed consent, this patient could have chosen not to participate in this arrangement.

I am hopeful that improvements in technology — and, like, people — will lead to less and less of these cases. Or, if nothing else, maybe the fear that all errors will be caught as a result of prolific home DNA testing will act as a strong-enough deterrent for strict self-regulation. In the meantime, let’s hope that all of Gaskell’s kids have a better outlook on parenting than he does.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

In one of the national reckonings over systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement in recent years, that about the treatment and role of women known as #metoo, Goldman Sachs emerged not only relatively unscathed, but even improved. It pledged to seek gender parity in junior hiring, insisted that those companies seeking the Goldman seal of approval in going public put at least one non-penis-haver on their boards, welcomed back a top female refugee from the Trump administration while pointedly closing the door to a male one, and even elevated a woman to the role of heir apparent to CEO David Solomon.

Sure, some Supreme Court clerks represent the cream of the crop in young legal talent: the all-star performers of the country’s top academic institutions girded by outstanding turns clerking for the nation’s most renowned appellate jurists. Bringing these standout performers into a law firm is more than worth the $400,000 bonus that’s become the standard.

But then there are the clerks who presumably helped Justice Kavanaugh write his bonkers concurrence in DNC v. Wisconsin Legislature.

Unsurprisingly, we were initially focused on Kavanaugh’s bizarre assertion that counting votes placed before election day after election day amounted to “changing” the result — a stupid claim for which he was properly chastised by Justice Kagan, who noted, “But there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted.” Literally no one issues a result on election day — networks make calls that night, but states don’t. But, as an Originalist, I’m sure Kavanaugh was remembering how they called the 1800 election at 9 Eastern and broadcast that by satellite to every state.

There are other mistakes of course. Mark Joseph Stern noted that Kavanaugh cited Bush v. Gore as unanimously decided — or more accurately he cited the holding that only 3 conservatives issued in Bush v. Gore as unanimous by wrongly attributing it to Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. Kavanaugh was there working on this very case, so this is just pure disingenuousness. Similarly, Stern points out that Kavanaugh cited a bunch of shadow docket cases as historical precedent, which takes a lot of chutzpah or a broken research software account.

But Kavanaugh being a liar is something we’ve known since at least his confirmation hearings. That’s not news.

But one passage stuck out when I dug into the opinion more.

The States are aware of the risks described by Professor Pildes: “[L]ate-arriving ballots open up one of the greatest risks of what might, in our era of hyperpolarized political parties and existential politics, destabilize the election result. If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.” Pildes, How to Accommodate a Massive Surge in Absentee Voting, U. Chi. L. Rev. Online (June 26, 2020)

Now… that seemed weird, because Rick Pildes does not strike me as the kind of guy who would say we should throw out valid ballots. And it turns out he’s not!

We heard a whole lot about Kavanaugh’s clerks. Indeed, we heard them invoked in a disturbing fashion just today. But where were they on this one? Shouldn’t someone with passable critical reading skills been able to Inigo Montoya this one and tell the boss, “You keep quoting Professor Pildes, I don’t think he says what you think he does”?

But it actually gets so much worse. Tierney Sneed sat down with the rambling opinion and succinctly put it:

Indeed.

Like the citation to Merrill II for the proposition that district courts shouldn’t second-guess state legislatures. Except Merrill was about a district court striking down a state Secretary of State voting restriction because it wasn’t passed by the state legislature. It’s very much the opposite of what Kavanaugh is trying to support here.

Or, as Sneed notes, a random aside about how even socialist Vermont isn’t changing its voting rules because of the pandemic, despite the Vermont office expediting the distribution of mail-in ballots for the express purpose of expanding opportunities to vote.

These are “citing red flag cases” level fuck-ups. Especially when absolutely none of them are necessary cites. He didn’t need to quote Pildes for his inane suggestion that we should just never count the troops (who of course are among the most likely late-arriving ballots every election), and he didn’t need to add Merrill II to the string cite, and he didn’t need to throw in a Vermont reference to own the libs. Summer associates don’t make these mistakes, why are they happening at the Supreme Court?

The reason, friends, is the steady erosion of the federal clerkship under the Federalist Society’s watchful eye. Elite law students are already turning down clerkships with these judges and that just feeds a cycle of awarding prestigious clerkships to the law student who ordered the most Chick-fil-A for their club’s weekly “serious academic debate” about whether immigrant children should be kidnapped or just chemically castrated.

While there are specific conservative clerks who really are smart enough to be the next ABA Not-Qualified federal judge, the problem with the FedSoc-Industrial Complex is that ideologues are learning at the knees of ideologues that precedent doesn’t really matter. And that’s how you train a generation of conservative lawyers to muck up basic citation.

It’s also why firms are starting to wise up about jumping at the first clerkship they see. A partner told me a while back that they used to just jump at clerkships and now they have to take a second and say, “Wait, with who?”

Not that it matters for Kavanaugh’s clerks. They’ll all doubtless go to Jones Day on schedule.

Earlier: Donald Trump’s Devaluation Of The Federal Clerkship

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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.

My parents have been married for more than 40 years at this point. Throughout the 35 years of that marriage that I’ve been around for, my mom has been fond of reminding me why she was so keen on getting an education after she finished high school: so that if she stayed married it was because she actually wanted to, not because she was economically trapped in marriage by a higher-earning partner.

By and large, college is indeed an extremely wise financial investment for the individual. According to a comprehensive report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a bachelor’s degree is worth $2.8 million, on average, over a lifetime.

The degree my mom got from the University of Minnesota wasn’t a bachelor’s, but she did fine during her long and successful career as a dental hygienist in small town America. She definitely met her goal of being financially self-sustaining (and apparently never felt the need to leave my dad, thankfully, despite being able to outperform him financially).

But sometimes I think the intangible value of education to our society as a whole gets overshadowed by the material results for individuals. Even though it wasn’t a four-year program like it is today, the dental hygiene program at the University of Minnesota was no place for academic slouches in the 1970s. Year after year as a child, I’d travel to the U of M for follow ups to my congenital cataracts eye surgery, and once we arrived on campus my mom would tell stories about her gross anatomy lab when she was a student there many years prior.

If you don’t know what a gross anatomy lab is, well, put down your drink if you’re having a coffee or something. That’s a class where you dissect human bodies (ones that their former occupants were kind enough to donate to science).

Why does a dental hygienist need to know how to dissect an entire human body? Well, some would argue she doesn’t. I don’t know that those folks would want someone poking around in their face with a sharp metal instrument without knowing exactly where all the arteries were, but maybe that argument carries a little more weight when we get below chest level.

But forget about a dental hygienist, there are a lot of things to learn about human biology that are useful in making a good citizen out of anyone, anywhere. Like, you know, that vaccines work. Or that wearing a mask helps keep respiratory viruses out of your face-holes.

There is a reason that about two-thirds of whites without a college degree voted for Donald Trump in 2016, while only 38 percent of whites with a four-year college degree voted for Trump. Uneducated people are generally not as good as educated people at determining when they are being lied to, because they are not as good at distinguishing between the credibility of different sources. There is a reason why so many uneducated people are still sticking with Trump in 2020, despite the fact that his pandemic nonresponse needlessly cost hundreds of thousands of lives and his only major policy accomplishment was a tax bill that harmed them to give away money to obscenely rich people. These folks do not (yet!) have the wherewithal to determine that the Fox News pundits screaming lies at them all day are not actually on their side and are not equivalent sources to the thousands of whiny liberal scientists, economists, and frazzled Above the Law columnists gently urging self-beneficial corrections to their worldview.

People (bad ones) make fun of baristas with college degrees, but every good citizen should have enough of a post-secondary education to vote competently, to determine fact from fiction to some meaningful degree. It doesn’t matter how tangential that education may be to how an individual ultimately earns a living. There’s dignity and intrinsic value in any kind of real, legitimate education, just like there is dignity and intrinsic value in any kind of real, legitimate work. In a more utopian American — maybe one where absolutely everyone could get at least two years of education after high school without going into debt — perhaps that would be self-evident.

My mom has a Joe Biden sign in her front lawn in a small town awash with Trump-flag-waving quarterwits because, unlike many of her peers, she learned how to think critically. I’m not going to totally credit a gross anatomy lab for that. But it sure didn’t hurt.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Most people would generally agree that attorneys are part of a serious profession. Indeed, the courthouses in which lawyers operate include lined columns, cathedral ceilings, and other attributes which give the judiciary an august perception. In addition, most law firm websites include the familiar rows of professional headshots of attorneys in professional attire, which seemingly conveys the serious attitudes of lawyers at that firm. On social media, lawyers often post somewhat dry client alerts, presentations, and other media that buttress the argument that lawyers are serious professionals. Most legal writing, whether it be briefs, memorandums, or pitch letters, is often monotonous and formulaic in order to convey the importance of what is being discussed. Nevertheless, in my personal experience, lawyers can have a bigger impact in court and relate more to their clients if they are sometimes less serious.

I first realized the impact of lawyers acting less seriously when I was in law school. At that time, I received literature about a variety of different law firms that were recruiting on campus. Each of these brochures had the same bland skyscrapers and professionals in suits, and it was easy to mistake one of these firms for another. However, one of the documents was different, and the tagline of the brochure was “are you ready to rock with ___” (the blank was the name of the firm that kind of rhymed with “rock”). I really appreciated that this firm was less serious and different, and this nontraditional approach made me want to work at that firm.

Firm nicknames are another way in which attorneys can benefit by acting less seriously. There is a large Biglaw firm which has a nickname that is identical to a common curse phrase. Hilariously, the firm seems to have embraced this nickname, and their URL is even this curse phrase. People within the legal profession enjoy referring to this firm by the common curse phrase, and I even spoke to an in-house professional earlier this year who said he knows people who hire the firm because of the nickname! By acting less seriously and embracing some humor, this firm has distinguished itself in the marketplace, and this shows the power of being less serious as a lawyer.

Lawyers can also have more success at originating business if they sometimes act less seriously and connect with prospective clients on a more personal level. Of course, some clients prefer to have a serious, somewhat cookie-cutter lawyer upon which they can rely, and you can often read the room to know that this is the side you should present at a pitch meeting. However, many clients want their attorneys to be colorful characters that are real people just like them.

For instance, one time, I was pitching work that a client had been shopping around to a number of law firms. The client showed up to our meeting in shorts and flip-flops and was an extremely laid-back kind of guy. During the pitch meeting, I used somewhat colorful language to describe the client’s adversaries and the weaknesses in their arguments. I could see the client’s face light up at hearing this, and he soon thereafter chose my firm for his portfolio of work. He frequently referred to the colorful language I had used in subsequent conversations, and it was clear that acting less seriously and relating to the client on a more personal level allowed me to stand out in the legal marketplace.

Being less serious can also help lawyers with their advocacy before courts. Legal writing can oftentimes be extremely formulaic, and if we are being truthful, pretty boring. Most lawyers present their arguments in a rigid style and use bland legalese to make their points. Of course, it makes sense that writing should be easy to digest by litigants and courts so people can review materials as efficiently as possible.

However, great legal writing is interesting to read, and tells a story with metaphors, colorful language, and perhaps a few jokes. I first witnessed the power of this writing style when I was in Biglaw, and worked with a fellow associate who was masterful in the art of legal drafting. This associate would use interesting quotes, sports analogies, colorful metaphors, and other devices in order to make his point. Even though this style of writing was somewhat unusual, he wrote many of the briefs we submitted, and this creative writing was effective at conveying our points.

Even in oral advocacy, being less serious can be advantageous to attorneys. Judges are regular people like the rest of us, and their eyes can gloss over at a bland argument just like anyone else’s. As a result, using colorful language, relatable examples, and maybe a few jokes usually doesn’t hurt in oral advocacy. I remember earlier in my career, I argued an appeal in front of the Appellate Division in New York for a case involving a man who fell from a height of seven feet. I related that I was nearly seven feet tall (actually 6’9’’, but it’s kind of close!) and this didn’t look too high from my perspective. The judges appreciated my humor, and they could relate to one of my arguments more readily. Numerous state and federal judges read my columns and have emailed me over the years, and I would love to hear the opinions of jurists on this issue. In any case, it is possible that being less serious and thinking outside the box can help with oral advocacy.

All told, as I have related before, attorneys are fun people to be around, and indeed, I am really going to miss kicking back with my lawyer colleagues at holiday parties this year. However, the legal profession can be really serious and boring at times. Nevertheless, if lawyers act less seriously in certain circumstances, they may be able to originate more business and be better advocates for their clients.

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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.

Imagine you’ve been criminally accused in some pesky drug possession and stalking cases. What’s the best way to get charges dropped? Well, you could always pretend to be a prosecutor and drop them yourself.

This is what actual prosecutors allege that New Hampshire resident Lisa Landon, 33, did in three different court cases last November and December. According to her most recent indictments, Landon allegedly used the court’s electronic system to submit her fake filings. The New Hampshire Union Leader has the details:

In November, Hillsborough County prosecutors became suspicious when they heard from a state forensic examiner, who had been scheduled to perform a competency evaluation on Landon.

The examiner saw a notice in Landon’s court file that prosecutors had dropped charges; the examiner wanted to know if the examination should go forward.

“The file purported to contain a nolle prosequi (drop the charges) filed by Assistant County Attorney Patrice Casian, but it quickly became evident to the State that the document, as well as other documents in the file, had been filed fraudulently,” wrote Superior Court Judge David Anderson in a ruling regarding the case.

Landon also stands accused of falsifying a decision of a retired judge to waive filing fees in a lawsuit she brought against the county and filing an order to halt guardianship proceedings involving one of her own children.

Landon is now facing one charge of false personation and six charges of falsifying physical evidence. Perhaps a real lawyer will be helpful this time around.

Woman accused of impersonating prosecutor, dropping criminal charges against herself [New Hampshire Union Leader]
Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself [WBRZ 2 ABC]

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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.

We told you this was bound to happen. Way back in September of 2019, when former Biglaw firm LeClairRyan’s process of dissolution turned to Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reports the firm was having issues paying monies owed, we noted that bumps in the road were likely. And that’s what has happened.

Earlier this week, a lawsuit was filed by a trustee for the now defunct firm, Lynn Tavenner, against UnitedLex and ULX Partners. UnitedLex, an alternative legal service provider, and LeClairRyan teamed up in 2019 to create ULX Partners which they claimed was “law firm 2.0” aimed at providing nonlegal operations for law firms. However, that partnership was unable to change the downward spiral, and, indeed, the lawsuit claims the venture “only served to plunge LeClairRyan further into insolvency.”

As reported by Bloomberg Law, the complaint alleges they misused funds:

But, according to the complaint, UnitedLex and ULX Partners, along with LeClairRyan officers and directors, “prioritized their own desires for financial gain and prolonged the Debtor’s lifespan, enabling the Defendants and others to improperly and unfairly extract millions of dollars from the Estate, to the detriment of LeClairRyan’s creditors.”

The trustee claims that ULX Partners has insider status in the bankruptcy proceedings due to its heavy ownership share in the joint venture, amounting to 99%, as well as the joint venture’s control over many essential functions at LeClairRyan, including marketing, accounting, conflict management, and business development.

The complaint alleges damages of no less than ~$42.8 million, saying they delayed the wind down process and also alleging damages from the liquidation of the retirement plan, the conversion from a professional corporation to a professional limited liability corporation (as part of the joint venture), and an increase in trade payables and accounts receivable. It further alleges more than $1 million in damages based on ULX’s “misappropriation of funds tendered by clients for specific expenses, which were used by the ULX Entities for improper purposes.”

The complaint also says there were legal maneuvers designed to elevate ULX’s claims in LeClairRyan’s bankruptcy:

Last September as LeClairRyan filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg Law reported the firm had entered into an outstanding deferred loan promissory note by which it agreed to pay ULX Partners $8 million for outstanding fees owed under the joint venture agreement. As of the firm’s bankruptcy filing, that loan had not been paid back.

However, according to the complaint, ULX Entities sought to elevate ULX Partners’ priority over other unsecured creditors through the promissory note, which they claim was “an equity infusion.”

Stacey Yonkus, director of communications at UnitedLex, said this about the complaint:

“We believe the allegations being raised through the bankruptcy of LeClairRyan have no merit. As a major creditor of LeClairRyan, we fully expect the bankruptcy process to fairly resolve this matter. We eagerly await the resolution process and the opportunity to highlight our client commitment.”

We’ll be following along, whatever happens.

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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).

Since the liberal Warren Court gave way to the conservative Burger Court well over four decades ago, conservatives have maintained a working majority over the federal judiciary. More recently, this conservative movement has come to achieve sheer dominance over the judicial branch. Having maintained so much power for almost five decades likely means there are discernable long-term conservative legal trends we can examine over this time. Moreover, these trends could indicate what a super majority conservative control is now going to do. Therefore, some might hope that because there has been an undeniable expansion of free speech and Second Amendment protection in the last 50 years, our future with a super conservative control is bright. Unfortunately, trends reveal that free speech expansion is under serious threat from a growing conservative movement that includes member(s) on the Supreme Court and the current president, who have plainly expressed their desire to see this expansion reversed. Furthermore, while undeniable expansions of individual liberty have indeed taken place over the last 50 years, with very few exceptions what has dominated conservative time in power is a steady restriction of individual liberty.

One of the most egregious, and deadly, examples of destructive conservative influence in the last five decades is upon the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment – although much has been made of a relatively recent line of cases where conservative majorities have disagreed with the government over what is an acceptable warrantless search. As I have said before, these line of cases do nothing to address the much larger and deadlier problem of the absurdly abused standard by which violent warrants are regularly signed off on.

Making things oppressively worse, conservative influence has been the driving force behind the almost five-decades-long trend of restricting a straightforward law that permits citizens to hold bad government actors accountable when they violate their constitutional guarantees. In fact, I have personally seen this trend in action. Indeed, a citizen’s right to hold bad government actors responsible for unlawfully and violently breaking into their homes has been effectively abolished — abolished through a court-concocted immunity that has no basis in textualist or originalist understanding.

Currently, during an election conservatives are conceding they are likely to lose, the conservative political movement has replaced one of the few justices who was openly skeptical of this court fabricated immunity. Of course, even prior to Barrett’s ascension, the Supreme Court already had a working conservative majority that has furthered the trend of concocting atextual, ahistorical preconditions or defenses to a straightforward statute which plainly states that every state official who violates a citizen’s rights “shall be liable to the party injured.” All throughout Barrett’s hearing though, I had to keep hearing the claim that originalist conservatives simply follow the law. They simply don’t, and the long-term conservative trend of utter destruction to our individual liberties via made-up immunities says so.

Another conservative trend that can be discerned within the last 50 years is within the religious liberty landscape. Indeed it seems plain to say that religious liberty cases over the last four decades have trended towards expanding the religious right to dissent, not just through a First Amendment lens but also through a “super statute.” Meanwhile, however, the nonbeliever right to dissent over this same time period has been tightly restricted and openly disdained. For example, the “super statute” that grants conservative religious views broad exemption from all other laws has been denied to the deeply held beliefs of nonbelievers. Denying nonbelievers the same rights under this “super statute” has the effect of creating government castes that favor religious citizens in the law to the exclusion of nonbelievers.

The fast growing nonbeliever population is not only harmed by conservative favoritism granted to religion and by their exclusion from this government favor, but any law that seemingly could protect the right of the nonbeliever to dissent or be exempt from laws is also being struck down by conservative majorities. The result is a “free conscience” doctrine where only certain types of conservative religious and political views are being protected against government compulsion. All while conservatives endlessly repeat the bigoted and demonstrably untrue drivel that this country is intended and suitable only for them.

Similar to other libertarian-minded folks, I am unabashedly opposed to any movement, right or left, that produces these types of enemies to freedom. Being forced to financially subsidize religious beliefs I disagree with is not acceptable. It is also not acceptable that demonstrating racial discrimination is virtually impossible in our current court system whereas proving religious discrimination does not require proof of discriminatory treatment or intent. I submit that a judiciary unilaterally crafting defenses and preconditions to laws because they don’t like the policy choice of subjecting cops to liability goes against everything an independent judiciary stands for. So, whatever the constitution allows — up to and including adding members to SCOTUS — to stop this assault on individual liberty, I fully support.

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Tyler Broker is a practicing attorney whose work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.