Category: News Feeds

It’s a crazy time in Biglaw. The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has led to the shutdown of many industries and the economy is reeling. Biglaw has been far from unscathed — there’ve been layoffs and furloughs. Other firms have opted for salary cuts (10 percent pay reductions, 25 percent pay cuts, and partners who’ve slowed or eliminated their payday) and benefits have taken a hit. Now another firm is making big moves for the “financial stability” of the firm.

Am Law 100 firm Baker Donelson is taking a number of steps to reduce the financial burden of COVID-19. Partner salaries have already been slashed. But that isn’t the end of the salary reductions. In the coming weeks, the entire firm will take a pay cut — that is, if they still have jobs. That’s right, the firm is also furloughing employees (exact numbers remain unclear). Though the firm would like to bring the newly unemployed folks back “once this crisis subsides,” there is not currently a defined timeline or date for that.

A Baker Donelson spokesperson provided the following statement:

In the wake of the unprecedented and far-reaching impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Baker Donelson has unfortunately been faced with some very difficult decisions. We have undertaken a number of measures to ensure the financial stability of the Firm moving forward, which includes shareholder reduction in draws and salary that have already been implemented. This will be followed over the next few weeks by temporary salary reductions across the Firm and with a furloughing of some employees. We are focused on doing all we can for all of our employees, while also ensuring uninterrupted service to our clients and meeting our temporary operating needs throughout this global crisis and beyond. Our hope is that, once this crisis subsides, we will eventually be able to bring the furloughed team members back to Baker Donelson. Until then, we are providing them with support to help minimize the impact of what we know is an extremely trying situation, particularly in these highly uncertain times.

Good luck to all those bearing the brunt of the economic downturn.

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).

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).

* Harley-Davidson has a new top lawyer —- hopefully he gets a few Harleys thrown into his compensation package. [Bloomberg Law]

* Federal courts have begun to promote teleconferencing for certain criminal and civil matters due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. [Indiana Lawyer]

* The New York Attorney General is looking into privacy settings on the popular Zoom videoconferencing app that may make it vulnerable to hackers. [New York Times]

* Zoom is having a rough week, as the videoconferncing app is also being sued for allegedly sharing user data with Facebook. [CBS News]

* A federal appeals court has temporarily allowed Texas to prohibit nonessential abortions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. [Dallas Morning News]

* Upcoming oral arguments before the Supreme Court are in limbo because of concerns surrounding COVID-19. The justices should just conduct their business through videoconferencing apps like everyone else in the world at the moment. [CNN]

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.

Coronavirus is hitting the legal profession hard. Not just in terms of health, but monetarily as the uncertainty around the disease has grown, leaving economic upheaval in its wake.

Law students have been in a vulnerable position in all of this mess. That’s why AccessLex Institute, a nonprofit organization that helps wannabe lawyers on their path to career success, has created a $5 million fund to help out during the pandemic. AccessLex is making $25,000 available to law schools (all the nonprofit or state-affiliated ABA-approved schools, that is). The money will go to each schools’ student emergency fund for the law school to administer as per their standard criteria.

As AccessLex Institute President and Chief Executive Officer Christopher P. Chapman said in a statement, it is “simply the right thing” to do:

“It is imperative that we act on our mission to positively impact the lives of law students in a tangible way when they need the support most. The establishment of the Emergency Relief Fund is simply the right thing for AccessLex to do during this unprecedented  time. It represents a targeted response in our effort to be there for those we serve everyday—the next generation of lawyers.”

Good for AccessLex, and hopefully the money will make these times a little less trying for law students.

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).

Some law schools are sticking with their original grading policies in the midst of this crisis, either by their own choice or because their Trumpian political overlords demand it. Other law schools have creative solutions like allowing students to beg for Pass/Fail after the fact, earning an accommodation if they give the school a compelling enough story about how COVID-19 impacted them. Why must everything be so difficult in an environment where students are trying to stay alive while their professors try and fail to unmute themselves on Zoom? Judges are already pointing out that no one is going to care what the Spring 2020 grades will be so just make this semester Pass/Fail and focus on just teaching the material rather than trying to properly parse every student by class rank.

So, to recap, there are schools that are still grading, schools that have gone Pass/Fail, and schools that give the student the ability to opt for Pass/Fail if they have a good story. Now comes Notre Dame offering its new twist — allowing students to opt Pass/Fail but only before exams while letting everyone else keep getting grades.

Wha?

The current grading system would remain in place, but students would have the option of making an all-or-nothing election to have the grades for ALL of their Law School courses converted to Pass/No Credit grades. Students would not have the option of making the election for some but not all of their Law School courses.

Requiring this to apply to all courses makes some sense. In theory, the reason for the accommodation is a breakdown in the learning environment occasioned by the disease, so it doesn’t make sense to allow “Pass/Fail shopping” among courses. Though in fairness, there are some champ professors out there doing much better with distance learning and, if we’re being honest, some courses that lend themselves better to a less interactive, monologue lecture format. So there probably are some classes that have had more of an impact on the students than others, but weeding through all that is overkill. A blanket policy makes more sense.

But then the school is requiring students to elect which option they want before taking the exams. This is an option in the ASU policy, but at least that policy doesn’t limit students to taking just that route and oh my God, we’re now talking about the ASU policy as a good thing?!?!

The problem with non-blanket Pass/Fail options is it signals to anyone looking at a transcript down the road that the student must have expected to (if the policy requires pre-exam election) or really did bomb (if the policy allows post-exam election) the semester. And “P” from a student of that school immediately becomes suspect instead of giving the future graduate the cover to say, “Who knows whether that was an A or a B that semester because the world was coming to an end — the school made that call for me — the point is I passed so check out my other grades.” This whole thing only really works if it’s a blanket policy.

A Notre Dame student wrote Dean Marcus Cole raising concerns about this policy and got this response:

If the only people that you were competing against for jobs were your classmates, then you would be absolutely right: mandatory Pass/Fail would help to “level the playing field.” Unfortunately, nothing I can do as your Dean, or as a member of your Faculty, can protect you from competition from students at other schools. Of the schools in the “Top 30,” only eight have gone to Pass/Fail (Stanford and Yale have always been Pass/Fail, so they are not making any bold announcements). Of those eight schools, four are making Pass/Fail optional, and the other four are making it mandatory. As of this writing, all eight are ranked higher than Notre Dame. The hard truth is that you are not only competing against other Notre Dame students; you are competing against students from 22 similarly situated schools, all of whom are NOT giving their students a choice of Pass/Fail. They are issuing grades.

So that’s not true at all. For example, of the T14 all but three have gone mandatory Pass/Fail, with Michigan and Georgetown going optional Pass/Fail  after receiving grades and only Chicago sitting out there looking the fool.

But this also misses the point. The dean says nothing “can protect you from competition from students at other schools” but the reality is a blanket policy does offer that protection. Only a blanket policy eliminates any stigma to choosing a Pass/Fail grade. As long as there is an option, every student with a “Pass” looks like they had something to hide.

And don’t lose sight of what we’re really talking about here: “Pass” grades. If students are failing it doesn’t matter if it’s an “F” or a “Fail.” Pass/Fail isn’t letting bad students walk, it’s about protecting otherwise passing students from the vagaries of a curve in a wildly unpredictable time.

Students are not happy — one of the nicer comments described the school as responding “callously, not seriously considering a wealth of student input, brazenly putting the school’s ranking prospects ahead of student interests” — and for good reason.

Dean Cole continues:

This all would not be an issue if ALL law schools went to January/February On-Campus Interviews. To date, only one school has formally announced that they will, namely, Columbia Law School. A January/February OCI schedule would allow for schools to adopt a mandatory, across the board Pass/Fail system, because it would afford firms the opportunity to see your Fall 2L grades. With any schools NOT agreeing to January/February OCI’s, firms would fill jobs with GRADED students in August, leaving the students at January/February schools with nothing left. It would be irresponsible of us to put you in that position of false hope.

First of all, this still labors under the misconception that the overwhelming majority of law schools are going mandatory Pass/Fail anyway and that OCI might well be moving to next winter no matter what because the firms themselves are not going to be ready to hire in August.

But it also continues to operate under this goofy conception that employers are going to uncritically hire a B student from one school as opposed to a Pass student from another. Yes, the straight A student is at an advantage over the straight Pass student. But the straight B student isn’t. And with a blanket policy, employers have to consider that every fully passing student might just be a straight A student and they’ll have to actually have an interview to figure out if the student is the right fit (or consider myriad other indicators like first semester grades or law review membership). The point is the only decision that throws students under the bus is the non-blanket route.

Thankfully, there’s still a whole month for the school to take a step back and fix this. Take the time to examine what other schools have actually done and, if OCI is the big concern, take the time to build a coalition with peer schools to push for a winter OCI. There are a lot of options available to the school right now… and very few of them could be any worse.

Earlier: Top Law School Sparks Controversy For Maintaining Grading Curve During COVID-19
When A Law School Says ‘Don’t Contact The Media,’ You Should ABSOLUTELY Contact The Media
Law School Offers Pass/Fail But Only If You Tell Them A Good Enough Story About How COVID Hurt You
Prominent Jurist Tells Law Schools And Gunners To Stop Freaking Out About Pass/Fail Options

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.

Columbia already saw the writing on the wall and moved its on-campus interview process to January 2021. No one knows for sure when this whole thing will be over, half of the transcripts students will have to show employers will be a bunch of “Pass” grades, and by the end of the summer, a lot of firms are just going to be taking stock of where their layoffs and furloughs have left them, so why persist in the delusion that firms will be hiring in August? And from what we’ve been hearing, other schools have also gone the Columbia route with at least Duke and Georgetown postponing early interview time as well.

Apparently, Harvard will become the first “HYS” school to put off early interviews. EIP, the Early Interview Program, will move to January 2021 according to a message sent to Above the Law:

Today, we write with an important update on EIP and the upcoming law firm recruiting season. After numerous discussions with students and employers, we have decided to move EIP Week to January 2021 and to suspend EIP Preview for this recruiting season. We will provide additional information about EIP in the coming weeks as we flesh out the details of our program.

While other schools moved first, Harvard’s decision likely opens the floodgates on recruiting changes. Biglaw firms aren’t going to fill their future classes without talking Harvard students, so there’s not going to be any appetite to gather everyone from Chicago in August only to tell them to expect a callback in February. By Friday, the rest of the T14 will almost certainly have pushed on-campus recruiting to match whatever Harvard’s doing.

I guess our on-campus interview shopping guide is going to have to be a lot more winter weather-centric…

Earlier: Elite Law School Postpones On-Campus Interviews Because Of Coronavirus

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.

Anti-LGBTQ wingnut activist Dr. Steven Hotze is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more. He’s tired of these godless liberals making laws to oppress Christians under the cover of some supposed “public health crisis.” So he’s appealing to a higher power, in this case, the Supreme Court of Texas, for an emergency Writ of Mandamus, overruling Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s March 24 stay-at-home order, which closes churches and gun shops during the coronavirus pandemic.

Because it is the sacred right of American Christians to assemble, shoulder-to-shoulder in time of plague. And also to buy guns. Thus sayeth the Lord. Amen.

“If the Order is allowed to remain in place, the harm to individuals, businesses, the general public, people of faith, and the fundamental rights guaranteed to Harris County residents under the United States and Texas Constitutions would be impossible to undo,” reads Hotze’s petition, filed with three local pastors, who contend that their flocks cannot possibly wait until after the pandemic to assemble in worship and top off their arsenals.

Hotze has long railed against “homofascists,” referred to Caitlyn Jenner as “Bruce Degenerate,” and once recorded a song called “God Fearing Texans Stop Obamacare.” On February 27, the doctor recorded a video for his YouTube channel calling COVID-19 “completely insignificant compared to the influenza virus,” and warning that, “The mainstream media (MSM) is creating an irrational fear over the coronavirus, attempting to herd you like sheep.” He’s currently flogging a $125 “Immune Pak,” which he promised on Facebook “would also help you prevent yourself from getting the flu, coronavirus, or any other viral or bacterial infection.” Or if you’re in the market to enhance male libido, check out his latest tweet.

Sounds legit!

Hotze’s legal arguments appear to consist of shouting WHAT ABOUT THE FLU? and accusing Judge Hidalgo of picking “winners and losers.” Bizarrely, Hotze’s “winners” are the janitorial staff, risking coronavirus as they sanitize our supermarkets, while the “losers” are the Christian faithful, forced to watch sermons online from the safety of their living rooms. Harris County has at least 254 identified cases of COVID-19, but the doctor can envision no “compelling government interest” to justify this infringement on the right of religious people to assemble.

Similarly, Hotze accuses Judge Hidalgo of unlawfully abridging the right to bear arms, which apparently includes the right to buy and sell guns all day, every day, pandemic be damned.

Shuttering access to firearms necessarily shutters the Constitutional right to those arms. By forcing Harris County’s duly licensed and authorized gun dealers/stores to close, Judge Hidalgo is foreclosing the only lawful means to buy, sell, and transfer firearms and ammunition available to typical, law-abiding residents of Harris County, Texas. Such a de facto prohibition on the right to keep and bear arms is categorically unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Hotze’s complaint was filed by Texas attorney Jared Woodfill, the former Harris County Republican Party Chair, who was publicly reprimanded by the state bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline in 2018 and fined $3,490 for professional misconduct. This case here, though, is totally on the up and up.

Texas Pastors, Right-Wing Activist Mount Constitutional Challenge to Stay-At-Home Order [Law & Crime]
Right-wing media coronavirus expert is a QAnon supporter who suggested the “deep state” orchestrated the pandemic [Media Matters]

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

(Kent Zimmermann, legal consultant with the Zeughauser Group, offering up a dismal view of what’s to come for the legal profession in light of the ongoing coronavirus crisis. As far as summer associate programs are concerned, Zimmermann went on to say that “[s]ome have canceled, made [an] internal announcement, but have not yet publicly announced the decision.” Click here to see our coverage of the layoffs and salary cuts that have occurred thus far.)

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.