WNBA Star To Hang Up Her Sneakers For The Joys Of Law School

Imani McGee-Stafford drives to the basket (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)

The law school dream claims another one.

Earlier this week, Imani McGee-Stafford, center for the Dallas Wings, announced she was stepping away from basketball to focus on the next step in her career: law school. She says she’ll be pursuing her J.D. at Southwestern Law School.

McGee-Stafford is part of a family basketball tradition — her mother is former USC basketball player Pamela McGee and her brother is Lakers center JaVale McGee, but she says she is looking forward to law school. I guess she hasn’t watched The Paper Chase yet:

“While I am saddened to step away from such a big part of my life, I’m also excited for this next chapter.”

ESPN reports the highlights of McGee-Stafford’s ball career:

The 6-foot-7 McGee-Stafford, 25, played at Texas from 2012 to ’16, averaging 10.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game. She was selected No. 10 overall in the 2016 WNBA draft by the Chicago Sky, for whom she played that season and part of 2017 before being traded to Atlanta. She was with the Dream in 2018 as well, and then was traded to the Wings before last season. She averaged 3.9 points and 3.8 rebounds for Dallas in 2019.

And though they’re losing a player, Wings president and CEO Greg Bibb wished McGee-Stafford well, saying, “We thank her for her hard work and contribution to the Wings organization and support her decision to step away from the WNBA in order to achieve a longtime goal.”


headshotKathryn 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).

3 Tips For Home Productivity

To those who have had enough of hearing about the COVID-19 lockdown, please know that I am quickly falling into the same camp. At the same time, we have to accept reality. For many IP lawyers — we who are decidedly “nonessential,” unlike those heroes tending to the sick and working to keep the healthy supplied and fed — the need to work from home constitutes a major change. True, many of us have gotten better at using technology to work remotely, even on that (now long-forgotten) occasional event called a vacation, in recognition of the always on-call nature of modern legal practice. But even with the relaxing of face-time standards at many law firms, the default for productive IP lawyers remains centered on performance in the office environment. Since our responsibilities to clients, colleagues, and our families are unceasing, there is a communal challenge facing the IP legal community we now must confront. How to stay as productive as possible when working from home, in an environment where both the general economy and legal system — indeed our very lives — have been severely disrupted.

As I mentioned in last week’s column, I may have more practical experience than most in terms of working remotely — for a number of reasons. Part of the impetus for the need to stay productive at home from the earliest stages of my career arose because of my personal observance of the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays, which obviously had an impact on when the office was accessible to me. Another large piece was the fact that my children were born concurrent with my Biglaw career. My desire to be with them of course led to my putting a premium on productivity in the times I wasn’t with them. Hence the late night brief-drafting, on top of the other accommodations inherent in the life of a partner-track Biglaw IP associate. With all that, however, during my time in Biglaw I was definitely in the majority of IP lawyers who had an “office-first” mentality in terms of thinking about the physical divide between work and family life.

This microscopic virus has completely collapsed the divide for many of us worldwide. Since I have been getting much more practice at working from home over the past few years, I want to share three idiosyncratic tips about achieving optimal productivity that I hope can be of help to readers.

First, let’s start with what not to do. Simply put, that means not adopting an extreme position on anything productivity-wise — without adopting an experimental mindset first. Just as deciding that you can necessarily work any less mindfully because you are now free from the distractions of the office is not conducive to remaining productive, so too is it important to avoid the temptation to turn as much of your newfound “free time” (e.g. former commuting time) into work time as possible. In short, now is not the time to show your employer or our colleagues what a superhero you are. It is a time for modesty, not aggrandizement.

At the least, for many the distractions of the office will now be replaced by the distractions of the home — sometimes severe ones that make our current experience very far away from a previously routine work-from-home Friday. Even for someone who lives alone, since the people they will be interacting as might not be. Cue up memes of underwear-clad toddlers (or even adults) wandering in the background of Zoom meetings if you don’t believe. So don’t pretend things are normal — you will be more productive by adopting that experimental mindset about this bizarre experience. At the same time, establishing some sort of routine is very important. I know that some tout the importance of getting dressed for the workday, but I am not sure how much of a difference that makes. In my view, it is better to find a reason to leave the house every day, if only to remind you of the broader world out there and the lessons you can draw from watching other humans from a safe six-foot (or 26-foot) distance. At a minimum, I would hope that leaving the house would be preceded by dressing in some kind of presentable attire.

Second, in addition to getting some air, it is also important to carve out at least a half-hour a day doing something work-related that you enjoy. Whether that means reading a decision in a case of interest, or watching an appellate argument, or just looking for an interesting article online related to an IP issue doesn’t matter. What matters is giving your mind the space to roam a bit, without the pressure associated with a work deliverable. We become better lawyers and people the more we indulge our curiosity, so take advantage of the work-from-home time to build such productive curiosity-seeking into your schedule.

Third, make sure you know going into each day what needs to get done on behalf of your clients. Ideally, the list of must-dos will be manageable, even as every day brings a set of one or two things that should really get done that day, without procrastination. While this may be harder to do if you are at the stage of your career where work gets dumped on you, there really should be fewer emergencies now that everything’s on lockdown. Either way, learning how to triage assignments into must-do, should-do, or can-do is always useful. More than ever now.

Ultimately, the most important thing for us to remember is that we can continue to serve our clients and practice our noble profession no matter where we are. Done right, we can be as productive as we want — no, need — to be in these trying times. We owe it to our clients, families, and colleagues to make the most of this situation.  More critically, we owe it to ourselves.

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.

Biglaw Firm Cuts Retirement Matching In Effort To Avoid Layoffs

(Image via Getty)

It’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a really long week for the legal profession. Thus far, we’ve seen associate layoffs and salary cuts, partners slowing their cash distributions, and firms pausing lateral hiring, all because of the coronavirus crisis. Some Biglaw firms are now scrambling to do all they can to avoid cutting personnel during a health crisis.

Marshall Dennehey, an Am Law 200 firm, has announced that effective May 1, it is suspending a 4 percent employer 401(k) match until next year. The firm’s matching program has an 80 percent participation rate among its 1,200 employees, but president and CEO Mark Thompson wouldn’t disclose how much money this financial maneuver would save — just that it wouldn’t be enough.

The Legal Intelligencer has more on what’s going on at Marshall Dennehey:

“We’re trying to offset these losses and live up to our family values and keep everybody together. This was a measure we could take as an alternative to layoffs and pay cuts,” [Thompson] said. …

Thompson and firm leadership have deep reservations about cutting head count or salaries. While suspending 401(k) matching will not fully cover the revenue the firm anticipates it will lose, Thompson said he does not anticipate firm layoffs. He said he prides the firm on having a family environment, and he loathes the idea of a laid-off employee losing their health insurance in midst of a public health crisis.

The response from employees, Thompson said, has been overwhelmingly positive in light of the cuts that have already been announced across the industry.

“We have received expressions of gratitude,” Thompson said. “People are scared and we’re trying to give them one less thing to worry about.” He expects the matching program will return to the firm in 2021.

Let’s hope Marshall Dennehey’s plan comes to fruition and the firm can save jobs.

In an Effort to Avoid Layoffs, Marshall Dennehey Halts Retirement Matching [Legal Intelligencer]


Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.

Even Bill Barr Thinks Something Looks Fishy In Richard Burr’s Trading

Morning Docket: 03.31.20

* A federal judge has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a tattoo artist who claims his work was copied when the video game NBA 2K depicted Lebron James with his tattoo. That’s a fact pattern worthy of a law school exam. [New York Post]

* A Nebraska attorney has been disbarred for punching his 83-year old father in the face. [Bloomberg Law]

* A federal judge in Texas has blocked the state’s ban on non-essential abortions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. [CBS News]

* A federal judge has agreed to advance a lawsuit against Panera alleging that it misled customers when it allegedly only used trace amounts of blueberries in its blueberry muffins. Please tell me they don’t only use trace amounts of chocolate in their chocolate chip muffins… [Reuters]

* An attorney who interrupted a deposition around 145 times and made 106 objections has been sanctioned $1,000. [ABA Journal]

* In-house counsel at a variety of companies, including The Cheesecake Factory, are facing pay cuts because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not even joking, I would gladly accept their cheesecake as part of a compensation package. [Bloomberg Law]


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.

The Darwinian Economics Of Biglaw Lawoffs — See Also

A New Normal Takes Time, Practice, And Design

(Image via Getty)

“Does it even make sense to change from my snowflake pajamas if I’m working from home all day?”  asked one of my team members.

“I just left groceries at my mother’s door and left. I was worried that interacting with her would endanger her health. Is that normal?” asked another.

Although they would have sounded crazy just a few weeks ago, these are good, logical, and even important questions. 

It Is Okay Not To Feel Normal

As we’re all still settling into a new normal, if there is such a thing, I noticed that many of my calls start with the references to the “end of the world” or “apocalypse,” as a joke to defuse tension and discomfort. Of course, every joke has a kernel of truth in it.

I’ve also noticed a lot of anxiety. Some feel very cooped up at home. Others worry whether they do enough to prevent getting infected. And others are worried about their children, significant others, and parents. Anxiety is in the air.

Indeed, times are strange. It is normal to not feel normal and to ask questions that you have never asked before. It is okay to check in with yourself and others. It is okay to go easy on yourself and go easy during this time of uncertainty and transition.

Working From Home (Or From Anywhere!) Is A Learned Skill And Habits

Just because we have homes, and many even have home offices, does not mean that we know how to work from home. Many of us are still struggling with the working-from-anywhere routine. How do I dress for a workday from home? It is now a persistent question and discussion.

Others are not yet comfortable and proficient with the technology. For example, video technology is new and uncomfortable for many professionals. Feeling camera shy is common. Worrying about one’s unprofessional home arrangement is another persistent theme. Are kids allowed in the background of your video meeting? Pets?

These are logical responses to what we are seeing at a societal level. It is normal to have questions when routine is disrupted. The good news is that many of these habits and skills, including how to come across professional on camera, are learned. More good news: learning video technology pales in comparison to passing a bar exam or mastering the rule against perpetuities.

 Supportive Hiring Practices, Infrastructure, Culture, Training, And Policies

Finally, we as lawyers can learn from others how to identify, influence, and implement best practices in our organizations. For example, I recently interviewed Marc Kaufman of Rimon Law about building a distributed law practice. It turns out that working from anywhere must be by design. According to Kaufman, the hiring practices, infrastructure, culture, training, and policies make a huge difference in whether an organization can work from anywhere effectively and whether it can seamlessly transition from a physical to a virtual working environment. In other words, working from anywhere will only become normal if the organization embraces working from anywhere by design.

The global coronavirus –- and government responses to it -– have thrown all of our lives into chaos. We are now making changes in our lives that were unimaginable just a few weeks ago. In making those changes, it’s essential that we remain proactive and not reactive. If we want to succeed in our workplaces, we must make choices by design, thinking strategically about what we want. If we do, we might even learn a thing or two for after the crisis.


Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology.  Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

Traders Go On Honor System To Not Insider Trade, Manipulate Markets

States’ Rights Revenge? 3 Key Takeaways From SCOTUS Ruling In Allen v. Cooper

The U.S. Supreme Court (by Joe Ravi via Wikimedia – CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Pirates have been known to pillage and plunder others’ treasures, but these are not actions normally attributed to states of the United States. On its face, pirates and states don’t seems to have anything in common, but given a recent ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, one may be inclined to think otherwise. In Allen v. Cooper, SCOTUS recently upheld a Fourth Circuit ruling that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA) does not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment. In essence, SCOTUS held that since Congress unconstitutionally attempted to take away state sovereign immunity under the CRCA, states could continue to assert sovereign immunity from damages resulting from their infringement of valid copyrights. Although many practitioners are viewing this ruling as a huge win for the states and an equally huge problem for copyright holders, I think there is more buried here than meets the eye.

The background of this case is worth a look. In 1996, Intersal Inc. (a marine salvage company) discovered a shipwreck off the North Carolina coast that was determined to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of notorious pirate Edmund Teach (more commonly known as Blackbeard). Since the ship was located within the state territorial waters of North Carolina, the state of North Carolina contracted with Intersal to conduct recovery operations.

To document the recovery efforts, Intersal hired videographer Frederick Allen, who thereafter recorded videos and took photos of the recovery for more than a decade, registering copyrights in all of his works in the process. When North Carolina published some of Allen’s works on the state’s website, Allen objected, and the parties reached a settlement.

Unfortunately, North Carolina later posted some of his copyrighted videos online as well as some of his photos in a state newsletter without Allen’s permission. When North Carolina refused to admit wrongdoing, Allen filed suit in federal court for copyright infringement.

To make a long story short, North Carolina moved to dismiss the case based on sovereign immunity — “the general rule that federal courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against non-consenting States.”  Allen responded that under the CRCA, Congress revoked the states’ sovereign immunity from lawsuits such as his copyright infringement case.  The CRCA  provides that a state “shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment [or] any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court” for copyright infringement. Although the district court agreed with Allen, the Fourth Circuit disagreed and reversed, holding the CRCA invalid.

In a 9-0 unanimous decision authored by Justice Kagan (with concurring opinions by both Justice Thomas and Justice Breyer joined by Justice Ginsburg), the court stated that:

“[this] court has permitted a federal court to entertain a suit against a non-consenting State on two conditions. First, Congress must have enacted “unequivocal statutory language” abrogating the States’ immunity from the suit….[S]econd, some constitutional provision must allow Congress to have thus encroached on the States’ sovereignty. Not even the most crystalline abrogation can take effect unless it is ‘a valid exercise of constitutional authority.’

Although SCOTUS found that Congress clearly intended that a state (such as North Carolina) could be sued for copyright infringement in the same manner as a private individual, the Court held that that the second prong could not be met and that Congress exceeded its authority under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment because “the statute aims to ‘provide a uniform remedy’ for statutory infringement, rather than to redress or prevent unconstitutional conduct.” As a result, the court affirmed the 4th Circuit’s holding.

As a result of this ruling, many practitioners have expressed concern about states running roughshod over copyright owners’ rights to their works. Here are three takeaways from Allen v. Cooper that should help put such thoughts into perspective:

States Can Be Still Be (Kind Of) Sued For Copyright Infringement. Although the CRCA has been held unconstitutional, states can still be sued for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief (just not for monetary damages).  Further, a state may have waived its sovereign immunity under certain circumstances (such as an express contractual waiver or other “clear indication” of submitting to Federal court jurisdiction). Granted, this is not perfect, but it’s something.

States Are Not Flagrantly “Pirating” Copyrighted Works. Believe it or not, states have not been in the habit of flagrantly disregarding third-party intellectual property rights. Although states have been known to interpret the fair use doctrine regarding unlicensed use of copyrighted works, overt, intentional infringement of such works is not the norm. Don’t believe me — before passing the CRCA, Congress asked the then-Register of Copyrights, Ralph Oman, to submit a report on the impact of the 11th Amendment on copyright enforcement. Although the Oman Report cited concern over immediate and irreparable harm based on comments it received, the SCOTUS review of the Oman Report in the present case found very few examples of state infringement. In fact, “Oman acknowledged that state infringement is ‘not widespread’ and ‘the States are not going to get involved in wholesale violation of the copyright laws.’” Again, this is not a guarantee against abuse, but if history is any indication, the present case is not likely going to open the floodgates to willful state copyright infringement.

Third Parties Working With States Can Be Held Liable. Although a state may enjoy sovereign immunity in a specific case, third-party facilitators to such infringement enjoy no such protection. For example, a state may contract with a marketing firm to reproduce specific works for a state tourism flyer — absent contractual considerations to the contrary, the marketing company may be held liable for copyright infringement. Further, this simple fact may induce third-parties to ask for contractual assurances (or even waivers) when dealing with copyrighted works and state entities. Simply put: don’t miss the jungle for the palm trees.

Although Allen v Cooper is not a win for copyright owners by any stretch of the imagination, it is not the end of the world either. We can all agree with SCOTUS that Congress needs to readdress this issue by “linking the scope of its abrogation to the redress or prevention of unconstitutional injuries — and [create] a legislative record to backup that connection” (although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that possibility for very long). Notwithstanding the foregoing, this decision should operate as a wake-up call to copyright owners to be cognizant of potential unlicensed state use of copyrighted works and think creatively when addressing potential copyright infringement. It may take a little more digging, but something tells me it may uncover some gems and be worth the effort in the long run.


Tom Kulik is an Intellectual Property & Information Technology Partner at the Dallas-based law firm of Scheef & Stone, LLP. In private practice for over 20 years, Tom is a sought-after technology lawyer who uses his industry experience as a former computer systems engineer to creatively counsel and help his clients navigate the complexities of law and technology in their business. News outlets reach out to Tom for his insight, and he has been quoted by national media organizations. Get in touch with Tom on Twitter (@LegalIntangibls) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/technologylawyer), or contact him directly at tom.kulik@solidcounsel.com.