Category: News Feeds

In celebration of the American Lawyer’s 40th anniversary, ALM has collected a treasure trove of Biglaw data. Currently, Baker McKenzie is the largest firm by headcount with 4,720 lawyers. What was the largest firm by headcount in 1979?

Hint: In 1979, the largest firm by headcount had 512 attorneys.

See the answer on the next page.

Cloud law practice management company Clio is today announcing a $250 million Series D funding — one of the largest investments ever for a legal technology company and the largest ever for a Canadian company.

Clio is also announcing that Mark Britton, who founded Avvo in 2006 and sold it last year to Internet Brands, is joining its board of directors.

Clio is holding an event later today in its Vancouver headquarters to provide more details on the investment. I will attend and provide additional information as time permits. Here is what we know so far.

The investment is from two growth equity companies, TCV and JMI Equity. TCV is an investor in well-known companies such as AirBNB, Expedia, Facebook, Fandango, LinkedIn and NetFlix, and in the law-related companies Avvo and LegalZoom. JMI’s portfolio spans a broad range of industries.

Jack Newton, CEO and cofounder, said in a statement that this investment will accelerate Clio’s ability to realize its vision of enabling lawyers to more easily deliver their services and make those services more accessible.

“Over three-quarters of legal problems don’t receive legal assistance, yet lawyers are struggling to find new clients,” Newton said. “It’s clear that something in the system is broken.

“Clio is committed to building the essential operating system for lawyers, one that focuses relentlessly on unlocking new efficiencies and entry points to legal services. This will allow legal professionals to easily deliver exceptional client experiences, increase their productivity, grow their firms, and make legal services more accessible.”

Founded a decade ago as the first cloud-based practice management program, Clio has had two prior rounds of funding, totallying $26 million.

With this latest investment, the company said, it will create cloud-based solutions designed to help law firms deliver client-centered experiences and make legal services more widely accessible.

Clio said that its customers can expect to see ongoing investment in the depth and breadth of Clio’s offerings, with new and enhanced tools for legal professionals to manage and grow their practices.

“At TCV, we partner with innovative companies that are leaders in their industry and offer superior value propositions for their customers,” said Amol Helekar, principal at TCV and a member of Clio’s board of directors. “Clio has had long-standing success in transforming a vast industry that has been lagging in technology adoption and we are confident the company will
continue to lead on a global scale.”

“Clio is not only solving some of the biggest pain points for the legal profession, it is creating a platform for the future of legal services, and we look forward to partnering with the team in the company’s continued growth and success,” said Sureel Sheth, principal at JMI.

Among the largest investments in legal technology to date have been the $500 million secondary investment last year in LegalZoom, the $200 million investment this year in Onit, the $100 million investment last year in Exterro, and the $100 million investment in 2017 in Litera.

Firms should consider the additional approach of enhancing associate opportunities to participate in meaningful non-billable work and to have such work credited in the same way that billable work is credited. Such opportunities could include traditional pro bono work, as well as engagement in diversity and student pipeline initiatives and nonprofit board service.

— Roger Juan Maldonado, president of the New York City Bar Association and a partner at Smith, Gambrell & Russell, offering a suggestion on how Biglaw firms can combat associate burnout, in addition to increases in paid leave time and partner transparency.

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.

A State Bar of California task force is exploring whether attorneys should be permitted to split fees with nonlawyers in certain circumstances.

But while the panel’s closely scrutinized work to develop final recommendations for overhauling legal ethics rules is ongoing, the State Bar is still cracking down on attorneys who violate the prohibition on fee splitting with nonlawyers.

Lawyer James Mark Meizlik of Los Angeles will begin serving a one-year suspension on Saturday for admitting to violating Rule of Professional Conduct 1-320(A).

Meizlik rented office space from Alliance Solution Network, which provided administrative support for his firm.

However, a client of Meizlik’s paid $8,000 in legal fees to Alliance Solution Network, which kept $5,500.

“By allowing Alliance Solution Network to collect legal fees on respondent’s behalf and also allowing ASN to keep some of those fees for its own purposes,” Meizlik willfully violated the prohibition on sharing fees with nonlawyers, according to Meizlik’s settlement with the State Bar’s discipline unit.

Meizlik had been disciplined twice previously by the California Supreme Court for activities involving nonlawyers.

In 2000, he received a private reproval for violating then-Rule of Professional Conduct 3-110(A) for failing to perform competently and properly supervise a nonlawyer staff member.

“That non-attorney staff member then accepted the representation of a client without advising respondent,” according to the bar. “The non-attorney staff member also accepted fees from the client that he failed to pass on to respondent.”

In 2003, the Supreme Court stayed a two-year suspension of Meizlik and instead placed him on probation for admitting to misconduct involving his use of nonlawyers to provide legal services to clients.

One matter involved the same nonlawyer staff member receiving $1,000 in fees from a client and performing legal services on the client’s behalf.

“Unfortunately, the client was a defendant in a civil lawsuit, and the non-attorney was understandably not equipped to defend her,” according to the bar.

A second matter prompting the 2003 discipline featured the nonlawyer staff member working on a client’s marital dissolution while failing to be properly supervised by Meizlik.

The State Bar mentioned Meizlik’s prior discipline in explaining the punishment it sought for him.

“Since the current misconduct is respondent’s third discipline, and because the two prior instances of discipline significantly aggravate respondent’s misconduct in this instance, significant discipline is warranted,” the bar wrote.

The agreed-to discipline for his most recent misconduct supported by the state Supreme Court was a two-year suspension featuring a one-year actual suspension that will continue until Meizlik provides evidence of his rehabilitation.

Lyle Moran is a freelance writer in San Diego who handles both journalism and content writing projects. He previously reported for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Diego Daily Transcript, Associated Press, and Lowell Sun. He can be reached at lmoransun@gmail.com and found on Twitter @lylemoran.

Put aside that Greg Craig’s whole prosecution felt a bit off. The SDNY took a pass on the case before the DOJ picked it up — seemingly just to make sure someone attached to the Obama administration managed to get tagged in the Russian profiteering kerfuffle. Regardless, Craig is a free man after the jury took all of four hours to acquit him of lying to the government about whether or not he acted as a foreign agent of the government of Ukraine when he wrote a report at the behest of the country’s then-pro-Russian government whitewashing the arrest of opposition party leaders.

According to a couple of jurors, Craig’s vindication may have had more to do with technicalities.

Because of the statute of limitations applicable in the case, the judge told jurors that they could only find Craig guilty if prosecutors showed beyond a reasonable doubt that Craig concealed a material fact about his Ukraine work after Oct. 3, 2013. At least some jurors believed Craig had lied before that date, but they found a lack of proof he did so after that point, the two jurors said.

Skadden and Craig were trying not to become “foreign agents” of the Ukrainian government, something that would require them to register as such per America’s lobbying laws. Basic agency theory would say that someone hired to write a report for another country is, indeed, an agent of that country and writing a report for the purpose of convincing government officials not to sanction that country would seem like lobbying. But that’s not how America’s anti-corruption rules work because that would make far too much sense. For Craig, the firm could avoid registering if they never put forward the report themselves for public relations purposes. It’s not “lobbying” if you give the lobbying material to someone else… even if that person is then going to use your name and reputation as the selling point for the argument.

Craig gave his work product to a reporter, but claims — at least as of the relevant date — he only did so when affirmatively asked for it meaning he wasn’t promoting the work and therefore not a foreign agent lobbying the government. Weak tea to be sure, but good enough.

Craig’s story though is indicative of a much more pervasive problem. There are firms with departments explicitly described as “Lobbying” shops that get very snippy if you call the people at the top of their promotional materials “lobbyists.” One law firm representative once scolded me for calling an employee a lobbyist, explaining that I could describe their job as lobbying as long as I never used the word “lobbying.” Orwell imagined that doublespeak would conceal big lies — in reality it conceals billions of dollars of small lies.

Washington operates on posting firm rules regulating the seedy world of lobbying and then everyone just consents to this collective delusion that lobbying isn’t lobbying if we don’t call it that. It’s the only way a former official can really make a living! An academic once estimated that the lobbying industry is at least double what we see based on official registrations.

I don’t know if Greg Craig and Skadden were ever foreign agents for Ukraine. The jury only decided that Craig never did anything after October 3, 2013 to suggest that he was and that’s the only “crime” he could have arguably committed. But even if we don’t have a solution readily at hand for the broader problem of unregistered lobbying, can this country at least come to the conclusion that we can use the word “lobbying” to describe “former government officials doing stuff on behalf of others to persuade current officials”? Can we say “small-L lobbying” or something? The first step to fixing anything is agreeing on how to describe the problem.

Greg Craig found not guilty in Ukraine lobbying case [Politico]

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.

In a trend that just doesn’t want to stop, yet another T14 law school has decided to afford prospective students the chance of opting out of the traditional law school entrance exam, the LSAT. Well, at least for some students.

That’s right, Berkeley Law is the latest law school to experiment with the GRE. Beginning in the 2019-20 application cycle, the school will begin a three-year pilot program to allow some applicants to attend on the basis of their GRE or GMAT score. And who will be able to sit out the LSAT? The program is designed for students interested in concurrent or combined degree programs, and specialized practice fields. As the school noted in its statement about the change:

“After careful examination, we determined that while the vast majority of applicants will (and should) take the LSAT, some applicants could reasonably be evaluated on the basis of alternative assessments,” said Kristin Theis-Alvarez, Asst. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. “Berkeley Law is a public law school with a longstanding commitment to access, to serving the public good, and to developing lawyers and leaders who will tackle our society’s most pressing and complex challenges – now and in the future. This has always meant that we seek to enroll candidates who are outside-of-the-box thinkers, and who want to build a multi-disciplinary toolkit to take forward with them into their careers. As always, our application review remains holistic. Test scores – from any source – are important, but not dispositive.”

The list of law schools that are expanding their horizons beyond the LSAT is growing.  Harvard, Yale, Columbia, St. John’s, Brooklyn, Northwestern, Arizona, Georgetown, Hawaii, Washington University in St. Louis, Wake Forest, Cardozo School of Law, Texas A&M, BYU, John Marshall Law School, Florida State, Pace, UCLA, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Penn, USC, Cornell, Buffalo, NYU, Florida International University College of Law, SMU Dedman, and Penn State Law at University Park. (University of Chicago and University of Georgia both allow candidates in dual degree programs to skip the LSAT.) And we are likely to only see this trend continue. According to a survey by Kaplan Test Prep, a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE. Another Kaplan study determined 49 percent of students surveyed support the move to the GRE.

Even though the GRE is gaining popularity in law school admissions, don’t expect an official statement from the American Bar Association — the body responsible for law school accreditation anytime soon. The accreditation body’s lack of an official response has functionally ceded the question to law schools. ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing, and that the test used be “valid and reliable,” but what that means for the GRE isn’t clear. (Though a number of law schools and ETS, the maker of the GRE, have done their own validity testing.) The ABA considered a resolution that would elimination the testing requirement in admission, however, in August of last year, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar officially withdrew that resolution before the ABA House of Delegates. Since then, it’s been radio silence from the ABA.

The speed of business is accelerating. We see it happening across the legal industry as a direct result of widespread digital transformation. There is a common trend across both law firms and corporate legal departments who want to do more with the legal data that they have at their disposal in an attempt to drive faster decision-making and to keep pace with the changing demands of client expectations.

The consumerisation of enterprise technology has led to an increasing expectation from lawyers, clients, and business users alike that the legal technology they are using in the workplace for collaboration, knowledge management, transaction management, and more should be as useful, intuitive, and user-friendly as what they are already using at home on a day-to-day basis.

Digital workplaces are answering the demand for a better way to work, by providing a single platform to manage content, people, and applications. As law firms review their technology strategy for the next three to five years, there is an opportunity to create digital workplaces that will match how lawyers will want to work in the future. Within a digital workplace, a lawyer will have access to relevant data and content, collaborate with both clients and colleagues, share knowledge, and solve problems, all in real-time, from anywhere.

Digital transformation paves the way for digital workplaces

The impact of digital transformation is now a C-suite priority for most law firms. In fact, according to Gartner, two-thirds of all business leaders believe that their companies must pick up the pace of digitalization to remain competitive. Accordingly, spending on digital transformation is projected to reach $1.7 trillion worldwide by the end of 2019.^[1]

The evolution and adoption of digital trends such as big data, the shift to the cloud, and the Internet of Things mean that digital transformation is no longer a novelty, it’s a necessity for law firms that want to win business by making it easier for their clients to interact, update, and collaborate on their matters seamlessly, no matter where they’re located.

We are seeing evidence of digital transformation impacting the legal industry in two ways:

1. Culture

Law firms are reviewing their operating models from human resources, business development, IT, and finance, to lawyers themselves. New operating models and business strategies are driving a collective cultural change that delivers more value to clients.

2. Technology

As an organization considers the cultural change they want to pursue in order to better serve their clients, they must also consider the technology stack that is required to deliver this change.

The concept of the digital workplace is born from pairing these two factors together. Businesses should be asking themselves these fundamental questions:

• What are the business goals we are trying to achieve?
• What is the cultural change required to meet those goals?
• What does the underlying technology stack need to look like to achieve those goals?

Law firms that are able to answer all three of these questions will be well equipped to create a digital workplace and thrive in this digital age.

Using digital workplaces to meet client expectations

Moving toward a more digital workplace is ultimately about transforming the client experience. If we look at innovative companies such as Amazon and Netflix, they are all focused on delivering a great customer experience and have created solutions to needs that we didn’t know existed. So, what can the legal industry learn from these innovative companies? It is crucial to draw insights from your data to get closer to your clients. It’s a well-known fact that much of the success of Netflix comes from their data-driven approach to content production. Is it such a strange idea for law firms to take a similar approach?

Transforming the client experience in legal is more than just adopting the latest technology and delivering new legal service delivery models. Designing a client-centric experience seems almost counter intuitive for an industry where the partnership model and billable hour have served so well. As law firms begin to embrace a culture of change, the challenge is to first identify exactly what the underlying client experience should be and secondly, to define which business processes need to change to meet it.

Beyond the obvious improvements for clients, by embracing these challenges and offering digital workplaces, the firm creates a much better experience for lawyers and business users as well.

Digital workplaces as an indicator of innovation

Too often we see a contradiction between what the law firm is trying to achieve culturally and the technology that they have available to them. Browse to any number of law firm websites and you will find the words innovation and collaboration listed as either core values or differentiators. And yet, it is still common working practice for lawyers to work in closed offices within information silos, and at the same time, they still have to log in through a VPN before they can access the information they need on the go.

Clients are increasingly looking for meaningful differentiators between their panel firms. These days they may need to look beyond the legal pitch for evidence of true innovation and collaboration. Perhaps it’s no longer enough to ask the question, “How are you using technology to deliver my needs more efficiently?” Most firms have access to the same technology and tools, for example, Microsoft, artificial intelligence, HighQ. Perhaps the more revealing question is, “How are you using technology in your day-to-day work within the firm?” The answer to this question will help indicate whether or not the firm has really embraced digital transformation and digital workplaces to drive innovation. Law firms that only use technology to improve client-facing interactions are missing out on the opportunity to work more intelligently within their own business.

In today’s competitive legal landscape, law firms have to be closer to their clients than ever, understanding their business more deeply and delivering solutions to problems that clients may not even know they have yet. At the same time, clients are expecting firms to be using data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to predict outcomes, reduce costs, improve transparency and ultimately add value. The digital workplace will be one solution a law firm can provide to meet these needs. As client demands and expectations for more digital workplaces grow, law firms can’t afford to disappoint.

He was addressing students at the Tshwane University of Technology’s main campus in Pretoria.

“It is not acts of xenophobia, these are acts of criminality, they are acts of tribal battles. And you think all these things are happening because of xenophobia, that is not the case.

“Criminals are seizing the opportunity to do what they are not supposed to do. That’s why we are saying police must act very harshly against criminals”, said Magashule.

Foreign-owned shops have been looted for days across Gauteng and dozens of people are behind bars.

At least seven people have now been killed in the violence in the province.

It’s the first week of September, and no matter what your age, it’s highly likely that your social media feeds have been infiltrated by hundreds of back-to-school pictures and status updates posted by proud parents — and sometimes, by even prouder law school classmates (and while we’re at it, admit it, you’ve probably even posted about your one or two of your own educational milestones at the beginning of the school year).

Guess which celebrity law student posted her own back-to-school photo this week?

Earlier this week, Trump celebrated her “last first day of school” at Georgetown Law, where she’s set to complete her third and final year of law school this spring. Although we’re not quite sure what Trump has planned for the future after graduation, we believe she may take steps to continue in her criminal justice reform work.

Best of luck as a 3L, Tiffany!

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.