Category: News Feeds

If you thought the legal intrigue over the presidential candidacy of Kanye West reached its apex when it was revealed a Biglaw attorney worked for both his campaign and the Trump reelection campaign, you were mistaken. Though Husch Blackwell attorney Lane Ruhland did her best to get West on the ballot in Wisconsin, there are now legal challenges the campaign must hurdle.

The most ticky-tack (which is how lawyers say “petty”) argument against the West campaign is that they turned in the paperwork in late — at 5:00:14, when the state law says that the filing needs to be made “not later” than 5 p.m. So, yes, the electoral college battle for Wisconsin may well hinge on 14 seconds.

As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the campaign’s response, filed by Michael Curran, argues it depends on what your definition of 5 p.m. is:

“For the average observer, arriving before 5:01 p.m. is arriving ‘not later’ than 5 p.m. The phrase ‘not later’ is particularly instructive in that it indicates the presumption that the seconds from 5:00:00 to 5:00:59 are inclusive to 5 p.m. As the statute states ‘5 p.m.,’ for something to be filed later than ‘5 p.m.’ it would have to be filed at 5:01 p.m.”

At least they didn’t argue that it’s 5 p.m. somewhere, so YOLO.

Curran further argues, that even if the filing was late, it isn’t the fault of the campaign:

“Even assuming filing was not timely to begin with, the Commission should find that the nomination paperwork was timely filed here due to the locking of the Commission’s doors as well as the interference of the media and a rival campaign,” Curran wrote.

Oh wait, there’s more:

“People of color have long been marginalized in this country,” Curran wrote. “In seeking to remove Kanye West from the ballot and silence the voices of those who signed to place him, the Complainants are continuing this marginalization simply because Mr. West’s views and perspectives on issues do not conform with theirs and those of the Party they represent.”

In Wisconsin, Curran wrote, Democratic operatives have made “shameful threats against his supporters and an organized effort of harassment and intimidation.”

That sound you hear is good-faith complaints about racial injustice being set back.

The West campaign also faces a challenge that the signatures submitted were fraudulent:

The challenges also suggest there are numerous problems with West’s nomination papers, including incorrect addresses for circulators and bogus signatures, such as “Mickey Mouse” and “Bernie Sanders.” The Democratic Party’s complaint included affidavits from six individuals who said they were duped into putting their names on West’s paperwork.

Curran’s response also addresses to those challenges, saying there is “little or no supporting evidence [of fraudulent signature, and] should be dismissed.”

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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).

A pandemic doesn’t seem like the best time for a merger, but that’s not going to keep the largest law firm in the world from expanding its enormous footprint. This is the biggest “merger” that’s been announced since the coronavirus crisis began, but for Dentons, that’s par for the course.

When we last checked in with the Biglaw behemoth, it had closed two offices thanks to COVID, but now the firm is back on board with Project Golden Spike, where it’s combining with other successful entities to bring the Dentons name across the country. When all is said and done, Dentons aims to have 1,100 attorneys in the U.S., and today’s announcement will add another ~100 attorneys to the firm’s gigantic roster.

Dentons will be joining forces with Salt Lake City-based Durham Jones & Pinegar, one of the largest firms in Utah, to become the first global firm in the Beehive State. What else is so special about this combination? As noted in the American Lawyer, Durham Jones & Pinegar — or we should say Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar — will be able to work under the Dentons platform, but maintain control of its own governance, compensation, and hiring. Here are some details from the firm’s press release:

“We are excited to be combining with Dentons, a widely respected law firm that, like us, clearly prioritizes innovation and adaptability, especially during these extraordinary times,” said Todd Leishman, Chairman and President of Durham Jones & Pinegar. “Our combination with Dentons will allow our clients to continue to be served by lawyers they know and trust, who can now connect them to colleagues across the country and around the world.”

Building on Dentons’ global polycentric model, Project Golden Spike increases the quality and breadth of service to clients on a national and global scale, while also enabling US member firms like Durham Jones & Pinegar to retain their defining characteristics and provide in and of the community insight wherever clients need it.

“In times of accelerated change, the model of law firm combinations needs to continue to transform,” said Toby McClamroch, Managing Partner of Dentons United States Region. “Through the Golden Spike model and this combination with Durham Jones & Pinegar, Dentons is able to foster true collaboration between member firms and continue its trajectory to better serve clients across our focus on the 100 largest legal markets in the US.”

Upon the completion of this tie-up, Dentons will have a home in 188 locations — with 37 in the U.S. Which firm will be the next to get on board with the new business model presented by Dentons? We’ll soon see, because global chairman Joe Andrew says a few more U.S. firms will become part of the Dentons family by late 2020 or early 2021.

Dentons to Combine With Durham Jones & Pinegar in Utah [Business Wire]
Dentons Makes Salt Lake City the Next Stop in US Expansion [American Lawyer]

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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.

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Imagine you’re accused of committing a crime. You believe with every fiber of your being that you are innocent, but you understand why some people think what you did was wrong. You even recognize that some of your misdeeds are so legally gray that a jury might find you guilty.

What would you do? You’d fight, right? Hoping that the truth would set you free, you’d choose to exercise your right to a trial before a jury of your peers.

But what if the stakes were higher? What if you felt forced to consider a plea offer?

Imagine the prosecutor says he wants to make the “right decision” even easier for you, your nervous spouse, and your young children. Plead guilty and cooperate against others, he says, and he will all but guarantee you never go to prison. On the other hand, if you insist on going to trial, he will add five times as many charges and seek a prison sentence of more than 20 years. The choice is yours.

Actually, the choice was mine.

In 2008, I was accused of public corruption for my work as a lobbyist. After I had cooperated for two years with the government’s investigation, the prosecutors gave me the choice described above.

I would have loved to have pleaded guilty to ensure I would never spend a day away from my daughters. I knew going to trial was risky and that the costs would be greater than the million-plus in attorney fees. But I believed I was innocent (I still do) and my plea offer required me to testify — falsely, in my view — against others. I couldn’t do it.

I went to trial — twice, since the first jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Ultimately, I was convicted of half the counts at the second trial. As promised, the government recommended that the judge sentence me to 20 years in prison.

The judge gave me 20 months.

I was lucky, relatively speaking. My offenses did not carry mandatory minimum prison terms. My judge had discretion, but in the vast majority of cases, prosecutors get their way.

“The Vanishing Trial,” a new short documentary produced by FAMM and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, reveals how prosecutors use the threat of lengthy prison terms to coerce defendants to forfeit their right to trial.

Their coercion works. Today, just three percent of criminal cases today go to trial. Many people accept plea offers because they are guilty. Admitting their wrongdoing and avoiding a costly trial is in their best interest. But in many other cases, the threat of a “trial penalty” — the term used to describe the substantial difference in the prison sentence that is offered as part of a plea deal and the sentence a person receives if they lose at trial — produces massive injustices.

First, we know the trial penalty forces some innocent people every year to plead guilty. According to the Innocence Project, 18 percent of people who were exonerated by DNA evidence or other means pleaded guilty to crimes they did not commit. When asked why they did, they said that they feared an even longer prison sentence if they were found guilty.

Second, the trial penalty results in sentences that are manifestly unjust. In “The Vanishing Trial,” for example, viewers learn about Chris Young, who was offered a plea deal of 14 years for a drug crime. The 22-year-old simply could not imagine spending that long in prison for his crime and believed he could do better with a judge. But when he was convicted at trial, Chris learned that the judge was forced to hand down a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole.

I was lucky I was not facing a mandatory minimum sentence, but even now, I do not understand how my prosecutor believed that the appropriate punishment for my misconduct was either no time in prison or 20 years in prison, depending on whether I exercised my right to trial. Justice should not be a game of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

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Kevin Ring is a former Capitol Hill staffer, Biglaw partner, and federal lobbyist. He is currently the president of FAMM, a nonprofit, nonpartisan criminal justice reform advocacy group. Back when ATL still had comments, “FREE KEVIN RING” was briefly a meme. You can follow him on Twitter @KevinARing.

The impact of COVID-19 on patent litigation has been interesting to say the least. There is no doubt that (as of this writing at least) things are nowhere close to normal, either in terms of schedules or procedures in district courts around the country. For every judge that has tried to adhere to existing schedules — with some even going so far as to experiment with Zoom trials and the like — there are others that have thought it best to push deadlines out because of the pandemic. By and large, everyone — from jurists to court staff to lawyers and their clients — is trying their best in terms of dealing with the unprecedented challenges of the day. Yet in spite of the challenges to existing patent cases staying on schedule in district court, new patent case filings have apparently gone up over the past few months. Which may be an earlier harbinger of both NPEs and operating companies doing everything they can to generate revenue with their patents, including by filing cases against unwilling licensees earlier in the licensing lifecycle. We will see.

While the increased number of patent case filings in the midst of a pandemic might be a surprise to some, it should be less of a surprise that IPR activity has kept pace. How do we know? Thanks to a timely report by legal analytics firm Lex Machina, released as part of the firm’s “ongoing work to track the impact of COVID-19 on litigation.” In their new report “PTAB Activity During COVID-19,” Lex Machina “reviewed recent PTAB trial activity to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown has impacted this administrative law body.” Their findings are obviously of interest to anyone impacted by patent litigation — so for purposes of this column I wanted to focus on the three (idiosyncratic, as is my wont) takeaways I found most interesting from their findings. (If anyone is interested, I also put some investor-focused thoughts on the report on our Markman Advisors blog.)

First, IPR petition filings continue to act as a trailing indicator of the general level of patent litigation activity. Since new patent case filings have gone up during the pandemic, there is no surprise that IPR filings have kept pace to a certain extent. Sophisticated patent defendants continue to turn to IPR filings as a first-line defense to allegations of infringement against them. Moreover, the tumult in district court schedules due to COVID-19 appears to have put even more of a premium on defendants getting their IPRs filed early. Doing so allows defendants to make robust arguments early in the scheduling process that a stay is warranted; arguments that most likely would be well-received by a district court trying to triage its caseload as best as it can under the circumstances.

Second, the unique nature of IPR practice, both for lawyers and the PTAB, lends itself to minimal disruption due to the physical displacement engendered by the pandemic, at least in terms of lawyers needing to work remotely and the shuttering of courthouse facilities. For one, IPRs are heavily front-loaded and “paper heavy,” requiring at least one experienced patent lawyer to take the laboring oar on drafting of necessary filings. To the extent it is a group effort, because so much of the work centers on drafting — at least to get IPR petitions filed — there is less of a need for team members to interact physically in order to get the job done. Likewise, the decision points during IPRs — institution, final written decisions, even conducting oral argument — are all within the ambit of the three PTAB judges assigned to a particular panel. Each of whom would have significant prior experience interacting with their colleagues remotely. And because IPR arguments don’t feature live testimony, conducting them over video conference — while not ideal — is generally an acceptable alternative to delay or choosing not to have an argument at all.

Lastly, it is hard not to read the Lex Machina report without at least a measure of respect for the PTAB’s ability to keep to the statutory deadlines for cases that were already pending when COVID-19 hit. From its quick issuance of guidance as to revised procedures at the commencement of the lockdowns, to the continued diligence of PTAB panels in issuing institution or final written decisions, there is a lot to admire in the PTAB’s handling of the crisis to date. Indeed the report lauds the “PTAB’s consistency in adhering to time frames” as it has “continued its trial flow in an effective, timely fashion.” Already a popular patent forum, in large measure because of its favorable time frames for petitioners/alleged infringers, Lex Machina’s report provides compelling evidence in support of the PTAB’s continued popularity. Pandemic or no pandemic, the PTAB’s outsized role in the patent ecosystem will continue apace.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

Ipro Tech has been around in the legal technology space for as long as I can remember. I was using their eCapture tool in the ’90s before the EDRM and most of the processing engines in the market even existed. Today, they are a leader in the legal technology industry, providing solutions across the e-discovery lifecycle.

Recently, the Tempe, Arizona-based company announced the acquisition of NetGovern, an information and data governance and compliance product. I saw this as reason to sit down with Ipro Tech CEO Dean Brown to talk about the acquisition of NetGovern and the future roadmap for the company.

For better or worse, Ipro has a perceived reputation as a software company for the small to medium-sized organization. Brown told me, however, that that is not entirely accurate. “Sure, we’ve got about 2,000 customers using the Ipro Desktop product, and some of them are small firms. But the fact is that Ipro Enterprise, which combines processing, review, and production in an on-premise or SaaS-based model, is the e-discovery product of choice for about 300 corporate, law firm, service provider, and government customers.”

“People do not realize how much Ipro can scale,” Brown said. “We have a presence within 85% of the Am Law 100, and we’ve got customers with 40 million records in Ipro. And now, with the addition of NetGovern, Ipro is only going to continue to innovate and influence the legal technology space.”

Brown expressed genuine excitement about the NetGovern acquisition. “Never before have I been this excited to be in the legal technology space,” he said. “This gives us an end-to-end solution, from information governance through trial. Not many companies can alone offer solutions that touch upon each phase of the e-discovery lifecycle.”

Ipro’s mission stems from customer frustration with the explosion of data volumes and the need to have a more recursive workflow for managing their data and e-discovery processes. The linear EDRM framework is fine, but how can customers get better insight into data earlier? How can they combine analytics on data in place and then use real-time bidirectional connectors to not only access the data, but also to satisfy data management, compliance, and e-discovery needs across the enterprise?

The NetGovern acquisition, combined with analytics tools Ipro has been developing, and solid e-discovery processing, review, and production tools, will enable customers to federate many processes across any data source, reducing time and cost to production.

The combination will also be a relatively light lift because both Ipro and NetGovern use a similar framework and an API and (micro)services-based architecture to integrate other tools. If a customer wants to insert additional analytics tools between NetGovern and the Ipro suite of tools to dig deeper into the data, that is completely possible. Performing enterprise-wide EDA searches across a company’s data sources will now be a breeze for Ipro customers.

Looking ahead, Brown has hired an entire UX team to reimagine the user experience in Ipro. He told me that they will be integrating all of their service offerings, including search and legal hold, into the e-discovery platform to give users better insight into their data. The focus is going to be on usability and workflows.

And of course, the powerful search and analytics of the NetGovern product will be front and center since that is where an organization’s data lives to begin with. A powerful early data-assessment solution will not only help organizations better manage the data that they have, but will also enable them to better identify PII and PHI early in the process, which makes downstream e-discovery activities more efficient.

Ipro will not be going down the forensic collection path. Ipro will focus on customer data management. After identifying the necessary data, users will have the control to preserve broadly, but then strategically promote for review. Users will be able to move data right into processing, or they can park the data in an archival copy.

I asked Brown whether the acquisition of NetGovern means there will be a rebranding at some point. “No” he replied. “We will continue to market and sell to segments of the industry using the NetGovern or Ipro brands, as appropriate.”

Like with every company in the industry, 2020 has been a challenging year, Brown reported. But Ipro has been growing for years and has retained 90% of its customers. In fact, the NetGovern acquisition is a net gain because in addition to their headquarters, Ipro will now have offices in Montreal and in Germany, two outposts of NetGovern. And all of NetGovern’s management has been folded into the Ipro team.

“We believe in helping customers,” Brown told me. “The ability to federate processes across any data source and build workflows that help customers solve business problems is what we offer.” With NetGovern on the left side, their traditional processing, review, and production tools in the center, and Trial Director — still one of the most popular trial presentation tools on the right side — Ipro, a tried and true 30-year veteran of the legal technology space, has built an end-to-end solution that will empower customers across the e-discovery lifecycle.

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Mike Quartararo is the President of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), a professional member association providing training and certification in e-discovery. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery and a consultant providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@aceds.org. Follow him on Twitter @mikequartararo.

Fourteen days ago, Kodak shares were worth $2.22. In the interceding two weeks, the company leaked word of some very good news—a $765 million federal loan to transform a flailing photography-adjacent dinosaur into a world-saving pharmaceutical innovator—issued its leaders with some soon-to-be-very lucrative stock options, saw aforementioned news announced, consequently saw its shares touch $60, consequently to the combination of the above became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission insider-trading investigation, consequently to that saw its stock price drop down into the mid-teens, and today saw the aforementioned transformational government loan disappear. In other words, Kodak is at best right back in the same place it was two weeks ago, but more likely in a much worse place, what with the SEC investigation and all.

* A lawsuit filed by McDonald’s alleges that its former CEO sent nude pics from his work email, destroyed evidence related to sexual relationships with employees, and committed other illicit acts. Looks like Ronald wasn’t the only clown at McDonald’s… [Business Insider]

* A federal judge in New York has allowed a lawyer to withdraw from representing Michael Avenatti in a criminal case. [Fox News]

* A disbarred Beverly Hills lawyer has pleaded guilty to stealing over $500,000 from a former client. [CBS News]

* Susman Godfrey has elected the first female managing partner in the history of the firm. [Bloomberg Law]

* A lawyer is apparently accused of billing his client 40 hours in one day. Maybe he had a time machine? [Texas Lawyer]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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

According to data collected by Law.com for the A-List Law Firms ranking, which top 20 firm has the highest associate satisfaction score?

Hint: The Biglaw firm received an impressive 99.5 (out of 100) score on associate satisfaction, helping the firm take the number 8 spot on the list.

See the answer on the next page.