Category: News Feeds

Corporate legal departments are looking beyond the largest firms for outside counsel. The reasons for this trend are various, and include the widespread unbundling of legal work as well as the transformation of the in-house/law firm relationship, with increasing expectations of collaboration and transparency. What is indisputable is that smaller and mid-sized practices have unprecedented opportunities to compete for the most sophisticated and lucrative work.

The key to seizing this opportunity is the strategic leveraging of technologies, including:

• Advanced security measures;
• The cloud;
• Advanced file-type support; and
• Automation

Join us on November 21st at 1 p.m. ET for a free webinar hosted by Jared Correia, who will be joined by Morgan Churma from Scharf Banks, and AJ Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Everlaw. Our expert panel will share insights and case studies on how your smaller firm can level the playing field with technology in today’s fiercely competitive market.

Normally associate bonus season is a rapid-fire event with firms falling all over themselves to follow the first announcer within the hours and days that follow. But when Milbank set the annual bonus schedule last Thursday, an eerie lull descended over the market as everyone looked around wondering what would happen next.

Cravath usually sets the tone and everyone follows suit. But whenever another firm tries to move first, Biglaw leaders act like a killer robot asked to ponder a paradox about human love and steam shoots from their ears as they try to figure out what to do without Cravath’s seal of approval.

Thursday passed without any follow on. Then Friday. Then the holiday came and everyone wondered if we’d ever hear of another firm matching. Finally, Cravath decided to match Milbank and now the sluice gates on Flood Control Dam #3 are fully opened.

This brings us to the news that Fried Frank has decided to match the Milbank scale in its New York, Washington, and London offices. The scale, for those who’ve forgotten since the last post roughly 20 minutes ago is…

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
Class of 2011 and senior – $100,000

There’s an added perk for Fried Frank associates, with the firm offering a premium of 15-30 percent over the designated class amount for outstanding performance. Special counsel and other attorneys will receive “individual” bonuses.

Bonuses will be paid out on or before December 31. Full memo available on the next page.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish.

---

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.

Now that Cravath has settled into its apparent new role as a market follower, other firms have decided to dutifully fall in line with Milbank’s incredibly early year-end bonus announcement.

Once again, commercial litigation boutique Holwell Shuster & Goldberg — the firm founded by Judge Richard Holwell (formerly of the Southern District of New York) and his former White & Case colleagues Mike Shuster, Dan Goldberg, and Dorit Ungar Black — has taken the lead on compensation and joined Milbank in announcing bonuses, ahead of almost all the other Biglaw firms that will match the market in the days and weeks to come.

Here’s a kind note to associates that was included in the firm’s bonus memo:

2019 was another great year for the firm as we continued to deliver top notch legal services to our clients, achieve impressive victories on their behalf and add remarkably talented attorneys to our bench. You are all a big part of what makes the firm’s successes possible and why HSG is a very special place to practice law.

Read the full bonus memo on the next page. Money will land in associates’ bank accounts on or before December 31.

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!

---

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.

Alright, let’s do this one last time.

If that sentence sounds familiar, it might be because it’s the device used in Into The Spiderverse every time the film introduces another alternate dimension version of Spiderman, and the joke is that it’s “one last time” over and over and over again. The precise details always change, but in broad strokes, someone is always bitten by a radioactive spider (technically Peter Porker was a spider bitten by a radioactive pig, but I digress) and becomes a superhero.

That’s a decent analogy for the phenomenon of law schools dropping the n-word every few months. The precise details always change, but in broad strokes, someone is always invited to discuss the First Amendment and hate speech and feels the need to hurl out racial slurs lest the black students in the room not fully understand the gravity of hate speech.

And every time this happens, it’s heralded as some kind of one-off outlier. Until we do it again a few months later… one last time.

This time it was Caitlin Sewell, who was assistant general counsel at the University of North Texas, until an invitation to speak at an event on “understanding of civil discourse and the type of language protected under the First Amendment” and was bitten by the radioactive desire to explain the First Amendment by tossing around the n-word.

To Sewell’s credit, she resigned the next day, fully grasping that she’d made it untenable to continue working in an academic environment. That’s the kind of professional responsibility that doesn’t often show up in incidents like this — it’s not an excuse for doing it in the first place, but it should be recognized in a world where too many just double down.

From the New York Post:

“Gonna say a lot of offensive things in here, because it’s impossible to talk about the First Amendment without saying horrible things,” Sewell said during the discussion, which a student in the crowd recorded. “Um, you know, ‘You’re just a dumb n—-r and I hate you.’ That alone, that’s protected speech.”

Indeed, it is! It’s also entirely unnecessary to say it when making the point.

But the worst twist came later when astute observers noticed that Sewell was saying “f-word,” you know, so she wouldn’t offend anybody.

However, SGA Senator Daniel Ojo said afterwards that Sewell continued with her example and used the term “f-word” in an attempt to censor herself, but didn’t seem to worry about using the n-word.

“So, you didn’t censor the n-word, but you definitely censored f—,” Ojo said.

Yeah, that says a lot.

Whenever this comes up, there’s a cadre of hot-take artists ready to duke it out online about how professors need to be able to use literal examples of racial slurs in class or the education system will fall apart. Those folks are wrong, but let’s sidestep this question for a second.

Even if you ascribe to the worldview that academic discourse requires white people to use literal examples of hate speech to describe the First Amendment, why are we only ever hearing about the n-word? These days there doesn’t seem to be the burning desire to toss around anti-Semitic slurs. Or homophobic rhetoric. Or derogatory terms for women. These are all equally protected terms, yet they never seem to work their way into these examples.

If this really is just an academic exercise, why does it always have to be this specific example? Because that says a lot too.

University of North Texas lawyer resigns after using n-word at free speech panel [New York Post]
UNT System assistant general counsel says the n-word at “When Hate Comes to Campus” event [North Texas Daily]

Earlier: T14 Law School Professor’s Tradition Of Using The N-Word In Class
The Original Emory Law School N-Word-Using Professor Faces A Hearing On His Future Today
Welcome To Emory Law School — It’s Been 0 Days Since We Last Used The N-Word In Class
Why Can’t Emory Law School Professors Stop Using The N-Word All The Time?
Law School Professor Drops The N-Word In The First Week Of Class
Law School Professor Who Dropped The N-Word In Class Is Back At It
Law Professor Drops Racial Slur In Class Because Otherwise How Will Black Students Ever Learn About Racism?

---

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.

After Milbank announced their 2019 bonus scale last week, and Cravath matched it, the die has pretty much been cast for the top of the compensation market. Though we’d love to be wrong and see a firm take the leap to become the new compensation leader, that doesn’t seem likely, particularly with Biglaw in defense mode over the coming recession.

Still, there’s a certain cache for the truly elite of Biglaw firms to make their bonus announcements as quickly as possible, once the market rate has been set. So, which firm is the latest to match the Milbank scale on bonuses? Why it’s none other than Paul Weiss, who sent around a memo (available in full on the next page) yesterday announcing the following bonuses:

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 and senior – $100,000

There was some grumpiness initially from associates at the market bonus scale being the same as last year’s. However, with multiple elite firms now on board, this scale will likely dominate across Biglaw.

Remember, 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!

---

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).

I am leaving for New Zealand this week to marry my best friend. Being that I come from Fairbanks, Alaska, and she is from the Albany, New York area, it only seemed fair for us to make our families collectively travel to a destination wedding. An added perk to the wedding trip is that it allows me to reconnect in person with some dear friends from Alaska who have since immigrated to New Zealand. From my friends’ description of the New Zealand immigration system, the process sounds arduous, more akin to a job interview where New Zealand takes into account your professional standing, education level, and finances into its ultimate decision-making.

There are undeniably powerful logistical/logical reasons for a country the size of New Zealand to want to restrict immigration to its islands. Moreover, it does say something positive about the life my friends had built that they satisfied this process and successfully immigrated to New Zealand. However, I also cannot help but feel a sense of pride that in my country, the United States, a majority of the overall population still desires to set us apart from the merit-based immigration of other countries. Most encouraging, the pure economic, universally beneficial argument for meritless-based immigration remains powerful. Principles are nice and I strive to maintain them, but to a cynic like me, principles are not as reliable in getting people to act in a certain way as much as economic incentive does.

The economic need is why Republican senators from red states have this year begged for increasing the number of H-2B visas, when their current party leadership’s “principles” advocate the opposite. The “argument” that the United States is somehow “full” is also provably false. First of all, as Shikha Dalmia explains, there is a glaring problem with the logic that the country is full. It is simply telling that no one, including anyone in anti-immigration MAGA world, is worrying about restricting child birth or an increasing U.S. population that is outgrowing its resources.

But there is also a more fundamental issue underlying the economic argument for increasing immigration, per Dalmia:

At the heart of this issue is the question: Are humans a liability who deplete resources or an asset who themselves are a resource—indeed, to use the parlance of the late, great environmental economist Julian Simon, the “ultimate resource”?

It is the ingenuity of human beings that turns fallow land bounteous, dirt into valuable metals, and sand into computer chips. There is no given or fixed set of natural resources out there, Simon pointed out. Useless materials become resources once human creativity finds a way to harnesses them. Oil was just a toxic black liquid in the ground till humans discovered that it could be burnt for light and power. The development of high-yield grains increased the productivity of land exponentially while human population grew only arithmetically—the exact opposite of what Malthus predicted.

The most important factor limiting a country’s economic progress, then, isn’t insufficient physical resources but insufficient human resources. Hence, contrary to Malthusian—or Trumpian—thinking, population increases through immigration are nothing to fret over when you have institutions able to harness human talent. Immigrants are not only mouths that need to be fed but also minds and hands that grow the economic pie. They certainly consume resources. But they produce far more than they consume over the long run when given an opportunity. To the extent that immigrants, whether high- or low-skilled, have jobs, it’s because they produce more wealth or value for their employers than they consume in wages.

Imagine for a moment that there were foreign planes periodically airdropping free goods on American homes. Wouldn’t it be colossally stupid to send missiles to shoot them down? Yet why is it not equally foolish to shoo away the real source of this wealth, namely, Mexicans whose sweat makes affordable housing possible for Americans and puts cheap goods in these houses? Or when it turns away Chinese computer engineers whose smarts virtually spin gold from sand?

Going beyond the economic case to a principled one, I think the argument for increasing immigration is strongest, even if it is less influential, perhaps, than pure economics. The reason I find the principled argument to be so superior is I fail to see how anyone can deny that the nativist argument against immigration is based on nothing but luck. In other words, no one can pick their birth parents, nor the place or time for which they will be born, meaning every American is American entirely by chance. Even if you immigrated here after you were born, the issue of personal responsibility remains, and luck or lack thereof depending on how you might look at it, is still the dominating factor.

The Nationalist desired policies of this current president fly in the face of all this evidence and reason. What has replaced each in MAGA world is slave-like devotion to the word of one man, and instead of a love for liberty there is outright bigotry. So, if by the time I get back from my wedding, if you all can just go ahead and impeach the guy that would be great.

---

Tyler Broker is the Free Expression and Privacy Fellow at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. His work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review and the Albany Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

* A University of North Texas lawyer has resigned after using the N-word during a free speech panel at the school. This attorney just learned a valuable lesson in free speech. [New York Post]

* A lawyer set to argue an important case about DACA in front of the Supreme Court is a Dreamer himself. [CNN}

* Hundreds have signed a petition in opposition to Scott Brown’s appointment as president of New England Law. [Boston Globe]

* An attorney from Roswell, New Mexico, is running against President Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary. His chances of winning are out of this world… [KOAT Action News]

* Lawyers for Representative Tulsi Gabbard are demanding that Hillary Clinton retract allegedly defamatory comments about Gabbard’s relationship with Russia. [The Hill]

---

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.

A street vendor displays bond notes before the introduction of new currency in Harare, Zimbabwe [Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters]

Consider the challenges confronting Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Justin Bgoni: a local currency that has crashed more than 80% since a peg to the U.S. dollar was ended in February and annual inflation that the International Monetary Fund estimates at 300%.

While Harare’s Industrial Index is at a record high and market capitalization in local currency terms has surged by 169% from a year ago to Z$31 billion, in dollar terms they have crumbled to the lowest in a decade, at $1.9 billion. In the past, investors have used the stock market as a shelter to ride out economic turmoil in the southern African nation, but its haven status has been shaken by the return of the Zimbabwe dollar and hyperinflation.

“Our market capitalization in U.S. dollar terms — that’s just been worse, we are almost half of what we are normally at,” Bgoni, in the job since March, said in an interview in his office in the capital, Harare. “If it was a normal country, where things are not indexed in U.S. dollars, things wouldn’t be so bad.”

When it comes to assessing individual stocks, hyperinflation skews the picture for traders, said Lloyd Mlotshwa, head of equities at IH Securities, a Harare-based brokerage. While companies are showing significant gains in revenue, actual volumes of products sold are down and overall performance is deteriorating.

“The massive devaluation of the currency has also caused a dislocation in stock market valuations,” said Mlotshwa. “Some firms are trading below the replacement values of their plants. At the same time, sentiment is so negative that this isn’t necessarily being interpreted as a buy signal.”

In February, the 1:1 parity peg between so-called bond notes and the U.S dollar was removed. In June, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube abolished the use of the multicurrency system and reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar as sole legal tender, almost a decade after it went out of circulation because of hyperinflation. The Zimbabwe dollar on Friday was trading at 15.85 per U.S dollar, compared with the February rate of 2.5 adopted at the end of parity.

Economic conditions in Zimbabwe, its struggling companies and inconsistent government policies all make local stocks less attractive to foreigners, Bgoni said. In terms of market development and options for investors, he estimated the bourse trailed African peers in Botswana, Kenya and Nigeria by about 10 years.

“We are really down on foreign investors and we almost have no new money coming in,” he said.

Foreigners accounted for 15% of trades in October, the lowest in three years, and down from the record 82% in February this year.

“We want foreign investors, especially when you have a devaluation of this sort, because they would be able to see bargains and bring up the prices,” Bgoni said. “But then, they can’t take their money out,” due to foreign-exchange controls and other Treasury regulations, he added.

Both Houses of Parliament Will be Sitting This Week

The 2020 National Budget Presentation will be on Thursday 14th November

The Senate and the National Assembly last sat on Thursday 24th October.  Since then MPs have been occupied mainly with Budget business.  From 30th October to 4th November their time was committed to the Pre-Budget Seminar at the Victoria Falls – an occasion for interaction between MPs and Ministers, particularly the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, and advisers on the priorities and content of the coming 2020 National Budget.  The Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon Jacob Mudenda, opened the Seminar with a thoughtful keynote address [full text available on the Veritas website [link]].

This week it will be business as usual in both Houses on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons – unless the Speaker is ready to clarify two current thorny issues, both of them referred to in Bill Watch 57/2019 of 7th November [link]:

• the penalty he imposed on MDC-A MPs for disrespecting the President at the opening of the session on 1st October [forfeiture of sitting allowances] and
• his ban on MDC-A asking questions during National Assembly Question Time on 23rd October.

Budget Presentation on Thursday

On Thursday afternoon the Minister of Finance and Economic Development will present the 2020 National Budget to the National Assembly.  Senators will listen by media link to the presentation in the comfort of the Senate, instead of the usual Thursday afternoon Question Time.

In the remainder of this bulletin we cover the latest developments on the group of Bills passed by Parliament in the last session but not yet gazetted as law.  This will be followed by what is due to come up in both Houses under the heading of business as usual on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Bills Sent to the President for Assent and Gazetting as Acts

Parliament sent three Bills to the President on 5th November, and gave public notice of this action [as required by section 131(5) of the Constitution] in General Notices 2040, 2041 and 2042/2019 published in the Government Gazette of 8th November:

Microfinance Amendment Bill

Maintenance of Peace and Order Bill

Companies and Other Business Entities Bill.

Section 131 allows the President 21 days in which to decide whether to assent to a Bill or to return it to Parliament for reconsideration.

Note: Only one Bill passed by Parliament during the last session still has to go to the President – the Consumer Protection Bill. 

Coming Up in the National Assembly

Lapsed Bills to be restored to the Order Paper

On Tuesday 12th November item 1 on the Order Paper will be a motion by the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs seeking the approval of the House for the restoration of six lapsed Bills to the Order Paper at the stage reached in the last session.  The following list shows the stage reached previously for each of these Bills:

Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency Bill [Committee Stage in National Assembly to be completed, including consideration of amendments proposed by the Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce]

Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill [for Second Reading stage]

Coroner’s Office Bill [for continuation of Second Reading debate]

Marriages Bill [waiting for Parliamentary Legal Committee [PLC] report]

Freedom of Information Bill [waiting for PLC report]

Education Amendment Bill [waiting for resolution of last-minute disagreement between the Houses, the National Assembly having rejected an amendment made by the Senate]

All these Bills lapsed at the end of the last session because they had not been completed.  Standing Order 161(1) allows the House to approve the Minister’s motion – a means of avoiding wasting work devoted to a Bill by MPs and Parliamentary staff – and the expense incurred in carrying out that work.

Note: The Zimbabwe Media Commission Bill also lapsed at the end of the last session while it was under consideration by the PLC after its First Reading [but is missing from the Minister’ motion]. 

Gazetted Bills Now Ready to be Presented

The following Bills, having been gazetted more than fourteen days ago, all qualify for presentation and First Reading and then automatic referral for consideration by the Parliamentary Legal Committee – which means that presentation may occur this week:

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Amendment Bill

International Treaties Bill

Constitutional Court Bill

The Veterans of the Liberation Struggle Bill, which was only gazetted on 1st November, does not yet qualify for presentation and First Reading.

International Agreements for Parliamentary Approval

Two international agreements are listed for approval in terms of section 327(2) of the Constitution.  Approval by both Houses of Parliament will clear the way for Zimbabwe to ratify these agreements.

Economic Partnership Agreement between the UK and Eastern and Southern African States

This agreement was signed on behalf of Zimbabwe on 31st January 2019.

Framework Agreement of the International Solar Alliance

This agreement was signed on behalf of Zimbabwe on 17th July 2018.

Motions

Two partly-debated motions are items 4 and 5 on the Order Paper:

• the vote of thanks for the President’s speech at the opening of this session;
• the anti-sanctions motion, debate on which terminated abruptly in great disorder on Thursday 24th October, just as Hon Biti entered the chamber to make his contribution [see Bill Watch 57 of 7th November [link]].

Take note motions on reports

Items 6 to 15 on the Order Paper are motions for the House to take note of various reports including include the report of the Public Accounts Committee [PAC] on Compliance Issues for the Reserve Bank, and a report on the Benchmarking Visit to the Parliament of Zambia by a delegation of some members of the PAC.

These reports will be posted on the Veritas website when they become available, which will be once the take note motions have been moved.

Question Time

This is due to go ahead on Wednesday, Questions Without Notice being allotted the first hour and Questions With Notice the next hour.  Hon Madzimure has 7 questions with notice listed, including asking the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare for details of distribution of food to the elderly in his Kabuzuma constituency and several for the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing seeking information on a large number of allegedly irregular land allocations and transfers in the constituency.  Hon S. Chamisa has 5 questions listed, including some for the same Minister seeking information on progress with issuing of title deeds to Mbare residents and construction of a secondary school in Mbare, and the official attitude towards returning vehicle licensing functions to local authorities to enable them to maintain roads.

Coming up in the Senate

The Senate will continue debating the motion for a vote of thanks to the President for his address opening this Parliamentary session and the anti-sanctions motion.  Both debates started during the first working sittings of the Houses on 22nd, 23rd and 24th October.

As already noted above, the Senate’s usual Thursday afternoon Question Time will not take place.  Instead, Senators will remain in their own chamber to listen by media link to the 2020 Annual Budget presentation in the National Assembly.

Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for information supplied.

Post published in: Featured