Category: News Feeds

* A lawyer for a Pennsylvania man, who allegedly pretended to be his dead mother to cast an extra vote, claims his client was engaged in “civil disobedience.” Pretty sure Gandhi and MLK didn’t use that strategy… [Yahoo News]

* President Trump issued a flurry of pardons and commutations yesterday to many individuals in his political circle and others. [CNN]

* A Colorado lawyer is accused of allegedly mishandling $2 million earmarked by clients to purchase personal protective equipment. [Denver Post]

* Walmart is being sued over allegations that the company helped fuel the opioid crises. [New York Times]

* A New York lawyer, who allegedly went on a racist rant at a restaurant in 2018, has been disciplined for his conduct. [New York Post]

* Somewhat relatedly, a Texas judge, who allegedly used racial slurs against Mexicans, has been sanctioned. [Texas Lawyer]

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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.

New Technology Without Adoption Is Worse Than Doing Nothing

New Technology Without Adoption Is Worse Than Doing Nothing

Rohit Parekh – Matter365

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to data collected by Jerry Organ, which law school had the greatest number of transfers in 2020?

Hint: The elite law school also came in first for transfers in 2017, 2018, and 2019. So if you’re looking to make a law school move, perhaps this is a place to check out.

See the answer on the next page.

One of the great joys of my professional life has been my once-weekly experience teaching an IP elective course to (very) motivated and capable high schoolers. Way back in 2016 — when classes could be maskless, even when in person — I described teaching high schoolers as a “rewarding experience,” which led me to recommend to readers at the time that they should seize any opportunity to teach that came their way. I still believe that, just as I still believe that today’s IP lawyers have an important role to play in educating the public — and especially the next generation of Americans — in at least the basics of IP literacy.

In fact, I am hopeful that some of the regrettable disruption of our educational systems, from college to preschool, will at least generate additional opportunities for IP literacy as part of a well-rounded educational curriculum, especially for high school students and up. The pandemic has confirmed that “we live in a world where it is both easier and harder than ever to bring to market disruptive products and services. The competition is worldwide, and relentless.” I wrote those words in early 2018 but they are even more true today. (For a good recap of the stakes regarding the incoming Biden administration getting IP policy right, I commend this piece by Bruce Berman.) Accordingly, fostering IP literacy in today’s students before they enter the workforce is more important than ever, especially since the pandemic has so radically altered the workforce they will be entering.

Considering how important the issue of IP literacy is to me, I remain fortunate that I have the ability to do something about it, at least in the context of my own class. For this year, I decided to mix things up a bit, primarily by choosing to have patents as the major unit of the semester. In prior years, trademarks and copyrights were the initial IP areas of discussion in the class, partly because it’s a lot easier to get a high school student to think about the branding on the sneakers they are wearing than the chipset in their smartphone.

As a result, the midterm project that was in many ways the highlight of the course previously carried a trademark focus, in the form of a set of domain name disputes that the students could litigate in a moot court-type setting. Since I would rejigger published domain-name arbitration decisions as our case studies, it was relatively easy to develop fact patterns that would be both interesting and workable for the students to work with.

Needing a change, however, I have decided to go with patents as our lead topic for the fall semester. Since one of my motivations for the switch was to challenge myself to keep things fresh in presenting the course, I understood that one of the biggest changes that would result would be in terms of the midterm project. Again, that project is really the centerpiece of the class, as it allows the students to get a taste for the IP lawyer’s role in resolving disputes, while also allowing them to explore how the interplay of law and fact help drive determination of IP matters in a litigation setting.

One of the most humbling things you learn as a teacher is that no matter how simply put or digestible you think your presentation of the material is — you can always do better. That challenge is doubled when you are asking students to handle something very different than anything they have encountered before. In terms of the midterm project, therefore, I was really looking for a case that presented a fact pattern involving easily recognizable technology, ideally embodied in a familiar consumer product. As importantly, I wanted a case that presented interesting — but manageable — questions on the key issues most often litigated in modern day patent cases, namely, venue, infringement, invalidity, and damages.

Since I have a practice of scanning new patent filings anyway, for the last month or so I have kept a special eye out for any cases that could be a good basis for this year’s midterm project. I was thus very pleased when I saw the recently filed lawsuit against Peloton by the originators of the “Spinning” phenomenon, the aptly named Madd Dogg. It was tailor-made for adaption for this year’s midterm project.

Familiar consumer product? Check — particularly due to Peloton’s gonzo performance in the closed-gym pandemic era. Venue issue? Check — as Madd Dogg (smartly) chose to sue Peloton in the Eastern District of Texas, rather than in the SDNY or Delaware, Peloton’s more natural “home courts.” Relatively simple technology? Check — an exercise bike with a screen and some connectivity, allowing for simple adaptation of infringement and validity questions for the class to handle. Money at stake? Check — both in terms of damages from Peloton’s sale of the bikes themselves, as well as the potential for convoyed sales of Peloton subscriptions. In short, plenty of raw material for adapting into a workable competitive endeavor for the class.

I still don’t know, of course, if this year’s project will be a success. For now, I am focused on splitting the class into working teams, on two levels. First, half the class will be assigned to “represent” Peloton and the other the plaintiff Madd Dogg. Then, each legal team will be further split into small groups of two, with each subgroup charged with handling one of the four issues (venue, infringement, validity, damages) that will be litigated. Once the groups are set, I will finalize the fact patterns for each issue, and meet with each of the litigation subgroups to make sure that they are constructing their arguments and conducting any relevant research properly. If all goes well — and school stays open — we should be on track for our oral arguments right after winter break in early February.

My hope is always that my students will get a taste of the fun and intellectual stimulation that can be had from a career in IP law. I recognize that the hands-on nature of the midterm project is perhaps my best chance of planting that seed in them. That is why I dedicate such care to having the project mimic a real dispute as closely as possible given the level of the participants. And it is also why I consider that investment of time so worthwhile. Because whenever we have a chance to plant seeds for the future, we should. 2020 has challenged our commitment to doing so. But we have a responsibility to keep planting. And watering, so that today’s seeds can flourish into tomorrow’s leaders.

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.

Finally!

After weeks of plastering the federal docket with garbage lawsuits, a trial judge in Delaware became so alarmed at attorney Lin Wood’s antics that he issued a show cause order sua sponte demanding to know why he should not revoke Wood’s pro hac vice admission to appear before the court.

As first reported by Law & Crime’s Adam Klasfield, Wood’s representation of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in a suit claiming defamation by Yahoo! News and Huffpost has hit a snag. Page represented himself in a federal suit against the news outlet’s parent company Oath, Inc., but U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield failed to find the alleged violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act and tossed that suit in 2018. So Page retained Wood for a plain vanilla defamation suit in the Superior Court for the State of Delaware, and the attorney’s PHV application was approved in August.

But Page is not Wood’s only client. Since the election, Wood has put his name on Sidney Powell’s Wisconsin “Kraken” suit, in addition to filing challenges to Georgia’s presidential and senatorial elections on his own behalf.

“It appears to the Court that, since the granting of Mr. Wood’s motion he, has engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred in Delaware, would violate the Delaware Lawyers’ Rules of Professional Conduct (“DRPC”),” wrote Judge Craig A. Karsnitz, before going on to detail a litany of screwups.

Among the failures in the Wisconsin Kraken advocacy, Judge Karsnitz specifically cited: adding a plaintiff without his knowledge or consent; claiming to have filed papers under seal when this was not the case; requesting a TRO without the required supporting affidavit; failure to certify that adverse parties had received notification; improperly pleading for expeditious injunctive relief; and including a fabricated quote from a supporting case cite in a pleading. None of which suggests scrupulous attention to procedure in a jurisdiction in which he was extended the courtesy of being allowed to practice.

And in Georgia, where Mr. Wood is a member of the bar, his own suit to stop Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from certifying the election results was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg, who described the claim as having “no basis in fact or law.” Judge Karsnitz suggests that this might violate DRPC Rule 3.1, which bars lawyers from filing suit “unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so.”

Judge Karsnitz was also deeply unimpressed with the infamous “Ramsland Affidavit” regarding purported electoral fraud in Michigan, which Wood (inexplicably) filed in his Georgia suit. Noting that the document “contained materially false information, misidentifying the counties as to which claimed fraudulent voting information occurred,” the court wondered if its submission as evidence ran afoul of multiple DRPC rules mandating candor before the tribunal.

Presumably the Delaware court had not seen Wood’s latest federal challenge to the rules of the upcoming Georgia senate runoffs, in which he guaranteed “plenty of perjury” when he drafted this show cause order.

Mr. Wood has until January 6 to explain to the court why he should be permitted to remain on Carter Page’s case.

Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on a call with reporters that she will be investigating “what we believe to be an intentional misrepresentation” by Sidney Powell in her Michigan Kraken litigation.

“I think we need to go back to a time where you can trust an attorney is making an accurate and truthful representation to the court, because if they don’t, then they won’t be able to practice law anymore,” Nessel said, according to Forbes.

Lawyers for the City of Detroit have reportedly given Powell 21-day notice of their intention to ask the court for Rule 11 sanctions for her conduct in the Michigan suit, so Powell may be facing challenges on multiple fronts in the Great Lakes State.

Later Nessel’s spokesman Ryan Jarvi added, “Professional litigators should know better than to waste the court’s time with baseless arguments designed to mislead the public, and we will consider filing grievances against those who violated the rules of professional conduct all attorneys swear to abide by.”

Godspeed, Michiganders and Muskrats. It’s time to clean this sh*t up.

Judge Says Lin Wood’s Post-Election Lawsuits May Have Violated Several Professional Rules, Orders Him to Respond [Law & Crime]
Michigan Attorney General Weighing Professional Sanctions Against Sidney Powell, Pro-Trump Lawyers [Forbes]

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

Just so this is clear for the record. I am George Terwilliger. I’m not Sidney Powell. I’m not Lin Wood. I’m not Rudy Giuliani. Our opponents here have raised the specter of this somehow being related to cases in which those lawyers have made assertions concerning the Georgia process and the election process and election procedures. We have nothing to do with that.

— McGuireWoods partner George Terwilliger III, in a statement made before Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia, where he sought a federal restraining order to change how mail-in ballots in Georgia should be validated. Terwilliger represents the Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the campaigns of Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Judge Ross ruled that Terwilliger’s clients did not have standing, and dismissed the case.

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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’s not clear at what point during the week after his Oct. 24 speech lambasting China’s increasingly heavy-handed financial regulation that Jack Ma realized he had really stepped in it, putting his dream of the world’s largest IPO rather in some jeopardy. Certainly, by the time of his summons for a little sit-down with the People’s Bank of China, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, he must have suspected just how covered in excrement both of his feet, ankles and legs up to and possibly above his knees were, because he came prepared to do whatever it took to keep things moving along.

In fairness to Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin, this case and his 2020 have gone hand-in-hand.

Back in April, the judge had to benchslap Kirkland & Ellis into oblivion for not only refusing to comply with a simple third-party subpoena, but then having the audacity to demand fees for their trouble. They would not receive them, but the judge would note that “K&E should be embarrassed.”

But Judge Austin only had to deal with K&E because the defendant claimed he didn’t control a number of documents held by the recruiting company he otherwise seems to run. Last week, Judge Austin had to deal with the underlying discovery disputes involving the defendant and it was not pretty.

Indeed, “petty” was one word the judge used. “Unprofessional” was another.

So let’s dive back into the world of MWK v. Jowers, a dispute between the various Kinney Recruiting entities^[1] and former employee Evan Jowers, and see how things are going for Judge Austin.

After warning the defendant in May to make good faith efforts to comply with outstanding discovery requests, he instead fired his attorneys from DLA Piper and brought on Robert Tauler, whose firm appears to be the defendant in a RICO matter over herbal dick pills right now — because why not? — and promptly filed eight motions ranging from asserting its right to withhold three-year-old requested documents as sensitive trade secrets to demanding 42 hours of testimony from the same person (MWK also filed two motions for protective orders decided in this order).

To the former point, Judge Austin did his best interpretation of the Chris Rock line, “This isn’t Dynasty, you work at the phone company”:

If this were a patent suit, and Kinney and Jowers were the principals of rival chip manufacturers, these would be serious issues, deserving of a careful review and analysis. But this isn’t a patent suit, and Kinney and Jowers are not the principals of competing chip manufacturers—they’re the principals of attorney recruiting firms and the material at issue is, at best, marginally sensitive and is three years old. Given all of this, there is simply no good reason any court should have to delve into precisely how much of the material Kinney should be permitted to see. Instead, this is the very sort of issue attorneys working in good faith should work out.

It’s hard to imagine an industry as fast paced as attorney recruiting where the jobs are snapped up so quickly. But, sure, try to claim that emails about an employment benefits opening from 2017 are super-sensitive.

As for the depositions, Tauler filed motions for sanctions after the plaintiffs failed to appear at a pair of depositions. Except…

In both instances, the depositions were scheduled by Jowers unilaterally, after being told that the proposed dates were unavailable or that a witness would not be there. At bottom, the dispute revolves around the fact that there are five MWK entities that are parties to the case—MWK (the plaintiff), as well as Counsel Unlimited LLC, Kinney Recruiting LLC, Kinney Recruiting Limited, and Recruiting Partners GP, Inc. (all of whom Jowers sued in his counterclaim). Tauler has informed MWK that, in addition to deposing Kinney individually, he also intends to take a deposition of each entity, for which Kinney will be the corporate representative. Based on this, Tauler has unabashedly insisted that he is entitled to take six depositions, each seven hours in length. With no hint of shame, Tauler recounts that when the topic of the depositions was discussed, Kinney “requested an agreement by Jowers to limit the number of those depositions—by combining and consolidating them—so that, Kinney would not need to be deposed for a separate, seven-hours long day for each of the five named entities. Jowers’s counsel told him . . . that no such agreement would be acceptable.”

So far, we’ve got “petty and unprofessional” and “with no hint of shame.” Are there any others in this 19-page order? Well, we have “absurdity,” “abusive, and unwarranted,” “failed to provide any colorable argument,” “wholesale lack of any evidence,” “goes too far, “pure speculation and conspiracy-theorizing,” and “a prime example of how far beyond the pale Mr. Tauler has gone in his abuse of discovery in this case.” It’s safe to say things aren’t going great for Jowers and Tauler. In fact, Judge Austin revisits Tauler’s pro hac vice admission and demands that local counsel be added to supervise Tauler now that the original DLA Piper attorneys have withdrawn.

But that’s not even the worst of it:

The conduct by Mr. Jowers and Mr. Tauler evidenced in the ten motions addressed here is deplorable. It is the essence of what makes the public have low regard for lawyers. It is petty, and unprofessional. And, most importantly, it has diverted the scarce judicial resources of this Court from disputes far more deserving of the Court’s time. In May, Jowers and Tauler were warned that there would be consequences for continuing the conduct the Court was already seeing at that point. Rather than correcting things, they both doubled down and increased their abusive approach to this case. Accordingly, no later than January 5, 2021, both Jowers and Tauler shall file a written brief showing cause why they should not both be sanctioned for the costs they have caused the Plaintiff and Counter-Defendants to incur to respond to the baseless motions disposed of here.

Judges are generally too lenient when it comes to sanctioning bad behavior. There is a class of litigator who sees the process as an invitation to engage in wars of attrition that demean the whole system and they feel they can get away with it because no one wants to pull the trigger on sanctions. And maybe Judge Austin will stay his hand here too, but it’s clear that if he did so it would be contingent on never having to resolve another dispute like this from the parties.

Maybe it’s time for these folks to lay off the herbal male enhancement pills. It’s possible that they’re clouding their judgment.

(Full order on the next page…)

‘Petty and Unprofessional’: Judge Threatens Sanctions in Legal Recruiter Trade Secrets Case [Texas Lawyer]

Earlier: Kirkland & Ellis Ripped In Blistering Benchslap

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[1] By means of full disclosure, Kinney is a longtime advertiser on this site, but that doesn’t really factor into our analysis here.

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.

We were all blindsided as 2020 unfolded, yet the momentum of technological change and innovation assured a steady stream of new products. I have identified five trends, which I have divided into three categories: unforeseeable, continuing and surprising.

The trends I believe are worth noting — Unforeseeable: COVID-19 impacts; Predicable: state court analytics and innovative workflow tools; Surprising: legal news re-emerges as a competitive focus among major legal publishers and tech marketplaces emerge.

Unforeseeable: COVID-Related Trends

COVID alone triggered four subtrends:

• The emergence of local law and ephemeral publications. Major legal vendors were no more prepared to track county level health department issuances and Governors’ executive orders than the average law firm. To make things worse these “documents” were issued in a myriad of social media formats, texts, tweets, Facebook pages … . What’s a law firm to do?
• Librarians and KM professionals stepped into the vacuum and established protocols for locating and harnessing the untidy universe of COVID-19 ephemera.
• Law firms became publishers of original COVID-19 resources (leveraging the local documents harnessed by librarians).
• Legal publishers turned put an unprecedent volumes of free legal resources covering COVID-19 issues. I covered this trend in an earlier ATL post.

Continuing Trends: State Court Analytics And Workflow Tools

State Litigation Analytics — California was ground zero for the development of federal and state analytics. Gavelytics and Judicata were two of the earliest startups to tackle the challenges of state litigation analytics. Lex Machina, the pioneer in federal litigation analytics, entered the state litigation analytics market with the February launch of California and Nevada modules.

Westlaw and Bloomberg Law which previously launched  state analytics continues to build out state analytics content. Starts-ups Trellis and Unicourt joined the state analytics party in 2020. Fastcase/DocketAlarm continued building out their state litigation analytics and late in the year announced the acquisition of Judicata.

Workflow Tools

• Brief Analysis tools. Casetext launched a groundbreaking AI-enabled motion-drafting tool, Compose, at the Legal Tech conference in January. Compose uses AI to identify legal arguments and standards tailored to a jurisdiction and legal issue. Parallel search turbocharges the location of relevant precedent to support arguments.
• Casetext had invented a new class of brief checking tool with the launch of CARA in 2016.  It has taken a few years for all of the larger tech companies to catch up. LexisNexis and Bloomberg Law launched their brief analyzer tools in 2020. Westlaw launched their brief analyzer tool Quick Check in   That product was leveraged to build Quick Check Judicial. This is a tool was created for judges and can analyze up to six documents and produce comparative reports.
• Among the other workflow tools launched in 2020: Wolters Kluwer added a Practical Content dashboard and Thomson Reuters HiQ 5.4 AI contract analysis with integration to  Contract Express.

Surprising Trends: Legal News And Technology Directories

Is the Lexis News Monopoly In Jeopardy? If you look at 2020 trends — the answer is “yes.” Lexis has owned a virtual monopoly on legal news for the past decade. They not only bought Law360 in 2012, but over the years have locked up exclusive deals with the Wall Street Journal and American Lawyer Media. In 2014 they bought the news aggregation platform Newsdesk. I have repeatedly wondered aloud why Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg — both media companies — have failed to compete directly with Law360.

In January, Fastcase and American lawyer Media both announced the launch of legal news products.

• Fastcase launched their first Law Street Media newsletter which provides not only news but weaves analytics from their Docket Alarm analytics product into the news.
• ALM announced an innovative news feed Legal Radar now branded as Law.com Radar. It offers a “breaking” newsfeed directed at younger lawyers who consume news on their phones. News items are referred to as “blips.” After originally focusing on Litigation news, they added “breaking deal” news for transactional lawyers in November.
• Thomson Reuters Back in March 2020 I met with Tony Kinnear, the new President of Thomson Reuters Legal Professions. My message to Kinnear – Thomson Reuters needs to compete with Law360. It may be a coincidence, but in October 2020 Thomson Reuters launched a legal news product Westlaw Today.
• Bloomberg Law solidified their place in legal news with the acquisition of the Bureau of National Affairs in 2011. I once described BNA as the nerd “A+ student in a bow tie” of legal publishing. Since his appointment in 2018, Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda has been focused on transforming the company’s historically dense, regulatory news offerings into more modern stream-able, clickable and contextualized legal news products. This past year they added embedded interactive visualizations including law firm rankings and hired an Editor-in-Chief from the National Law Journal.

Tech Marketplaces

First of all it needs to be stated that marketplaces are basically curated directories.  Some also offer cloud environments where new products can be tested. I didn’t see this coming at all and yet, I have a visceral understanding of why Marketplaces are needed. A Google search for something like “legal practice management tools” can deliver 8 million useless results in a second. You are better off emailing your colleagues for product recommendations. What is a lawyer/technologies/librarian to do? Enter the Tech Marketplace.

• Reynen Court created by a consortium of law firms is a type of legal app store launched in January with a mission:  “to make it easier for law firms and legal departments to adopt and manage modern cloud-based software applications without having to trust firm or client content to the rapidly growing universe of vertically integrated SaaS providers.”
• Thomson Reuters announced  two initiatives. Thomson Reuters Marketplace (beta version), is an online marketplace where lawyers, technologists and knowledge professional can research, trial and purchase a wide range of Thomson Reuters solutions. Thomson Reuters Legal Home  is described as an “integrated digital launchpad” where subscribers can access their Thomson Reuters products as well as information about external products which can be integrated with or linked to Thomson Reuters products.
• The law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe launched The Observatory, “an interactive platform offering data on 600+ legal technologies in the market today. Created by Orrick’s Innovation Team, The Observatory plainly describes what each technology does and includes data on management diversity to help legal departments enhance focus on vendor equity.”
• LegaltechHub This past fall, husband and wife tech team Chris Ford and Nikki Shaver launched an important new technology resource: com. Legaltechhub (LTH) is a curated database of legal technology tools, which is enhanced with extensive and careful tagging and taxonomy of more than 600 legal technology products.

2020 Trends in Context. Competition drives innovation. The ongoing expansion of state court judicial analytics products are important not only for the practice of law but for the impact such data can have on access to justice. Workflow tools free lawyers to focus on higher level analysis and provide quality assurance checks. Competition in the Legal news space is long overdue.  Tech marketplaces offer a win-win for vendors and law firm customers. Products can more easily be located and tested and technology and knowledge processionals can more easily assess the marketplace and determine what technologies exist and what needs a custom in house solution. Will the emergence of ephemeral law law during COVID result in a long term change in legal publishing? I don’t see any signs of that so far. No major publisher has announced a commitment to ongoing collection of local materials. So the long term COVID impact on legal publishing may be the emergence of law firm Knowledge Management teams in law as the permanent aggregators and publishers of local law updates and databases to support their clients needs.

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Jean O’Grady is a knowledge strategist/librarian/lawyer with over 30 years’ experience leading the transformation of research and knowledge services in Am Law 100 law firms. She is the author of the Dewey B Strategic blog, which monitors the evolving landscape of technologies and companies that are transforming the business and practice of law.

New Jersey is not the last jurisdiction to release bar exam results, but it is the only jurisdiction we know of that has kept its applicants entirely in the dark since they took the exam. Even California, who is holding off on results while it Inspector Clouseau’s its way through one-third of its applicants flagged for cheating, felt compelled to share a timetable for an expected release. The NJ BOLE has taken a different approach:

They won’t answer the phones. They won’t announce anything. We are one of the last jurisdictions (California at least has spoken to applicants) to release. Something needs to change.

That’s just one of upwards of 30 tips we’ve gotten over the last couple days raising concerns about the New Jersey process, which seems to racked with opacity:

There has been a complete lack of communication and they do not answer the phones nor email. Last reply I personally received was in July after continuous emails with the same question until the case manager replied.

Not that many of these applicants feel safe to complain into the void. “We can’t even complain to them out of sheer fear that we won’t be able to get licensed,” said one tipster reasonably worried after the NCBE president told the public that bar examiners were considering leveraging their character & fitness powers against anyone who complains about the bar exam.

And it’s not merely a matter of candidates getting nervous — there are real consequences to the continued delay. Not only are there employers who demand bar passage out there losing patience with applicants, but bar prep companies often require proof of a failure to make room for an applicant to study for February and we’re running out of time to effectively study for that process.

This is all even worse for those New York applicants who were at one point encouraged to take the New Jersey exam. Because, remember, when New York was struggling to guarantee seats for out-of-state examinees:

Many of us wanted to take New York but relied on New York’s advice to register elsewhere and then were not allowed to transfer back to New York once New York went online.

Now those folks are sitting around waiting while those able to take the New York bar exam have already gotten their results.

Bar Exam Tracker is hearing from sources that a release is likely next week:

But it’s a testament to how badly run this is that applicants are relying on an independent source to find out information that the examiners should be entirely transparent about.

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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.