Morning Docket: 09.11.20

Lindsay Lohan (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty)

* Lindsay Lohan is being sued by a publisher for collecting her $365,000 advance and never writing an autobiography. When she writes the book, hope she explains why there was never a sequel to “Mean Girls”… [USA Today]

* A Florida attorney was allegedly killed by his son earlier this week in an apparent murder-suicide. [New York Daily News]

* Parents for a Northeastern University student who was suspended for breaking anti-COVID-19 measures have lawyered up. [Boston Globe]

* Federal prosecutors are asking that civil cases against Ghislaine Maxwell be put on hold while the criminal prosecution moves forward. [ABC News]

* A lawyer who falsely claimed he needed to have cancerous tumors removed to get discovery extensions may be suspended from the practice of law. As Arnold Schwarzenegger would say, “it’s not a tumor!” [ABA Journal]


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.

Is This Biglaw Deal Too Good To Be True? See Also

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RG3’s Legal Victory: It’s… been a while since the one-time Heisman winner won something. 

What To Do After You Sue Biglaw? Open up your own shop.

Law Firm Rankings: What does Vault have to say about practice areas and regions?

This Isn’t A Great Look: The ExamSoft bar exam story just keeps getting weirder. 

Sorry Associates, But This Many Of You Are Not Going To Make Partner

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

According to Law.com’s 2020 Midlevel Satisfaction Survey, what percentage of midlevels say they’re on track for partnership?

Hint: Only 11.4 percent of respondents have a much more statistically realistic perspective and say they are not on track to make partner.

See the answer on the next page.

New September CLE: Divorce in Elder Clients, Understanding the Legislative Process, and More

Even though the months seem to blend together these days, it’s hard to believe that summer is coming to an end. While returning to school and work this fall might not look as it once did, one thing remains constant: Lawline’s CLE. This month we have programs on topics such as divorce in elder clients and the legislative process. Check out some highlights below:

  • Navigating Divorce and Preserving Benefits for Clients in their Golden Years. This program will guide attorneys through preserving federal benefits for elder clients in the midst of a divorce, including social security, veterans benefits, Medicare, disability, and the Affordable Care Act. Airing September 17, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. (EST)
  • Search and Seizure in the Digital Realm. Supreme Court cases such as US v. Jones, Riley v. California, and Carpenter v. US, changed the landscape of the 4th and 5th Amendment laws in the digital realm. This program will take a deep dive into these cases, and how federal and state courts are now applying the 4th and 5th Amendments to digital evidence. Airing September 18, 2020 at 3:30 p.m. (EST)
  • Understanding the Legislative Process for Attorneys. All attorneys regardless of practice area can benefit from a working knowledge of the legislative process. Through a detailed overview of the legislative process, this program enhances attorneys interpretation and application of the law. Airing September 29, 2020 at 2:30 p.m. (EST)

If you can’t attend a live webcast, don’t worry! All of our courses go on-demand within 48 hours after airing (and you can check them out with our free trial). Check out some recent highlights:

  • Eagle Protection: Examining the Interaction between Federal Regulation and Traditional Tribal Practice. Federal laws such as the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection act criminalize the illegal “take” of eagles, however, this comes in direct conflict with traditional Native American cultural practices. This program addresses the legal and cultural perspectives involved in the clash of civilizations due to the lack of accommodation of traditional Native American practices in Federal law. Originally aired on August 5, 2020.
  • Stress Management for Attorneys: Ethical Traps for the Unwary. A lawyer’s ability to ethically interact with their clients can be altered due to chronic stress. This program defines chronic stress, the ways in which it manifests, and the ethical duties that are often violated as a result of it. Originally aired on August 7, 2020.
  • Reopening – and Staying Open – During the Pandemic: Creating a COVID Safety Plan. As more businesses begin to reopen, creating a return-to-work plan remains vital. This program will address key components of reopening plans, lessons learned from the first wave of businesses to reopen, and the laws and regulations to consider when creating a reopening plan. Originally aired on August 7, 2020.

Related Content:

  1. A Back to School Guide to Remote Learning: From Cyberbullies to Silent Protestors
  2. What Florida Attorneys Are Watching Right Now
  3. Effective Native American Tribal Consultation on Infrastructure and Other Projects

Breaking: Practice Management Platform MyCase Sold to Private Equity Group | LawSites

The practice management platform MyCase has been sold to a private equity firm, it was announced this morning.

The previous owner of MyCase, AppFolio, a California-based provider of cloud-based business technology, said it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell 100% of the equity interest in MyCase, a wholly owned subsidiary.

It was sold to funds advised by Apax Partners, a private equity firm, for approximately $193 million in cash.

Founded in 2010, MyCase is a leading cloud-based legal practice management software designed to help firms run efficiently from anywhere, provide an exceptional client experience, and easily track firm performance so that firms can reach their business goals.

MyCase covers the entire client lifecycle with Lead Management, Case Management, Billing and Invoicing, and robust Reporting. It includes market leading features such as integrated MyCase Payments, 2-way text messaging, and the MyCase Client Portal to centralize client communication and share files securely.

In a statement, Kim Coalson, president of MyCase, said, “Our mission at MyCase is to enable our customers’ success by providing powerful legal practice management software that modernizes the client experience and increases the efficiency of firm operations.  The Apax Funds’ record of investing in software companies that become category leaders makes the partnership a great opportunity for MyCase to increase the breadth of our product and accelerate growth, while continuing to provide the high level of service our customers expect.”

In a separate blog post, Coalson said that MyCase remains strongly committed to its customers and “to continuing to provide the level of service you’ve come to expect from our team.”

She also said that the full MyCase team, including its senior leadership team, will continue to be part of MyCase. “This continuity ensures that our technology and services remain at a high level and that we remain focused on our mission to empower law firms to improve efficiency, deliver an exceptional client experience, and reach their business goals,” she wrote.

Umang Kajaria, partner at Apax, said, “MyCase software and its integrated payments greatly simplify law firm operations, so legal professionals have more time to do what they love most – serving their clients. Increasing adoption of cloud-based legal software is driving rapid growth, and MyCase is a leader in modern legal practice management through its best-in-class product and customer centricity. We are excited to partner with Kim and the MyCase team to invest behind continued innovation and growth acceleration.”

The Apax Funds will support MyCase with increased investments in product development, sales, and marketing to continue its impressive growth trajectory.

The transaction was approved by AppFolio’s board of directors and is expected to close before the end of the third quarter, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions.

My Pillow Guy Hires Lin Wood To Sue Anderson Cooper For Defamation Over Poison Plant COVID Drug

Lin Wood strikes again! Fresh off his glorious victory, errr “victory”, representing conservative teen Nick Sandman in his defamation suit against CNN, the notorious lawyer has netted the My Pillow Guy as his newest client.

“While I am fully aware that [Anderson] Cooper’s sarcastic, mocking, derisive, and demeaning tone, attitude and facial expressions toward Mr. Lindell are not legally actionable,” he wrote to CNN’s executive vice president David Vigilante, “I have complete confidence that Cooper’s false and defamatory accusations are actionable.” Newsmax and Newsweek both got their hands on a copy of the missive, but failed to publish more than excerpts.

Mike Lindell’s staunch support of the president has netted him access to the entire universe of Trump insiders including the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“It’s a great administration,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an August 18 interview. “Anything I hear out there, whether it be good sanitizers, or cures, or anything, to bring it back to the task force.”

Why Lindell, who possesses no medical credentials (or even an undergraduate degree) is qualified to speak on infectious disease treatments is unclear. Nevertheless, Lindell claimed that he’d “told the whole country to pray” for a cure for COVID-19, “this guy called me on Easter Sunday and said he had an answer to the virus.” Hosanna!

In fact, what “this guy” Andrew Whitney had was a company called Phoenix Biotechnology which was flogging Oleandrin, an extract derived from the poisonous oleander plant, as a potential treatment for COVID-19. By amazing coincidence, Mike Lindell has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, and would thus stand to benefit if the federal government decided to buy up millions of doses of the drug and start touting it as the “answer to the virus.”

And indeed, Lindell did his darnedest to make it happen, contacting HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, who helped arrange an Oval Office meeting with Trump in July for Lindell and Whitney to pitch the president on their supposed miracle drug.

The problem is that Oleandrin has never been proven to be an effective cure for COVID in human beings.

“Wait a minute, sir. Wait a minute, stop.” Cooper interrupted Lindell mid-rant about his supposed miracle cure. “There’s no public, peer-reviewed studies about this. There’s no trials that have been published anywhere. There’s no human trials that have been published anywhere.”

But Lindell continued to insist that Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials had indeed been performed somewhere and “the FDA’s got ’em all.”

“There’s been no Phase 1 and Phase 2 on this drug sir,” Cooper said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, yeah, there has. The FDA has had it since April. You’re just misconstrued [sic] because the media’s trying to take away this amazing cure that works for everybody,” Lindell huffed.

“You have no medical background; you’re not a scientist. A guy called you in April, said he had this product. You are now on the board and going to make money from the sale of this product. The reason he reached out to you is because you have the ear of the president, so he gets a meeting with the president, and you stand to make money from this,” Cooper deadpanned.

“How do you sleep at night?”

The interview degenerated from there, with Cooper accusing Lindell of being a “snake oil salesman” who is “willing to promote anything . . . even if it doesn’t work.”

According to Newsweek, which, again, has not published the letter from Wood, “Among Cooper’s statements that Wood says in his letter are false are that Phase I and Phase II clinical studies have not been conducted; that the drug ‘has never been tested;’ and that tests do not exist ‘anywhere outside a lab in a test tube.’”

In the letter Wood provided a link which purported to establish that Oleandrin’s efficacy against COVID was being studied by the government at the time of the interview. But Newsweek hasn’t seen fit to pass this link on to its readers, nor has Wood offered it in his chest-thumping Twitter feed.

Our best guess is that Wood was referring to neutralization tests which the Army was conducting at the time to determine Oleandrin’s efficacy against the coronavirus — an in vitro assay, which is neither a Phase 1 or Phase 2 trial, and certainly doesn’t involve 1,000 human subjects.

How the existence of such a test establishes that Cooper defamed Lindell is unclear. But in any event, the test results were inconclusive, and the FDA rejected Phoenix Biotechnology’s application to market Oleandrin as a dietary supplement, both because it had been publicly bruited about as a treatment for coronavirus (thanks, Mike Lidell!) and because “your submission did not provide sufficient information to establish that the information that you rely on as evidence of safety is qualitatively and quantitatively related to the ingredient, when used under the proposed conditions of use, as indicated in your submission.” Which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Lidell’s claims that his miracle drug is totally safe.

So good luck to Mr. Wood and his client. We’re sure he’ll prosecute his case with all the tact and discretion he’s become known for.

My Pillow Creator Michael Lindell Threatens CNN with Legal Redress Over Anderson Cooper Interview [Newsweek]


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

Michael Cohen Explains Why Donald Trump Is So Obsessed With Barack Obama

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

He’s Black. He went to Harvard Law. He graduated at the top of his class. He’s incredibly articulate. He is all the things that Donald Trump wants to be, and he just can’t handle it. And what do you do if you can’t handle it, and you’re Donald Trump? You attack it.

— Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, in comments given about the president’s fixation on Barack Obama during an appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. Cohen was a guest on the show to discuss his new book, Disloyal, where he makes quite a few rather damning (and incredibly colorful) allegations against his former employer.


Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.

Well, Here’s One Way JPMorgan Became The Largest Distributor Of PPP Funds

Yes, There Is (Professional) Life After Biglaw

Connie Bertram

It’s been three years since Connie Bertram helped to shake up the staid world of Biglaw by being one of the early trend setters of partners suing their firms, in her case it was Proskauer Rose. Though the case settled for an undisclosed amount, the allegations — which included that there were “substantial gender disparities” at the firm, that Bertram was objectified by two partners, and that her compensation lagged behind that of similarly situated male partners — helped to break the silence surrounding these issues in the legal industry.

After the settlement, Bertram joined Polsinelli, but now the time has come for another big career move. Bertram is saying goodbye to Biglaw and opening up her own firm, Bertram LLP. It’s something she says she’s “had in the back of my head for 10 or 15 years. I’ve had several clients that encouraged me to do this.”

And, no, it isn’t a reflection on Polsinelli. She tells Law.com the move “had nothing to do with Polsinelli. It was a great firm. I had a good experience there.” That firm similarly wishes Bertram all the best, “We thank Connie for her commitment to our firm over the past two years and wish her well in her future endeavors.”

As with all new business endeavors launched during the pandemic, there are some questions hanging over the project. For example, Bertram, who is at the moment the only attorney at the new firm, is holding off on getting permanent office. But since she has an existing client base from her 20 years of practice, she doesn’t see much of a problem. On opening her own shop Bertram says, “It depends some on who you are and what kind of practice you have. If you were coming out of government, hanging up your shingle with no clients, [I] would be nervous.”

The new firm will focus on employment counseling, investigations and litigation including whistleblower claims, executive and board disputes, restrictive covenants, trade secret disputes and government contractor compliance. And Bertram hopes to grow the practice to as many as 50 lawyers over time. Her focus will be on hiring women and minorities:

Bertram said throughout her career she held management roles and worked on client service along with associate development and “trying to be ‘the voice in the room’” for women and minorities. As a result, she would like to focus on hiring women and minorities at her firm.

“It’s more on bringing together very like-minded people … who want to do exceptional work, but maybe had some challenges in the practice of law. I’ve found that a lot of attorneys actually have had difficult life experiences and it pushes them to be more exceptional,” she said.

Best of luck to this new firm.


headshotKathryn 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).