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More and more attorneys are capitalizing on technology to better run their practices or start a practice. Today, more attorneys than ever are considering practicing remotely as the pandemic has forced unprecedented work-from-home scenarios. For many attorneys trying to build a practice, the current lack of face-to-face interaction is a major roadblock.

At the same time, people and businesses across the country are in need of legal representation but don’t always know how to find it. Attorney search sites are hard to navigate, don’t give enough information and still leave you with the burden of scheduling and meeting. They promote the attorneys who pay fees for a listing, not necessarily the best attorneys. For much of the public, millions of legal matters go unaddressed every year, which adds up to an untapped legal market of billions of dollars, despite attorneys who want to work and clients who want representation.

A new player in the legal tech market is aiming to solve everyday challenges lawyers face. The folks at XIRA have created an online platform designed to bring clients to you, manage your schedule and help you book your free time. They also expand your market reach, reduce your overhead and help you get paid faster.

How XIRA Works for Clients

XIRA is easy to use and free of any extraneous marketing, advertising, or other clutter. Users start by simply searching for attorneys who practice in particular areas of law in their jurisdiction.

The search results appear as a list of potential attorneys, each with a name, photo, rating, charge for initial consultations (some of which are free), standard hourly rates, and earliest availability to meet. On the left of the results screen, there are filters that users can toggle to obtain a perfectly tailored combination of price, fee structure, availability, expertise, and more to meet their specific criteria.

Click any individual attorney in the search results, and users can see an attorney’s bio, areas of law they practice, education, license information (which links directly to the bar association if the user wants to confirm they’re in good standing), languages, and social media links. Users also see the attorney’s calendar for the next 30 days with available meeting times.

If users like what they see, they can instantly book either the first available time or another free time that’s convenient for them. Making an appointment with a new attorney is that simple!

There’s never any fee for clients to use XIRA – all they pay for is the legal services actually obtained. To register, the user simply verifies their email address and adds credit card information for future use. If the attorney that is selected has no initial consultation fee, the user doesn’t get charged!

XIRA sends a confirmation email with information on what to expect, what documents the user should have ready, and a link to the meeting. Scheduling the first consultation is easy and intuitive, and there’s no additional software needed.

Equally Easy for Attorneys to Join

Just enter your email, bar information, add your photo, select your practice areas, hourly rates or fee structures associated with each of your practice areas, initial consult charges (if any), and connect your calendar. XIRA can be synced with Google, Microsoft and iCal to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Once XIRA verifies that you’re licensed and in good standing, you’re open for business

and potential clients can find and book appointments on your calendar. The entire process to join XIRA takes less than 10 minutes and couldn’t be easier.

There are tools to help you promote and increase your visibility and to let clients get to know you better.  Build your bio, add a video bio, and connect social links.

Attorneys always have full control over their calendars and can set the hours and days they want to work. You can also designate how much lead time you want before new appointments (15 minutes > up to two days) and whether you’d like to have a time buffer between appointments.

As with clients, attorneys pay nothing to sign up for XIRA. There are no monthly fees, subscriptions or contracts. That means there’s zero cost to get yourself up and running and in front of potential clients.  XIRA only makes money when attorneys make money.  Learn more about XIRA’s straightforward price list here.

XIRA Handles the Business Side of Practicing Law

It’s no secret that law school may teach you to be a great attorney but does almost nothing to teach you how to run a business. Many attorneys in small or solo practices spend almost half their time on things like client acquisition, office management, and billing — things other than practicing law.

XIRA’s platform handles all those “non-law” things for you. Take billing, for example. Attorneys enter their activities and expenses directly into XIRA.  XIRA creates the invoices, presents them to clients, and collects payment from the credit card the client has on file. Attorneys can specify whether they want to invoice monthly, weekly, or via micro-billing; meaning that every charge or expense entered into XIRA will immediately be invoiced to the client. Micro-billing avoids clients getting sticker shock each month, increases attorney transparency, and helps with cash flow.

XIRA also functions as free marketing for attorneys. XIRA markets on Google, Facebook, other sites and television to promote attorneys on its platform, and even offers a specialist to help you promote your XIRA profile on social media — all for free. Again, XIRA doesn’t collect any money until a client schedules an appointment. Essentially, XIRA allows attorneys to become entrepreneurs without all the risks and costs that usually come with it.

Finally, XIRA makes connection and collaboration a breeze. Appointments are scheduled with simple clicks, rather than the back-and-forth between clients, attorneys, and assistants which was traditionally required. Documents can be stored and shared via secure, dedicated servers that essentially function as secure virtual file cabinets for each of your clients.

XIRA makes doing business so easy, you’ll want to invite your existing clients onto the platform. Thankfully, XIRA lets you do just that with a few clicks, allowing you to streamline your practice and bring it online and into a secure, virtual environment where you can grow your business and expand your reach. And, there are no setup charges for your existing clients.

Tapping Into an Unserved Market

Whether you’re a new attorney, a small firm, a solo practitioner, or an attorney who’s been inactive and looking to get back into the game, XIRA is the solution for reaching new clients and growing your business. As a free platform for users who might otherwise not know how to find the attorneys they need, XIRA allows you to have a broader reach than you could ever likely achieve on your own.

The way we do business has evolved. Your practice should evolve with it so you can finally achieve that work/life balance you’ve always wanted. Let XIRA do the heavy lifting, so you can focus on what you enjoy doing most – practicing law.

The saga of Robert M. Schulman — former intellectual property litigation partner at Hunton & Williams and Arent Fox, who was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud in 2017 — has seemingly reached its conclusion. Schulman was already sentenced to three years probation, fined $50,000 and ordered to forfeit about $15,500 and required to serve 2,000 hours of community service, but now the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ad hoc committee on professional responsibility has weighed in on the matter. In a negotiated discipline, Schulman has agreed to a three year suspension, retroactive to June 28, 2018.

Way back in 2010 Schulman allegedly got drunk before sharing inside information about a planned M&A deal with a friend and investment adviser, Tibor Klein. He hinted that his client King Pharmaceuticals was going to merge with Pfizer, saying, “It would be nice to be King for a day.”

In a statement to ABA Journal, Schulman points to a life beyond Biglaw and his previous patent law speciality:

Schulman said he was grateful that the hearing committee and a case manager “expended the effort to look beneath the surface into the specifics of my case.”

“The patent office has likewise handled this matter in a very professional manner,” he said. “Should the D.C. Court of Appeals agree to the settlement, I do not know that I would practice again, though it would be nice to have that as an option.

“Even after the passage of more than three years since the verdict, I still wrestle with what has happened. But it did happen. I have tried to learn and grow from it and not become embittered. I am grateful for the support of family and friends who saw me through this. There are a lot of great people, both clients and former colleagues, whom I miss dearly. I am still in touch with many of them.

“I’ve tried to use my extra time in a meaningful way. I’ve become a master gardener and am pursuing a master’s in agriculture and life sciences from Virginia Tech. I’ve also been teaching ESL classes.

“At this point, I’m enjoying my vegetable gardening, including a lot of volunteering, my grandchildren and, with any luck, some baseball soon. There is in fact life after patent law after all!”

I don’t want to say it’s dire, but he is looking forward to baseball y’all.

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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).

“Do I need to learn to code?” It’s the one question I consistently get from law students and lawyers alike, usually with a dreadful grimace. It’s understandable — these are people who spent three years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars learning one skill, and now they’re being told that skill is worthless without also having a completely unrelated one.

There are, of course, an unlimited number of answers and opinions on the topic, varying from company to company. So, I crowdsourced the answer in my global network.

I asked: “Do lawyers generally need to learn how to code?” I received the following results to the three choices.

1. Yes, lawyering & coding = ❤️ 31%
2. No need for lawyers to code! 65%
3. I do NOT want to vote! 4%

The Enthusiastic Yeses

On the one hand, Shari E. Belitz CEO of Shari Belitz Communications, summarized it: “If you asked me in 1990 if lawyers needed to learn email, I would have said no. If you asked in 1995 if lawyers needed to know how to type rather than dictate a memo, I would have said no. If you asked me in 2019 if lawyers would need to learn how to use an online platform to mediate, I would have said no. So, do lawyers need to learn to code? Yes. Learning to code provides the added bonus of sharpening logic skills, so is not just a utilitarian function.”

Some even reassured me that learning to code for lawyers is a doable, even enjoyable, endeavor. Dina Eisenberg, a law firm leader coach, explained: “I learned HTML over a long weekend. Not only am I able to do simple coding myself, I learned about my grit and raised my confidence. Those insights help me better serve my clients.”

The Pragmatic Noes

On the other hand, Rachita Maker, head of legal operations at Tata Communications, said: “I don’t think lawyers need to code. Lawyers need to know how to use tech to make their work more efficient. They need to learn to speak to technologists on their problem areas and how solutions should be designed.”

Similarly, MacAllistre (Alli) Henry, corporate counsel at Contentful, explained, “I believe in comparative advantage — as a tech lawyer, it’s important for me to understand issues that arise in coding — integrating open source, compatibility, etc. — but I do not need to be the coder.”

Likewise, Jack Shepherd, an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, detailed five reasons why lawyers don’t need to code. He suggested that many lawyers “won’t do as good a job,” “lawyers add to software builds by being the voice of the lawyer, not the developer,” “coding is only one part of a software,” “coding and design are even less important than identifying business problems that need solving, and being strategic around how the effort,” and it is incorrect to assume that “things like marketing, positioning and communication are easy or less important.”

And, Other More-Measured Suggestions

Of course, others explained that there are many answers between “Yes” and “No.” This is, of course, an expected result when one polls lawyers.

Dr. David Cowan, a lecturer at Maynooth University and editor-at-large at Global Legal Post explained: “I voted no need to code, but I would have voted for a different answer if offered: Lawyers need some introductory teaching on coding.” He continued, “From this, they will gain important insights into the relationship between law and technology, to which I would add for some law students it will be useful for them to learn coding as there will be good job prospects for them to work with law in new ways.”

And, of course, there is a thoughtful “it depends” answer. For example, Chris Weimer, a member at Pirkey Barber, said, “To give a lawyerly answer: it depends. I’ve seen some very compelling visual representations of data created by lawyers who code. But generally, I think it’s more efficient to provide ideas to developers to implement them. And then there are some specialized practices where being able to read code is crucial, but those are not the norm.”

The rich commentary that accompanied the vote suggests a difficulty in distinguishing between pragmatic specialization, say in the area of law, and pressure to be technically competent. In the current state of the industry, knowing how to code is generally a skill that will provide an advantage to individual lawyers in some specialties, but as a whole, according to the experts, is not totally necessary — yet. But why not be prepared for the future of the industry? As lawyers, don’t we always want to be innovating, thinking creatively, and prepared for all eventual outcomes?

For now, the question rests with each lawyer: while there is a general agreement that technical competence is a must for the twenty-first century where does the individual lawyer draw a line in deciding how far to go?

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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.

During last week’s installment of the Maine State Bar Association’s “Bar Talk” series, attorney Leah Baldacci chimed in to share her “concerns” about anti-racism efforts in the state. “I would like to note that many of the attorneys in Maine… despite having white skin have had their struggles in order to achieve all of the academic achievements they have made and become attorneys and I am certainly one of them,” Baldacci said on the video chat with the Acting Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court.

Baldacci is the daughter-in-law of the former governor of Maine. It is, truly, a hard knock life.

As the legal community begins… an introspective process about racism, I would like to caution attorneys… [that] telling attorneys that are of the white race that they have ‘White Privilege’ is antithetical to the goals of searching for a way to make race a non-issue in our community…

I was very surprised during some of the discrimination training that I’ve received through the State of Maine that ‘White Privilege’ was a topic that was raised many times. and felt as though there was no other purpose but to shame the individuals who were white in the room…”.

Whenever you hear language like “the white race” you know you’re buckling in for a wild ride.

Oh, and if you’re skeptical that her critics are playing “Gotcha” games and cutting her remarks out of context, that was a passage that she put on her own LinkedIn page so she, mind-bogglingly, thinks this makes her look sympathetic.

Let’s break down where she careens off the rails here. First of all, when she describes the goal of making race “a non-issue” she’s beginning from a flawed premise that dooms all of her conclusions. The vision of universal color-blindness misses the point of struggles against racism just as surely as universal androgyny would miss the point of sexism. The problem in both cases isn’t that there aren’t differences but that those differences shouldn’t be the basis of discrimination. To that end, understanding the ways in which white people have advantages is pretty important to understanding how discrimination works.

Second, she interprets “white privilege” as meaning that every white person lives an easy life, a conclusion that requires a wicked persecution complex. White privilege means I don’t assume every interaction with a cop will kill me, not that I wasn’t born in a trailer park. It also, to make this relevant to the legal profession, means I can do my job without people dismissing me as an affirmative action hire or something. White people can face all sorts of struggles… but they don’t face any of these struggles that uniquely impact people of color and that’s why they’re indicative of systematic discrimination.

This is all the more tragic because Baldacci’s remarks suggest that she does grasp the existence of sexism in the legal profession. Unfortunately this sort of uncritical self-absorption at the heart of Karenism isn’t uncommon. It’s as if being victims of a form of discrimination they basically shut down and refuse to accept the possibility that they’re doling out discrimination themselves, consciously or unconsciously.

As people tried to convince Baldacci to step back from embarrassing herself publicly she went back to LinkedIn and… made things worse:

I have recently received messages, privately and publicly, insinuating or calling me “racist” because of my position on the phrase “White Privilege.”

When you accuse a group of people of “White privilege” you create no oxygen in the room for a discussion on haw we can help make the world a better place.

The phrase “White Privilege” is also, by definition, a racist comment – as it states that ALL white people are privileged and categorizes a whole race as guilty of bad faith.

She then posts a Jordan Peterson video in an unparalleled act of unintentional comedy before deleting and blocking her critics and threatening to raise ethical violations against those characterizing her rhetoric as racist.

The president of the bar association thanked her for her comments at the time, but later issued a statement apologizing for not appropriately dunking on her at the time:

“Recognizing bias isn’t racist against white people,” he said. “Saying Black lives matter isn’t saying that other lives don’t matter. I’m sorry that I didn’t address these issues on Monday. I understand my silence was a lost opportunity, and it appeared complicit. My response, or lack thereof, is not a reflection of my believes or the beliefs of the Maine State Bar Association.”

A partner at her firm, Lipman & Katz, resigned from the Board of Governors in protest over the president’s statement, but named partner Roger Katz took a different route:

“Although the associate has every right to exercise her First Amendment rights and express her opinions, I see things quite differently,” Katz wrote. “As a white man living in Maine, I see it as my duty to listen, learn and speak up on issues of racial justice. We have a national problem.”…

I am a lucky man. I was born in the greatest country in the world at one of the great times in history. Lucky. Two loving parents. Lucky. But I was also born white. Lucky there too,” he wrote. “Call it white privilege. Call it starting the Race of Life a little ahead of others because of the color of my skin. Whatever. But let’s recognize it. Let’s own it. And let’s change it.

Indeed. The video cued up to her comments at the 23 minute mark is here:

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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.

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Last week, the Supreme Court narrowly agreed not to rescind the DACA program, thus permitting young undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States for at least the near future.

What it didn’t do was rule on the wisdom of DACA or say that the Trump administration cannot lawfully rescind it.

Some background — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama to side-step years of Congressional logjam on immigration reform. It happened through an executive memorandum ordering the Department of Homeland Security to defer the immigration prosecution of certain young people who entered the country without papers. To qualify, the young people had to have lived here since 2007, had to either be students or completed high school, or had to be honorably discharged from the military.

They also had to have committed no serious crimes, not posed a threat to national security or public safety, and be under the age of 31. In 2014, this program was expanded to include people of any age who entered the United States before the age of 16 and lived in the U.S. continuously since 2010. The 2014 changes also attempted to defer the prosecution of parents of U.S.-born children (called DAPA), but this initiative was stillborn when it drew immediate court challenge and was ruled illegal.

The interesting thing about DACA is that all litigants in the recent Supreme Court argument agree that it was unlawfully established. As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent, it was a program created “unilaterally through a mere memorandum,” while it should have been either a legislative decision or drawn up through the normal rule-making process. “To state it plainly,” Thomas wrote, “the Trump administration rescinded DACA the same way that the Obama administration created it,” and according to him, there’s nothing illegal about that.

So why did five justices agree to let DACA survive, if even just for the moment? Their rationale, written by Chief Justice John Roberts (considered to be in the conservative camp), was that it wouldn’t be fair to renege on a promise made by the government, upon which so many relied.

Putting into immediate deportation the over 7,000 young immigrants who have “enrolled in degree programs, embarked on careers, started businesses, bought homes, gotten married and had children,” would be unjust, Roberts said.

He also cited the economic impact rescinding DACA would have. The cost of replacing workers would total $6.3 billion. There’d be a $25 billion loss in economic activity, a $60 billion loss in federal tax revenue over 10 years, and $1.25 billion loss in state and local tax revenue.

The DACA feud got started when the Trump administration wrote its own memorandum rescinding the Obama administration’s memorandum. The thought was, if Obama could create DACA with a mere memorandum, then Trump could rescind it with one.

The majority opinion, however, faulted this logic, saying that for any action to be in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act (which governs decisions taken by the Department of Homeland Security), it must not be “arbitrary or capricious.” The fact that the Trump memo failed to consider the “reliance interests” of DACA recipients made the decision to rescind “arbitrary and capricious.”

While pro-DACA litigants included an equal protection argument stating that Trump’s overt hostility toward immigrants, who he’s called “criminals, drug dealer and rapists,” was an overt violation of equal protection law,  the majority didn’t find this claim substantiated because Trump’s prior statements were not “contemporary” with the memo. (Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only judge who would have upheld the equal protection claim.)

The decision is viewed by all sides as political. As President Donald Trump tweeted: “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!”

The justices have given the Trump administration a roadmap for a second go at getting DACA rescinded. According to the decision, his administration just has to “assess the existence and strengths of any reliance interests and weigh them against competing police concerns” in order to pass muster.

But this might not be so easy. This weighing of interests should take time, at least if it’s to be done right.

Hopefully, the time it takes will be enough for U.S. voters to decide who they want in office when and if the DACA fight is revisited.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

White & Case is facing a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former senior legal assistant. In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Manhattan state court, Hannah Kim alleges violations of New York City Human Rights Law for pregnancy, gender, and disability discrimination, hostile work environment, failure to accommodate, retaliation, and constructive discharge. She also seeks unpaid wages pursuant to New York labor law.

As reported by Law.com, Kim alleges a pattern of harassment that began before she went on parental leave in 2016:

“Plaintiff was subject to severe harassment by the individual defendants as a result of her need to express milk while at the office,” Kim said in the complaint. “This harassment was continuous and ongoing until Plaintiff stopped expressing milk for her child at work in approximately the fall of 2018.”

Rita Masino, one of Kim’s managers and a named defendant in the lawsuit, allegedly made repeated comments about breastfeeding, including that the plaintiff’s son was a “grown-ass boy,” that breastfeeding was “hink,” and that “formula was invented for a reason.” The complaint also alleges Masino made comments about Kim’s breasts and nursing bras.

According to the complaint, Kim was also prevented from using the firm’s lactation room. Plaintiff further alleges that when she latched her own door for privacy while pumping Carol Grajeda, another supervisor and named plaintiff, repeatedly tried to open the door while she was mid-pumping. Additionally, Kim alleges Masino interrupted her by telephone for seemingly minor issues.

The complaint alleges both supervisors repeatedly told Kim she should “keep her legs closed” to prevent additional pregnancies. Kim also alleges Masino told her she “better not be planning on getting pregnant anytime soon,” because Grajeda would “not put up with that shit.”

The plaintiff also says Grajeda and Masino harassed her following a car accident when she sought a part time work schedule to accommodate her recovery.

Kim says she voluntarily left the firm in February of this year after she was denied a bonus for 2019 and her year-end review was repeatedly put off, which she says are signs she was going to be fired. She also alleges she has not received her last paycheck and unused vacation days.

White & Case has not commented on the lawsuit.

Read the full complaint on the next page.

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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 note from Kerriann: This week I am proud to turn my column over to my dear friend Gilbert Bayonne, Esq., to share some of his thoughts on race and the bar exam. I hope he will return soon to share more of his insights and wisdom with us. 

I am a black man in America, the first-born son of Haitian immigrant parents. This article is not the answer to American racism as I do not believe that black Americans should be tasked with solving an age-old problem that we did not create. However, I do believe in the power and great beauty of black narratives told free from the shackles of whiteness.

I do not believe a meaningful conversation can be had about race, racism, and the concept of whiteness without context. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney, in true white supremacist fashion, authored the Dred Scott decision, which legalized the invisibility of black people in America. He wrote, with the confidence of every Karen after him, “[blacks] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order […] and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” This is neither hyperbole nor am I trolling. Squarely, this is our legacy.

163 years after the Dred Scott decision, we still find ourselves in a fight for the recognition of our humanity against an ideology that has infected all of America’s institutions. My colleague and good friend Kerriann Stout, wrote in response to NY BOLE’s prioritization of first-time bar takers over repeat test takers,  “[New York BOLE] is excluding the most marginalized groups of test-takers, and they aren’t telling us why.” As a graduate of one of the six HBCU law schools in the United States, I would argue that NY BOLE has already answered this question. In that, institutional racism is cyclical and, more importantly, purposive. Taney’s words in 1857, from the highest court in this nation, spoke to America’s commitment to the erasure of black people.

How difficult is it to marginalize the marginalized? According to a Florida International University Law Review study, in 2016 nearly half of black law school applicants (49 percent) were not admitted to a single law school. That share is larger than that of any other racial or ethnic group. Irrespective of whether NY BOLE, or anyone else for that matter, has considered the disparate impact this decision will have across racial lines, this policy bares the odor of racial exclusion, nonetheless. Individuals in the legal community, if we actually are one, have the luxury of dancing around the issue of racial exclusion. The others that Taney spoke of do not share in this luxury.

Personally, I attended Southern University Law Center, a law school founded as a result of a lawsuit filed by the great Charles Hatfield against Louisiana State University in 1946 when he was denied admission to law school solely on the basis of race. Prior to 1946, black students could not study law in Louisiana. Interestingly enough, Hatfield never attended law school. After filing his lawsuit, in the heart of the Jim Crow South, Hatfield received constant death threats. Those threats forced Hatfield and his family to seek refuge in Atlanta, Georgia. His law school dream deferred, he, like many other black heroes, was forced into social martyrdom. The luxury of privilege is that it operates like an account filled with unearned assets that one set of people can pull from at any time. Those privileges come at a great cost. And too often, black Americans, like Hatfield, find themselves on the outside of the promises of this country.

I am not sure where we, as a legal community, if we are one, are headed. However, we do know that history has a way of repeating itself, and societal hierarchies are interlocking. As attorneys, precedent is a tool of the trade. We study its impact, and we are forced to interrogate it from all angles. Is there much distance between the words of Taney in 1857, the deferral of Hatfield’s law school dream, the 49 percent of black applicants denied admission to law school, and NY BOLE’s recent decision? Are these things inextricably tied in the wheel of history? For all the illusions of black progress and advancement in the legal profession, I wonder how far we’ve actually come. Perhaps, time has already answered those questions. 

Gilbert Bayonne is the founder of The Bayonne Firm where he is committed to the professional and rigorous representation of clients. His experience includes representing clients in Criminal, Immigration, and Civil Law matters.

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Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

Atkins pitch man and occasional actor Rob Lowe told Conan O’Brien last week that he’s friends with Justice Clarence Thomas which… sure, why not?

Lowe explained that he’d be interviewing the justice on his show, which sounds like a celebration of the sort of neutered both-sides political fantasy befitting a West Wing alum. Where are his kids to troll this move?

If you’re wondering how Lowe met Clarence Thomas, he said that he met the justice at his own induction to the Horatio Alger Society where he described Thomas as “studly” which is lit-rally a ridiculous descriptor for a member of the Supreme Court. The justices may be a lot of things, but “studly” isn’t one of them. Thomas is a nerd lawyer, Long Dong Silver is studly. Get it right.

Lowe dropped the revelation of his friendship with Thomas on Conan’s podcast where he was promoting his own upcoming podcast because podcasts are the sourdough starters of the rich and famous. Let’s take a break at this point to remind everyone to subscribe to the various Above the Law podcasts.

Justice Thomas also gave Lowe his cell phone number:

“And you’re like, ‘Jeez, shouldn’t there be, like, a vetting process?” Lowe joked about getting through to a U.S. Supreme Court judge so easily on the phone.

We don’t really have a real vetting process to put him on the Court in the first place so why should a cell be any different?

Earlier: Rob Lowe’s Son Mercilessly Mocks His Dad’s Legal Acumen On Instagram

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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.

I’m on the board of my apartment building. We voted to require masks when you’re in the building. I run jog (without a mask, out in the streets, more than six feet away from everyone) in the morning. But I carry a mask in my pocket: When I return to the apartment building and walk the thirty steps from the back door to the service elevator, I’m in public. I’m on the board, so I put on a mask for those thirty steps. It may be silly, but it’s only right.

For several years, I served as the chief compliance officer of my company.  During those years (and some would say permanently), I was humorless. You look at the ethics complaints coming up through the system, and you realize that people take offense at damn near everything. As the chief compliance officer, you shouldn’t give offense. So I didn’t. I might have been boring but not giving offense was part of the job. (It’s slightly easier now that I oversee litigation. You’re still in a leadership role, but you can lighten up a little bit.)

So here’s what I don’t understand: The United States is facing one serious policy issue, about which reasonable minds should certainly differ, and one scientific issue, about which reasonable minds could not possibly differ. Why have those two issues become intertwined?

The policy issue is this: For how long should we shut down the economy to reduce the spread of COVID-19?

This is a very hard question. How quickly should we have shut down the economy at the outset? At what speed should we reopen? These are hard trade-offs to consider: If we leave the economy closed people will be out of work, people will be driven into poverty, domestic violence and alcoholism will increase, and so on. If we open the economy, we avoid those social ills — but people will die. How many deaths should we tolerate for how much economic and social cost? (Don’t tell me that’s an immoral question.  Governments make those decisions all the time: Should the speed limit be 20 mph or 70 mph? It depends on how much inefficiency we’ll tolerate for how many deaths. How many safety precautions should we take when digging mines? How tall should we allow a building to be? Governmental decisions will inevitably result in deaths, but we make those decisions.)

Politicians will disagree about the speed with which we should reopen the economy, and both sides can hold reasonable positions. We should encourage that debate, make a reasoned choice, and then move on (informed by new data as that data become available).

The scientific issue, unrelated to the tough policy choice, is this: Should people wear masks in public?

This is not a policy issue about which reasonable minds could differ. There’s plenty of scientific evidence showing that wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19. Wearing a mask may be a pain in the neck, but everyone should tolerate a minor nuisance for the greater good of saving lives. This is not an issue as to which politicians, or anyone, should differ.

But somehow they do.

Democrats now generally favor wearing masks; Republicans do not. President Donald Trump says that some people wear masks “to signal disapproval of him.” That may now be true — but, if it’s true, it’s only because the government has already blundered so badly. It is Trump himself who refuses to wear a mask and who suggests that there’s a legitimate argument against wearing masks (by tweeting that there are “[s]o many different viewpoints” on the issue).

I understand that we live in a partisan time. But can’t we occasionally let an issue of universal public health remain nonpartisan?

Or am I wrong, and I can jog without that silly mask in my pocket?

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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.