Category: News Feeds

According to a new survey conducted by Legal Cheek, associates in the London offices of U.S.-based Biglaw firms are working themselves to the bone, regularly averaging 12-hour days. At which white-shoe firm do associates have the longest workdays?

Hint: If you’re expecting to receive a year-end bonus that will “shatter the market,” you’d better be prepared to work hours that will shatter any concept of work-life balance.

See the answer on the next page.

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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.

Legal department operations have shifted over the last decade to reflect a broader, global drive toward more efficiency. In-house legal teams are taking a multi-pronged approach to accomplish this goal of becoming more efficient to contribute to overall organizational profitability: They are onboarding specific people as well as technology solutions. 

Improving Efficiencies with People and Technology

According to the 2018 Legal Department Operations Survey, nearly 15 percent of respondents reported having zero full-time employees on the legal operations team. In 2019, the survey shows that almost 95 percent of respondents now have at least one full-time employee dedicated to legal operations, demonstrating the growing focus on this function of the legal department. And the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) has cited the benefits of legal ops professionals specifically in establishing operational strategy and overseeing the department’s technology roadmap. 

Emerging technologies are the second major force impacting legal departments, with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing at the core of many solutions-creating efficiencies. The 2019 Legal Department Operations Survey shows that half of the respondents plan to address their contract management technology over the next 12 months, and almost 60 percent plan to evaluate their document management technology. 

The Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Legal Operations Team

This blend of bringing on both humans and technology to make legal departments more efficient may come as a surprise to those who have listened to the rumors surrounding AI’s supposed replacement of human legal professionals. While technology won’t be replacing humans in the legal department any time soon, it will increasingly aid departments’ humans to be more productive. 

One of the most significant opportunities for legal departments to implement technology to improve operations is contract management. The International Association of Contract and Commercial Management issued research showing that improving contract management can increase corporate profitability by nearly 10 percent annually. Implementing a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system helps legal operations not only contribute to such an increase in revenue, but to streamline the management of each contract so volumes of vital contracts remain error- and risk-free. CLM software helps organizations integrate automation into the lifecycle of a contract so humans aren’t burdened with repetitive tasks, contracts are secure through software-based storage, and approvals happen more quickly. 

The Impact on General Counsel

The role of the general counsel is also shifting in the wake of expanding legal operations, and one of the effects is integrating the in-house legal team with the rest of the business to understand various issues faced by other departments. Overall, it’s clear that legal department expansion not only offers general counsel the ability to become a more strategic member of the business, but it intertwines legal into the rest of the business as a whole. 

To optimize your legal department for this change, bring the right people and the right technology into your business. Consider exploring technologies such as contract lifecycle management software to offload repetitive tasks and leverage automation. Your future legal operations team will be the most efficient it can be. 

For more, download Legal Department Operations: A Guide for General Counsel. 

Biglaw associates, were you hoping that another firm would swoop in and offer more bonus money, forcing other firms that have already matched to up the ante?

Sorry, but if you thought that Sullivan & Cromwell would rescue the market from the same bonuses that have been handed out year after year — and perhaps even offer spring bonuses like back in the day — your hopes have officially been dashed. After weeks of waiting, SullCrom’s black bonus box has been smashed open, and the firm is matching standard market bonuses.

Based on the deluge of tips we received, it looks like S&C has done exactly what the rest of the Biglaw market has done, matching the bonus scale set by Milbank last month. Needless to say, associates at the firm are a bit miffed — there’s not even any extra cash being offered for high billers. This seems to be representative of the comments we’ve received from associates at the firm:

We were expecting a match, but really would have gone a long way to give a bump for high billers. We’re basically below market. I billed a crazy number of hours in last 12 months and would easily qualify for extra at other firms.

At least SullCrom is paying out its bonuses on December 18, so associates will have some good cheer deposited into their bank accounts before the holidays.

If you still have something to say about your S&C bonus, feel free to sound off by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). All complaints (or praise) will be kept anonymous — and could find its way into an update to this story.

Remember everyone, 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 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 all of your help!

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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.

We allowed our father to pass with as much dignity as is possible under the relentless assault of advancing dementia. There was no debate over whether to stop the clock and restore what was possible. He would be allowed to complete his journey on his terms. We had no choice but to come to terms with the nature of death and dementia. The vibrant, charismatic, funny dad in words and actions would not return.

That is not to say there were no debates over ongoing palliative care. I remember being selfish and demanding over medication that could prolong alertness. That was not about comfort and quality of life. It was about me. There was an uptick, but it did not last long. It was as the doctors and the hospice care team told us it would be. A gradual roller-coaster downward. A series of plateaus and declines until there was only deterioration.

I, however, became obsessed with each stage of the process. I googled mottling of the skin and learned that it is generally a sign of impending death. I asked about it each time I visited. I wanted to see the mottling. I wanted to know at what point swallowing became impossible. There would no longer be food. No intravenous feeding. Only morphine. The caregivers assured me that the body also compensates. It produces its own form of opiates. There is no pain.

I sat and watch the morphine drip as the wasting process continued with the lack of food. The dad of my past now relegated to memory. The man I loved in the bed, features unrecognizable. I researched and researched as if that somehow would give me the ability to turn back the clock. I would be the expert, not the doctors and nurses. The Dunning-Kruger Effect borne of not wanting to let go.

If successful in my search, he would once again be sitting with us at dinner. Coaching me in Little League and teaching me to drive in Schenley Park. There were so many times I wanted to scream to the nurses what I had learned and tell them what we should do differently to prolong his life. Life?

How should I define that? His chest moved up and down. His heart pumped blood. He sporadically blurted out names from the past. He spoke with his deceased brother and parents. He was alive as science defines it. For the most part, it was tears and quiet. The smell of the various liquids and lotions used to ease the transition. Kisses on the forehead. Whispering in his ear. Letting him know that his greatest fear in death would not be true in life. His sons would continue to love and take care of each other. We would also take care of the people he loved.

In the end, that was his concern. All he wanted was to know was that the people he loved would be okay without him. He did not want science to prolong the inevitable. We knew that. He did not have to tell us.

Each morning his vitals declined a bit. When I left for a July business trip, I knew that any day could be the last. I walked out of my door, crossed the street, over to his place. I again sat in the chair. I asked if this would be the day. The caregiver told me he was stable. My sister-in-law and her sister came by. I rested my head on his shoulder. I whispered that it was okay to let go. We would take care of each other. He had done a great job with his sons. I got up to leave, and to my surprise, he said, “Where are you going? Stay longer.”

I didn’t remember the last time he spoke that much to me. I replied, “just stretching, Dad.” I sat back down and held his hand. I got up to leave again. He said, “I love you, Brian.” I can only speculate that he knew the end was imminent, mustering up every ounce of strength to vocalize his love. For me, those last words will always be the voice of the dad telling me to hold the steering wheel with both hands.

I went on my business trip. He hung on. The next Wednesday, early afternoon, I got the text from my brother. “It’s happening Brian, get over here.” I got dressed and ran faster than my artificial hip had ever permitted. I burst through the front door. He was gone. We hugged. We cried. I kissed him on the forehead one last time. I spoke in his ear one last time. It was not a pretty death. It was not a movie. It was brutal to watch and be a part of. Our love of our father demanded that we do so. It was not about us.

This coming week, the entire extended family will get together for the first time since his passing for the “unveiling,” as is the Jewish tradition. We will not talk about the awfulness of dementia. We will talk about the laugh. The charisma. The driving lessons. We will recite my dad’s favorite saying when he picked up the check for every single meal or pushed casino chips over to me when I went bust at the blackjack table.

“Wait Until You Get My Bill.”

Dementia is ugly. We dealt with it the best we could. We allowed our dad to live his final months on his terms. That is what he wanted. That was his bill to us. We paid it the only way we would, with love. Always love.

I love you, Dad.

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Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Sure, every store is blasting holiday carols and there’s snow in the forecast, but December also means year-end bonuses!

In Biglaw, after the first firm announces their scale (this year, that honor is held by Milbank) the rest of the notoriously risk-averse industry steps up with a match of that scale. And the latest firm to prove they’ve got what it takes to keep up with the Milbanks and Cravaths of Biglaw? It’s Covington & Burling.

For those that need the reminder, the industry-wide bonus scale that Covington is matching is as follows:

Class of 2019 – $15,000 (pro-rated)
Class of 2018 – $15,000
Class of 2017 – $25,000
Class of 2016 – $50,000
Class of 2015 – $65,000
Class of 2014 – $80,000
Class of 2013 – $90,000
Class of 2012+ – $100,000

Remember — we can’t do this without you, dear readers! 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).

[T]he record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress and obstructing justice.

I cannot help but conclude that this president has attacked each of the Constitution’s safeguards against establishing a monarchy in this country. Both the context and gravity of the president’s misconduct are clear.

If what we are talking about is not impeachable, nothing is impeachable.

— Professor Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina School of Law, in testimony given today before the House Judiciary Committee in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, explaining some of the ways Trump has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” and other impeachable actions.

Professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School, testified that America’s founding fathers would have been “horrified” by “[t]he very idea that a president might seek the aid of a foreign government in his reelection campaign.”

Professor Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School noted in his opening statement that “[o]n the basis of the testimony and evidence before the House, President Trump has committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency.”

Even Professor Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University School of Law, who testified that “this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president,” later noted that “a quid pro quo to force the investigation of a political rival in exchange for military aid can be impeachable, if proven.”

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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.

Today is eDiscovery Day, the annual celebration of the amendments that brought the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure just a little closer to the 21st century. To celebrate, Exterro is hosting a day-long eDiscovery event complete with webcasts and in-person events around the country. It’s a great opportunity to keep up to date on developments in the field and to network with others in the space.

And at 7 p.m. Eastern, check out “E-Discovery in the News: The Top E-Discovery Storylines from 2019,” an annual recap webinar featuring Zach Warren of Legaltech News, Eleanor Tyler of Bloomberg Law, and me. We’ll cover the big headlines of the year in eDiscovery and keep you entertained.

If you haven’t had a problem client or 10, you haven’t been a lawyer very long. But even baby lawyers fresh out of law school are experienced enough to know you can’t tell a problem client, “All those deep dark attorney-client privileged secrets I learned in representing you are hitting the presses if you don’t treat me right.”

Yet Rudy Giuliani, who has theoretically been a lawyer for half a century, does not seem to grasp this. Maybe his ignorance makes sense. Two months ago, I wrote a pretty well-received piece about how Rudy Giuliani is not acting as an attorney, and hasn’t been for some time. He is not Donald Trump’s private lawyer: he is Trump’s political goon and conspiracy theory curator. Since nothing Giuliani has done in years is actually the practice of law, maybe it’s only rustiness to blame for him having no clue what legal ethics are anymore. Still, it sometimes seems he knows more about the attorney role than he’s letting on, at least when it is convenient for him. Giuliani playacts as a lawyer to use the shield of zealous advocacy for a client when it suits him, while ignoring the serious obligations of the profession when it doesn’t.

Rule 1.6 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct says:

(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).

The Model Rules are just that, models, but every jurisdiction has more or less the same version of Rule 1.6 enumerated somewhere. The attorney-client privilege is a common law evidentiary concept and is technically distinct from Rule 1.6, but for the purposes of this discussion, we can consider them related enough to discuss concurrently. The gist is, if you are a (real) lawyer, you don’t get to go around spreading information “relating” to the representation of a client. That is a pretty broad prohibition, and a lawyer could quite easily be both breaching ethical duties and violating attorney-client privilege by carelessly disclosing information.

Of course, there are those paragraph (b) exceptions, and there are quite a few of them. We won’t go through all seven in the interests of space and relevancy, but check out 1-3 and 5:

(b) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:

(1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm;

(2) to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer’s services;

(3) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain to result or has resulted from the client’s commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer’s services;

…

(5) to establish a claim or defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer’s representation of the client;

So, if Giuliani is really representing Trump as a private lawyer, as he, Trump, and hundreds of media outlets have repeatedly claimed, Giuliani can release information he learned in the course of this representation if he reasonably believes someone’s life is in jeopardy, if he is reasonably certain the client — Trump — is going to commit or has committed a harmful crime or fraud, or to establish his own defense to charges against him which arise out of the representation.

Think about that for a moment. If Giuliani wants to release information gleaned from his purported representation of Trump, under the Rules, it has to be because he knows there is some serious weight behind charges leveled, or about to be leveled, against Trump, himself, or both.

In November, Giuliani told multiple media outlets that he had “insurance” if Trump turned on him. Subsequently, Giuliani first tried to float the moronic idea that the “insurance” he was talking about was actually dirt on the Bidens, which makes no sense, because that was what Giuliani was after in the first place, that would help rather than harm Trump and so would provide no leverage to keep Trump from turning on Giuliani, and Giuliani would have run any dirt he had on the Bidens up a flagpole months ago if he actually had it. Next, because his own (actual) lawyers made him do it, Giuliani decided to try out the lie that his claim of having “insurance” against Trump’s treachery was merely a joke.

You don’t need a law degree to know what someone means when he claims he has “insurance” against someone throwing him “under the bus.” Giuliani meant that if Trump turns on him, he’s going to air out some of the skeletons he’s uncovered in Trump’s closet.

Which is not how being a lawyer works. There are two options here. Either Giuliani is a real lawyer and believes he, Trump, or both may have committed or are about to commit a crime in the course of this representation, in which case Giuliani should probably just disclose whatever he knows rather than hang on to it to protect himself alone. Or, Giuliani is a fake lawyer, and does not know or does not give a damn about probably the most foundational tenet of legal ethics. Assuming it’s the latter is actually giving Giuliani the benefit of the doubt.

I really think Giuliani doesn’t know that you can’t blackmail clients into doing what you want by threating to release information you learned in the course of representing them. Because he’s not a real lawyer, and he hasn’t been in quite some time. Every moment we pretend otherwise makes our profession, and every individual lawyer, less respected and less valuable to society.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

By the very nature of the so-called swamp, the Washington Post Style section often bleeds into political coverage. It’s often more fascinating than the main section of the paper since it usually details how the “very serious ideologues” that whip the country into Manichaean hatred all day actually sip cocktails in Georgetown townhouses together at night.

It’s exactly this kind of party that sets the scene for its recent profile piece on Neal Katyal, describing the launch of his plain language primer on impeachment helpfully titled Impeach (affiliate link) (also available in our handy holiday gift guide). In this case, it was Kalorama instead of Georgetown, but who’s keeping score? A Republican strategist, Juleanna Glover, threw the party. Michael Hayden and George Conway came by to hang out. But the star was obviously Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal, who had just — with the aid of Sam Koppelman — churned out a couple hundred pages in the span of about two weeks. Par for the course in a Biglaw litigation practice of course, but to craft a best-seller and get it through the world of publishing in that time is something to behold.

There’s a lot to say about the arguments advanced in Katyal’s book, and if you’re interested in all that you should check out the recent Above the Law interview with Katyal. But what’s stuck out of the society pages was a seemingly innocuous paragraph about how busy it is to be a high-profile Biglaw great:

Katyal didn’t immediately agree to take on the project. He had other things going on: he had to prepare for a death penalty case he’d be arguing in front of the Supreme Court in December; he had Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Love Supreme improvisational rap classes on Tuesdays in New York (mostly for fun, he said, though the improved mental elasticity could be helpful for the rat-a-tat rapport of his now-frequent television appearances); and there was that voice track he was supposed to record with members of the band the National for a charity album benefiting Planned Parenthood.

Wait… what? “[H]e had Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Love Supreme improvisational rap classes on Tuesdays in New York….” Catalog this for that Jeopardy category about the music careers of legal luminaries. The Freestyle Love Supreme Academy is an 8-week course covering “beatboxing, improv skills, word flow, and speaking truthfully through music.”

Can we get Paul Clement in these classes to set up a real Hamilton-style oral argument? Justice Ginsburg’s traded on this Notorious RBG name for a while now, give her a chance to earn it!

This is a facet of Katyal’s story that deserves more exploration! Why is the Washington Post spending more time telling me about the cheese pizza Michael Hayden ate than describing Katyal in a hoody jumping up and down to hype himself up before busting out on stage? At least the article makes clear that George Conway is absolutely auditioning to be Katyal’s hype man.

Will MC Former SG be dropping a single? “Impeachin’ ain’t easy, but it’s necessary” perhaps?

Sushi, cocktails, roasts and one lawyer’s plan to deal with ‘a national emergency’ [Washington Post]

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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.