Category: News Feeds

Children, assets, estranged relatives. These are the common issues that testators address when writing a last will and testament. Who should raise the kids? Who can manage the money? Who should have nothing to do with my estate and my legacy? In recent years, another concern has been determining who will control, review, and collect one’s electronic accounts and assets upon death.

Social media, email, and online business transactions are not just for millennials. Especially given the current pandemic, people pay bills, manage assets, and communicate with others through their screens and keyboards. Usernames and passwords have replaced handshakes and voices. Aside from property management, the internet has opened a world of interaction for individuals, connecting us more quickly and frequently than ever before.

How often do we find out about a tragedy (or a celebration) from a Facebook post or an Instagram feed? How many times has someone’s social media account gone silent for too long, and it is discovered that she is in distress, or worse.

When someone passes away, a fiduciary is appointed to manage the decedent’s affairs. This is an executor if someone dies with a last will and testament or an administrator if not. Sometimes, if assets are held jointly or with a named beneficiary, a fiduciary does not even have to be appointed for an estate, rather the surviving owner or beneficiary produces proof of death, likely completes some forms, and receives the corpus of the account.

Marshaling assets is easy when they can be seen or touched. Collecting the jewelry, reviewing the bank statements, and producing the deed are usually straightforward and easy for a fiduciary to accomplish. Rounding up a decedent’s social media accounts, apps, photos, bank accounts, and liabilities can be tedious, especially when the usernames and passwords are stuck in an inaccessible computer, phone, or tablet.

In recent years, it has become fairly common to include clauses in a last will and testament that give authority to an executor to control a decedent’s digital assets. This includes the power to access, change, use, cancel, or dispose of a digital device or digital account that is held on a digital or electronic device. These include email, social network, healthcare, file sharing, credit card, utility, and service accounts. Further, an executor can be given control of data, games, texts, music, miles, points, records, and photos. This kind of a provision is imperative for the executor who is trying to piece together the decedent’s financial and social lives. Many powers of attorney also include such language. A power of attorney is a document used while someone is alive to control finances in the event of incapacity. Especially during the scary times we live in, if someone were to become incapacitated, it is important for an appointed agent to have access to those assets and information, including electronic accounts.

The question becomes what happens if someone passes away without a last will or becomes incapacitated without a power of attorney and their files need to be accessed? What can be done not only to secure someone’s assets and information, but to manage their legacy?

Generally email and social media accounts are managed under specific terms of service agreements. Sometimes the agreements contain provisions regarding a user’s death and sometimes they do not. Social media platforms that address the issue of a user’s death range from electing to delete the account upon death to memorializing a page so that friends can continue to post. A fiduciary can request that a deceased user’s account be deleted, if she can demonstrate that she has the authority to make such a decision and can prove the death occurred. Most states now have laws that pertain to social media accounts, emails, and other electronic accounts wherein certain individuals are able to gain access to a decedent’s electronic accounts if certain criteria are met.

As is the case with any assets and possessions, care should be given to the protection and accessibility to these items upon their owner’s death. It is best practice to make a list of all usernames and passwords and to keep them in a secure place, perhaps with a last will and testament. Alternatively estate planning can also make certain to provide specific authority under a testamentary vehicle so that electronic assets may be easily marshaled, preserved, and deleted, if necessary. After all,  your estate also includes your Fortnite coins.

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Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com.

While COVID-19, economic downturn and protests against police brutality have turned many lives upside down, most lawyers are still doing great (financially, at least). But how many are doing good?

Quite a few, it turns out. I am happy to say that I know of hundreds of lawyers who have volunteered to help vulnerable people escape lonely, painful, and completely unnecessary prison deaths.

When COVID-19 began to spread in our nation’s federal prisons, the organization I lead, FAMM, joined with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil and Urban Affairs (WLC) on an emergency project to get as many sick and elderly people as possible out of harm’s way. We knew a viable mechanism existed called the federal compassionate release program.

For nearly 40 years, the federal government’s compassionate release program has given people in prison the chance to apply for early release if they could demonstrate they were dying or suffering from a debilitating, chronic illness. Until very recently, however, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) controlled compassionate release, and it routinely ignored or denied everyone who requested compassionate release. Jailers gonna jail and all.

But in 2018, President Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, which included a provision to allow people in federal prison and their families to appeal BOP denials in federal court. The new law also said prisoners could go to court if the BOP failed to respond to their application within a reasonable time. Thousands of sick and elderly prisoners, many of whom did not need to be in prison any longer and who were now being targeted by a deadly disease, finally had a legitimate shot at early release.

Our organizations were ready to help them. Two problems: We had no money and no staff. We simply were not in a position to represent thousands of people who needed to file motions in federal court. What we needed were lawyers — check that, free lawyers — and lots of them. We started something called the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse with the goal of recruiting and training pro bono lawyers to represent federal prisoners and their families, especially in areas where the nation’s amazing federal public defenders were swamped.

That was in March. Over the past six months, hundreds of attorneys at law firms around the country have answered the call. They have donated thousands of hours to help at-risk federal prisoners and their anxious families try to secure compassionate release.

Some firms stepped up big time. Sidley Austin volunteered teams of paralegals to help screen the thousands of requests for help that poured in, and dozens of lawyers at the firm stepped up to represent prisoners. Talented attorneys from other firms, including DLA Piper, Blank Rome, Zuckerman Spaeder, Epstein Becker & Green, Mayer Brown, Jones Day, and Venable undertook representation of individuals in federal prisons across the country. Many knew little to nothing about compassionate release, but they were eager to receive training and start taking cases as quickly as possible.

Their efforts are saving lives. More than 1,400 vulnerable people have been granted compassionate release from federal prison this year. (Just 125 won early release last year.) These releases have also saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

Families have expressed overwhelming gratitude for the pro bono attorneys and federal defenders who rescued their parents, spouses, and children from dying alone in a prison cell. The volunteer lawyers have said the experience has changed their lives, too.

Elizabeth Bailey, an associate at Buckley LLP in Washington, D.C., won release of a man who was in a persistent vegetative state. She convinced the court that his continued incarceration served no purpose, especially during a deadly pandemic. After the ruling, Bailey said, “There was so much emotion and relief. When you work on something like this, you end up getting to know the most intimate details of a client’s life. You think about them when you’re not working, wonder how they are doing and worry for their family.” Even after the pandemic passes, she said, her work with the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse “will continue to color my practice and, indeed, my life.”

Sounds a bit more fulfilling than doc review.

We and our partners are immensely grateful to all of the attorneys and firms who have given, and continue to give, of their time and talent to help the families with whom we work. Their generosity belies every cliché about lawyers. They didn’t seek any recognition, but they certainly deserve some -– and now they’ve gotten it.

If any attorney or firm is interested in volunteering for the Clearinghouse, please contact Mary Price at mprice@famm.org.

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

A lot will have pressure to do it, and maybe some will and some won’t. I think the [financial] variation is causing many law firm chairs to be performing a very delicate balancing act. There will be a group of firms, perhaps as large as a quarter of the Am Law 200, that doesn’t have as much flexibility to stay as competitive as they historically have.

— Kent Zimmermann, a consultant for Zeughauser Group, commenting on the COVID bonus wars that are currently ongoing among elite Biglaw firms. Thus far, Kirkland & Ellis, a firm that’s known for being competitive on pay, has already decided not to participate in the announcement of fall bonuses.

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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.

At any given time, healthcare in-house counsel have a lot on their plates. This includes, but is not limited to, negotiating contracts as part of the broader consolidation trend in healthcare, adapting to regulatory changes from the FDA and HHS, managing data privacy and cybersecurity issues, and weighing in on an array of medical ethics issues.

But the public health crisis that has emerged with the rise of Covid-19’s impact on the U.S. has added to healthcare in-house counsel priorities in dramatic ways.

Werner Boel, a senior partner with executive recruiter Witt Kieffer in its Atlanta office, said even before the public health crisis the role of the in-house counsel for hospitals and health systems was evolving.

“They need to be a strategic business partner to navigate partnerships with other institutions, such as facilitating acquisitions, working with third parties for population health management, helping hospitals improve access to care for underserved patient populations, and negotiate regulatory hurdles.” 

It was a point emphasized by Lauren Rowinski, Virtua Health General Counsel.

“You have to have a business acumen to be an effective legal partner.  Look at the impact of reimbursement for commercial and government payers. You could be a fantastic lawyer but you must have a solid understanding of your clients’ business in order to be an in-house attorney who can help your organization advance its strategic objectives.

“I was so impressed with our operational leaders’ roll out of telehealth from our Access Center,” said Rowinski. “Our patient scheduling center became the central focus. It was very important to further expand our telehealth services for both Covid-19 and non Covid-19 related cases. Although the Legal Team helped with matters such as reimbursement issues, the real heroes were the ones who set this up and expanded the services in such a quick period of time.”

AI in healthcare and its push to automate tasks has been a major issue in healthcare because it poses myriad questions on data collection, such as data privacy, cybersecurity, reliability, and how best to integrate these tools. And then the Covid-19 public health crisis came along and in-house counsel priorities shifted immediately in ways they never have before.

Boel noted that in a recent conversation with a GC, they were addressing a request from the state’s governor to make ventilators available to other parts of the state. GCs are providing advice to their CEOs on numerous Covid-19 matters that span addressing PPE and ventilator shortages to scaling telemedicine and telehealth capabilities across their health systems. Another related issue all GCs have to contend with: How to restart their elective procedures and other non-Covid-19-related operations so they can generate revenue at the levels they did before this public health crisis began.

Digital health integration poses challenges for any hospital but health systems were forced to scale telemedicine and remote patient monitoring capabilities in a matter of weeks to prevent non–emergency patients coming for in-person appointments. That switched the work of healthcare in-house counsel into overdrive. 

Rowinski noted some of the short– and long–term consequences of digital health integration and adoption for hospitals.

“Digital health technologies and transformation are so important and Legal has to have a seat at that table to understand the strategies as they are developing in order to, in real time, help the organization with regulatory requirements as well as weigh the risks because they have not yet been fully defined. The government agencies are issuing guidance but they don’t have all the answers either.”

Like many teams within businesses, in-house counsel have had to find new ways of engaging with each other to stay connected. Rowinski said her group has had to change the way they do business as a result of the Covid-19 health crisis. But like other in-house counsel teams, they have had to think about how best to deploy their staff in a way that allows their organization to pivot quickly in uncharted challenges for the health system. That can be tough when almost everyone is working remotely. For example, the Legal Team has streamlined legal contract reviews to reduce going back and forth with vendors.

At the Medical College of Wisconsin, (MCW) delivering medical education poses some challenges in a public health crisis but Jack Newsome, the general counsel, described his institution as one that’s well-prepared to meet them. The pandemic got underway almost as soon as the institution had completed a land transaction to acquire the property MCW and its physician practices had leased from the county for years. 

“We’re completely changing our business model on the education side. We were lucky because we have two remote campuses,” Newsome said. “We were already providing remote education with tele-education.”

Newsome noted that much of MCW’s content was already in a format that could be easily adapted to a tele-education setting. They just had to adapt to testing in that environment. So MCW should be well positioned if it decides to continue online learning through the Fall.

He acknowledged that halting elective procedures, a critical source of revenue, has created a significant financial burden for most healthcare organizations, including the Medical College of Wisconsin. The question all healthcare organizations face is, how do they restart? 

At the Baycare Health System in the greater West Central region of Florida, Scott Kizer, Baycare Chief Legal Officer, said regulatory compliance is a number one priority. Contract compliance is also a high priority.

Prior to the pandemic, one area of focus for Kizer was supporting the health system’s goal of expanding its service delivery model throughout its market area to better meet the needs of the community and the changing healthcare landscape. It also launched its own Medicare Advantage insurance plan in 2019.

With the rise of Covid-19 cases, the health system has turned its attention to increased testing capabilities, securing necessary staffing, and providing safe and compassionate care while preparing for the seasonal influx of residents at a time when health systems likely will be contending simultaneously with both the flu and Covid-19. Baycare has also ramped up its existing telemedicine offering to provide convenient access to high-quality care through a mobile app accessible with a smartphone or other digital device.

Rowinski, Newsome, and Kizer each said they have worked with regional organizations so they can gain insight and support from neighboring institutions and help each other when they face other crises in the future. Kizer noted he checks in with a group of 20-30 general counsel to share lessons learned since the pandemic started.

Although the path forward will be different for each of these institutions, it is undeniable that general counsel have gained considerable insights into navigating the Covid-19 pandemic that will shape their health systems for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Getty,Yuri_Arcurs

Sports and entertainment attorney Darren Heitner joins Joe and Kathryn to talk about sports and the law in the age of COVID. Conference contractual agreements, declining TV ratings, bubbles, season tickets, occupancy limits, business interruption insurance — the pandemic has created all sorts of havoc for practitioners in this space.

The excitement over COVID appreciation bonuses is just getting started!

Cooley got the COVID appreciation bonuses ball rolling earlier this week. But Davis Polk did not come to play, and they wowed with more money and others have matched that more generous scale.

It remains to be seen exactly which firms will pony up the cash to meet the top of the market, but we have at least a partial answer: Irell is in. The West Coast firm announced last night that they would be offering associates a special bonus, between $7,500 and $40,000, depending on class year. They’re payable September 30, and yes, they are in addition to, not instead of, any end-of-year bonus.

You can read the firm’s full announcement on the next page.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). 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, 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.

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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).

One by one, Biglaw firms that introduced austerity measures in the spring due to the coronavirus crisis are now reversing them, but in some cases, the news isn’t all good. When announcing salary cut reversals, some firms have managed to slip in news about layoffs in the same breath.

Back in April, Seyfarth — a firm that posted $717,370,000 gross revenue in 2019, earning it the 60th place on the latest Am Law 100 ranking — rolled out firmwide cost-cutting measures effective May 1, ranging from salary cuts to furloughs of attorneys and staff. Equity partners reduced their monthly draws by 20 percent, all U.S. lawyers had their pay reduced by 10 percent, and staff salaries were cut up to 10 percent based on earnings. The firm also furloughed 10 percent of its U.S. employees, and at the time, sources told us that 180 staff and 50 attorneys were taken out of play.

Today, the firm is announcing not only the reversal of its salary cuts, but the layoffs of some of those who were furloughed — including attorneys.

Here’s a statement from Pete Miller, Chair and Managing Partner of Seyfarth Shaw:

Over the last few months, we have faced incredible challenges, but we have been quick to adapt, supporting each other and responding to our clients’ needs while implementing a series of necessary economic measures to ensure the firm’s success moving forward. Our targets have shifted, but with hard work, our firm’s performance has exceeded our revised forecast. As a result, effective October 1 and going forward, we will be returning all staff to their full 2020 salaries and restoring attorney compensation. In addition, we have been able to bring back some of our furloughed employees.

However, we have also had to make the difficult decision that some staff and a small number of attorneys who were furloughed in April will not return. The affected employees will be provided severance packages, including a minimum of two months of severance, regardless of how long they have been with the firm. The remainder of those furloughed will stay on furlough until the end of the year, at which time we will revisit their status. We will continue to pay their health insurance premiums and will bring them back sooner if the needs of our clients and the firm support it.

Miller continued, noting that the decision to let go some of the staff and attorneys who were furloughed was “largely a result of underutilization” due to the way work changed during the pandemic and the way the firm will work in the future. “Decisions like these that impact our colleagues are never easy to make. This has been an extremely difficult time, and we are grateful for the resilience and dedication our firm has shown in the face of extreme circumstances,” he said.

Best of luck to all those who are affected by the layoffs at Seyfarth.

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.

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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.

There’s a lot out there about the racist history of facial recognition algorithms. Academics have noted that the technology rests on systemic racist assumptions, a 2019 government study confirmed it, and states are looking into banning it. But for thousands of soon-to-be attorneys across the United States, this technology will decide whether or not they’re cheating on their bar exams in a couple weeks. What can possibly go wrong?

This applicant isn’t alone. A California applicant also recently posted the same problem:

This isn’t a new problem. Victoria Hudgins covered this back in August when we were dealing with Michigan’s effort to deploy this technology and detailed the absurd and inexcusable additional burden this is placing on non-white applicants:

Taylor, who is Black, has readjusted her studying tactics to prepare to be observed by ExamSoft’s facial recognition tech.

“It’s going to affect my preparation for the bar. I will be far more conscious of my face as I study,” she said. She’s practicing for her exam under different conditions, such as foregoing glasses for contacts, practicing under perfect lighting and other scenarios.

“I don’t want to be flagged for cheating, and I would want to prepare properly,” she added.

But in the intervening month and a half, the software hasn’t gotten much better. Probably because they’re still trying to figure out if they can make desktop computers work.

When I spoke with diploma privilege advocates earlier this summer, we discussed the possibility that the ExamSoft system may violate California city ordinances banning the use of the technology for a number of applications. But even if those specific ordinances don’t apply, there’s ample cause for state and local officials to get involved when we have a state-sponsored entrance exam discriminating against people on the basis of race. I think there’s, like, an Amendment about that or something.

The ILG online exam experience was… not good. But the appeal of the ILG model was the commitment to live proctoring. Actual human beings would be watching over the test takers in the same way they would at an in-person location. By contrast, ExamSoft uses an algorithm to watch everyone which alleviates the technical hurdle of simultaneously routing thousands of feeds to remote proctors, but introduces all the rest of the racist baggage from facial recognition tech.

It also can’t deal with diabetics, but that’s another article.

There will be a day when facial recognition technology is useful and reliable, but it’s gotten way out ahead of itself. This is the stage where facial recognition developers should be futzing around with whether or not you need a password to update Candy Crush, not forming the basis of no-knock warrants. And somewhere in between those applications is “gatekeeping the legal profession” but it’s a lot further from the former than it needs to be.

Earlier: Bar Exams’ Facial Recognition Deployment Is Heightening Test Takers’ Anxiety

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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.

Over the last 24 hours, we’ve gotten a number of tips from irate California bar examinees who are experiencing a revolutionary new approach to customer service of “just ignoring the customers.” This may come across as a complete failure of service, but consider that applicants are now less angry about their glitching and crashing professional exams and more angry at the seemingly indifferent public officials who are supposed to be helping them. It’s an impressive act of redirecting negative energy!

There are increasing issues with Examsoft and just getting the MOCK exams uploaded for the CA bar. Examsoft WILL NOT even take calls – just says “due to higher than normal call volume, we can not take your call at this time, goodbye!” On-line chat help feature doesn’t work either.
It is so bad, CA BAR THROUGH TWITTER!! announced that we now have a deadline to upload the Mock exams of Sept. 23rd.
It is really getting bad out here (although I imagine it’s like this elsewhere).
Maybe some press will get CA Bar to wake up to this clusterf**k??

This underscores how difficult this strategy really is. In an ever more connected world, it’s not enough to have an interminable hold line. The illusion of availability required to pull this off mandates broken phone lines and crashing online chats and complete radio silence from all social media avenues. It takes a lot to be this detached!

Seriously though, this is a great point. This isn’t just a stress test of the crapnado of problems arising with the software right now, but a stress test of the bar examiners’ ability to address concerns that may arise mid-exam.

And the results aren’t looking great.

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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.

Biglaw prestige is what economists (or law-and-econ types) would call “sticky,” i.e., resistant to change.

(Why is this the case, and is it a good or bad thing? For a detailed discussion, see this excellent post by the always insightful Joe Borstein — who will be interviewing me over at Litera.tv at 12 p.m. today.)

If you question the stickiness of Biglaw prestige, just take a look at the new Vault 100 ranking of the most prestigious law firms in America, which Vault issued last week. Let’s start with the top 10:

1. Cravath, Swaine & Moore (no change)
2. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (+1)
3. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz (-1)
4. Sullivan & Cromwell (no change)
5. Latham & Watkins (no change)
6. Kirkland & Ellis (no change)
7. Davis Polk & Wardwell (no change)
8. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (no change)
9. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (no change)
10. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (no change)

Eighty percent of the top 10 firms stayed in exactly the same place as last year — and that’s not unusual. The general rigidity of the Vault rankings, especially near the top, is why Wachtell Lipton and Skadden Arps trading the #2 and #3 spots, to Skadden’s advantage, constituted “historic drama,” to quote Staci Zaretsky.

Until this year, the #1 and #2 spots went back and forth between just two firms, Wachtell Lipton and Cravath, this year’s #1. Cravath has occupied the top spot since the 2017 Vault rankings, when it ended Wachtell’s 13-year reign at the top. (June 2016, when those 2017 Vault rankings came out, was also the month in which Cravath announced the $180K pay scale — but Cravath’s taking the #1 spot can’t really be attributed to gratitude from Biglaw associates for the pay raise, since the surveys used for calculating the 2017 rankings were completed much earlier in 2016.)

And it’s not just the top 10. Looking at the entire ranking of 100 firms, only 34 firms moved two or more spots in either direction — meaning that two-thirds of the firms in the Vault 100 either saw no change in ranking or went up or down by just a single spot (at least by my count; please correct me if I’m wrong).

There’s enough gloomy news out there in the world right now, so for purposes of today, let’s look at the positive side of the ledger: the biggest gainers in the 2021 Vault 100 rankings. Here are the 17 firms that moved up by two or more spots this year, ranked by the size of their jump (with the two newcomers listed at the end):

• Mintz (+10, from #96 to #86)
• Goodwin (+7, from #37 to #30)
• Willkie (+7, from #51 to #44)
• Perkins Coie (+6, from #49 to #43)
• Vinson & Elkins (+5, from #63 to #58)
• Holland & Knight (+5, from #64 to #59)
• Fenwick (+5, from #78 to #73)
• Cooley (+4, from #28 to #24)
• Faegre Drinker (post-merger) (+4, from #95 to #91)
• Winston & Strawn (+3, from #43 to #40)
• Greenberg Traurig (+3, from #56 to #53)
• Norton Rose (+3, from #66 to #63)
• Davis Wright (+3, from #90 to #87)
• Foley Hoag (+3, from #98 to #95)
• Sheppard Mullin (+2, from #74 to #72)
• Troutman Pepper (post-merger) (from not ranked to #81)
• Gunderson Dettmer (from not ranked to #90)

What can we say in general about these firms? The Vault Law Editors made this observation:

The 2021 Vault prestige rankings saw the rise of West Coast firms—more than one-third of firms that moved up two or more spots in the Vault Law 100 were based in either California or Washington state: Cooley LLP (No. 24); Perkins Coie LLP (No. 43); Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP (No. 72); Fenwick & West LLP (No. 73); Davis Wright & Tremaine LLP (No. 87); and Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP (No. 90).

I would expand upon this observation by noting that many of the firms with the most momentum, at least as reflected in the Vault rankings, are forward-looking and future-focused, no matter where they are located. They tend to be strong in growing and vibrant sectors like technology, life sciences, and healthcare. This is true of the West Coast firms mentioned by the Vault editors, but it’s also true of some of the firms on the list that did not originate on the West Coast — like Mintz and Goodwin, both Boston-founded firms, but known across the nation (and beyond) for their expertise in healthcare and life sciences.

The Vault Law Editors gave a special shout-out to Cooley, noting that “[i]n addition to its Top 100 jump, the firm also launched seven spots in the New York regional ranking to settle at No. 33 and moved into the top 30 in the Washington, DC, ranking.” And this isn’t the first year in recent memory that has been good for Cooley. In 2014, for example, Cooley climbed 10 spots, more than any other firm, to break into the top 50. Now, just six short years later, Cooley is a top 25 firm.

And I’d expect Cooley to continue climbing next year. Associates tend to reward compensation leaders when filling out Vault surveys; last year, for example, after leading the way to $190K, Milbank jumped 15 spots and entered the top 25. So Cooley, which just led the way in announcing both “appreciation bonuses” and 2020 year-end bonuses that won’t be lower than 2019 year-end bonuses, should be shown some love by associates filling out Vault surveys next year. (Even if Cooley’s scale was subsequently exceeded by other Biglaw firms, like Davis Polk and Milbank, as well as elite boutiques, like Hueston Hennigan, it’s not clear that any of these other firms would have acted if Cooley hadn’t kicked things off.)

So that’s a look at the Vault 100 rankings from the firms’ perspectives. What do these rankings mean for associates who work at these firms?

In general, the more prestigious firms enjoy higher profits per partner, for those who make partner, and better exit opportunities (including in-house opportunities), for those who don’t make partner. So if you’re a star associate in a busy practice area, working long hours for lower pay at a firm that’s lower down on the prestige totem pole, you might want to consider lateraling to a firm that’s more prestigious and pays top-of-the-market compensation.

If you’re a star associate at a Vault 100 firm who’s interested in an “upgrade” in terms of pay, prestige, and exit options, please feel free to reach out to me by email at dlat@laterallink.com. In a time when some firms are paying mid-year bonuses while other firms are cutting compensation, the difference between the Biglaw haves and have-nots is only growing — and you want to be on the right side of that divide.

P.S. Biglaw prestige might not change much, but it seems that everything else in our world is changing, and quite rapidly at that. To learn about “change management” — defined as “the process, tools, and techniques used to manage the human side of change for the achievement and sustainment of a desired business outcome” — and how it can help you and your organization navigate these tumultuous times, please register for this free webinar I’ll be moderating next week. It will take place this coming Tuesday, September 22, and it features an impressive panel of general counsels, chief executive officers, and other leaders. Hope to see you there!

2021 Vault Law 100 [Vault]
Introducing Vault’s 2021 Top 100 Law Firms! [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 100 Rankings: The Most Prestigious Law Firms In America (2021)

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by David Lat, a managing director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, David founded and served as managing editor of Above the Law. Prior to launching Above the Law, he worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.