Category: News Feeds

True fact: there are (probably) racists at every law school in the country. Racism in this country is insidious and widespread, that’s why it’s been allowed to flourish for as long as it has. But in this national moment of reckoning, institutions find themselves needing to take quick and decisive action when confronted with racism in their backyard.

A Twitter thread appeared online yesterday posting screen shots from Snapchat of some truly despicable content. It claimed the author of the offensive posts was a 1L at South Texas College of  Law — and went ahead and tagged the law school as they provided the receipts.

So… yeah. But the good news is the law school, along with Dean Michael Barry, wasted little time coming right the hell out against the hate-filled rants. They also promised an investigation and that appropriate actions will be taken.

Dean Barry detailed the steps the law school took once the issue was brought to their attention in an email to faculty.

It’s good to see the law school doing what it can to make sure these ideas no longer find their way into the legal profession.

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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).

Want to come see Donald Trump next week in Tulsa, Oklahoma? No problem! You don’t even need a mask when you and 19,000 of your fellow Trump supporters pack into the BOK Center to scream your lungs out in support of our nation’s 45th president.

Oh, but before you come in, you’ll need to sign this little waiver. Just promise not to sue the Trump campaign or the venue if you happen to catch coronavirus at this potential superspreader event, and you’ll be all set to get your tickets.

By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.

Leave aside the appalling symbolism of hosting a rally in Tulsa, the site of a 1921 massacre of 300 African Americans, on June 19, AKA Juneteenth, the day Americans celebrate the official emancipation of slaves in this country.

Neither the campaign nor the venue seems to be taking any precautions as they resume in-person events during a viral pandemic that has already killed 115,000 Americans.

“I can’t have a rally with, you know, seven seats in between everybody,” Trump scoffed at suggestions he take health and safety precautions at his campaign events. Which is par for the course from a politician who refused to wear a mask when he toured a factory in Maine last week, forcing the facility to discard thousands of coronavirus testing swabs. He’s also nixed social distancing measures at the White House, rearranging the chairs to pack reporters together at press conferences because “it looked better.”

While Oklahoma’s coronavirus numbers remain low, Tulsa is less than 250 miles from Plano, Kansas City, Wichita, Fayetteville, Garland, and Dallas-Fort Worth. And cases in Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri appear to be going up, not down, and businesses reopen and social distancing is eliminated.

Moreover, Trump announced plans for upcoming in-person rallies in North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona, all of which have seen recent spikes in COVID-19 cases. Will he be requiring or even suggesting his supporters wear masks for those events?

Don’t bet on it. But no one gets in without a waiver, pal. ‘Cause no one cares about your health, but when it comes to protecting the big man’s bottom line, no sacrifice is too great.

Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally sign-up page includes coronavirus liability disclaimer [WaPo]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Joe and Kathryn talk to Marty Festenstein and Kristin Cerutti of NELSON Worldwide about the design of traditional law firms and how that model will be changed in the aftermath of COVID-19. We also discuss what trends are coming as a result of the pandemic, and some changes that most businesses are embracing that just won’t work for law firms, as well as
how is the pandemic going to accelerate firms making changes.

Today, bitcoins and the like are literally useless for any purpose other than losing money. But what if, five years from, young people begin demonstrating against “injustice and corruption” and begin supporting those causes it deems beneficial? (Wildly speculative, we know.) And let’s say the U.S. government believed there was a military role for shutting that down, and that the military itself did, too? (Farfetched, yes, but go with us.) Well, said military fears, in such a scenario, bitcoins would become quite useful, indeed.

Karen Dunn and Bill Isaacson may work in D.C., but when people think about the blue chip clientele these litigators bring to the table, there’s a bit of a West Coast vibe. The pair boast clients from a wide array of industries, but are perhaps best known for representing Apple in its throwdown with Qualcomm and their recently announced move to Paul Weiss is likely to bring significant business from Oracle and Uber as well.

So it should come as no surprise that the unveiling of this lateral move was packaged with an announcement from firm chair Brad Karp announcing a planned expansion to the Northern California market.

“We have been thinking about entering the Northern California market for a while,” Karp said. “This is an exciting first step in that direction.”

To date, Paul Weiss has focused on its New York and D.C. presences, with an outpost in Wilmington for good measure. Taking the firm to the West Coast will be big news when they eventually put the plan in action.

And one that coincides with the West Coast downsizing of Dunn and Isaacson’s former firm, Boies Schiller. The firm has experienced a number of high-profile departures over the last several months, with many of the moves flowing out of the West Coast offices. This does generally track the message from Boies Schiller’s leadership, which has said that the transition from a firm based around the named partners would see big changes in the footprint of the firm and a revamping of its compensation model. Losing Dunn and Isaacson was probably inevitable in this reorientation process — whether getting out of this area sets up the firm better in the long-run remains to be seen of course.

For now, Paul Weiss is casting its eyes westward and the Bay Area mainstays will soon have a new kid on the block to deal with.

Earlier: Everyone Seems To Be Overreacting To These Boies Schiller Departures

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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.

Earlier this month, Harvard Law announced that thanks to the pandemic’s uncertainties, the elite school was planning to go fully remote for the Fall 2020 semester. During this time, tuition will remain flat at $65,875 for 2020-2021 academic year, and the school will be eliminating the pass/fail grading used during height of the coronavirus outbreak, resuming regular grading. Needless to say, many students are less than pleased with Harvard’s choices.

In fact, during a webinar the school hosted yesterday about how students can have a successful online semester, in response to concerns about inadequate spaces to study due to home environments unsuitable for remote work, a member of the administration reportedly advised students to take out extra loans and “rent office space” to study from. The school, of course, has no plans to lower tuition to accommodate this ridiculous suggestion. Harvard may be one of the best law schools in the country, but telling students who will be graduating with upwards of $200,000 in debt to take out more loans to rent office space so they’ll be able to do work during a pandemic is absurd. How are students taking this COVID-19 studying advice?

They obviously found it “tremendously insensitive and tone deaf,” and in response, they’ve drafted a petition to appeal Harvard Law’s decision to host an online-only semester, in favor of implementing a hybrid semester. We’re told that more than 400 students have signed on to the petition thus far. Check it out, below.

We reached out to Dean John Manning for his thoughts but have yet to hear back.

Best of luck to all Harvard Law students in search of safe spaces to study this fall. Unfortunately, with options like this, it may now cost you even more to do so.

Earlier: Harvard Law School To Hold All Fall 2020 Classes Online Due To Coronavirus

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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.

Well, this is simultaneously unexpected and great. Fresh off an early statement on the murder of George Floyd, Skadden Arps — one of the most prestigious law firms in the country — has made another move in the battle for social justice.

Today, the firm’s managing partner, Eric Friedman, sent an all-employee email announcing that Juneteenth will be observed as a firm holiday.

Skadden is pleased to announce that next Friday (June 19) we will observe Juneteenth as a Firm holiday.  Juneteenth is a national day of celebration memorializing the end of slavery in the United States.  It was in 1865, on June 19^th, that enslaved black people in Texas learned that the Civil War had ended and that they were free, more than two years after the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.

We hope this day will provide an opportunity for us to pause from our daily routines to reflect on issues around racism and its impact on our country.

In the grand scheme of fighting systemic racism in this country, is this a relatively minor step? Yes. Is it an awesome thing? Also, yes.

Celebrating Juneteenth is a good thing. Too many kids grow up never even learning about the holiday. The fictional character of Dre Johnson on Black-ish even said the country acknowledging the day almost feels like “an apology.” I wouldn’t go quite that far (seems like there’s a lot more work to do to atone for slavery), but it does serve as an important reminder that our country is built on a legacy of slavery — and that legacy is part of the daily lives of black people in America.

Listen, Biglaw is noted for being a cutthroat place where the bottom line is *the* most important thing. Taking a step back from legal work to commemorate the day and encouraging all employees to reflect on the legacy of slavery sends a important signal from the top of the firm that this is an important issue. Yes, other firms have tried to celebrate Juneteenth in the past, but to Above the Law’s knowledge, this is the first time a major Biglaw firm has declared the day a holiday.

Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

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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).

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are just the latest manifestation of profound injustice in our society. They have given rise to an urgent conversation about how to address longstanding, systemic inequality in our nation.

Law firms have responded in a forceful manner by donating millions of dollars to support organizations that are battling inequity in the trenches. While we applaud their efforts, we believe that more needs to be done.

Law firms must actively increase their commitment to diversity and inclusion. With COVID-19 threatening the financial health of many law firms and in-house departments, we fear that, as was the case in the last economic downturn, diversity and inclusion initiatives will be the first to go as austerity measures are instituted.

We cannot let that happen.  Equality, the rule of law, and justice are at the core of who we are and the industry that we serve.

We embrace the words of Arthur Ashe: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

Our Commitment

At Lateral Link, we commit to working with our law firm and in-house clients to bring them talented and experienced lawyers of color, women lawyers, and LGBTQ+ lawyers. It is a commitment that we don’t take lightly. Many of us are former practicing lawyers, so we know firsthand the importance of diversity in law firms and in-house departments.

We commit to having difficult conversations with regard to diversity and inclusion, even when it is uncomfortable — especially when it is uncomfortable — and to deal with the issues head-on. For example, we need to know if your lateral partner integration plan takes diversity into account. We need to understand the relationship between your firm’s origination credit and partner compensation system. We need to hear where you may have fallen short on diversity in the past — as well your success stories regarding women and minority partners.

Our commitment to diversity reflects our longstanding commitment to the broader legal community. In 2015, our founder, Michael Allen, established the Lateral Link Scholarship Fund at his alma mater, Harvard Law School. Ten percent of the fees earned from Lateral Link’s placement of HLS alumni go into the fund, which supports scholarships at the Law School for financially disadvantaged students, many of them from diverse backgrounds.

Our Team

In order to help law firms and in-house legal departments recruit the best diverse lawyers, recruiting firms must embrace diversity themselves.

Lateral Link fields one of the most diverse legal recruiting teams in the industry. Almost three-quarters of our recruiters are women, minorities, or LGBTQ+. Women of color hold leadership positions and sit on our Executive Committee. Here are just four of our diverse leaders at Lateral Link (who are black, black and Latina, Asian American, and Asian American and LGBTQ+, respectively):

* Monique Burt Williams, CEO of Cadence Counsel, a Certified Women’s Business Enterprise, specializing in in-house recruiting;

* Gloria Sandrino, Global Chair of Partner and Group Recruiting and member of the Executive Committee;

* Gloria Cannon, Managing Director of the California Legal Recruiting Team and member of the Executive Committee; and

* David Lat, Managing Director, who will receive the Dan Bradley Award, the highest honor of the National LGBT Bar Association, at the 2020 Lavender Law Conference and Career Fair.

The stories of the candidates that we work with are our stories as well.  We bring credibility to our legal recruiting efforts because we understand the often difficult paths of diverse lawyers making a lateral move in the private sector or to an in-house department.

Our Call to Action

If you would like to work with a legal recruiting firm that walks the walk as well as talks the talk on diversity and inclusion, please reach out to us. You can contact Monique Burt Williams for in-house searches, Gloria Sandrino for partner searches, and David Lat for associate searches. We are eager to work with you on recruiting superb, diverse attorneys into your law firm or corporate legal department.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Gloria Sandrino, Global Chair of Partner and Group Recruiting, and David Lat, Managing Director at Lateral Link.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.