Category: News Feeds

Law students are facing a new and precarious danger: Coronavirus has not only quieted streets and shut down restaurants, it has thrust the economy into a deep recession, perhaps even depression. During the chaos and disquieting calm since we all retreated into quarantines, law students and law professors are faced with the situation of trying to carry on as normal to finish the semester, all the while knowing it isn’t normal at all.

Some schools have recognized the new normal, allowing students to finish pass/fail. Some have opted for an ignorance is bliss approach, preferring to continue with grades as if the world of law students hasn’t changed. Others, in a particularly callous effort, have requested that students write essays justifying pass/fail, as if COVID-19 were not justification enough.

The pandemic lifted the veil between law school and “the real world.” Sitting alone in my room (now workspace, gym, dining hall — oh, and sleeping space) it feels impossible to pull it back and focus only on law school.

Suddenly, class, grades, and rank feel less important — I’m not certain what the world will look and who will be there after the pandemic passes. Then again, even getting a job after law school seems unlikely. Let’s not forget that there’s also a recession. Law students from lower-ranked state schools cannot compete with the top-tier law schools whose graduates will be scrambling for anything they can find this and next year.

Enter the Great 2020 Law School Debate: Should law schools use pass/fail or keep the curve? The debate exposed a tension: pass/fail is the fairer option given the suddenness of the change, but some law schools prefer to use the curve to distinguish their “best” students and give some students a boost in hiring and a tool to dole out scholarships. Some law schools offered another choice: You can see your grades, and if you don’t like them, declare pass/fail. Already, law schools recognized that its method favors a certain type of (white, wealthy, and legal pedigree) student — usually dismissing the concern with the “but everyone knows how to do law school by the second semester.”

But the threat of the curve forced law students, who are taught to put their heads down and do their best, to start speaking up about their unique, and increasingly difficult, if not impossible, situations. Law students are not the same as they were thirty years ago. Nor twenty years ago. The demographics have changed.

Most law students are not the young, childless, wealthy, white men of the Paper Chase (or Legally Blonde). Women are the majority of law students. Law students are, on average, 24 years old. They are older and more likely to have families. Law students are more likely to come from poorer families. These are the students law schools, to varying degrees, have recruited. Law schools invited diversity. Now, they must find solutions to accommodate their diverse student bodies — even in the middle of a pandemic.

During the semester, law students carefully plan their entire semester around attending in-person classes. Within one week, a virus upended these plans and students in the most perilous financial and family positions are now most at risk of being unable to finish the semester.

Not all students have access to reliable internet and technology for a seamless transition to online classes. Yes, some of us relied on the school’s public computers for writing our first-year appellate brief. Many of us went to Starbucks for reliable internet. The campus is closed and so is Starbucks. The presumption that we have access to technology is wrong.

Not all students have reliable access to food. Yes, free pizza lunches were an important part of my food budget. The presumption that we have equal access to food is wrong.

While many law students are older and have children, not all of them have access to childcare. Suddenly, law students also must double as parents for more hours of the day. Twenty years ago, women made up less than half of law students. Today, women are the majority of law students. Women are burdened with more responsibilities at home. The presumption that we all have equal study time is wrong.

Not all of us have access to quiet study areas — I write as my neighbors have decided weeknights are now for parties and revving large trucks.

Not all students are financially secure. We lost clerkships, internships, jobs, and more in this pandemic. One day, we had a job that paid for groceries, utilities, and books. The next day, we were told to stay home. Some of us work part-time and do not qualify for unemployment in most states. Many of us do not have families that can support us. Being in a risky financial situation is not only anxiety-inducing, but a real crisis that predominates many of our lives. The presumption that this pandemic was anything other than life-altering is wrong.

Many first-generation college students are now primary-income earners. Nearly 20 percent of the workforce reported being fired, laid off, or on reduced hours last week. Stories within first-generation circles abound with the reality that our parents are now unemployed with no help — some are undocumented immigrants who will not be bailed out. Some students have already decided to quit and return home. Some may have no choice within a few weeks.

Many students will get sick or have sick family members they must care for. That is the reality of a pandemic: people get sick. Enforcing the curve asks law students to prioritize being a law student over caring for a sick child, parents, grandparents (who hospitals may be forced to simply not treat), or spouses. Medical workers were advised to make preparation in case they died from the virus. Law students and their spouses may be making end-of-life plans now — just in case.

If law schools ever cared for their students’ physical and mental health, they must consider all students and the unique positions they endure, not just the caricature to which many cling.

As debates around the meaning of coronavirus for law schools fomented, suddenly stock markets dropped — faster than during the Great Depression. We are likely entering a recession, and law students are acutely aware that none of us are getting the jobs that were there when we decided to go to law school. The presumption that things will get back to “normal” is wrong, and we know it.

Most of us remember the 2008 recession. Some of our summer vacations as children were spent riding in unreliable, hot cars to and from unemployment offices with our parents. We are a generation that knows what is like to live in a recession. We know what’s out there for us.

Perhaps prioritizing kindness will do more for law students right now than enforcing law school norms. As law schools scramble to create fair solutions, they must consider their diverse, and struggling, students. To promote normalcy in these extraordinary times will only reinforce inequalities.

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K.G. Molina is a law student, the EIC for the ABA Law Student Division, and talks about law school a lot. Please follow on Twitter (@CanPanicNow) for amusing and insightful commentary. Email questions or comments to kgmolina@ou.edu.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com. The overwhelming majority of this insightful blog post is K.G. Molina’s, which should spontaneously cause you to offer her gainful employment. Anything you hate is my idea. But I’m still right.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily suspended its remaining docket due to our current public health crisis, two cases with far-reaching implications to religious education are still going to be decided this term. Taken together in fact, these two cases reveal a fundamental incoherence to the legal strategy utilized by those pushing for a restructuring of the relationship between government and religious education.

The first case, Montana Department of Revenue v. Espinoza, held oral arguments this past January. It is not overselling it to say the result could profoundly alter how our government funds public education. The relevant facts surrounding the Espinoza case, however, are relatively simple. The Supreme Court has held states have the right to strengthen the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause liberty with state-specific statutes or constitutional provisions, if they so choose. Moreover, even the petitioners in the Espinoza case conceded during oral argument that as a function of this Establishment Clause liberty, states can choose not to fund secular and religious private schools entirely. Now, you and everyone else can read right here and see that upholding this recognized state right is exactly what the Montana Supreme Court did in the Espinoza case. To the petitioners in Espinoza and those voices who support them, however, the refusal by the Montana Supreme Court to require the state to fund private schools when it democratically elected not to was somehow akin to upholding an anti-Catholic 19th century bigoted Blaine-type framework.

To put it bluntly, the argument that what the Montana Supreme Court did in its December 2018 decision was uphold a 19th century Blaine-type form of discrimination is legally incoherent. Indeed, it was none other than Chief Justice John Roberts who exposed this incoherence at oral argument by utilizing a basic understanding of history and legal standing. For those who may not be aware how the bigoted Blaine framework of the past operated, 19th century states had largely established public schools as uniquely Protestant in that they forced Protestant bible reading and adoption of other Protestant religious practices onto students of different Christian denominations and different religions. In this 19th century context, no-funding provisions functioned solely to maintain Protestant schools as the only state school.

In modern-day Montana however, even the petitioners in Espinoza conceded that the state’s current no-funding provision was not favoring one form of religion over another and in fact treats all private schools the same, regardless of their religious identity. The lack of discrimination by Montana’s modern no-aid provision was why Roberts noted during oral argument that although any conceivable injury that petitioners could point to in the Espinoza case necessarily “flows through the schools,” there was no school at party in the case. The reason no school was a party in the Espinoza case is absent any claim of discriminatory injury by the state, it becomes virtually certain that any religious school that challenged Montana’s 1970s constitutional provision would have seen their cased dismissed on standing grounds. Moreover, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out, the petitioners in Espinoza are even farther removed from having legal standing than the schools themselves: “They aren’t the taxpayers receiving the credits, they aren’t the schools receiving the money from the state, and there is no guarantee that their children will receive scholarships.”

The fact that this weak of a case where under the petitioner’s own argument the party that any conceivable injury “flows through” does not have a rational legal basis for standing, made it all the way to our nation’s highest court is an embarrassment. But in order to appreciate the full scope of the legal embarrassment going on here, the Espinoza case must be placed in the context with another religious case involving education this term: Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru.

Like Espinoza, the facts of the Guadalupe School case are relatively straightforward. The question presented, however, is a degree more complicated than the one presented in Espinoza due to a recent Supreme Court precedent called the “Ministerial Exception,” that was only vaguely defined when it was established. The ministerial exception prevents private employment claims from being taken against church bodies (such as religious schools) and is legally based on the principle enshrined in the First Amendment that government and religion should exist in a state of separation, and for what it is worth, I wholeheartedly agree. However, when establishing the ministerial exception back in 2012, Roberts declined “to adopt a rigid formula for deciding when an employee qualifies as a minister” and therefore cannot sue the church. The Guadalupe School case, therefore, appears to turn on whether the employees at issue qualify as ministers.

What makes the Guadalupe School case remarkable is not the arguments being made in the case itself, but the context in which these arguments are taking place. Remember, just this past January, many of the same forces/voices who undoubtedly support the religious school’s argument in the Guadalupe case — that it should be kept separate from government — argued that government should be forced to fund religious schools. I submit that no sane reading of our religious liberty clauses supports the notion that government is both commanded to stay out of the affairs of religious schools while at the same time existing under the obligation to fund them. Yet, it is virtually certain multiple Supreme Court Justices, perhaps even the Court itself, will agree with such an obviously incoherent legal standard this term. We should all be embarrassed it has come to this.

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

How is Biglaw dealing with the economic upheaval surrounding COVID-19? Well, there have been layoffs and 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 we’ve heard that one Biglaw firm has taken a slightly different approach.

Pryor Cashman has furloughed associates amid the economic downturn. Though the difference between furloughs and layoffs is fuzzy at best, the implication of a furlough is that the employee will be re-hired at some point. Tipsters at the firm haven’t been told a specific date or timeframe that the now out-of-work associates will be hired back.

According to a statement by the firm, they furloughed associates whose work has dried up because of coronavirus. And they didn’t provide a specific time table for bringing back the associates, only saying they’d do so once the work is back:

We have furloughed some associates whose workflow has been interrupted by the Corona-19 crisis.  We are hopeful and expect that we can reinstate them as soon as their work levels approach norms again.

Hopefully for those impacted, the furlough will be relatively short. But given the lack of certainty surrounding the virus, it doesn’t look great.

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).

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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).

Lisa: Cheer up, Dad. Did you know the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity’?
Homer: Yes. Crisitunity.

As usual, Homer Simpson’s got the right idea. The COVID-19 outbreak pushed the legal community to adopt new virtual practice models and put a stop to the face-to-face interactions and networking opportunities that mark the profession. In the face of this, why not take the opportunity to try something new and innovative? And if it can be for a good cause, that’s even better.

There aren’t any solid, CLE-awarding conferences to fly to right now, so Rocket Matter has created one virtually. Rocket Aid, as it will be called, will be a first-of-its-kind opportunity to show off just what we can do with conferencing technology. The $25 registration fee will be donated directly to United Way’s COVID-19 Fund, Pro Bono Net, as well as Feeding America, a charity network of more than 200 food banks.

Rocket Aid will stream live, online on April 16th and 17th, from 10am to 4pm EDT each day. The content will cover cutting-edge topics on running an online practice, ways to generate more revenue, and embracing modern tools that will help law firms adapt and thrive in a changing world. In addition to attending educational sessions, participants will have the ability to network during face-to-face virtual “happy hours” and breakout sessions.

To attend the show, register online here.

The programming for the two day show includes a number of talks offering insight either directly or indirectly related to practicing in a pandemic. There might even be an opportunity for you to join the roster of presenters for a few of these talks.

Rocket Aid’s content is mostly in place already, but the conference has a call for speakers for panels and additional suggested talks. Planned sessions include the following:

• Panel: COVID-19 and Law Firm Operations: What are We Learning?
• Session: Remote Lawyering Overview: The Tools You Need
• Session: Hidden Gems of Office 365
• Session: How to Increase Profits and Sanity by Running a Lean Law Firm
• Session: Saying “Adios” to Billing Headaches and “Hola” to Increased Profitability
• Session: A 12-Month Plan for Going Paperless
• Session: Cybersecurity for the Remote Lawyer
• Panel: COVID-19 Coverage and How to Think About PR
• Panel: Remote Technology Do’s and Don’ts
• Panel: Staying Sane While Working Remote
• Mini-session: An Economic Outlook for Lawyers During and After COVID-19 (non-CLE)
• Mini-session: Setting Up an Ergonomic Home Office (non-CLE)

Rocket Matter is also looking for speakers for mini 3- and 6-minute sessions on their remote successes as well as lawyers who would like to offer their thoughts on panels.

To apply for a speaker position, please apply here.

Consider just how quickly this has all come together. Less than a month ago, many of us were in Chicago for ABA Techshow. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be attending a virtual conference that hadn’t even been conceived back then.

As someone who, like most of you, has been locked away for a couple of weeks now, I look forward to seeing you all on April 16th and 17th!

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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.

Welcome to legal profession’s 2020 recession, courtesy of the coronavirus. We’ve already seen Biglaw firms announce 10 percent pay reductions, 25 percent pay reductions, and partners slow or eliminate their draws entirely. What could possibly come next?

According to multiple sources, Rivkin Radler, a midsize firm that ranked #211 on the latest NLJ 500, announced a series of cost-cutting measures on Monday afternoon. Specifically, the firm will be slashing compensation by 20 percent across the board, among other financial cuts. Here’s an excerpt from the firm’s memo on the adjustments (available on the next page):

In order to protect the long term health of the Firm for everyone, effective with the payroll period ending April 16, all attorney compensation will be reduced by 20%. Further, all payments pursuant to the fee participation program and the attorney recruitment program are suspended. These measures will last until such time as the Firm is back in its offices and operating at full capacity.

Rivkin Radler also plans to cut staff salaries by 20 percent. As our tipsters note, no mention was made of cuts to partner compensation.

We reached out to Rivkin Radler, and the firm’s managing partner, Evan Krinick, confirmed the steps taken to keep the firm in the black. According to the firm’s statement, the move will “ensure the long-term well-being of [the] firm”:

Like most businesses, we are working to address the complex challenges presented by this global pandemic. Foremost in all of our minds is the health and safety of our families, colleagues and friends. For business, the reality is that the temporary closure of the courts has decreased our workload in our litigation groups and the general economic downturn has impacted our commercial transactional practices. To ensure the long-term well-being of our firm, our partnership has elected to temporarily reduce compensation for all attorneys and staff by 20%. We fully expect to restore all to their regular compensation levels as soon as the present crisis abates.

Good luck to Rivkin Radler as the firm weathers the storm that is COVID-19.

Which firm will be the next to turn to salary reductions as a way to avoid layoffs?

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).

(Flip to the next page to read Rivkin Radler’s compensation memo in full.)

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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.

The coronavirus crisis continues to ravage the legal profession, be it through layoffs, benefits reductions, or salary cuts. We’ve already a Biglaw firm announce a 10 percent pay reduction for anyone making more than $100,000, but the latest salary cuts are quite the doozy in comparison.

According to multiple sources, Cadwalader, ranked #89 in the latest Am Law 100 and #52 in the latest Vault 100, announced a series of cost-cutting measures during a townhall meeting this morning. Specifically, for the next four months, the firm will be slashing associate compensation by 25 percent and staff compensation by 10 percent. On top of those cuts, partners and senior counsel will be making the most “significant financial sacrifice” of all. Here’s an excerpt from the firm’s memo on its shocking compensation adjustments:

These salary reductions take place almost immediately. IMMEDIATELY. Yikes.

With no end to the COVID-19 pandemic in sight, law firms are clearly trying to find ways to quickly lessen their costs. On the bright side, although its employees’ wallets may be a little lighter in April, at least Cadwalader hasn’t decided to conduct layoffs.

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).

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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.

The law school dream claims another one.

Earlier this week, Imani McGee-Stafford, center for the Dallas Wings, announced she was stepping away from basketball to focus on the next step in her career: law school. She says she’ll be pursuing her J.D. at Southwestern Law School.

McGee-Stafford is part of a family basketball tradition — her mother is former USC basketball player Pamela McGee and her brother is Lakers center JaVale McGee, but she says she is looking forward to law school. I guess she hasn’t watched The Paper Chase yet:

“While I am saddened to step away from such a big part of my life, I’m also excited for this next chapter.”

ESPN reports the highlights of McGee-Stafford’s ball career:

The 6-foot-7 McGee-Stafford, 25, played at Texas from 2012 to ’16, averaging 10.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game. She was selected No. 10 overall in the 2016 WNBA draft by the Chicago Sky, for whom she played that season and part of 2017 before being traded to Atlanta. She was with the Dream in 2018 as well, and then was traded to the Wings before last season. She averaged 3.9 points and 3.8 rebounds for Dallas in 2019.

And though they’re losing a player, Wings president and CEO Greg Bibb wished McGee-Stafford well, saying, “We thank her for her hard work and contribution to the Wings organization and support her decision to step away from the WNBA in order to achieve a longtime goal.”

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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).

To those who have had enough of hearing about the COVID-19 lockdown, please know that I am quickly falling into the same camp. At the same time, we have to accept reality. For many IP lawyers — we who are decidedly “nonessential,” unlike those heroes tending to the sick and working to keep the healthy supplied and fed — the need to work from home constitutes a major change. True, many of us have gotten better at using technology to work remotely, even on that (now long-forgotten) occasional event called a vacation, in recognition of the always on-call nature of modern legal practice. But even with the relaxing of face-time standards at many law firms, the default for productive IP lawyers remains centered on performance in the office environment. Since our responsibilities to clients, colleagues, and our families are unceasing, there is a communal challenge facing the IP legal community we now must confront. How to stay as productive as possible when working from home, in an environment where both the general economy and legal system — indeed our very lives — have been severely disrupted.

As I mentioned in last week’s column, I may have more practical experience than most in terms of working remotely — for a number of reasons. Part of the impetus for the need to stay productive at home from the earliest stages of my career arose because of my personal observance of the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays, which obviously had an impact on when the office was accessible to me. Another large piece was the fact that my children were born concurrent with my Biglaw career. My desire to be with them of course led to my putting a premium on productivity in the times I wasn’t with them. Hence the late night brief-drafting, on top of the other accommodations inherent in the life of a partner-track Biglaw IP associate. With all that, however, during my time in Biglaw I was definitely in the majority of IP lawyers who had an “office-first” mentality in terms of thinking about the physical divide between work and family life.

This microscopic virus has completely collapsed the divide for many of us worldwide. Since I have been getting much more practice at working from home over the past few years, I want to share three idiosyncratic tips about achieving optimal productivity that I hope can be of help to readers.

First, let’s start with what not to do. Simply put, that means not adopting an extreme position on anything productivity-wise — without adopting an experimental mindset first. Just as deciding that you can necessarily work any less mindfully because you are now free from the distractions of the office is not conducive to remaining productive, so too is it important to avoid the temptation to turn as much of your newfound “free time” (e.g. former commuting time) into work time as possible. In short, now is not the time to show your employer or our colleagues what a superhero you are. It is a time for modesty, not aggrandizement.

At the least, for many the distractions of the office will now be replaced by the distractions of the home — sometimes severe ones that make our current experience very far away from a previously routine work-from-home Friday. Even for someone who lives alone, since the people they will be interacting as might not be. Cue up memes of underwear-clad toddlers (or even adults) wandering in the background of Zoom meetings if you don’t believe. So don’t pretend things are normal — you will be more productive by adopting that experimental mindset about this bizarre experience. At the same time, establishing some sort of routine is very important. I know that some tout the importance of getting dressed for the workday, but I am not sure how much of a difference that makes. In my view, it is better to find a reason to leave the house every day, if only to remind you of the broader world out there and the lessons you can draw from watching other humans from a safe six-foot (or 26-foot) distance. At a minimum, I would hope that leaving the house would be preceded by dressing in some kind of presentable attire.

Second, in addition to getting some air, it is also important to carve out at least a half-hour a day doing something work-related that you enjoy. Whether that means reading a decision in a case of interest, or watching an appellate argument, or just looking for an interesting article online related to an IP issue doesn’t matter. What matters is giving your mind the space to roam a bit, without the pressure associated with a work deliverable. We become better lawyers and people the more we indulge our curiosity, so take advantage of the work-from-home time to build such productive curiosity-seeking into your schedule.

Third, make sure you know going into each day what needs to get done on behalf of your clients. Ideally, the list of must-dos will be manageable, even as every day brings a set of one or two things that should really get done that day, without procrastination. While this may be harder to do if you are at the stage of your career where work gets dumped on you, there really should be fewer emergencies now that everything’s on lockdown. Either way, learning how to triage assignments into must-do, should-do, or can-do is always useful. More than ever now.

Ultimately, the most important thing for us to remember is that we can continue to serve our clients and practice our noble profession no matter where we are. Done right, we can be as productive as we want — no, need — to be in these trying times. We owe it to our clients, families, and colleagues to make the most of this situation.  More critically, we owe it to ourselves.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

It’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a really long week for the legal profession. Thus far, we’ve seen associate layoffs and salary cuts, partners slowing their cash distributions, and firms pausing lateral hiring, all because of the coronavirus crisis. Some Biglaw firms are now scrambling to do all they can to avoid cutting personnel during a health crisis.

Marshall Dennehey, an Am Law 200 firm, has announced that effective May 1, it is suspending a 4 percent employer 401(k) match until next year. The firm’s matching program has an 80 percent participation rate among its 1,200 employees, but president and CEO Mark Thompson wouldn’t disclose how much money this financial maneuver would save — just that it wouldn’t be enough.

The Legal Intelligencer has more on what’s going on at Marshall Dennehey:

“We’re trying to offset these losses and live up to our family values and keep everybody together. This was a measure we could take as an alternative to layoffs and pay cuts,” [Thompson] said. …

Thompson and firm leadership have deep reservations about cutting head count or salaries. While suspending 401(k) matching will not fully cover the revenue the firm anticipates it will lose, Thompson said he does not anticipate firm layoffs. He said he prides the firm on having a family environment, and he loathes the idea of a laid-off employee losing their health insurance in midst of a public health crisis.

The response from employees, Thompson said, has been overwhelmingly positive in light of the cuts that have already been announced across the industry.

“We have received expressions of gratitude,” Thompson said. “People are scared and we’re trying to give them one less thing to worry about.” He expects the matching program will return to the firm in 2021.

Let’s hope Marshall Dennehey’s plan comes to fruition and the firm can save jobs.

In an Effort to Avoid Layoffs, Marshall Dennehey Halts Retirement Matching [Legal Intelligencer]

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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.

The most baroquely partisan U.S. Attorney General since John Mitchell, if not ever, has made clear that he’s not the slightest bit interested in any wrongdoing on the part of any Republicans during this very sensitive time for his chief concern, the reelection of his boss, Donald Trump. But even Bill Barr can’t look at the very suspiciously timed trades of essentially the entire net worth of Sen. Richard Burr, saving the North Carolina Republican a suspicious quarter-million dollars or more just before the coronavirus pandemic he said was no big deal tanked the markets after Burr got some confidential briefings on said pandemic without saying, “Come on.”