Category: News Feeds

‘Silent genocide’

The senior doctors described the situation at the country’s hospitals as a silent genocide, saying doctors are forced to work without basics such as bandages, gloves, and syringes.

Findings from the 12th Annual Law Department Operations Survey

Findings from the 12th Annual Law Department Operations Survey

BLICKSTEIN GROUP & ABOVE THE LAW

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If you have to be stuck in the office the afternoon before Thanksgiving, the very least the firm can do is announce their year end bonus scale. (Unless, of course, they’ve already announced bonuses, in which case, well done!) The folks at Sheppard Mullin received their good news this afternoon.

As expected, Sheppard Mullin’s bonuses are in line with the market scale set by Milbank earlier this month. Though as their grid below shows, they divide it up by associate levels rather than class year.

In order to be eligible for these bonuses, attorneys must hit the 1,850 billable hour threshold. Bonuses will paid in January of 2020. (Full memo on the next page.)

Remember, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

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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).

Marcus L. Urann was a lawyer who left his legal career at the turn of the 20th century for a more agricultural lifestyle. His efforts to extend the selling period of his staple crop led to what product, which will be featured on many Thanksgiving tables this Thursday?

Hint: Decades after his career change, Urann said in an interview, “I felt I could do something for New England. You know, everything in life is what you do for others.”

See the answer on the next page.

Last week, news surfaced of an unusual case involving a woman’s divorce and a ruling on the child that was conceived via surrogacy during their marriage. The news reports describe how an Indian couple living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been married for 15 years but had been unable to conceive. In most cases, a couple embarks on a journey to have a child together, with parties agreeing. But in this case, the husband traveled to India and underwent surrogacy procedures … without the wife’s knowledge or consent. (Not a great move for a healthy marriage!)

Upon learning of her husband’s actions, the wife, unsurprisingly, sought a divorce. However, this wasn’t your typical American no-fault divorce for irreconcilable differences. Instead, according to her testimony, the husband would only agree to a divorce if she signed consent forms for the surrogacy procedures that were already underway. Under duress, she signed. After the birth of the child, the husband took the couple’s valuables–and the child–and moved to India. The husband then informed the wife that, oh, by the way, her name was on the birth certificate as the mother of the child, and she was legally recognized as the mother of the child.

Still in the UAE, the wife also sought non-recognition of the parent-child relationship, as well as the divorce proceedings, in the United Arab Emirates.

The UAE and Assisted Reproductive Technology Laws

In April 2019, the United Arab Emirates enacted “draft” laws that outlawed surrogacy, as well as egg and sperm donation. While I’m not familiar with the UAE legal system and where the draft law stands in terms of enforceability, it’s clear that the UAE means business. Penalties for defying the prohibition include incarceration for up to five years, along with heavy fines.

Dr. Hassan Elhais, a UAE legal consultant for the wife, explained to me that this was the first time a UAE court had made a ruling on surrogacy. Dr. Elhais explained that while it is widely understood that surrogacy is not permitted in the country no court had previously issued a ruling on the question of parentage involving a surrogate-born child. Here, the court ruled in the wife’s favor, with a broad ruling likely to have implications for future intended parents. The court held that surrogacy is not determinative of parentage and also found that, therefore, the wife was not a legal parent of the child. But it went even further, holding that even if the child had been genetically related to the wife, she still would not be found a legal parent of the child under UAE law.

The court had ordered the husband to produce the child for DNA testing. However, the husband, now in India, declined. Dr. Elhais explained that even without the DNA evidence proving the lack of genetic connection, it was not possible for his client to be the genetic parent of the child. She never underwent the procedures (such as ova retrieval) that would have been necessary for her to be genetically related to a surrogate-born child.

The Other Side

In contrast to the wife’s allegations that the surrogacy was without her consent, the husband argued that his wife had consented initially, and only changed her mind as the due date of the child grew closer. He argued that surrogacy was legal in India, and that the UAE should defer to Indian law on surrogacy in the matter — which would find the wife the legal parent of the child. UAE courts do, at times, apply foreign law, but the court refused to do so in this case based on the country’s stance against surrogacy.

This Case Sounds A Little Familiar

The facts of this case have certain parallels to the infamous 2016 Sherri Shepherd surrogacy situation in the United States. There, actress Sherri Shepherd (known for The View, and as a recent surprise celebrity guest on The Masked Singer, if anyone happened to watched that) and her then-new husband Lamar Sally entered into agreements for a woman in Pennsylvania to carry a child for them. The child was genetically related to Sally and an anonymous egg donor.

During the pregnancy, Shepherd and Sally’s relationship crumbled, and Shepherd later claimed that she had been fraudulently induced to enter into the surrogacy arrangement. She argued that she should not be found the legal parent of the child. A Pennsylvania Court of Appeals ruled against Shepherd, finding her legally and financially responsible for the child.

Of course, if Shepherd’s dispute had been brought in the UAE, the ruling very likely would have gone the other direction. Dr. Elhais did point out that, similar to the United States, the UAE courts prioritize the best interests of the child. In his client’s case, the court did not consider it in the child’s best interest to find the wife a legal parent to the child. With different facts — such as a surrogacy case where the intended parents both wish to parent the child — a UAE court may face a trickier job of balancing the surrogacy prohibition while also prioritizing the child’s best interests.

For now, though, the lesson may be to avoid surrogacy arrangements if you live or plan to live in the UAE.

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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.
 

There’s no question that the legal industry looks different today than it did even five years ago. Several high-impact trends — from increasing information complexity and client demands to economic forces, changing demographics and technological advancements –- are converging to change the way we work. Those factors have created an environment where clients expect answers immediately, and the job of finding those answers is more complicated than ever before.

As we learned in Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Lawyer survey, legal professionals are turning more often to technology and innovation to solve those challenges, and early adopters (or Technology Leaders) are already showing a competitive advantage. The survey found that 68 percent of Technology Leaders reported increased profitability from 2017 to 2018, compared to just 52 percent of organizations that have been slower to adopt those practices. In addition to profitability, 50 percent of Technology Leaders who responded to the survey felt prepared to keep pace with the changes that legal professionals are experiencing as the industry continues to evolve.

Despite the clear advantages that technology and innovation can have for legal professionals, many survey participants also indicated resistance to change. Our respondents told us the following:

• 36 percent of organizations noted the lack of technology knowledge, understanding, and skills as the top reason for resisting technology. Many legal professionals just don’t know what’s available, how to choose the right solution for adoption, or how to make the most of their technology investments.
• 34 percent of respondents pointed to organizational issues -– including the lack of a tech strategy, a culture that fears change, or leadership resistance.
• For 30 percent of respondents, financial matters — whether whether they be direct costs or return on investment — are standing in the way of innovation.
• Survey respondents also acknowledged that there are barriers to implementing change in their organization because of leadership resistance to change, the high level of difficulty that comes with change management, and the costs of change.

Based on the survey’s findings, the obstacles to bringing innovation into an organization are very real, but some law firms have made strong progress in developing innovation programs. I recently had the pleasure of hosting a panel at Ark Group’s second annual Legal Innovation Summit in Boston with three talented individuals who have spearheaded innovation efforts at their own organizations.

One of our panelists was Lucy Dillon, Chief Knowledge Officer at Reed Smith, a global law firm with more than 1,500 lawyers in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Implementing any kind of new system within an organization of such size is an accomplishment in and of itself –- and in Lucy’s case, implementing innovative practices has taken effort, but so far, it’s proving successful.

Dillon recognized that lawyers of the future will need a different set of skills to deliver services in a digital environment. To help prepare for the change, she proposed a plan to include students with different skill sets in the firm’s Summer Associate program. “Changing the culture involves building from the ground up, so I saw our Summer Associate program as a good place for us to introduce practitioners with different skills and interests,” she said.

To get started, Dillon’s team identified universities that offered a broader curriculum, with the goal of finding students for last summer’s program who had interest and experience in tech, process design, and service design. Those associates were expected to dedicate a portion of their time specifically to innovation and legal tech projects for the firm. The firm piloted the scheme in 2018 with three students, growing to four in the 2019 intake.  That level will continue in 2020. In a positive first measurement, all of the “legal tech” Summer Associates have been offered New Associate positions at the firm. The first cohort joined in September 2019, so it is early days, but alongside their more traditional new associate activities, they are already involved in developing digital platforms for clients, document automation, and the design and implementation of a number of systems to improve internal efficiency.

Reed Smith has also implemented a practice to give lawyers across the firm an opportunity to share their own ideas for innovation. “Our lawyers have good ideas and an enthusiasm to try new things, but they don’t have much time available to put those ideas into action,” Dillon said. To encourage ideas, the firm created a system that allows practitioners to receive billable credit for approved innovation projects.

“We have adopted a very broad definition of innovation, so that everyone with an idea of how to improve efficiency or for a new client service feels empowered to submit an idea. We have publicized where ideas should be submitted and we assess quickly, and we have a clearly articulated approval process and ongoing project management to ensure that time is well spent. We also showcase projects to promote the program and encourage others to participate.” In this instance, a “good project” is defined as one which has been well thought through, with a clear problem to solve. That can range from working with a client to develop a collaboration platform to creating a workflow for an internal process. A success can also be a failure, when an idea which seems like a good one fails to deliver, as these can be valuable learning opportunities for the firm.

Reed Smith’s innovation programs have a few winning qualities that other legal professionals can observe:

• specific objectives,
• clearly defined processes, and
• results that can be shared to demonstrate value and ROI.

Those factors can be important to consider when making the case for innovation -– especially if you encounter resistance from other areas of your organization. Having a clear plan with specific actions, accountability, and goals can make for a more favorable argument to implement change.

Dillon summed up her advice to would-be innovators in a few choice words: “Start small, but with a view as to how you would scale. Go where there is energy. Don’t over-engineer. Work with the culture of your firm. Be patient!”

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Dean E. Sonderegger is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a leading provider of information, business intelligence, regulatory and legal workflow solutions. Dean has more than two decades of experience at the cutting edge of technology across industries. He can be reached at Dean.Sonderegger@wolterskluwer.com.

The LSAT is a pretty big deal, assuming, of course, that you are interested in going to law school. Sure, there are other factors that go into a law school’s decision to accept a particular student, but admission is largely dependent on the test scores. So, it’s a pretty big deal when thing start going wrong during the test.

Fresh off the news that LSAC, the organization that administers the LSAT, had to cancel scheduled tests at 30 locations in advance of Monday’s administration of the LSAT, it turns out even more students’ test day was a disaster. Above the Law tipsters referred to it as the Fyre Festival of standardized testing. Yikes.

So what exactly went wrong? Basically, everything. As Dave Killoran, CEO of PowerScore, tweeted, LSAT test centers across the country experienced issues. In some places, proctors didn’t show up, others had router issues, and still other centers were short on the number of tablets (which is how the digital exam is administered), leading in some locations to a delay of the exam and outright cancellation in others.

I spoke with Jay Thomas, Executive Director of Admissions Programs for Kaplan Test Prep, about the snafu and he thinks it is part of the LSAC’s “growing pains” as they move the traditional law school into the 21st century with all-digital administrations of the exam. He also noted there was “staggering” demand for the November administration of the LSAT. Thomas points to the transition to the digital LSAT as part of the reason for that demand. You may recall in the lead up to the all-digital version of the LSAT, the administration of the LSAT was done half digitally and half on paper. Due to the unique status of that administration, LSAC offered a one-time deal that let students cancel their scores and re-take the exam, hence, the off-the-chart demand for the November test date. Thomas is hopeful these kinks will be ironed out by the next administration.

When reached for comment, Kellye Testy, president and CEO of LSAC, provided the following, apologizing to those affected and offering some make-up options:

While most candidates had a smooth test day, we had significant staffing and equipment delivery issues that caused excessive delays at several test centers and prevented candidates from taking the exam at others.

This is completely unacceptable, and we are deeply sorry for the problems our test takers experienced. We are going to do whatever is necessary to fix the situation, so our candidates get the smooth and positive test-day experience they deserve.

Our first concern is for the affected test takers. We are reaching out directly to each of them to extend our sincere apologies and to offer them an expedited make-up test or other options, whatever is best given their individual needs. They will also receive four free law school reports, in recognition of the problems and inconvenience they experienced.

Our staff have moved quickly to nail down make-up test administrations on December 8 at a number of key locations in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. This will be a nondisclosed, paper-format test, given how quickly we need to administer it. There is no additional cost for this make-up test, and scores will be released as originally scheduled on December 19. We will be communicating these make-up test locations to candidates as they are finalized, and we will continue to be in direct contact with candidates to ensure their needs are being met.

We have never experienced the level of staffing and equipment-delivery issues that we saw this month. These vast majority of these issues are not related to the digital test. They are issues we will fix through better communication and tracking, and operational improvements.

Again, we want to express our deepest apology to the candidates who were affected by the problems at our test centers. Any affected test takers who have questions or concerns should contact our candidate services team directly at LSACinfo@LSAC.org or 215.968.1001.

The fact remains it sucked for those affected. Hopefully, they’re able to regroup from the snafu and get the LSAT score they’re hoping for.

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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).

Chicago Law’s Will Baude is one of the conservative legal scholars whose work tries to earnestly and creatively slap lipstick on theory pigs, which makes him much more interesting to read than many of his peers. He’s also willing to commit the occasional conservative apostasy when the rest of his camp drop their masks and reveal that the whole theoretical superstructure is just a convenient fig leaf for contemporary Republican party politics. The point is, Baude is not the sort of cynical ideologue that generally populates conservative academic ranks.

Which is why his recent blog post attempting to deflect the storm of bad press for the Federalist Society is so jarring, because to make any sense at all it must either be nakedly disingenuous or woefully naive — neither of which seem like Baude’s style.

This has led to claims that the Society is in fact a partisan organization because of its supposed role in picking judges, to calls that the organization disavow or denounce various things, and to arguments that members of the society have some moral culpability for what other members of the society do.

“Supposed role in picking judges.” This bit of handwaving refers to FedSoc’s Executive VP Leonard Leo and his unquestioned role as the primary arbiter of Donald Trump’s judicial nominations. Leo’s managed to appoint fully one-quarter of federal appellate judges in a relative blink of an eye — with the help of Mitch McConnell’s willingness to sacrifice the orderly administration of justice for years to create a daunting number of vacancies for Trump.

Similarly, I think it’s a mistake to expect the Federalist Society to take official positions beyond, perhaps, its relatively open-ended mission statement.

Right… because of its tax status. With a group already playing dangerously close to the line in taking advantage of 501c3 status, an official position would most definitely be a mistake.

I am a member of the Federalist Society, but I don’t see things this way and thought I’d try to explain why. As I see it, the Federalist Society is essentially a network that connects thousands of scholars, students, and lawyers. There is obviously some intellectual valence to that network — it is not a random network — but it’s usually a mistake to discuss the network as a collective noun.

It certainly is a network, but it’s a network designed for the purpose of stacking the judiciary and academia with conservative ideologues. The unabashed mission of the organization is to avoid another “Souter moment” by vetting and nurturing “right-minded” individuals for career advancement. Baude notes that he doesn’t see himself as a likely court appointee — which is true — but also irrelevant. Vetting includes finding people who don’t make the cut too. And it ignores that his career as a T14 academic is just as much a part of FedSoc’s mission as finding judges.

But the society doesn’t do anything. Individuals like Leonard Leo and Don McGahn do.

“United Airlines doesn’t fly to Houston, Captain Oveur does.” After repeatedly describing the organization as a network, he’s got to grapple with the question: for what purpose? A network is a little like a poker game — if you look around the network and can’t see how it’s serving its leadership, you’re the sucker. Facebook isn’t a network of elderly people sharing cat photos, it’s a data driven advertising engine.

Ultimately though, this is Baude’s real issue. He notably opposed the Supreme Court’s gutting of organized labor in Janus, arguing that compelling union members to contribute money is not compelled speech and he realizes the negative press around FedSoc affords him an opportunity to double down on his reasoning because unions are, in a very real sense, networks too.

Baude and Eugene Volokh argued at the time that “requiring people only to pay money, whether to private organizations or to the government, is not a First Amendment problem at all.” In other words, just because an organization is speaking with someone’s money doesn’t mean that individual is talking. A better challenge to the reasoning of Abood and Janus would have been that protecting organized labor is a recognized governmental goal much as the social security system was in Lee and the efficient operation of that goal requires the orderly collection of dues regardless of a dissenter’s opinions. Instead we get a spicy libertarian hot take suggesting that unions are entities separate and apart from their members. It’s how GOP candidates always say they care about teachers, just not teacher unions as if those aren’t the same thing.

So when FedSoc lands in the news for hosting raving conspiracy theorists and folks generally saying stupid stuff and people start tying Baude to this circus just because he’s devoted the better part of his life to this organization, he’s got to find a way to say “nah, that’s not me.”

But that’s a cop out.

Leonard Leo using the organization’s Rolodex to fill federal court vacancies and letting Bill Barr toy with jailing seditionists is what FedSoc’s all about and if you offered aid and comfort in building that network, then you own it.

There are no tourists.

FedSoc is a They, not an It [Summary, Judgment]

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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.

Calling a woman judge—now an associate justice of this court—‘attractive,’ as [the defendant] does twice at the outset of his reply brief, is inappropriate because it is both irrelevant and sexist. This is true whether intended as a compliment or not. Such comments would not likely have been made about a male judge. …

Objectifying or demeaning a member of the profession, especially when based on gender, race, sexual preference, gender identity, or other such characteristics, is uncivil and unacceptable. Moreover, the comments in the brief demean the serious business of this court. We review judgments and judicial rulings, not physical or other supposed personal characteristics of superior court judges. …

[A]s judicial officers, we can and should take steps to help reduce incivility, including gender-based incivility. One method is by calling gendered incivility out for what it is and insisting it not be repeated.

— Associate Justice Brian Currey of California’s Second District Court of Appeal, with Associate Justices Thomas Willhite Jr. and Audrey Collins concurring, in an opinion calling out courtroom sexism and sexism in the legal profession at large after an attorney referred to now-Associate Justice Gail Ruderman Feuer, who was a Los Angeles Superior Court judge at the time, as “an attractive, hard-working, brilliant, young, politically well-connected judge on a fast track for the California Supreme Court or Federal Bench” in his brief. While the attorney in question claimed he was attempting to compliment the judge, the court concluded that his comments “reflect[ed] gender bias and disrespect for the judicial system” nonetheless.

(Flip to the next page to read the opinion in full.)

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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.