Category: News Feeds

If Devin Nunes’s family is trying to stop Americans from reading Ryan Lizza’s September 2018 Esquire article Devin Nunes’s Family Farm Is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret, forcing it back into the news cycle every three months is a weird way to go about it.

If the California congressman and his family hadn’t hired razzledazzle libelslander lawyer Stephen Biss to sue Lizza and Hearst Media for defamation, we probably wouldn’t find ourselves discussing the article at three-month intervals every time the court issues another exasperated ruling explaining that a defamation claim requires specific statements of fact which are both false and harmful.

But they did, and we are, and now the Nunes clan will have to put up or shut up and answer questions under oath if they want to keep this BS lawsuit alive.

It’s an odd result for a family that refused to speak to Lizza when he showed up in Sibley, Iowa two years ago asking questions about the NuStar dairy farm. Once it became clear that Lizza was interested in undocumented immigrants employed by dairy farmers, he found himself kicked out of restaurants and tailed by members of the Nunes family. The congressman’s brother Anthony Nunes, III, told Lizza, “I’m taking your license plate down and reporting you to the sheriff,” adding later ““If I see you again, I’m gonna get upset.”

While other residents of the town suggested that the Nunes dairy farm could not feasibly turn a profit without undocumented labor — “It’s next to impossible … There’s no dang way.” — no one in the family would speak to the reporter.

But now, if they really intend to prosecute this defamation suit, they’re going to have to do it. And under oath.

U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams had already dismissed the congressman’s suit last month. And Friday he did the same for every count of the family’s claim save one arising from Lizza’s assertion that “NuStar did indeed rely, at least in part, on undocumented labor.”

“Falsely accusing someone of knowingly employing undocumented workers is accusing someone of committing a crime,” Judge Williams said. “To falsely accuse a person of an indictable crime is defamatory.”

So now, if they want to proceed with discovery, Anthony Jr. and Anthony III can sit for a deposition on labor practices at their family business and whether they ever knowingly or unwittingly employed undocumented immigrants.

Which can hardly have been what the family intended. Lizza wrote:

I learned that Anthony Jr. was seemingly starting to panic. The next day, the 2009 Dairy Star article about NuStar, the one that made me think the Nuneses were hiding something and that had led me to Sibley in the first place, was removed from the Dairy Star’s website. Anthony Jr., I was told, had called the newspaper and demanded that the editors take the nine-year-old story down. They relented. The article wasn’t captured by the Internet Archive, which provides cached versions of billions of web pages, and it can no longer be found anywhere online. According to someone who talked to him that day, Anthony Jr. allegedly said that he was hiring a lawyer and that he was convinced that his dairy would soon be raided by ICE.

And now, having allowed Congressman Nunes to talk them into this idiotic lawsuit, they’ve painted themselves into a corner where they actually have to describe their farm’s hiring practices on the record if they want to establish the falsity of Lizza’s claim.

Karma’s a bitch, ain’t she?

Memorandum Opinion and Order [Nunes et al v. Lizza et al, No. 20-CV-4003-CJW-MAR (N. D. Iowa Sept. 11, 2020)]

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

Two months ago, LexisNexis announcing its planned launch of a premium legal research service, Lexis+, which it said would take a bold approach to providing legal research, AI-driven analytics and practical guidance within a unified and fully integrated platform.

As I reported at the time, the company positioned the new service not as a successor to its current research platform, Lexis Advance, but rather as a higher-end alternative designed for users who want an all-in-one, end-to-end platform that incorporates the latest powerhouse technologies, including several that are unique to this product.

Today marks the official commercial launch of Lexis+, and LexisNexis allowed me an opportunity to test it in advance. I’ll share my experience below, but first let me recap what the product offers and how it differs from Lexis Advance. Please also refer back to my July post, which goes into additional detail on several of these points.

With Lexis+, LexisNexis combines three key features within a single platform: its most advanced legal research tools; enhanced Practical Guidance, the new name for what was previously called Practice Advisor; and the introduction of Brief Analysis. These are accessed through a navigation bar on the left called the Experience Dock, and LexisNexis refers to each of these three main features as “Experiences.”

Lexis+ also offers what LexisNexis describes as “dramatic visual styling” and a simplified layout intended to “set a new standard” in ease of use.

“Striking imagery, bold colors and typography improve readability, reduce visual ‘clutter’ and emphasize essential information and tasks,” LexisNexis says.

Several of the features of Lexis+ are new to this platform and had not been available in Lexis Advance. Most notable among these new features:

• Brief Analysis. This is LexisNexis’s answer to a line of products pioneered by legal research company Casetext with its CARA brief analysis tool and followed by companies such as Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg Law.
• Search Tree. A new search feature that displays visually how the terms in a terms-and-connectors or Boolean search were applied and how those relationships impacted the results. Whereas in Lexis Advance you would not know how your search terms were applied, in Lexis+ the Search Tree shows you.
• Missing and Must Include. Another new search feature, it highlights terms from your search query that are missing from a specific document in the results set, without having to open the document. When you see a “missing” term at the bottom of the search-results snippet, you can select “Must Include” to rerun the search and force inclusion of that term.
• Shepard’s At Risk. This new feature identifies cases that are at risk of being overruled, even if they have not been directly. It flags cases in which the underlying points of law on which they rely have been negatively treated by other decisions in the same jurisdiction, which would suggest it is at risk.

In addition to those new features, Lexis+ provides enhanced versions of other features and tools:

• Practical Guidance. LexisNexis Practical Guidance is a collection of practice-specific forms, clauses, checklists, articles and practice notes designed to help a legal professional get up to speed more quickly on a particular matter. While Practical Guidance is also available in Lexis Advance, LexisNexis says it is now more tightly integrated throughout Lexis+.
• Lexis Answers. This feature responds to natural language search queries with the best, most relevant answer, taking the user directly to its location within the document. In Lexis+, the feature has been completely redesigned with the latest machine learning capabilities, LexisNexis says, offering expanded and more relevant answers across wider question categories and automatic jurisdiction detection.
• Code Compare. With this feature, a user can compare two versions of any state or federal statute side-by-side, including current, future and archival versions dating back to the early 1990s.
• Legislative Outlook. A feature that predicts the passage of pending federal and state legislation.
• Ravel View. A research feature that provides visualizations that show the relationships between cases.

“Lexis+ was designed for the ways that attorneys work, with deeply integrated product components, cutting-edge technologies and modern design elements that put the LexisNexis applications, content and data that attorneys need right at their fingertips,” said Jeff Pfeifer, chief product officer at LexisNexis North America, in announcing today’s launch. “Regardless of where or how a user starts a research or task, they will be guided to the information that best addresses their legal question.”

Testing It Out

As I mentioned above, LexisNexis provided me with early access to Lexis+. Here are some of my impressions.

You start your research at a landing page where you can select from the three “Experiences” I described above: Legal Research, Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis. This page also allows the user to easily select categories and jurisdictions to search, as well as drill down into types of content, sources, topics, and more.

When I spoke to Pfeifer back in July, he said that the Lexis+ search tool is designed to balance two interests — making maximum use of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities while also allowing researchers to maintain the ability to control and customize their searches.

One way it does this is through the new Search Tree feature I described above. When you conduct a terms-and-connectors or Boolean search, it provides a visual display of how your search terms were applied and how those relationships impacted the results. (It does not work with natural language searches.)

In the standard Lexis Advance, you would not know how your search terms were applied. In Lexis+ the Search Tree shows you. Each part of the search is represented in a box that displays how many results would be retrieved if only that part of the search was run. Select any of the boxes to refresh the results with those search terms.

Another new feature intended to give users greater control over their searches is called Missing and Must Include. It highlights terms from your search query that are missing from a specific document in the results set, without having to open the document.

As you can see in the image above, if a result does not include one or more of your search terms, then this omission is shown at the bottom of the search-results snippet. If you want to force inclusion of that term, you can then select “Must Include” to rerun the search.

The multicolor search term map shows the locations and distribution of your search terms.

Another feature that is included in the version rolling out today is an expanded version of Search Terms Maps. These maps show the location and distribution of your search terms both within the results list and within the full text of documents. You can use this to identify where in a document are the largest concentrations of your search terms or to navigate to points in document where specific terms appear.

According to Lexis Nexis, Lexis+ expands this feature, which in Lexis Advance was available only in case law, to more than 30 content types, including news, statutes and legislation, administrative codes, secondary materials, administrative materials, and litigation documents.

New Shepard’s At Risk

A new feature included within Lexis+ is Shepard’s At Risk. It identifies cases that are at risk of being overruled, even if they have not directly been. It flags cases in which the underlying points of law on which they rely have been negatively treated by other decisions in the same jurisdiction, which would suggest it is at risk.

This feature is similar in concept to the enhanced citator Thomson Reuters introduced two years ago as part of its roll-out of Westlaw Edge, which likewise identified cases that may no longer be good law, even when there is no direct citation relationship between the case at hand and the case that possibly invalidated it.

In an example provided by LexisNexis, a Georgia case, Durrah v. State Farm Fire & Cas., 312 Ga. App. 49 (2011), shows up in Lexis+ with a red label, “At Risk,” even though the case has not directly been overruled or discussed negatively by other decisions. However, for a specific point of law, the case relies on another decision which has been overruled.

The At Risk feature highlights the text of the passage in question and displays alongside it that cases that give rise to the risk.

Lexis Answers

The Lexis Answers tool, which LexisNexis says has been completely redesigned for Lexis+,  uses semantic analysis to understand the meaning of what you’re asking.  The idea of is to provide on-point answers, with citable authority, to natural-language legal questions, without the researcher having to comb through extensive search results.

I entered the query, “What are the elements of employment discrimination?” The results page showed the top three answers, and I could click Show More Answers to see additional results. Below the answers, it shows case results as it would for a typical research query.

Each answer displays text from the case that is relevant to the question, as well as the court where the case was decided, the date it was decided, and the citation. Click on the answer to go to the exact location within the case where the answer text is found.

Code Compare

Another feature included within Lexis+ is Code Compare. It allows a user to compare two versions of any state or federal statute — such as the current version and the immediate prior version — with additions shown in green and deletions shown in red.

When viewing a statute, you would use this feature by clicking on the compare versions button. By default, it will compare the most current version with the most recently archived version, but the user can select to compare any two versions, going back to 1991.

I used it to compare current and prior versions of Massachusetts statutes. It is easy to use — just select the two versions to compare from a drop-down and the redlined comparison is shown, along with a heat map showing where additions and deletions occurred.

Brief Analysis

LexisNexis is a bit late to the game with a brief analysis tool. Ever since the 2016 launch by Casetext of its CARA brief-analysis tool, brief analysis has become the new vogue. Last year, Thomson Reuters, unveiled its version, called Quick Check, and in February, Bloomberg Law released its Brief Analyzer.

The idea of these tools is to help you find cases that are relevant to the brief but not cited. This can serve as a quality check on your own research or as a way of reviewing an opponent’s brief.

Upload a PDF or Word brief to launch the brief analyzer.

With the Lexis+ version, you upload a brief, and it helps you find both targeted research recommendations and Shepard’s analysis, based on the citation patterns and legal concepts found in your document.

I uploaded an amicus brief I filed last year in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. After scanning the document for viruses, the tool took just a few seconds to produce its analysis.

As you can see, the tool creates a dashboard that shows its analysis of the document and research recommendations. This includes a breakdown of the core concepts extracted from the document, key passages identified, similar briefs, and Shepard’s analysis of cites in your document.

By clicking on the Case Recommendations tab, I am taken to a page that shows the key passages in my brief and the number of recommended cases related to those passages. By clicking on a passage, I can see the cases recommended for that passage.

The analyzer also shows other briefs that may be relevant to the one you are analyzing, highlighting matching legal concepts and cites for each of the recommended briefs.

Practical Guidance

Selecting the Practical Guidance button on the left brings up a page that asks, ‘What task would you like to accomplish today?’

LexisNexis Practical Guidance is a collection of practice-specific forms, clauses, checklists, articles and practice notes designed to help a legal professional get up to speed more quickly on a particular matter. All subscribers to Lexis+ will get access to one Practical Guidance collection and can add others as desired.

In Lexis+, Practical Guidance is now fully integrated, both as its own “experience” and throughout research results. To search Practical Guidance materials, select that “experience” from the home page, or start a search and select Practical Guidance results, or browse by practice area, content type or other parameters.

In this example, I searched for employment discrimination interrogatories. The search initially showed practice notes, which provided a number of general resources relating to employment discrimination litigation, but not about interrogatories. But when I selected the “Forms, Clauses and Checklists” category, I found results specific to my query.

A New Name for Lexis Advance

With its launch of Lexis+, LexisNexis says it has no immediate plan to eliminate or phase out Lexis Advance. “There will be no phase-out of Advance in the near term,” Pfeifer told me in July. “We will see how the market embraces this new solution and then see how that impacts the longer-term life of Advance.”

However, the company is retiring the “Advance” name from all U.S. products and Lexis Advance will now be called simply Lexis.

In addition, as noted above, Lexis Practice Advisor has been renamed Practical Guidance in the U.S. and Canada. The company says these changes reflect the positioning of Lexis as the standard research service and Lexis+ as the premium offering.

Future Plans for Lexis+

Future plans for Lexis+ include new features, content and product integrations. Later this year, LexisNexis expects to integrate Lex Machina analytics, Courtlink, and other tools. Early next year, content from Law360 will be incorporated into the platform.

My Thoughts

When I wrote about Lexis+ in July, after having been given a demonstration but not having tried it myself, I said this:

“Having not yet been hands-on with Lexis+, I can say only that, based on the demonstration, it certainly has a compelling design and introduces a number of useful features. The platform will likely be much more compelling once it integrates other core LexisNexis products such as Lex Machina, CourtLink, and Law360.”

Having now used it myself, I think the most-compelling reason to use the more expensive Lexis+ over Lexis Advance is the tight integration within a single platform of the three components — research, Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis.

Back in July, Pfeifer told me this tight integration was an overarching goal in creating Lexis+, with the aim of producing what he described as “a deeply complementary and integrated product experience.”

The basic experience of conducting legal research in Lexis+ is not all that different from Lexis Advance. But the added features that I described above — Search Tree, Missing and Must Include, Search Term Maps, and Ravel View — are valuable in that they give researchers more control over their searches and results without requiring them to be power researchers.

The integration of both Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis is a strong point of Lexis+. While Practical Guidance was already available in Lexis Advance, Lexis+ makes it easier to come at from different directions, including diving directly into a topic or discovering it through research results.

With regard to Brief Analysis, products of this sort are valuable to litigators, enabling them to check their own work product and analyze their opponent’s. Given that other major research services already offer this, it is all the more essential for lawyers to have access to it and, therefore, for Lexis to offer it.

But I will say again what I said in July, which is that I have to wonder what customers will think, and how they will respond, as  LexisNexis asks them to choose between two legal research platforms, Lexis and Lexis+. To the extent that Lexis+ has advanced research tools to give users greater control, and to the extent is offers essential features such as Brief Analysis, it is the preferable of the two platforms.

Ultimately, the determinative factor in whether to stick with Lexis or move to Lexis+ will be the price differential. Unfortunately, LexisNexis will not reveal pricing to the public. You know the drill: If you want to know the price, you need to speak to a sales representative. That is a critical piece of information, without which no comparison can be complete.

My impression, after a short period of testing, is that LexisNexis has achieved its goals with Lexis+, designing a platform that is intuitive to use, more modern in its design, and with features that give users greater controls. To me, the biggest question about whether to move would be the cost. Maybe someday, LexisNexis (and Thomson Reuters) will be more transparent about this.

There’s a lot going on at Winston & Strawn. The firm, ranked #40 on the latest Am Law 100 list, has reportedly been letting go a number of associates and staff over recent weeks.

The exact number of laid off associates is unclear, but tipsters have put the number at approximately ~10 percent of associates, which translates in the neighborhood of 30-40 attorneys. That’s a hefty chunk of associates out of work. Sources say they let go associates across multiple offices, and the severance package they’re being offered is either three months at 100 percent pay or six months at 50 percent pay. And as one tipster notes, the layoffs are not performance based:

I’m not writing in to hurt the firm. It’s important that the layoffs are publicized so that when the associates go to look for new jobs, they’re not penalized (similar to the 2012 summer associate debacle). I have not heard of anyone being fired for performance issues.

The staff situation is more complex. According to multiple tipsters, almost all secretarial staff positions have been eliminated and the firm will be creating new positions as part of a resource center. Early retirement or buyouts were reportedly offered to at least some staff members, and there will be an opportunity for now former staffers to apply — and test — for the newly created resource center jobs.

When Above the Law reached out to the firm for comment, a spokesperson for Winston had nothing to say about the associate layoffs. They did, however, respond to the staff cuts:

“In response to a fundamental shift across the legal industry in how clients and lawyers interact, Winston & Strawn is forming the Winston Resource Center, a virtual, cross-functional group that will provide 24/7 professional support services for attorneys and clients. This innovative restructuring addresses evolving work practices while improving operating efficiencies. As this model includes an elimination of certain roles, Winston will assist our valued, dedicated and appreciated employees either by transitioning them into newly created roles at the firm, offering early retirement opportunities or providing career counseling.”

This corresponds with sources at the firm saying the administrative upheaval has been in the works for some time. But, according to tipsters, folks are still pretty upset about the massive change taking place during a pandemic:

However, at the beginning of covid, the firm said that the last thing it would do would be to fire staff. So everyone feels blind sided and upset about the lack of transparency. Associate morale is pretty low.

The firm also is laying off essentially all of its secretarial staff, offering some the opportunity to transition to a “resource center coordinator” role and offering others small buyouts. Many of the secretaries have been at the firm for 20+ years. It is demoralizing.

It makes sense that morale would take a hit when so many employees suddenly find themselves out of work.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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).

You know, I don’t. It is deeply honoring. It’s humbling to be included in the list. I’m grateful that the president has that confidence in me. But it’s not the desire of my heart. I want to be in the political fight. I want to be fighting to nominate and confirm three, four, five principled constitutionalist justices. But that’s not where I want to serve. I want to stay fighting right where I am in the U.S. Senate.

— Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), in response to a question asked by Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business as to whether he wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. Cruz, a Harvard Law graduate, was included on President Donald Trump’s latest shortlist of 20 potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a Yale Law graduate who was included on Trump’s list, also politely declined his candidacy for a seat on the high court.

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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.

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was driving home from a Republican fundraiser on Saturday when he hit what he told Hyde County authorities was a deer. On Sunday, it was revealed that Ravnsborg had actually struck and killed 55-year-old Joe Boever, who was walking along the side of the road.

Ravnsborg, who has a history of automobile infractions, had been at Rooster’s Bar and Grill, where attendees were buying tickets to win a handgun engraved with President Trump’s name. It’s a detail that may not directly bear on this tragedy, but it speaks to the cruel frivolity of these folks that someone is dead because a bunch of yahoos went to a bar to win a vanity handgun.

According to the NY Post:

Ravnsborg “drinks lightly,” [spokesman Tim] Bormann said, but the attorney general’s spokesman said he didn’t think Ravnsborg was imbibing at the event, the Rapid City Journal reports.

OK, sure.

While the South Dakota Highway Patrol is leading the investigation, officers from North Dakota have joined the effort due to the inherent conflicts involved in probing the state’s chief law enforcement officer in a killing.

Obviously our thoughts are with Boever’s family.

South Dakota AG involved in deadly crash after GOP event [NY Post]
Documents: South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has history of speeding [Argus Leader]

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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.

The COVID-19 tide has really turned in Biglaw.

We’re already tracking the Biglaw firms that are rolling back their previously announced compensation cuts caused by the novel coronavirus. But now comes word that a Biglaw firm has announced a special (monetary) thank you for all the hard work associates are putting in during this trying time.

Today, Cooley announced special “appreciation bonuses” that will give associates an extra $2,500 – $7,500. Considering the firm has not previously announced any compensation cuts, this generous extra bonus is quite the gesture. Here’s how the bonuses will break down by year:

And if you’ve been particularly busy during the pandemic — on track to bill in excess of 1,950 hours — the firm will give you a bonus “materially higher than the amount listed above.” That’s a pretty nice way to say thank you for the hard work. (In a moment of touching humanity, the firm also acknowledged that financial perks may not cover everyone’s needs during this trying time and committed to continue hiring talent to ease some of the burden, and providing additional resources to everyone.)

In addition to these special appreciation bonuses, the firm has also made some commitments for year-end bonuses. First of all, they announced that these bonuses will not replace or otherwise negatively impact 2020 bonuses. And the bonuses will at least be at the 2019 level (which ranged from $15,000 to $100,000 based on year). With all the upheaval caused by COVID, it’s nice to have confirmation bonus season won’t be another casualty — at least at Cooley.

You can read the firm’s full announcement on the next page.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish.

As more and more firms make moves to reverse their COVID-19 austerity measures, either in whole or in part, Biglaw associates have come to expect the retroactive payment of compensation that was cut and some have been left wanting. But at some firms, the extra work associates need to do to recoup their lost cash just doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Baker Donelson — a firm that was ranked just outside the Am Law 100 at #101, with $378,877,000 in 2019 gross revenue — slashed salaries across the board back in April and furloughed an untold number of employees. Earlier this summer (in mid July, to be precise), the firm disclosed to associates how they could go about getting retrospective pay for the months their salaries were skewered.  To be brief, associates aren’t thrilled with the firm’s plan:

Essentially, we have to collect 125% of our revenue targets (which are all based on rates that none of us are actually getting so it’s more impossible than it appears) to get all of our retrospective pay. Even though our collections are up (August was 4% above pre-pandemic budget) they’re still sending emails basically telling us to not expect anything else any time soon.

In a confidential memo, Baker Donelson listed three ways associates could earn back some of their salaries (that memo is available in full on the next page):

Last, but not least, if an associate achieves at least 110% of their hours target, as of September 30, but have not exceeded one of the pay thresholds, that associate will receive a one-time payment that will bring their compensation to 90% of base pay.

What about their future pay? Is there any end in sight for the salary cuts at the firm? According to the memo, the answer is a hard no.

At this time, no one will be paid 100% of their salary prospectively.

Best of luck to everyone at Baker Donelson as they try their hardest to collect on the compensation they’re due — it looks like they may need it.

(Flip to the next page to see the confidential memo from Baker Donelson.)

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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 never seemed like a great idea when Texas decided to go forward with its bar exam by shoving applicants into a hotel “bubble.” Sure it was better than forcing folks to take it in a convention hall, but logistical hurdles always seemed to crop up at every turn. The examiners put out their intense and only slightly unintentionally hilarious training video, and it certainly gave the impression that they’d thought of everything. It turned out they had not.

As you may recall, a core tenet of the plan involved asking applicants to put all of their personal belongings in the closet and using a ziptie to keep the closet shut for the duration of the exam. Apparently, no one considered the floorplan before pitching this idea:

The zip tie plan for the closets didn’t work for several rooms because they were sliding closets. As a result they had to put tape on the doors which had the potential to fall off.

Well, there you go. We’ve finally found a problem duct tape can’t solve.

Another questionable strategy from the video was the keying starting and stopping off a WWI trench charge whistle. It turned out about as well as the first day of the Somme.

The whistles were an awful idea. People on my floor started the Procedure and Evidence section early because the sound of whistles carried from floors above and below. After proctors realized what happened, they switched to manually going around and telling people that the exam started.

Yet the only thing worse than hearing errant whistles was not hearing whistles at all:

We couldn’t hear any whistles, and on the first section of the exam, they forgot to give us test booklets. We were told we would get extra time to compensate, but they changed the amount of extra time twice, first saying ten minutes, then five, then ten again. One BLE employee came around our corner several times to hang out with her phone, with her mask off. The other employee in our area wore his mask below his nose. They also left test materials in our section long after the sections ended because they forgot to collect them.

At least everyone could use the hotel alarm clocks to keep on schedule…

Also, the BLE told us that each room had an alarm clock that we could move since there was no mass timer we could all see. However, we could not move the clocks as they were bolted to the nightstands. My room was so large and oddly shaped that I couldn’t even see my nightstand from my desk. I asked the hotel for a clock multiple times, and they never delivered one. So for the MBE, I ended up getting a screw driver from my apartment and unscrewing the clock from the nightstand so I could relocate it to my desk. I screwed it back on after the test! But some people literally did not know what time it was until the 15 minute warning was called on the second day.

All in all, it seems as though the test went as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, logistical screw-ups are inevitable and at least Texas didn’t actively try and kill everybody. But, as with all of these stories, we have to ask, “Was this all worth it?” Is this test so necessary that we have to put everyone through this expensive and error-filled production? Could everyone just take a couple of weeks to consider if maybe there’s a more effective way of guaranteeing that licensed attorneys are up to snuff throughout their careers than a one-off generalist exam?

Earlier: Texas Bar Exam Procedures Video Is Intense

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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.

London had been bombed for three nights in a row in September 1940. The leader had to speak. But of course the leader didn’t want to throw the country into a panic.

The leader flipped through the draft speech. “Who wrote this crap?”

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

“That’s no good; that will make people panic. Cut that bit. In fact, forget the prepared remarks. I’ll just say whatever comes to mind.”

So the leader spoke:

“We have now been bombed by the Nazis for three consecutive nights. We have it entirely under control. We have it contained. This will all be over by Halloween.

“The days will get shorter as winter approaches. Without enough daylight, the Nazi pilots won’t be able to see London. Like a miracle, it will all end. Believe me.

“Some people have asked whether we have enough Spitfire fighters. We have plenty of Spitfires. Anyone who needs a Spitfire can get one. You don’t even have to wait in line; just hop in and fly off.

“Some people in the government have recommended the use of blackout curtains. I personally don’t like them. I just can’t see meeting foreign leaders in rooms that have blackout curtains. I’m not going to use blackout curtains.  If they make you feel safer, you can use them. I’m not going to bother with them.

“I feel the same way about bomb shelters. If they make you feel safer, you can use them. If not, go out and play in the streets.

“Hey, I didn’t tell Hitler to attack us. It’s not my fault. The economy was going great, and then, all of a sudden, what I call the Berlin virus. The invisible enemy! You can’t see it. Sometimes you hear a whistling sound and then a little bang, but you can’t see it. In fact, the bombs don’t exist; it’s fake news; it’s all a hoax. It’s really the Democrats who are bombing us.

“We can’t let an invisible enemy make the stock market go down. We have to reopen the economy. Let’s have outdoor markets at night; that’ll help the economy. We had the strongest economy the world had ever seen a year ago — Did you know that India is one of our colonies? Not everyone knows that.  And India’s a big country! Some people say it’s the biggest. Maybe we can swap India for Greenland; India’s a sh_thole country anyway — and we’ll have the strongest economy again, after Halloween, when this all stops.

“I’m doing great. No one’s ever done better. And only I can do it. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to me.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was Trump’s finest hour.’”

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Back in April, megafirm Norton Rose Fulbright announced a bunch of austerity measures thanks to the economic upheaval cause by COVID-19. And it wasn’t just the salary cuts that lots of other firms also instituted — associates were also laid off as part of the measures.

Those who were left at the firm in the U.S. saw a 15 percent salary cut for all those making over $50,000. Now the firm has announced the end of those compensation hits, and their salaries will be returned to full, pre-pandemic levels.

Jeff Cody, Norton Rose Fulbright’s US Managing Partner, had this statement on the firm’s reinstatement of salary cuts:

“Based upon the firm’s performance through August, Norton Rose Fulbright US will end pay reductions for lawyers and staff and return them to full compensation on September 30. The partners are grateful for the commitment and loyalty demonstrated by all of our lawyers and staff during these difficult and uncertain times. These reductions were made in response to the pandemic, as our goal has always been to take care of our people while maintaining the firm’s health. We appreciate the ongoing commitment and loyalty of our people during these unprecedented times.”

When the firm announced its salary cuts in April, they indicated they’d only last through the end of September. Insert Wake Me Up When September Ends joke here. Now that you’ve got that song stuck in your head, it’s good to see the firm’s financial performance is progressing as expected.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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).