Category: News Feeds

Analytics is all the rage in legal technology circles. It’s funny how a “killer app” can come along and quell a community rift. For years, the legal profession and the legal tech world tussled over whether or not “AI” or “Machine Learning” was hype or the next big thing. We joked about robot lawyers, mused about the unauthorized practice of law, had serious conversations about encoding bias, but in the end all it took to get lawyers to come on board with the promise of AI was providing the application nearest and dearest to a lawyer’s heart: research.

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first talked to LexisNexis about Context, its offering based on Ravel Law’s AI technology. Back then, what Context promised was a powerful tool to breakdown judges and expert witnesses, analyzing opinions to identify trends, quirks, and points that resonate. Context could flag, “hey, this judge cites this one quote from this one outlier of a case every single time this very specific argument has come up… maybe you should read that one.” It was an eye-opening demo.

Last week, LexisNexis unveiled a new module, Context Company Analytics, using “advanced machine learning technologies to cross-reference litigation history with news events, combining these insights with financial data and information on prominent executives for more than 2.5 million public and private companies.” Context’s engine correlates information coming from all sides of the LexisNexis marriage: news coming from the Nexis side — including Law360, business journals, and national newspapers — litigation data coming from dockets and caselaw courtesy of the Lexis side, and corporate financial information from Nexis Dossier.

It’s all intertwined, and Context allows the user to see it all at once. Here’s a look at Ford Motor Company:

See how the news stories are all tied to the underlying suits and you can easily jump from the media narrative to the litigation materials? I’ll say that a live demo conveys this even better.

I did note that the system managed to avoid gathering any stories about the most headline grabbing caption for the company last year: Ford v. Ferrari. All kidding aside, there was a day when a system trying to do this kind of thing would uncritically spit out the fact that hundreds of stories were written about what appears on paper to be a case. This is the power of AI.

“To fully understand potential risk and exposure, or anticipate potential market opportunities, law firms and corporate legal departments need to see how news events and litigation can impact the financial well-being of a company and its executives,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO, North American Research Solutions at LexisNexis. “Only Context Company Analytics gives attorneys powerful language analytics to dive deep into news, litigation, and financial data to better serve their clients, prospects and key internal stakeholders.”

The benefits of understanding a litigation adversary or a counterparty in a deal are obvious, but the system also provides value for attorneys looking to expand their practices.

If I’m looking to get some Ford business, these are the firms in my way and these are the courts where I need to show expertise.

As of now, Context Company Analytics covers all public companies, all private and international companies that have had litigation in U.S. courts, and private companies larger than 100 employees even if they have no litigation history.

Context Company Analytics is available with a Lexis Advance subscription.

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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.

Unemployment is soaring thanks to the novel coronavirus, and in the first two weeks of March alone, the legal industry lost 1,700 jobs. As law firms proactively enact cost-cutting measures like salary reductions, furloughs, and layoffs to manage their finances over the difficult months to come, lawyers and legal professionals have been anxiously waiting for the next domino to fall. Will their firm be next?

We’ve been tracking how this has played out thus far, and now we’ve got news on Am Law 200 Sullivan & Worcester, a firm that sources tell us is conducting firmwide salary adjustments in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with some furloughs. Specifically, we were told that associates’ salaries would be reduced by 5 percent for the next 90 days, and at the end of the month, the firm would decide if any additional salary cuts were necessary. Further, sources said nonequity partners’ salaries would be reduced by 10 percent and equity partners’ salaries would be reduced by 20 percent. Finally, we heard that the firm had furloughed some of its employees.

We reached out to Sullivan for comment, and managing partner Joel Carpenter confirmed what was going on and also offered some corrections on the firm’s plans.

[W]e are managing through a situation in which the short term impact of the virus on the firm’s revenue is largely unpredictable, so our Management Committee has created an expense reduction plan to deal with the most adverse impacts we think we are likely to experience.

That plan does not at present involve any layoffs, but it is true that a small number of employees who cannot perform their functions remotely have been furloughed for 90 days with full benefits. They will be rehired as soon as we can return to the office, which we hope will be sooner than that. The 5 percent salary reductions you were told about apply to all employees who make more than $66,000 a year, not just associates, and are not expressly limited to 90 days. The partner reductions you were told about are accurate in the percentages but the reductions are to monthly draws, not total compensation. The impact on actual compensation levels will not be known until we get through these difficulties and see how our overall year will work out. And lastly, I told everyone that the Management Committee will revisit our plan monthly to test our experience against the assumptions of our plan and will make appropriate adjustments, positive or negative, as the impact on us becomes clearer.

These are by far the most gentle salary cuts we’ve seen for associates and staff, while partners are taking the brunt of the financial impact. “As always, our priority is the well-being of our own people and our clients,” Carpenter said. “We expect that taking these difficult steps now will allow Sullivan to more easily return to business as usual when this crisis passes.”

Best of luck to those who were temporarily furloughed at Sullivan. We hope you’ll be able to find the security and support you need during these tough times.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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.

Vinson & Elkins had a conference call with associates Friday morning and made assurances that no layoffs/furloughs or reductions to base pay are contemplated as of now.

What is your firm doing doing during these difficult days? Are they assuring the safety of your job? Or are they slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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).

For many of us, the past few weeks have been filled with uncertainty, fear, or health battles. While it remains unclear when things will return to normal, it is increasingly apparent that the pandemic is accelerating some long-term trends that have already been in progress. It will, without a doubt, have lasting effects on corporate cultures and the way we practice law.

Collaboration Is The New Normal

Overnight, we went from real life, human collaboration, and communication with some electronic components to exclusively virtual, technology-aided collaboration and communication. This shift is as significant as it was sudden.

Collaboration and communication in person tend to be off the record. The identities of speakers or collaborators tend to be known, and interactions tend to be sequential, in which participants take turns speaking one after the other. Virtual collaboration and communication, on the other hand, tend to have different attributes. They tend to be on the record, speakers and collaborators often remain anonymous, and collaboration tends to be more sequential. In other words, our communications and collaborations are becoming more fluid. They are also more efficient.

The Imaginary Separation Between The Employee And Her Family Is Gone

As we work from home, have you noticed how happy your colleagues and clients are when they share a pic working with their pets or kids? It’s like they finally came out of their shell.

One good thing about this crisis is that it’s finally okay to show up fully. Work has finally become personal, and personal spaces have openly become workspaces. Our kids have always been present in the background of our minds; now, they’re showing up in the background of our video conferences.

In other words, it’s hard to tell where personal ends and professional begins. Consequently, we no longer have a fictional separation between employee and family. It feels liberating.

Age-Based And Service Length-Based Seniority Are Dated

In the past, senior employees were promoted to leadership first. But when you work virtually, there is no corner office. Your suit doesn’t matter nearly as much. Your shoes probably don’t matter at all. Who can see them?! And, then it is hard to see gray hair or judge someone’s age. Your productivity, output, and impact are visible and are what matter. They become paramount.

These things may — or may not — correlate with age or length of service. This crisis has allowed many people who are normally overlooked and taken for granted to shine and lead. Relying on age or length of services as the basis of promotion is dated. You will certainly miss the potential for leadership on your team.

 Cultivating A Culture Of Agility Has Become Mission-Critical

In the past, we have talked about “working from home” or “remote work.” Lately, we have started talking about “working anywhere.” After all, we work in different places today. Why should location matter? I have worked at the airport, parking lots, hotels, airplanes, various offices, boardrooms, cars, and numerous other odd places. Why not just call it “work”? If you have a connection, who cares about your location?! It is much more interesting and relevant to discuss your productivity, output, and impact — much more so than your location. In shifting this focus, we would cultivate the culture of agility with this global crisis highlighted as mission-critical.

Sustainability Is A Competitive Advantage For Any Business

 “Olga, small businesses are hurting. Do you know that some of our clients can use help?” My employees came to me and requested that we step up our game. This is a new normal. Top talent looks for companies that prioritize sustainability and doing the right thing. Their paycheck is table stakes. They look for you to do the right thing for the employees, clients, and the world around you. They evaluate your mission, team, and actions. And they will make it clear if you fall short by telling you in person, on social media, or other public forums. Thus, sustainability is a competitive advantage for a business today.

We are living in a crisis that is challenging the way we’ve been doing things for … ever. Overnight, the conventional became no longer possible, and things that became unthinkable two weeks earlier have come to feel normal.

Such a sudden change creates an opportunity for growth and change. Companies have been forced to make changes that they didn’t feel were worth the risk before. Let’s make the most of this moment, and be sure that once this crisis is over, we’re on a stronger footing than we were going in.

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

The economy is at a standstill, and is likely to remain so for some time to come. Hedge funds are, for the most part, having a rough go. The only thing keeping us tied to one another has failed. There’s still no f*****g toilet paper.

Even Ken Griffin has made some accommodation (literally) to our nightmarish new world. But we can still look to Citadel for a reassuring glimpse of life continuing as it always has, with old doors closing and new ones opening, a cycle of hiring and firing that even a global pandemic cannot interrupt. (After all, even an exogenous force like a novel virus is ravaging the markets is no excuse for losing Ken Griffin money.)

Judges and prosecutors, particularly in New York but also around the country, are facing a big dilemma. Typically, people who get arrested for serious crimes have very high bails slapped on them which they’re unable to make.  They stay in jail awaiting trial. Nobody generally cares.

But with the threat of COVID-19 infecting (and even killing) more and more inmates every day, judges and prosecutors must weigh the possibility of the virus killing inmates with pre-existing conditions against the presumed danger of letting them by reducing their bails.

The choice is tough. A primary concern of judges and prosecutors is public safety. Although the system pays lip service to the presumption of innocence, the real presumption upon arrest is that of guilt. The more serious the charge a person faces, the more dangerous he’s assumed to be and thus the higher the bail. The worse the defendant’s record, the higher his bail.

The fallacy of this argument, however, is that no matter the charge or the prior criminal history, defendants with money make bail, while the indigent get stuck inside. It’s really a system based more on economic ability and not dangerousness or likelihood of return to court.

At least 90% of the people in jail awaiting trial are poor. They’re in jail because they can’t afford bail.

But now there’s a new issue. Many people in jail have pre-existing conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.  One of those pre-existing conditions is asthma and according to studies, more poor people suffer asthma than do the wealthy.

Asthma is tied to home environment. Data shows that housing projects and other low-income housing are fecund places for the factors that contribute to asthma — poor ventilation, living close to polluted areas, cockroach waste, etc.

Four out of five of my jailed clients called me last week, telling me they suffer severe asthma. They use inhalers and are living in close quarters with other inmates who may be carriers of Covid-19. They’re panicked. Some have been hospitalized in the past for TB or other lung-related diseases; many suffer other immune deficiency problems and mental health issues. They’d all like to get out of jail or at least have their bail lowered to an amount they can afford. They all promise to return to court.

The problem is each one has been indicted for serious crimes ranging from murder to gun possession and domestic violence. Two have been remanded (no bail set). The others have had bail set so high that they have no hope of making it. I’m making renewed bail applications for each of them.

Judges and prosecutors have a choice — leave bail as is and hope these guys don’t die in jail from the virus, or reduce their bail and hope they’ll come back to court without posing a danger to the public.

The defense bar is urging prosecutors and judges to rethink their standard positions and employ a new, more open-minded approach to pretrial incarceration.

The theory of bail is that setting it high enough will act as a surety that the defendant, not wanting to lose his money, will return to court. If money is posted by his family and friends, the defendant arguably would not want to leave family or friends in the lurch by causing them to lose money.

Traditionally, judges set extremely high bail for violent crimes -– hundreds of thousands of dollars. But for some families, $5,000 is an enormous sum — money they can’t afford to lose. Setting bail at a lower amount than usual could still guarantee the defendant’s return.

Because people in jail are contracting Covid-19 at a rate 10 times that of the general public and have been dying in state and federal prisons, remand (having no bail set) should only be used in the most extreme circumstances –- potentially only post-conviction when future incarceration is certain.

The cost-benefit analysis is the following: possible risk to the public by setting a bail the defendant can make, versus possible death to the inmate.

It behooves everyone with the power to make these decisions to rethink the old rules and weigh heavily the risk of death to inmates with compromised health.

These cases must be looked at individually. The old standard calculations should not apply. For some, this is truly a matter of life and death.

Lower bail can and should be set, no matter the crime charged.

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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.

I ask my outside law firms the obvious question: “Will we win at trial?”

I always hear the same responses: “We haven’t yet finished discovery. We don’t know.” Or:  “Juries are always unpredictable.” Or: “I’ll get back to you five minutes after the jury renders a verdict.”

It’s exactly the way one should hedge one’s bets, but it’s not what the questioner is looking for.

So, too, with COVID-19. Will hydroxychloroquine treat this problem? “We haven’t yet finished the clinical trials. And, like Sergeant Schultz, we know nothing until five minutes after we see the results of the clinical trials.”

That’s crap. You know something. You’re just hedging your bets, and you’re afraid to speak.

So I asked a couple of physicians to go out on a limb for me — anonymously, of course — and tell me what’s really going to happen, even though we of course don’t know anything until the results come in. Here’s what I heard.

COVID-19 causes serious trouble breathing — physicians call it “acute respiratory distress syndrome,” but I’m leaving the fancy words to people with medical degrees. Serious trouble breathing has been causing people to be admitted into intensive care units ever since they invented intensive care units. As you would expect, because this has been a problem for decades, physicians have been studying it for decades. But they haven’t yet found a cure. There’s no decent medication for the problem. Many, many drugs don’t work. In the words of one recent study: “We found insufficient evidence to determine with certainty whether corticosteroids, surfactants, N‐acetylcysteine, statins, or beta‐agonists were effective at reducing mortality in people with” acute respiratory distress syndrome. I don’t even know what all those words mean, but you can tell it ain’t good.

There’s some evidence that if you turn up the ventilator a little higher, that helps patients. But, for the most part, physicians have spent decades trying to cure acute respiratory distress, and no one has come up with anything that works.

President Donald Trump says that hydroxychloroquine might work. President Trump tells us that he’s a smart guy, and he feels good about hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then says that he’d be more cautious; he’d wait for the results of the clinical trials to come in.

Translation: “This is way too optimistic. I have to correct the president in a way that won’t get me fired. We’ve been working on the problem of breathing difficulties for decades, and no one has yet solved it. What are the odds that a drug that has been on the market for 50 years — and is not aimed specifically at this virus — is going to be the cure for COVID-19? It’s conceivable, of course, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it.”

Not only that: About half of the patients with COVID-19 who are put on ventilators die. Suppose a drug works. Perhaps it reduces the mortality rate from 50 percent to 40 percent of those put on ventilators, which would be a great treatment. Even with a 40 percent mortality rate, we still have a heck of a problem on our hands. Scientists hit singles and doubles more often than they hit home runs; it’s very unlikely that we’re going to unearth a miracle.

How about the other ideas for treating COVID-19? They’re interesting, but they’re all crapshoots. Don’t count on ’em.

How about a vaccine?  That’s far more likely. As Fauci said, proving that a vaccine is safe and effective will take a year to 18 months. A year to 18 months is a long time to wait.

After the vaccine is developed, it will not be 100 percent effective. Perhaps it will be 70 or 80 percent effective.

So how will this all play out?

COVID-19 will not disappear. It exists, and it will exist for a long, long time.

But COVID-19 appears to be seasonal. The virus appears to spread far less in warm weather.

Thus: We now have flu season every year. Flu season arrives in the winter.  Some people choose to get a vaccine, which is not 100 percent effective.  Some people choose not to get a vaccine. Every year, the flu kills tens of thousands of people.

Starting two years from now, we will have COVID-19 season every year. It will arrive in the winter. Some people will choose to get a vaccine, which will not be 100 percent effective. Some people will choose not to get a vaccine. If enough people take the vaccine to create “herd immunity,” then relatively few people will die from COVID-19. Otherwise, every year, COVID-19 will kill tens of thousands of people.

And we’ll live with it, just as we live with the flu, and people dying in car accidents and plane crashes, and the many other deaths that regularly occur in the background noise of society.

But don’t expect a miracle cure in the next month or two.

The jury won’t come back by then.

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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.

* The New York Attorney General has ordered New York Sports Clubs to stop charging membership dues while gyms are closed. Now everyone has an excuse not to go to the gym, and they might even save some money too. [Gothamist]

* A noted Chinese human rights lawyer has finally been released from prison. [New York Times]

* A lawyer who worked at a well-known New York personal injury law firm claims that a supervisor repeatedly showed her pornographic images. And this is not a “I know it when I see” situation. [Law 360]

* President Trump indicated that he intends to nominate a White House lawyer to be the inspector general overseeing COVID-19 relief funding. [Bloomberg Law]

* Lawsuits about COVID-19 are piling up, and because many courts are all but closed, it may take a while for these matters to be resolved. [New York Daily News]

* Attorneys are offering drive-up estate planning services so you can have a will signed without leaving your car. They should throw in a burger and fries to provide the entire drive-thru experience… [CT Post]

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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.

ANKARA

Zimbabwean doctors and nurses said Friday a plan to pay an extra $37 in risk allowance for dealing with the deadly coronavirus is a slap in the face, according to media reports.

“It’s an insult to the doctors who are the frontline soldiers right now in this battle,” Secretary of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) Norman Matara, was quoted by The Zimbabwe Mail website. “We were already demotivated coming out of a strike, and this will demoralise a lot of doctors. Some doctors have already indicated they will stay home than risk their lives for a pittance.”

Dr. Anele Bhebhe from the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association also blasted the government, saying: “The government is sending health workers as sacrificial lambs for slaughter. The risk allowance offered is just ridiculous. These cadres are working without protective gear in a very unsafe environment. Certainly, they deserve to be compensated better.”

Health workers went on strike last month demanding risk allowances as well as personal protective equipment to help deal with the deadly virus.

They returned to work after the government committed to work on the complaints, according to the Zimbabwe Mail.

Matara appealed Thursday to the international community to take action to save the country from a “catastrophic attack,” considering its weak health system and struggling economy, according to the Newsday website.

Zimbabwe confirmed eight COVID-19 cases including one death, but health experts and the opposition contend the numbers are understated, a charge denied by government, according to The Zimbabwe Mail.

Zimbabwe has been suffering from a severe economic meltdown for the past two decades, resulting in inadequate medicines and general hospital supplies.

Donations from China and the United Arab Emirates have helped but Zimbabwean hospitals have remained poorly stocked and without water in most cases.

While the government maintains sanctions on top politicians are affecting economic reforms, the head of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) said graft is the cancer that has eroded all economic gains.

“It’s not sanctions but corruption that has taken this country to its knees,” Justice Loice Matanda Moyo said in an earlier statement.

Zimbabwean have been experiencing inappropriate working conditions and low salaries even before the pandemic hit the African nation.

Since appearing in Wuhan, China, last December, the novel coronavirus has spread to at least 181 countries and regions, according to data compiled by the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

The data shows more than 1 million cases have been reported worldwide, with the global death toll nearing 60,000 but more than 225,500 recoveries.