Category: News Feeds

The magistrate court in Harare ruled that Beatrice Mtetwa — an internationally acclaimed lawyer who has been at the forefront of defending the country’s human rights activists — be removed from representing award-winning journalist Hopewell Chin’ono.

Chin’ono faces charges of inciting violence for his role in promoting protests against corruption in late July that were banned and led to a government crackdown on dissent.

The state accused Mtetwa of writing contemptuous letters to the country’s magistrates and high courts, and of running Facebook pages that denigrated the courts.

“In view of the submissions by both the state and the defence, the disqualification of the lead counsel Beatrice Mtetwa as requested by the state be and is hereby granted,” ruled magistrate Ngoni Nduna.

The posts undermined public confidence in the courts, the magistrate said.

“The picture portrayed a biased justice system and the world was invited to an outrage over abuse of human rights,” he added.

Mtetwa denied any knowledge of the Facebook pages.

She said the government was leading a “personal” attack against her with a “chilling effect” on other lawyers.

“The idea is to say to human rights lawyers: if you represent such a client we will come after you,” Mtetwa told reporters outside court, adding that her team would challenge the decision.

“The right to legal representation has been curtailed by a court which is supposed to be supporting that right.”

Mtetwa had served as the lead counsel for Chin’ono, who helped expose a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal involving the procurement of coronavirus protection gear and test kits.

The journalist has been in jail since he was arrested by armed police at his house in Harare on July 20.

Chin’ono had encouraged the public to join the July 31 anti-government protests via Twitter.

The protests were then banned, and around 20 activists who held demonstrations in their neighbourhoods were arrested and have since been freed on bail.

Those arrested included internationally acclaimed writer and Booker Prize nominee Tsitsi Dangarembga.

New York — In response to Harare Magistrate Ngoni Nduna’s ruling today that Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa be barred from representing jailed journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, as reported by Herald newspaper” data-saferedirecturl=”https://www.google.com/url?q=https://cpj.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3D6ad2c1e7bfaa1357bb4387b58%26id%3D1b27f0e5ce%26e%3Da0cee2f7fd&source=gmail&ust=1597905477676000&usg=AFQjCNFINLyKgXjId_2hpNcFRzhJLWtrHw”>the state-run Herald newspaper, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:

“Magistrate Ngoni Nduna’s decision to disqualify Beatrice Mtetwa from representing Hopewell Chin’ono has effectively stripped the journalist of his constitutional right to a lawyer of his choice and is in breach of his constitutional rights to a free trial and the African Charter to which Zimbabwe is a signatory,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Today’s ruling shows how Zimbabwe’s courts are being abused for a political agenda. We hope that a higher court will reverse this travesty on appeal and ensure that Chin’ono will be guaranteed a fair trial.”

Nduna’s decision, published in the Herald, said that Mtetwa was in contempt of court in relation to letters Mtetwa wrote to judicial officers that Nduna said “demean the court severely,” and in relation to comments about the case on the Facebook page of a documentary about Mtetwa’s work, which the state alleged were made by Mtetwa. According to reports, Mtetwa denied making those comments and said she was not responsible for that Facebook page.

Chin’ono was arrested on June 20 and faces charges of incitement, as CPJ documented at the time. He is scheduled to appear in a closed hearing in court tomorrow for a bail application, according to reports.

Mtetwa, who was awarded CPJ’s Benjamin Burton Memorial Award in 2008 for her work defending journalists and upholding press freedom, told reporters today that the court ruling was meant to instill fear and could have a chilling effect on young lawyers who may be dissuaded from taking on human rights cases, according to news reports.

Post published in: Featured

11:12
Is now dealing with postponements on other matters

11:24
Magistrate Nduna starts reading his lengthy ruling on Mtetwa’s recusal from representing Chin’ono, applied by the State.A short summary will be availed soon

12:00
Magistrate Nduna has just granted the State it’s application to disbar Mtetwa from representing Chin’ono

12:00
He has ordered the prosecutor general to institute prosecution on Mtetwa with regards to contents in a letter she wrote to the court on 27 July 2020 and the posts on the wall of a Facebook page titled Beatrice Mtetwa and the Rule of Law

12:01
He has ordered that a copy of his judgment be availed to the Law Society of Zimbabwe

12:03
Has adjourned the court for ten minutes to allow Advocate T.W Nyamakura to make a bail application for Chin’ono as his counsel had foressen that the court was likely to disbar Mtetwa

12:12
Magistrate Nduna returns and the court resumes proceedings

Post published in: Featured

Developing customer relations through excellent service delivery is a key perquisite in the highly competitive Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. Assessing whether sales and marketing activities are hitting the mark forms an integral part of short-and long-term customer retention strategies.

Technology provides an important tool in the food and beverage industry’s efforts to manage, mobilise and ultimately automate its sales force, obtaining accurate and valuable data that will strengthen sales teams’ service delivery and turnaround times.

Schweppes Zimbabwe Limited (SZL) is a leading manufacturer and distributor of non-carbonated still beverages under license from The Coca-Cola Company. The company’s product portfolio currently includes well-known brands in categories such as cordials, fruit juices and bottled water.

SZL has two manufacturing plants in Harare and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and ten distribution centres countrywide. Its route to market is predominantly B2B and was recently extended to include B2C through e-commerce and tele-sales platforms.

Most of SZL’s orders are delivered through in-house logistics and third-party partners with a smaller portion handled through customer collection at the distribution centres.

Optimising sales efficiency

SZL has partnered with mobile technology specialist company, MACmobile since 2016 to optimise its sales force and customer relationship requirements.  MACmobile’s FIELDForce solution has in the last four years provided SZL with the ability to:

• Develop customer relations through the capture of key market data;
• Generate customer orders; and
• Track sales activities and marketing assets.

“Before partnering with MACmobile, our sales teams would manually track or reference customer history and cold drink equipment (CDE) which was highly ineffective. As a result, this led to suboptimal order fulfilment of customer orders and CDE asset utilisation.” explains Diana Mubayiwa, Corporate Affairs Executive at SZL.

Adds Andrew Dawson, MD of MACmobile: “Our FIELDForce offering delivers an end-to-end solution to SZL that covers their full spectrum of Route-to-Market sales and distribution, ultimately catering for the specific needs and nuances of FMCG call cycles within Zimbabwe’s  retail, rural and main markets.”

Evolved needs

Due to Zimbabwe’s telecoms challenges, MACmobile also added an offline capability to FIELDForce which enables SZL to utilise the solution without network connectivity.

Additionally, FIELDForce’s recently added Forms functionality allows SZL to develop surveys that enable it to conduct self-reads for Coca-Cola’s (Right-Execution Daily) RED.  In the past, SZL had to outsource surveys to third-party providers at a significant cost to the company.

FIELDForce Forms for example offers integrated GPS functionality which means SZL can validate whether surveys where indeed conducted in-store.  Additionally, Forms has enabled SZL to customise specific survey such as:

• RED self-assessment;
• Competitor activity tracking;
• Price dipstick; and
• Outlet classification.

Benefits abound

SZL and MACmobile’s partnership have undoubtedly led to an improved sales force and customer relations, driven by accurate data that can be mined to improve go-to-market and retention strategies.

MACmobile allows SZL to stay one step ahead of the requirements of both its sales team and its clients.  Today the company benefits from:

• An effective and efficient sales team route that leads to optimised operations and execution in the market;
• Effective sales representative activity tracking resulting in increased productivity and sales;
• The ability to create and run surveys;
• Improved and accurate customer and CDE assets databases; and
• Real-time salesforce metrics dashboards that allow for RTM (route-to-market) remodelling by the SZL commercial team.

“Thanks to our partnership with MACmobile we can rest assured that our sales and marketing strategies are on point and we can readily meet the ever-changing requirements of the markets we serve,” says Mubayiwa.

“Ultimately, our partnership with SZL has provided MACmobile a deeper penetration within the independent distributors that trade under the Coca-Cola Company license. It has also strengthened our footprint and user-base within the SADC region,” concludes Dawson.

Post published in: Business

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

According to data collected by Law.com for the 2020 Am Law 100 ranking, Wachtell comes in first at profits per lawyer (PPL) with $2.03 million in profits per lawyer. Which Biglaw firm comes in second by PPL?

Hint: Wachtell more than doubles the second place firm’s PPL, but that firm made a respectable $943,000 in PPL in 2019.

See the answer on the next page.

This past week saw the deaths of former Illinois Governor James “Big Jim” Thompson and former Finley Kumble partner, Steven Kumble. First, Thompson, who deserved the name “Big Jim” as he was 6’ 6″. As U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, before serving four terms as governor, Thompson’s office prosecuted a variety of political corruption cases. He did not lack for case selection, given the Democratic machine that had run Chicago for years.

He was one of the reasons why I decided to go to law school. In 1973, I was in Chicago working as a radio news reporter. I covered the trial of then Seventh Circuit Judge Otto Kerner, former governor of Illinois, who was on trial for political corruption. Thompson represented the government, and Judge Kerner was represented by Paul Connolly of the D.C. firm, Williams, Connolly and Califano. These names won’t mean much if anything to millennials and those younger. Kerner was convicted.

To see Thompson and Connolly represent their respective clients was to watch grace in action, always courteous to each other, often deferential to witnesses, but I knew that I was watching masters at the game, and I decided that that was what I wanted to do, to try cases.

Steven Kumble was a partner of one of the very first large nationwide law firms in the ’80s. For those readers who are not of dinosaurial vintage, the name will mean nothing, but for those of us who practiced way back in the 1980s and before, the name meant something. Kumble was the managing partner of what was one of the very first “megafirms,” but the firm’s story was also a cautionary tale of what can happen when a big firm goes awry.

Finley Kinble grew and grew and grew, and at the end it had more than 700 lawyers, but its foundation wasn’t very solid. It crashed and burned toward the end of the decade, filing bankruptcy and then a subsequent liquidation. Was it a harbinger? IMHO, the firm did not have a particularly good reputation; the lawyers were not courteous (at least not in my experience here in Los Angeles); dealing with them was no fun. The firm ditched the collegial attitude, which had been the way of practice, for a contentious approach. In the end, that approach did not serve the firm well. Schadenfreude.

I often wonder if the megafirms of today have learned the lessons of Finley Kunble, especially in this teetering economy, where partners are clawing back work that they would have, in flusher times, given to associates. Remember it’s all about the billables. Always has been and always will be.

Why do you want to go to law school? Is this a good time to spend the next three/four years waiting out the economic mess learning how to lawyer? Are you willing to take the financial risk on an uncertain future?

The employment rate for lawyers in 2019 was the highest it had been since 2007. But 2019 is not 2020. Uncertainty looms large, not just in employment opportunities, but even if there will be bar exams in some states, and if not, how will the 2020 graduates get to practice. Diploma privilege?

Given the fiascos of summer 2020 bar exams to date, with Florida being the latest to crash and burn, I wonder if California will have same or similar issues with its bar exam, now set for early October. What happens if there are any glitches (and I would be surprised if there aren’t some snafus.) Is there a contingency plan?

And it’s not just the legal profession that is in a state of flux. There’s a cautionary tale in a New York Times media column about the slashing and burning of senior Warner Bros. executives. AT&T, which acquired Warner Bros. several years ago, has told these employees that the landscape has changed, they have been unceremoniously shown the door, and the new is not at all like the old. Streaming services now rule the landscape and the old Hollywood, the one of movie studios, is on life support. The days of the Hollywood moguls are history, as is the way it distributed content. Why do I mention this?

If you haven’t been paying attention to how the legal landscape has been changing and will continue to do so, you need to start paying attention now. The profession I joined more than 40 years ago is just about unrecognizable in many years. It’s rife with innovation. From the various forms of technology now available, artificial intelligence, alternative legal service providers, data analytics (?), even such prosaic things as office equipment and the ability to work from home (even before the pandemic), the delivery of legal services is now more competitive, more price sensitive than ever before, and changes will continue.

While the legal profession is not a declining industry in the way that Hollywood seems to be, if you are not willing to keep up with change, it will leave you in the dust of old law library books. (Remember those?) Make sure that your choice to go to law school is not just a place marker until things improve, a date yet to be determined. Don’t waste your time and money if it’s not something you really want to do. It’s never been an easy way to make a living and it will be even harder in the years ahead.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

On one side, 14 of America’s largest companies; on the other, a scrappy small town attorney and the sister of an opioid addict.

This is the story of a fight between rural West Virginians and the drug distributors that profited from their suffering. At the center is an unfortunately dying breed: small town lawyers.

If we want to attract new lawyers to these rural legal deserts, it’ll take a larger policy response than tax breaks and student loan relief. Do we have the stomach for what’s really needed?

Make sure you take advantage of the show’s Q&A feature. You can ask Mike questions about the latest episode and he’ll answer at the end of the next episode. Just submit your question in the form at the bottom of this post.

Episode Resources:

ABA’s 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession
Death in Mud Lick

This past week, Debora L. Spar — Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School — penned an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times on the future of family structures, thanks to the emerging technology of “IVG.” What is IVG? Wait, hold on a second. I’m getting there. In the opinion piece, Spar posits that IVG “will dismantle completely the reproductive structure of heterosexuality.” Okay, you have my attention, Ms. Spar. Go on.

What’s The Latest Acronym All About? 

Since you’ve been patient, let’s back up and unpack the newest assisted reproductive technology acronym. With in vitro fertilization (IVF) eggs and sperm combine — outside of the body — to create an embryo that can be implanted in a uterus. Well, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is a little more mind-bending. In IVG, an ordinary adult cell, such as from skin or blood, is reverse-engineered to what’s called an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC), essentially, an initial embryonic stage of a cell before it becomes a spleen cell or toenail cell. iPSCs are then turned into eggs or sperm, and from there, regular IVF can combine the eggs and sperm into embryos.

Seems a little too futuristic? This latest technology has successfully taken mice cells, differentiated them into sperm and eggs cells, and created embryos, which later resulted in baby mice. Aww. This technology has also been used to create immature human eggs — not quite ready for fertilization, but definitely demonstrating potential in human cells. And this advancement has demonstrated potential to become a giant leap forward in technology. Not to mention the sci-fi futures we can imagine. Any cell, from anyone, can become a sperm or an egg? Wow. Once an effective artificial womb has been invented, our children will be ordering their own siblings from Amazon through the kitchen Echo.

The Dismantling Already Occurred

I agree with Spar that IVG technology, whenever it comes to fruition, will be a game-changer. But in some ways, the game has already changed. Spar argues that IVG will dismantle the reproductive structure of heterosexuality. But that train has left the station. IVF, and the increasing use, and acceptance of use, of donor, egg, sperm, and embryos, has already decoupled reproduction and heterosexuality. Not to mention that the law has generally moved in favor of supporting these changes, particularly in the United States and Canada. The law has increasingly evolved to acknowledge that parents do not need to be genetically related to their children in order to received legal acknowledgment and protection of their relationship.

If anything, IVG could push the dial back to intended parents being more often able to be genetically related to their children. The complications of donated gametes and embryos emerged because hopeful parents couldn’t use their own gametes and had to turn to other options for sperm or eggs. If there is an option for parents to use their own cells through IVG, the use of donated gametes will decrease, possibly and ironically returning more parents to the more traditional parenting arrangement of being genetically related to their children.

The Changing Family

The larger and more complex family structures that Spar refers to — with more than two parents — largely have already come about because of the use of donor gametes. We have seen jurisdictions like Ontario, Canada, allow a child to have up to four parents, and a number of states have recognized more than two. This is frequently because of donor gametes and the disassembling of the reproductive structure of heterosexuality. These arrangements are often a same-sex female couple or a same-sex male couple or both, that choose to have the genetically related donor-parent and their spouse or partner, all part of the supportive family structure raising the child. If two women or two men in a same-sex couple could choose to both be related to their child, they most likely would — assuming costs or other factors aren’t a barrier. That is likely to reduce some potential parenting groups back to two, versus increasing two-plus parenting groups, in contrast to Spar’s theory.

When Is The Brave New World Arriving?

While some accounts argue that IVG technology is only a few years off, others, probably more reliably, argue that with safety testing and other steps it is more likely 20 to 40 years off. With that timeline, I won’t close up my donor legal practice yet. But I will be watching with anticipation for the amazing new things we will be able to do in the future to solve current problems. And, unlike Spar, I’m not worried about a dystopian future. We already have the technology for that.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.