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In late October, hot on the heels of the news that the national average score on the MBE section of the July 2019 administration of the bar exam had seen the largest increase since 2008, New York released its results amid much fanfare. Pass rates were up across the board.

Today, we’ve got a list of the pass rates for the July 2019 New York bar exam by law school. Which law schools saw their pass rates climb, and which ones took tumbles?

First, we’ll provide you with some background information. This summer, 85 percent of all first-time takers from ABA-accredited law schools in New York passed the test, an increase of 4 percentage points from July 2018. Eleven New York law schools saw their pass rates rise, and two of them soared with double-digit gains. Only four law schools saw their pass rates drop — and three of them are ranked in the T14.

*record scratch* *freeze frame*

Yup, we’re talking about Columbia, NYU, and Cornell. You’re probably wondering how such elite law schools ended up in this situation. As it turns out, it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s still worth mentioning when the high and mighty have fallen, even slightly. Columbia’s pass rate dropped from 98.3 percent to 96.9 percent; NYU’s pass rate dropped from 98.4 percent to 95.8 percent; and Cornell’s pass rate dropped from 94.1 percent to 93.8 percent. No doubt they’ll recover quickly from this travesty.

Check out this table to see the passage rates for all New York law schools:

Jack Newsham of the New York Law Journal has the details on the law schools whose pass rates skyrocketed this summer:

Touro Law’s first-time bar pass rate remained the lowest among all New York law schools, but it increased its rate by 14.8 percentage points, from 48.6% to 63.4%. That’s close to its 64.8% first-time pass rate on the summer 2017 bar exam and within spitting distance of Hofstra’s 65.3% pass rate.

“This year’s rate is a step forward,” said Touro Dean Elena B. Langan in a statement. “I expect we will maintain an upward trend as we continue to implement new initiatives and work closely with each of our students. Many of our recent efforts have yielded positive results and I am confident that we can continue to support students in ways that will be beneficial.”

New York Law School increased its first-time test taker pass rate more than any other school in the New York Law Journal’s sample, from 64.1% to 78.5%. Anthony Crowell, the dean and president of NYLS, attributed the increase to changes the school made to its course of study around the time that its class of 2019 began their legal educations.

Despite vast improvement, the gap between the state’s worst-performing law school (Touro) and its best-performing law school (Columbia) is now about 33.5 percentage points compared to last year’s nearly 50 percentage point gap. Students at the worst-performing schools still have much more work to do to catch up with their colleagues. We hope the situation will continue to improve next year.

What are your thoughts on the bar pass rates for New York’s law schools? Feel free to get in touch with us via email or text message (646-820-8477) to brag about your law school or alma mater, talk trash, or offer dispassionate analysis.

Amid Dips at the Top, Most New York Law Schools See Rise in Bar Pass Rates [New York Law Journal]

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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.

President Trump’s lawyers have, on the whole, been notable for their incompetence and helplessness, as well as their own potentially criminality, so it was perhaps a bit much to expect success at keeping his banks from complying with subpoenas for his financial records from Congressional committees. Suffice it to say that association with the flailing, failing men of Frankfurt does not help.

A federal appeals court said Tuesday that Deutsche Bank must turn over detailed documents about President Trump’s finances to two congressional committees, a ruling that will most likely be appealed to the Supreme Court…. Investigators for the two committees are hoping the materials will shed light on any links Mr. Trump has had to foreign governments and whether he or his companies were involved in any illegal activity, such as money laundering for people overseas.

* The trial against Elon Musk for his “pedo guy” tweet is underway, and there are some competing theories about what “pedo guy” actually means. [New York Times]

* A lawyer from Sidley Austin has been disqualified from representing a Chinese tech company because of prior work at the Justice Department. [Reuters]

* A prominent lawyer has completed his one-month sentence for crimes related to the college admissions scandal. Wonder if he was billing time in the clink… [Boston Globe]

* A Black attorney in the New York City Law Department has received a $600,000 settlement for his discrimination lawsuit. [New York Daily News]

* League of Legends publisher Riot Games will pay $10 million to female employees for allegedly perpetuating a “bro culture” that passed women over for promotion. [The Verge]

* A disbarred San Diego attorney was convicted yesterday of stealing money from charities and filing false tax returns. Sounds like a law school hypothetical of what you shouldn’t do. [Fox News San Diego]

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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.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a decade, marked by soaring inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines and electricity.

“We are very much concerned as the situation continues to deteriorate,” Eddie Rowe, World Food Programme (WFP) country director, speaking from Harare, told a Geneva news briefing.

“We believe if we do not reach out and assist these people then the situation would blow up into a major crisis,” he said.

The 240,000 tonnes of food aid, to be procured on international markets, represents a doubling of the WFP’s current programme in Zimbabwe.

The agency aims to purchase supplies from Tanzania, in the form of maize grain, as well as from Mexico, and pulses from Kenya and potentially the Black Sea area, Rowe said.

Zimbabwe has only had one year of normal rainfall in the last five and “markets are not functioning”, he said. “There are families that go to bed hungry without a meal a day,” Rowe added.

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government will scrap its plan to remove grain subsidies next year, a move it says will protect impoverished citizens from rising food prices, state media reported last week.

Rights groups say at least 17 people were killed and hundreds arrested in January, after security forces cracked down on protests against fuel price increases. Police have banned further protests.

“For a country that used to be breadbasket of southern Africa, the situation is nothing short of tragic,” WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and Ed Osmond)

The alert follows last week’s warning from a UN-appointed independent rights expert that the country – once seen as the breadbasket of Africa – is in the grip of “man-made starvation”.

In Geneva, WFP spokesperson Bettina Luescher said that almost $300 million was needed urgently to supply some 240,000 tonnes of aid.

“A climate disaster” and “economic meltdown” were to blame for the ongoing crisis, she explained, with normal rainfall recorded in just one of the last five growing seasons.

Subsistence farmers hit by unreliable rains

The increasingly unreliable rainy season affects subsistence farmers in particular as they grow maize – a very water-intensive crop, and many of these farmers are still recovering from the major 2014-16 El Nino-induced drought.

In addition, “the crisis is being exacerbated by a dire shortage of currency, runaway inflation, mounting unemployment, lack of fuel, prolonged power outages and large-scale livestock losses, and they inflict the urban population just as well as rural villagers,” Ms. Luescher said.

WFP has now nearly doubled aid assistance in a bid to reach more than four million of those hardest-hit by the crisis.

In total, however, 5.5 million people in the countryside and 2.2 million in urban areas need help, and acute malnutrition has risen to 3.6 per cent, up from 2.5 per cent last year.

‘Unprecendented’ malnutrition

Eight of Zimbabwe’s 59 districts have acute malnutrition rates of over five per cent, which is unprecedented, Ms. Luescher added.

Her comments echo last week’s warning from Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, that women and children are bearing the brunt of the crisis.

The majority of youngster she had met on an 11-day official visit to Zimbabwe were stunted and underweight, she said.

Linked to this, child deaths from severe malnutrition have been rising in recent months, Ms. Elver added, and 90 per cent of Zimbabwean children aged six to 24 months are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet.

“I saw the ravaging effects of malnutrition on infants deprived of breastfeeding because of their own mothers’ lack of access to adequate food,” she explained.

Because of this, children were increasingly dropping out of school and being forced into early marriage; others faced domestic violence, prostitution, and sexual exploitation, the independent rights expert maintained.

The effects of the economic crisis were noticeable in rural areas and cities, including Harare, said the Special Rapporteur.

She described seeing people waiting for hours in front of gas stations, banks, and water dispensaries, and receiving information that public hospitals have been appealing to humanitarian organizations after their own medicine and food stocks were exhausted.

Ms. Elver called on the Zimbabwean Government, political parties, and the international community to come together to “put an end to this spiralling crisis before it morphs into a full-blown conflict”.

Post published in: Featured

Moved by the plight of the elderly residents at this home earlier this year, Zimnat decided to provide free insurance cover for the home’s two vehicles. Upon donating to the home, the organisation discovered that much more needed to be done to help the home overcome the many challenges it faces and ensure the residents are more comfortable.

It has therefore launched a charity drive dubbed the Heart to Hand Christmas Campaign to enlist the help of customers and members of the public in helping improve the lives of the home’s elderly residents.

The Heart to Hand Christmas Campaign is an appeal to well-wishers to donate goods that will be channelled towards the upkeep of the residents.

Located along Mutare Road, Melfort Old People’s Home, which is registered with Help Age, has the capacity to accommodate 60 elderly residents, most of whom have been referred to it by the social welfare department. Some have come from Harare and Marondera hospitals.

Among the challenges, the home faces are the lack of consistent food supply and inadequate manpower. Currently, there are only two superintendents, who are employed by Help Age Zimbabwe, and a part‑time nurse.

“After our earlier contribution to Melfort Old People’s Home in May this year, we saw that there was more that needed to be done to ensure that our elders, who are a fountain of wisdom, have a comfortable life,” Zimnat group chief executive officer Mustafa Sachak said.

“We discovered that there are a lot of challenges the home is facing, such as food shortages and lack of manpower. We decided, therefore, to launch a Christmas Campaign called Heart to Hand which is targeted at encouraging members of society and corporate citizens to contribute whatever they can towards the Old People’s home” he said.

Zimnat has placed Heart to Hand donation collection bins at the entrance all of its branches, in which those wishing to take part in the Heart to Hand Christmas Campaign can place their donations.

Commenting on the launch of this year’s Heart to Hand campaign, Zimnat Group Marketing and Public relations director Angela Mpala said: “I do hope that members of the public and corporates will join us in our effort to improve the lives of the elderly residents of Melfort Old People’s Home. They really do deserve our assistance.”

Zimnat is a diversified financial group that offers products across the financial and insurance spectrum. It has four business units, namely Zimnat General Insurance, Zimnat Life Assurance, Zimnat Financial Services and Zimnat Asset Management.

Post published in: Featured

Robert Mugabe left $10m (£7.7m) in the bank, some small plots of land and a handful of modest properties, a list of his estate published by a state-owned newspaper in Zimbabwe has shown.

The report of the relatively limited fortune of the late dictator, published on Tuesday, was greeted with scepticism by many in the poverty-hit southern African country.

Mugabe, who died in August aged 95, was thought to have amassed a portfolio of investments worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, over his near four-decade rule.

The most recent list was revealed when Mugabe’s daughter Bona Chikowore wrote to legal officials seeking to register her father’s estate, which she said included $10m held in a local bank, four houses in the capital, Harare, 10 cars, a farm, his rural home and an orchard, the Herald newspaper reported.

No will has yet been found and there has been no other declaration of Mugabe’s wealth, or that of his second wife, Grace, nor of his sons and other relatives.

The former guerrilla leader, who took power in 1980 and ruled for decades, was buried in September in his rural home town of Kutama.

The final burial place caused tension between the government, which wanted him to be interred at the National Heroes Acre, a hilltop shrine in Harare, and his family.

When he was ousted from power in November 2017, Mugabe was given a generous state pension and a retirement package that included a pension, housing, holiday and transport allowance, health insurance, limited air travel and security.

Some of the Mugabe family wealth has been exposed by a series of legal quarrels. One, between Grace Mugabe and a Belgian-based businessman over a $1.3m diamond ring, lifted a veil on the lifestyle of his widow, nicknamed “Gucci Grace” for her reputed dedication to shopping. The family is believed to have an extensive portfolio of luxury homes overseas. In 2015, a dispute revealed their ownership of a $7.6m home in Hong Kong.

The ruling Zanu-PF party said in October it planned to transfer ownership of the sprawling mansion in Harare where Mugabe lived until shortly before his death to the family. The house is worth several million dollars.

The Mugabes are also thought to own more than a dozen farms. Several are in Mazowe, about 40km (25 miles) north of Harare. One, belonging to Grace Mugabe, has been the centre of a recent land dispute.

A 2001 US diplomatic cable, later released by WikiLeaks, said that while reliable information was difficult to find, there were rumours that Mugabe’s assets “include everything from secret accounts in Switzerland, the Channel Islands and the Bahamas to castles in Scotland”.

The news of the Mugabes’ wealth comes as Zimbabwe plunges further into a humanitarian crisis. The UN food agency said on Tuesday it was procuring 240,000 tonnes of food assistance to deliver to 4.1 million people in the former British colony where food shortages are being exacerbated by runaway inflation and drought induced by climate change.

“We are very much concerned as the situation continues to deteriorate,” Eddie Rowe, World Food Programme country director, speaking from Harare, told a news briefing in Geneva.

The country, once the breadbasket of Africa, is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a decade, marked by soaring inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines and electricity. The aid will be for January to June, Rowe said.

Post published in: Featured

The new outfit, which will be trading as ZFX Bureau de Change, is a registered Tier Two bureau de change, which is able to provide both foreign exchange and money transfer services.

ZFX will, according to Zimnat group chief executive officer Mustafa Sachak, combine customer-tailored financial services and technology to bring convenience to its customers.

“As a business that is guided by a purpose of making life better, we are driven to always come up with financial solutions that empower all our stakeholders to reach their full potential.

“The idea of coming up with ZFX was born out of the need to ensure we provide a holistic financial service for our customers. In that vein we have also partnered with World Remit to ensure that our customers can also receive money from their benefactors in the diaspora and be able to change it under one roof,” said Mr Sachak.

He said Zimnat hoped that ZFX would strengthen foreign currency availability on the interbank market by providing competitive exchange rates.

“This bureau de change has also been born out of the need to provide a safe, legal and convenient place for changing one’s money and leveraging on our widespread distribution network. We hope to provide this convenience in all four corners of the country,” said Mr Sachak.

The new bureau de change allows customers to convert their foreign currencies, including United States dollars, British pounds, South African rands and Botswana pula, at competitive market rates.

Zimnat is a diversified financial services group made up of four business units, namely Zimnat General Insurance, Zimnat Life Assurance, Zimnat Microfinance and Zimnat Asset Management. It is associated with Sanlam, which is the largest non-banking financial services group on the continent.

Post published in: Business