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The process of reopening Biglaw offices is bound to be a slow one filled with many stops and starts. Just ask Squire Patton Boggs. The international law firm had to shut down its Manchester office after lawyers tested positive for COVID-19.

According to RollOnFriday, the office was “evacuated after two separate outbreaks of Covid.” Apparently there were two separate attorneys who took COVID tests over the weekend, and were at the office when they got the positive results. Which led to closing the office ASAP:

“Neither individual experienced symptoms while in the office”, emphasised a spokesperson for SPB, adding that the lawyers have not returned to the office while they self-isolate.

The results let to the immediate closure of the office on Monday “out of an abundance of caution” and a deep clean. It re-opened on Wednesday.

Though the office is now reopened, according to a spokesperson it “remains, as it was previously, at limited capacity,” and employees at the office are “doing so on a managed, voluntary basis and in accordance with the health and safety protocols put in place by the firm.”

One of the attorneys who tested positive was reportedly working on a corporate deal when the test result came in. The entire team was immediately sent home, and, as RollOnFriday notes, they had to depend on the kindness of another Biglaw firm to get everything done:

An insider claimed the associates “had to rely on another law firm”, DLA Piper, “to help run the rest of the deal for them”, which “meant a couple of all nighters for the DLAP bods”. Clearly the Blitz Spirit is alive and well, brings a tear to the eye so it does.

We’d like to believe this is the last hiccup in the re-opening of Biglaw, but, it probably won’t be.

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).

Last Friday, the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) and RE Botanicals, a South Carolina hemp CBD manufacturer, sued the Drug Enforcement Agency regarding its recently published interim final rule (the Rule).

The petitioners claim the Rule is unlawful because it exceeds the DEA’s authority and violates the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill).

If you follow this column or keep your finger on the pulse of the hemp industry, you may recall that the Rule suggests, in part, that intermediary hemp shall be treated as a Schedule I controlled substance during any point at which its THC concentration exceeds 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis — even fleetingly during the processing phase and before the percentage is brought back into legal compliance for the finished product. This, the petitioners argue, is contrary to the plain language and the intent of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp, its derivatives, extracts, and cannabinoids so they could be regulated as agricultural commodities, and thus, fall outside the DEA’s jurisdiction.

In addition, HIA and RE Botanicals argue that Timothy Shea, the DEA’s acting administrator, failed to observe certain administrative procedures imposed under the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA) by implementing the Rule without providing the public with notice and the opportunity to comment before the Rule went into effect — According to the DEA, the Rule “merely conforms DEA’s regulations to the statutory amendments to the [Controlled Substances Act] that have already taken effect, and it does not add additional requirements to the regulations.” (Emphasis added).

While the Rule clearly suggests that the DEA is exceeding its authority and is attempting an illegal power grab over lawful hemp activities, only time will tell whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will be receptive to the petitioners’ arguments. Yet, one thing is certain, the hemp industry is determined to protect the lawful production of hemp that Congress established when it enacted the 2018 Farm Bill.

Indeed, this industry-wide effort is not limited to challenging the DEA Rule. For months, hemp stakeholders have challenged state regulations with far-reaching consequences for the industry.

For example, last month, four hemp companies sued the State of Texas for imposing a ban on the manufacture, processing, distribution, and retail sale of smokable hemp products.

Although a 2019 state law tasked the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) with adopting rules prohibiting the manufacturing of smokable hemp products in the state, DSHS exceeded its authority by extending the ban to the distribution and retail sale of these products, despite thousands of comments objecting to the ban.

The Texas district court that heard the case first issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) that prevented the state from enforcing the ban for a few weeks. Then, last Thursday, the court granted a temporary injunction that voided the DSHS regulation prohibiting the production, distribution and retail sale of smokable hemp products until a trial is held in February 2021.

While the issuance of the TRO and the temporary injunction do not mean that the state overstepped its boundaries, these decisions by the Texas court are promising and encouraging for the industry.

Since the enactment of the 2018 Farm Bill, the hemp industry has had to continuously fight state and federal roadblocks to protect its interest and has had to overcome obstacles with which no other legal industry has been confronted. Yet, the industry’s tenacity along with these lawsuits should give federal and state regulators pause as they signal that these agencies cannot flat-out ignore the legality of hemp.

Nathalie practices out of Harris Bricken’s Portland office and focuses on the regulatory framework of hemp-derived CBD (“hemp CBD”) products. She is an authority on FDA enforcement, Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act and other laws and regulations surrounding hemp and hemp CBD products. She also advises domestic and international clients on the sale, distribution, marketing, labeling, importation and exportation of these products. Nathalie frequently speaks on these issues and has made national media appearances, including on NPR’s Marketplace. For two consecutive years, Nathalie has been selected as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers Magazine, an honor bestowed on only 2.5% of eligible Oregon attorneys.  Nathalie is also a regular contributor to her firm’s Canna Law Blog.

Just because some Biglaw firms are handing out COVID-19 bonus money hand over fist, we mustn’t forget there are still some firms that are dealing with COVID-19 austerity measures, from slashed salary to furloughs to layoffs. Today, those cuts end at one of America’s most profitable firms.

The latest firm to completely roll back its salary reductions is K&L Gates, another member of the billion-dollar club that placed 39th in the Am Law 100, with $1,026,626,000 in 2019 gross revenue.

Back in April, the firm reduced salaries across the board, with equity partners seeing a 20 percent reduction in scheduled advances, and firm leaders taking even larger reductions. Income partners, associates, and allied professionals and staff were subject to a 15 percent reduction in their salary provided their income didn’t fall below a $75,000 floor. In late August, the firm walked back those reductions, with equity partners due to see a 15 percent cut to their advances at the end of September, while all other employees would sustain a 10 percent pay cut starting at the beginning of September (with the income floor shifting to $100,000 for no pay cuts).

Now, thanks to further review of its austerity measures, K&L Gates will be doing away with its salary cuts entirely. Here’s a relevant excerpt from a memo (available in full on the next page) sent by Jim Segerdahl, the firm’s global managing partner:

We are pleased to confirm on behalf of the Management Committee that it is now time to discontinue the Covid-19 salary reduction initiative entirely on a going forward basis, and that we are doing so for all affected allied professionals, associates and income partners effective October 16th (there may be some timing variations in certain markets).  Thus, salaries that were reduced as a result of the special Covid-19 initiative will return to pre-reduction levels on a going forward basis at that point in time.  The special Covid-19 related reductions in the provisional advances made to equity partners will cease on a going forward basis with the advances scheduled for the end of October.

In this memo, Segerdahl once again reminded everyone that K&L Gates is holding open the door for bonuses for those who have made “extraordinary contributions” during the pandemic. (Alas, the firm made no mention of fall appreciation bonuses.)

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, 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.

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.

Pretty much everything has been said about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that anyone and everyone would care to know. I’m not going to repeat the encomiums, the recitation of all that she did to advance the cause of equal protection, to forcefully advocate for the cause of women and men. Others have said those things much more eloquently than I ever could. I know that, at my age, I will not see the likes of her in my remaining lifetime.

What can I say about her that hasn’t already been said? I can talk about how sex discrimination affected my career and how, if we aren’t vigilant, we could back-pedal (or the favored term of the day “walk back”) the progress that has been made, hard-fought progress, hard-won progress, the incremental progress that Ginsburg favored, to build upon what had been won.

I am a “second wave” feminist, who in the early 1970s, decided to go to law school. My father, a physician and never a bastion of enlightenment or progressive thought, said that I should be a legal secretary rather than a lawyer. Thanks, Dad, for that vote of confidence. But that was the thinking at the time. Women should take subordinate roles in the workplace because they were too delicate, too fragile, too emotional, too (choose your adjective) to be subjected to the rough-and-tumble world of the legal profession.

I remember when the “help wanted” ads were divided between men and women, and most, if not all, of the job opportunities for women were secretaries, nurses, and teachers. Look how hard it was for Ginsburg to get a job when she graduated at the top of her law school class at Columbia. Being a woman and being Jewish didn’t help her cause in the late 1950s. New York firms told her that they didn’t hire women; it was unstated but understood that they also didn’t hire Jews.

It wasn’t surprising that my law school graduating class was 20 percent women, given that the law school had been started by a woman. When we graduated in 1976, there were very few jobs open to us. Some of us started our own firms, worked for small firms, or went into government practice. Those were pretty much the only opportunities available to us all those years ago.

Sex discrimination was rampant and unabashed. After working at a district attorney’s office for a year or so, trying cases back-to-back, the then president of the State Bar of California announced at a meeting that I attended that women did not make good trial lawyers. Probate, family law, those were the areas that women lawyers belonged in, he said, not prosecuting pukes or representing business interests. Phooey on him, I thought.

When I moved to private practice, I was mistaken for the court reporter or the social worker, but never the attorney. Taking notes at meetings where I was the only woman lawyer was not why I went to law school. To add insult to injury in my first in-house job in the early 1980s, I was told that I didn’t have as high a title or would make as much money as a recently hired man because he “had a family.”

It’s been a long haul for women in the profession, and it’s still an uphill battle every day. One recent report says that the pay gap between male and female lawyers in Biglaw has not narrowed but widened. Swell. Sisyphus schlepping that rock up the mountain has nothing on us.

Ginsburg did many mitzvahs for all of us who have sought equal protection under the law. Mitzvah is Hebrew for “a good deed.” She performed many mitzvahs, both on the bench and as a tireless advocate.

It’s fitting that she died on the first night of the Jewish New Year. Is there symbolism that her death came when it did? I think there is. The Jewish tradition of doing good, of making a difference in the world could not have had a better advocate than Ginsburg. She believed in “We the People,” she believed in justice for all, she fought hard to make this world a better place.

What was also so admirable about her was her ability to forge friendships with people with whom she disagreed judicially. Exhibit A was her enduring friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia. Two people with widely divergent judicial philosophies could nevertheless come together as friends. How I wish that people would look at that friendship in this divisive era and learn from it.

She believed that persuasiveness is not the same as partisanship and thought that minds could be changed with thoughtful analysis and understanding the issues of how discrimination affected women and men. Every case that the lawyer Ginsburg brought to the Court was heard by men who were clueless about the challenges that women faced trying not just to get ahead, but just to get a rung on the opportunity ladder.

It’s never been easy being a woman lawyer, and I think the same holds true today. Ask any woman whether she thinks it’s easy. It may be easier (a relative term) today than when future Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ginsburg finished law school and looked for employment, but I don’t think that any woman would say that it’s easy today.

Ginsburg made a huge difference in how society viewed equal protection: equal protection of the laws for gender equality, equal pay, same-sex marriage, disability rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, and the like. She used vivid language to tell the Court to unlock the doors that thwarted women, that limited dreams and ambitions. She fought for the things she cared about and showed how to bring others to join her. She exemplified tikkun olam, to repair the world.

I owe her a debt of gratitude that I can never repay, but I can pay it forward. So can we all. May her memory be a blessing.

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

* Florida’s Attorney General is calling for an investigation over whether Michael Bloomberg’s pledge to pay off fines for ex-felons in Florida so they can vote was unlawful. You know what they say, no good deed… [Politico]

* Facebook has been hit with a lawsuit alleging that it failed to remove hateful pages which allegedly led to the Kenosha shootings. [ABC News]

* A judge has ordered Eric Trump, son of President Trump, to sit for a deposition conducted by the Attorney General of New York before the election. [NBC News]

* A new trial has been ordered on a murder charge that was nixed because a lawyer did not object to an erroneous jury instruction. [Bloomberg Law]

* A disbarred Florida lawyer has been found guilty of forging a court order even though his twin brother claimed he himself did the forgery. And I can’t even get my triplet brothers to go on a road trip with me… [Herald-Tribune]

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.