Category: News Feeds

Richard Luthmann stormed into our hearts back in 2015 when the Staten Island lawyer told the world that he wanted to settle claims against him through trial by combat. Apparently, trial by combat truly is a viable alternative dispute resolution that can be ordered by a state judge because New York can’t be bothered to clean up its code, and Luthmann felt those accusing him of advising a client to fraudulently transfer assets needed to man up or designate themselves a champion.

On a serious note, if you find it hard to believe that trial by combat could really happen in the United States in 2019, it’s worth noting that it does functionally exist in some states, it’s just called “Stand Your Ground.” Who provoked the attack and who acted in self-defense? Whoever walks out alive gives you all the answers you need! It’s all the barbarism of medieval justice but now with guns.

In Luthmann’s quest for a Game of Thrones moment, he even went so far as to show off his skills with his weapon of choice — a plastic Mjolnir.

Maybe we should’ve let this guy have his combat?

But he failed to secure a trial by combat in that case and that should have been the last the mainstream media saw of him until he managed to reenter the news when he was indicted by the feds for kidnapping.

The feds did not offer a trial by combat.

Now Luthmann’s been sentenced to four years for his role in a plot to sell scrap metal to Chinese companies in a scheme that involved installing the beggar outside his office as president of a shell corporation and threatening people with pistols. As an aside, that’s a hell of a step up from a plastic hammer.

With time served, he expects to be out in 20 months.

SI attorney gets 4 years for running scrap metal fraud scheme [NY Post]

Earlier: Judge Admits Trial By Combat Is Available In New York… Then Declines To Order It
Is Trial By Combat Coming To NYC?
Trial By Combat Lawyer Indicted In Federal Kidnapping Scheme
Trial By Combat: It Was Real And Spectacular

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.

I have wanted to compete on Survivor since I first watched Elisabeth Filarski jump off that cliff in the Australian Outback. Now that it’s happening (!!!), I keep reminding myself that the show is for money and not just an adventure. I want a behind-the-scenes look at the show I love, and I want to test my mind, body, and social prowess. The opportunity to graduate law school with zero debt is a bonus.

— Molly Byman, a second-year student at Duke Law, explaining her motivations for becoming a castmember on Survivor: Island of the Idols. Some of Byman’s pet peeves include “[b]eing unwantedly touched,” “slow talkers,” and “rule-breakers.” Best of luck on the show!

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.

When Judge Richard Posner left the Seventh Circuit he managed to get in a few shots on the way out the door about the shabby way the judiciary treats pro se litigants. Make no mistake, Judge Posner recognized the presence of vexatious cranks among the pro se ranks, but he spoke out against a legal system that’s managed to make access to legal counsel less and less affordable while simultaneously mounting more and more road blocks in front of people who just want a lifeline from the court system.

To help bridge the gap, Judge Posner set up the Posner Center For Justice for Pro Se’s to offer counseling for pro se litigants to give them at least a decent chance in court. The effort highlighted the access to justice crisis in this country in a way that only a football coach clerking for a local court while struggling to beat Army might challenge. Sadly, the Posner Center is no more, and in its demise is another opportunity to recognize the magnitude of the problem.

When Judge Posner took on his latest new job, working for Legalist, one wondered what would happen to the Posner Center. When I perused the website yesterday, my suspicion was confirmed.

The Board of Directors of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s Nonprofit Corporation dissolved the Posner Center on July 23, 2019.

The stated reason for the Posner Center’s dissolution is that the Center was receiving many more requests for assistance from pro se litigants than it could handle. The mismatch was something on the order of 100 requests for assistance for every Center staff member.

Since the lawyers and non-lawyers of the Posner Center were assisting the pro se litigants free of charge, perhaps it was inevitable that the demand would greatly exceed the supply. Thus, this experiment in assisting pro se litigants with their ongoing court cases has sadly come to an end.

As much as Posner’s effort to bring justice to pro se litigants shed a light, the fact that his foray into this world yielded “100 requests for assistance for every Center staff member” actually goes even further to highlight the problem. And those are just the litigants with enough legal or research savvy to know to reach out to Judge Posner, which one has to assume is a mere fragment of the people out there looking for help.

Litigation Daily’s Jenna Greene reached out to Brian Vukadinovich, who served as the center’s executive director, who branded this statement “self-serving” and “nonsense.”

“Unfortunately there were lawyers involved in the Posner Center who were really not very interested in helping pro se’s but were more interested in having their names connected to the Posner Center for selfish reasons,” he said in an email. “[T]he problem was that most of the lawyers who signed up to be part of the Posner Center weren’t willing to actually help the pro se’s. As executive director I reached out to lawyers on a daily basis and asked them to help pro se’s with their requests for help and almost every one of them would come up with a ridiculous excuse to not provide help.”

Whether the demand was too overwhelming or attorneys weren’t committed enough, while it’s sad to see this organization go, attorneys should take this opportunity to redouble their commitment to funding for the Legal Services Corporation, expanding Pro Bono outreach to litigants who may not know what’s available to them, and supporting “Low Bono” efforts for the ever increasing population of folks who find themselves too well off to be indigent but far too poor to hire legal counsel.

Still, all the improved representation in the world won’t help while the judiciary itself continues to throw obstacles in the way of people trying to represent themselves. Court offices enforcing confusing, contradictory rules and judges refusing to invest the time and effort to understand pro se matters before kicking them out of hand — often on technicalities only trained attorneys would notice.

At the end of the day, the judiciary holds all the cards that really matter. That’s a frightening thought.

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.

Last week, two law schools — the Western New England University School of Law and the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law — received a public notice of noncompliance with the American Bar Association’s accreditation standards. Though the two law schools are on the hook for different accreditation standards, the deans of each school spoke with ABA Journal about the issue.

Western New England Law’s notice stated they were in potential non-compliance with Standards 202(a) and (d) which deal with the law school’s current and anticipated financial resources and if the school’s anticipated financial condition is “reasonably expected” to have a negative impact on meeting accreditation standards, respectively. As Dean Sudha N. Setty told the ABA Journal, the incoming class at Western New England is larger than it was in 2018, and its budget has also increased:

“My understanding from some conversations is that they were unsure if our information was based on solid data. I think the council was not entirely sure we were going to meet those goals, even though it’s based on actual deposit numbers in spring and early summer,” says Setty, who received word of the public notice by email Sept. 3.

Previously, the law school was also asked about funds that the university was giving the law school, Setty says.

“The university is committed to making the law school work; we just need to make sure that the council fully understand the depth of the support,” she says.

UDC Law’s notice of non-compliance was about Standard 501(d) which requires schools to only admit students capable of passing the bar exam, and noted the rate of academic attrition at the law school. Dean Renée McDonald Hutchins said the school has made academic improvements but the school’s goals, as part of a historically black college, are linked to increasing diversity in the legal profession:

“Diversification of the legal profession will always be core to UDC Law’s mission. It is therefore not enough for our students to earn a degree, bar passage, too, is essential to access. As one of just six HBCU law schools and the only public law school in the nation’s capital, UDC Law is keenly aware of its responsibility in this regard,” Renée McDonald Hutchins, the law school’s dean, wrote in an email to the ABA Journal. According to her, the law school has already taken various steps toward improvement, but the action is recent and not yet measurable.

“We receive the council’s finding that the law school has not yet demonstrated compliance as an important reminder of our ongoing pledge to our students—that they will not only receive a top-flight education at UDC Law but also will be positioned to enter practice. We are confident we will soon be better able to demonstrate to the council the impact of our recent improvements, and the school will successfully turn the page on this challenging chapter,” she wrote.

Both law schools were asked to submit reports regard the noncompliance, and could see a hearing on the matter in 2020, depending on what the council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar thinks about their responses.

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).

This week marks my one-year anniversary writing at Above the Law. I consider at least part of what I do with this column as providing a service to the legal community, and to the legal operations population in particular. So, when I learn about tools that I believe to be useful, especially they involve legal technology, well, I try to write about it.

Since the ILTA Conference a few weeks ago, I’ve been hearing and reading about Reynen Court. It’s being called the app store for legal. The concept itself is not entirely original; other companies bundle software applications for users and obviously there are other app stores. What’s unique about Reynen Court, however, is the automation and interoperability the platform offers. That and their close ties to the legal community and the fact that the platform is designed for and supported by a consortium of 19 global law firms. We don’t typically see this kind of collaboration across competing law firms.

Reynen Court recently launched a beta version of its platform, which is intended to help legal operations teams in corporate and at law firms gain fast access to software applications without worrying about the time, cost, and hassle of on-premise implementation, expensive infrastructure, or concerns about cloud security.

Christian Lang, Reynen’s Chief Strategy Officer, told me that “the platform itself is boring middleware.” What’s makes Reynen Court useful is it enables subscribers to find and buy software, manage computing power and user access, and it provides metrics that aid in monitoring usage and expenditures. It’s also designed to foster interoperability between unrelated applications.

Applications offered through Reynen run in an already secure, containerized environment. Corporations and firms do not need to worry about gathering the different requirements and deployment or server specs or undertaking lengthy POC trials and security audits. Subscribers choose their own infrastructure, either on-premise or their own private cloud environment, and they subscribe to the apps they’d like to use. It makes implementing and scaling software more efficient, cost predictable, and secure.

Currently, there are more than 50 applications available in the Reynen Court platform, and they are continuously adding more. I had a quick look at Reynen’s interface when I spoke last week with Lang. There is a menu of options here that would make tech-driven legal operations professionals salivate. Users can access everything from time and billing software, business intelligence, research, case management and budgeting tools, and yes, eDiscovery and machine learning tools.

Lang did not offer any announcements of new applications that will be coming online in the coming months, but he says they are engaged in conversations with many of the major software providers in the legal technology space.

Does this mean that legal departments and law firms will soon be able to subscribe to popular solutions like Relativity via Reynen Court? Maybe. CEO Andy Klein, a former Cravath attorney turned brewery owner and asset manager who founded Reynen Court in 2017 on the premise that he wanted to accelerate adoption of legal technology, believes there is plenty of room in the legal tech space for large SaaS providers; Reynen Court will be available for those organizations who cannot or choose not to make that investment.

Klein recently commented during an interview on Bob Ambrogi’s LawNext Podcast that big organizations sometimes take a year or more to vet and implement a new software offering. At the same time, the software companies spend an equal amount of time selling, providing demos, testing, and implementing their products. With Reynen Court, software offerings in the platform can be deployed almost instantly, even on a Friday at 5 p.m. when a transactional team realizes they need to dig into some documents as part of a due diligence effort.

This all sounds very expensive, doesn’t it? Well, Reynen won’t disclose subscriber costs just yet. After all, there are just five firms taking part in the beta release. But Lang expressed confidence that organizations will quickly see the value.

Subscribers to the platform pay a modest fee that is the same for all organizations. Lang says that Reynen Court is working to develop a tiered pricing model that scales based on usage. Another source of revenue comes from the software companies that make their products available for deployment through the platform, which pay a fee to Reynen Court. Additionally, if a software company chooses to sell their product through the Reynen platform, there’s a revenue share with Reynen Court.

The beta release has begun with five large law firms. However, the platform is not just for the biggest firms. In fact, there’s an advantage to using Reynen Court for medium to small organizations and firms — those who do not have the infrastructure or resources to run a full suite of technology tools. For smaller companies with small legal departments or smaller firms that have big clients, Reynen Court could really level the playing field and give them access to the same tools as the largest firms.

Reynen Court is hoping to have a full commercial release in the first quarter of 2020.

Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.

* Redaction comedy: filings in the Roger Stone case inadvertently gave out Trump’s phone number. [National Law Review]

* Law firm growth has slowed but we’re going to pretend that’s not a troubling sign. [American Lawyer]

* California’s going to war with the NCAA and they stand a better chance than this year’s UCLA team. [KTLA]

* Former Penn State GC faces discipline hearing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. [Law.com]

* Insider trading trial begins with argument that banker didn’t intend to go in on an insider trading scheme with his dad. [Law360]

* FDA sends warning letter to Juul over its claims to be “safer than cigarettes” being potentially false as opposed to its claims to “not make you look like a douche” which are demonstrably false. [Corporate Counsel]

Back in April, we brought together a group of legal professionals at the frontier of professional development in the legal sector. In the brief few hours of Law Jobs for Humans, we heard from almost a dozen legal career rebels forging new and unique careers at the frontier of the legal sector, the legal innovators who are actively hiring non-traditional legal professionals, and the law school educators who are breaking the rigid law school structure to teach and train law students for 21st century careers.

And, despite all the effort we put into curating quality content, attendees told us that the most valuable part of Law Jobs for Humans wasn’t any of the specifically prepared programming. It formal (a modified speed dating event) and informal (incidental networking and accidental collisions) connections forged at the event.

That’s when we knew we had something. It wasn’t about us. It was that these people had been searching for an opportunity to be together. All we had to do was create the container. And that’s when we knew that we had to do it again.

The details are forthcoming but the aim is to keep what worked – more hearing directly from innovators, more opportunities for speed dating and accidental collisions – and do less of what was less impactful.

Here’s the v1 of the Law Jobs for Humans 2.0 Agenda: 

• 1:00 – 1:30 Registration and Coffee
• 1:30 – 1:45 Welcome Remarks
• 1:45 – 2:45 Innovators Runway
• 2:45 – 3:30 Speed Dating Networking & Coffee
• 3:30 – 4:30 TBA   
• 4:30 – 4:45 Networking and Coffee 
• 4:45 – 5:45 How to Build a Human for a Law Job
• 5:45 Networking and Happy Hour 

This is obviously just the beginning. Stay tuned. We’ll announce more about the conference and provide information on specific speakers soon. 

Law Jobs for Humans 2.0 will be held on November 15, 2019 in New York City. If you’re a part of the burgeoning new legal professional landscape, if you want to be, or if the traditional legal professional industrial complex seems a bit “off” to you, then Law Jobs for Humans is for you. 

Join us in New York to explore the new frontier or legal careers and surround yourself with like-minded legal professionals.

Often the survivorship clauses of a last will and testament do not get too much attention. Clients are focused on the naming of beneficiaries, the disposition of assets, and any disinheritance. It is common, however, for last wills and testaments to include provisions requiring beneficiaries to survive the testator by a particular set of days, whether it be 30, 60, 90, or some greater number. This makes certain that the testator’s wishes are properly carried out and that the individual whom he wants to receive his asset, actually receives it. For example, if a beneficiary died only a few days after a testator, it is possible that the testator’s estate would be distributed to the beneficiary’s estate, individuals whom are unknown or not liked by the initial testator. Without the inclusion of a survivorship provision, this could result in unintended consequences. With a survivorship provision requiring the beneficiary to survive the testator by a certain number of days, the former’s death would result in the bequest being transferred to a contingent beneficiary, pursuant to the wishes of the testator.

At times, one would not want to implement a survivor provision for a spouse, child, or significant other. Sometimes couples or families die within a short time of one another and a time frame will hinder and not help the disposition of the testator’s assets. Such was the case for the Estate of Jill Morris, a New York County resident, who died in June 2016. Morris’s last will had a 30-day survivorship provision that appeared to require that her partner of 18 years, Joan Anderson, survive her by 30 days. Unfortunately, Anderson did not and she lost her life a mere 12 days following her partner. As a result, the contingent beneficiaries, charities Doctors Without Borders, the National Resources Defense Council, and Save The Children, received Anderson’s bequest pursuant to the terms of the residuary clause. Specifically, it was ruled that the charities and not Anderson, or her estate, received Morris’s diamond ring, three paintings, a carousel horse, her safety deposit box, $100,000 in cash, and two New York pieces of real estate.

Since Morris’s passing, Anderson’s daughter fought on behalf of her deceased mother’s estate. She would receive from her mother, if that estate received from Morris’s estate.  She  argued that Anderson’s estate should receive the significant bequest as was the wish of Morris. The charities and Morris’s last will’s executor argued that the last will and testament provided a 30-day survivorship clause and there was enough proof to support that Morris wanted the 30-day survivorship clause to apply, even to Anderson.

In addition to the last will’s construction issue, this  case is also interesting because Morris and Anderson were partners who never married. Anderson’s daughter attributes their lack of a marriage to the stigma of gay marriage for their generation, the women having died in their eighties. The court noted that due to the fact that they were not legally spouses, deference could not be given to Anderson as a surviving spouse although there was evidence of Morris’s intent to make certain that her partner had her properties.

This case highlights the need for all couples to be meticulous with their estate planning — especially those in long-committed relationships without a legal marriage. Marrying one’s longtime partner gives status to the other and the ability to contest last wills before the probate courts. During one’s lifetime, it allows the spouse to make medical decisions and have access in certain situations. In the absence of a last will, it gives status as a surviving spouse under the laws of intestacy. Additionally, it creates a relationship that continues to be viewed by the law as special, whether it is for tax, interpretive, or other issues that are often litigated before the courts. It would seem that the wise words of Gloria Gaynor, “as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive,” do not hold true for all beneficiaries. Committed couples and families should engage in comprehensive planning to make certain that their wishes are carried out and that unintended consequences or beneficiaries do not receive at the expense of loved ones.

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. 

Last week’s column focused on the importance of acquiring broad experience as an IP associate.  This week, it is important that we consider the value of also getting deep experience as early and often as possible as an IP associate. This may seem an ambitious goal, particularly for IP associates who may not feel like control over their careers is fully theirs yet. But with the right ambition, coupled with a willingness to learn, it is possible for IP associates to accumulate both broad and deep experience. It will take some time, however, say at least eight-to-10 years of practice for most. Step one is realizing there are no shortcuts, particularly when it comes to earning deep experience. It helps as well to have some guidance, which I hope this column can provide in at least a small measure.

For even the best IP associate, getting broad and deep experience will not be easy. It could even require moving firms if the mix of matters one is assigned to is too restrictive or superficial. But an ambitious, proactive IP associate can and should be able to get the experience they need, as well as the experience they want, if their goal is a long and satisfying career practicing IP law. Whether their future job is in-house, or as a law firm partner, or as something else is irrelevant. Building your foundation as broadly and deeply as possible — in terms of your technical legal skills, your understanding of legal economics, as well as your marketing skills — is essential to longevity and satisfaction in your career. Since we have already addressed the elements of acquiring breadth of experience as a young (experience-wise) lawyer, we can now focus on what deep experience means for IP lawyers. Because knowing what you need to do is the first step towards doing it.

In some ways, acquiring deep experience can be easier than acquiring broad experience — particularly in a law firm setting. Especially for IP lawyers, who tend to focus on one area of IP practice, sometimes even from the earliest days of their career. Say you are a young trademark associate, working for a firm that does trademark prosecution and enforcement for large multinational clients. There is a good chance you will be spending the overwhelming majority of your time exercising responsibility over the paralegals and more junior lawyers responsible for maintaining the trademark dockets of the firm’s key clients. In addition, you may also be the primary interface between the more junior members of the prosecution team and the relationship partner. 

In that scenario, there is a good chance you will be doing a lot of the same types of things on a daily basis. Your practice would be focused on docket management, responses to office actions, supervising new trademark filings, and perhaps occasionally drafting cease-and-desist letters or co-existence and other trademark-related agreements. By doing so, you will be acquiring deep experience in the area of trademark prosecution — which is a good thing. To fully reach the depths of experience in that area as much as possible, however, you should be looking at the delta between your experience and that of the senior lawyers you work with. Where is there is a gap between your experience and theirs? That is precisely the area of depth you should be striving to achieve — and the types of experiences you should be aiming to acquire.

Let’s make things concrete, using our trademark prosecution associate as an example. At a certain point, any young lawyer will get comfortable with a certain task, provided they are given enough chances to produce a similar work product. Let’s say our associate is at the stage where they have sent out a dozen cease-and-desist letters to infringers of the client’s trademarks. Or 10 takedown notices to Amazon, seeking to remove infringing listings. At that point of that associate’s career, we may be able to say that they have acquired deep experience in those specific aspects of a trademark practice.

The trick, however, is not to get complacent about your depth of experience. Ever. That same trademark associate may be sending out cease-and-desist letters. But are they the ones negotiating with opposing counsel when the response letter comes in? Or are they handing the matter off to a more experienced lawyer at that point? If the latter is true, then in order to acquire deeper experience, our trademark associate must find a way to get a chance to negotiate with opposing counsel at some point. 

The trick, therefore, is to focus on what more senior lawyers are doing that you are not yet doing. And if you are the most experienced lawyer at a particular level at your firm, you should be looking at lawyers outside your firm to see what you should be doing to get deeper experience. It never ends. But that is part of what makes IP law so interesting and fulfilling. There is always something to learn, at least if you have the humility to realize that more learning is something that can benefit you. 

Ultimately, IP associates who thoughtfully compare their experience levels with their more senior colleagues — and find ways to position themselves to close the experience gap — are much more likely to acquire deep experience in the areas of IP practice they find themselves focusing on. While acquiring deep experience is never easy and often fraught with setbacks and mistakes along the way, there is no substitute for actually getting that experience if the goal is to know what you are doing as a 40-year-old lawyer. Because no IP lawyer wants to end up well into their career with limited and superficial experience. So aim wide and aim deep, so that your hard work early on pays off later.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome. 

Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.