Category: News Feeds

For the record, there is no shred of evidence that piecing the veil on qualified immunity for police officers will lead to more mass violence from gun owners. But “evidence” stopped being a concern of Republican judges a long, long time ago.

Compared to how I was six months ago, very well.

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at a question-and-answer session with Professor Amanda Tyler at Berkeley Law School, revealing her comparatively healthy outlook following her fourth bout with cancer earlier this year. She also told the crowd she continued to exercise throughout her diagnosis, noting, ”I do pushups,” and that she planks, “both front and side.”

After a long day at work, it’s entirely normal for an attorney to head to the local pub to grab a quick drink. But the tequila poppers go too far when you’re dumping client confidences all over the place. That’s what apparently happened in Orlando the other night according to a viral tweet.

Some of the reaction to this tweet scolds folks for trying to get a lawyer fired for a simple mistake. I’m all for forgiveness, but this is Attorney 101 here. You don’t throw client files around willy-nilly. Losing a laptop does put client confidences at risk — and attorneys should use encryption, or better yet put files in the cloud, to prevent that sort of disclosure — but it happens. But she’s not saying “you lost your bag” or “lost your computer.” When she’s saying a lawyer lost a whole file, she’s talking about a redweld that someone just took into the bar and left behind after 6 rounds of beer pong. There’s no forgiveness for that. Getting canned is the only appropriate punishment.

In any event… good luck on the custody fight.

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.

“Relativity Fest is an annual conference designed to educate and connect the eDiscovery community. It’s the place for legal and technology professionals to talk shop, meet new people, and have fun.” So says the banner on the Relativity Fest website.

This week, thousands of people in the legal technology industry descended upon the Chicago Hilton in downtown Chicago to celebrate everything Relativity. With more than 2,000 attendees, over 300 speakers, and 150+ educational sessions, Relativity Fest has become one of the largest must-attend conferences of the year.

This year, the conference kicked off with a keynote that featured Andrew Sieja introducing new CEO Mike Gamson. Readers will recall that Gamson joined Relativity earlier this year from LinkedIn, where he held a global solutions role. Andrew Sieja, who previously held the CEO role, remains as founder and has moved into an executive chairman role that enables him to focus more on product development and getting closer to customers, which are two areas he has always been passionate about. After all, he is a coder at heart.

Sieja described how he met Gamson and, although they were originally going to grab a drink together, they wound up just going for a walk. The next day, says Sieja, he called Gamson and asked, “What if you came on board as CEO?” The rest is history, as they say.

One-hundred days in, Gamson has endeavored to talk to every person who works at Relativity — no small task, given that the company now has 1,000 employees — and he’s been listening to customers of Relativity and promoting the vision of the company: “To simplify and accelerate how the world conducts eDiscovery.”

Gamson also highlighted some of the ways that Relativity is building community and giving back. The Relativity Fellows program, launching in 2020, is going to bring training and education to underserved communities in an effort to kickstart careers in legal technology.

But the big feature of the keynote is Relativity’s SaaS-based product, RelativityOne. It has come a long way in a short time, with the number of customers doubling in a year’s time and over five petabytes of data under management. Gamson introduced Chris Brown, Relativity’s new Chief Product Officer, who also recently joined Relativity with an entrepreneurial spirit and a track record of product innovation at technology companies.

Brown walked the 2,000 people in attendance at the Relativity keynote through some of the innovations within the RelativityOne platform, such as:

• A new solution for automating workflows for repetitive, time-consuming tasks like indexing data, imaging native files, OCR and more.
• A new and faster way to integrate and analyze data from mobile devices using Cellebrite’s LegalView application.
• The new Collect Now product update that provides a secure and defensible process for collecting cloud-based data from platforms like Office 365 and Slack.
• Satisfaction of the FedRamp program, which means Relativity meets the federal government’s stringent security parameters, and the rolling out of Relativity for Government.

Finally, Chris Brown demonstrated Relativity’s next-generation user interface, called Aero. The Aero preview showed off an intuitive and streamlined interface that is built for speed, minimizes the steps to complete tasks, and provides greater insight into the data in a Relativity workspace. Aero will be released in 2020.

Relativity Fest is quickly becoming one of the most significant legal technology events to attend each year, and just one day in this year was no different. With more than 2,000 attendees, 300+ speakers, and 170+ educational sessions, there’s a lot of information still to absorb.

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.

Both the Senate and the National Assembly Resume Sittings Today

Note:  The President has declared Friday 25th October a public holiday

to allow Zimbabweans to attend solidarity against sanctions on Zimbabwe events.

Coming up in Parliament

The Second Session of this Parliament – the Ninth Parliament of Parliament [and second Parliament under the 2013 Constitution of Zimbabwe] was officially opened by President Mnangagwa on Tuesday 1st October at a joint sitting of both Houses.  The President delivered a State of the Nation address [link] during which he outlined the Government’s legislative agenda for the session.  After the joint sitting both Houses reconvened briefly before adjourning until today.

MPs have not, however, been idle in the interim – they have been attending committee meetings and engaging members of the public at public consultations on Bills and the forthcoming 2020 National Budget.  Yesterday they attended a pre-Budget briefing in preparation for their coming labours on the 2020 National Budget – including the detailed pre-Budget Seminar at Victoria Falls scheduled for 30th October to 4th November.

The presentation of the 2020 Budget by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development will be on Thursday 14th November.

Today’s agenda

As today’s sittings will be the first working sittings of the new session and as all unfinished business of the First Session, including uncompleted Bills, lapsed at the end of that session, the agenda for this afternoon’s sittings is very brief.  It is the same in each House: the moving of the customary beginning-of-session motions expressing loyalty to Zimbabwe and respectful thanks to the President for the speech that he delivered when opening the new session on 1st October.

Upcoming Business

Unfinished business from the last session it is likely that motions will be put, and approved, that Bills be restored to the Order Paper at the stage reached in the last session:

Education Amendment Bill

Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency Bill

Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill

Coroner’s Office Bill

Marriages Bill

New Business, for example, tabling of three recently gazetted Bills so that they can go for consideration by the Parliamentary Legal Committee:

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Amendment Bill

International Treaties Bill

Constitutional Court Bill

The Government’s Legislative Agenda for the Second Session

Twenty-six Bills were listed by the President in the Government’s legislative agenda for this session.  We have divided the list into the following parts and indicated the Bills that have already been gazetted or are awaiting gazetting, having been sent to the Government Printer for printing and gazetting:

Bills repeated from the legislative agenda for the First Session

1. High Court Amendment Bill
2.  Public Finance Management Amendment Bill
3.  Gold Trade Amendment Bill
4. Precious Stones Trade Amendment Bill
5. Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill
6. Freedom of Information Bill [already gazetted]
7. Zimbabwe Media Commission Bill [already gazetted]
8. Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill
9. Cyber Crime and Cyber Security Bill [awaiting gazetting]
10. Data Protection and Electronic Transactions Bill
11. Child Justice Bill
12. Mandatory Sentencing for Rape and Sexual Offences Bill
13. Immigration Bill.

Bills appearing on the legislative agenda for the first time

14. Labour Court Bill
15. Magistrates Court Amendment Bill
16. Police Bill
17. Insurance and Pensions Commission Amendment Bill
18. Pension and Provident Funds Amendment Bill
19. Securities and Exchange Commission Bill
20. Deposit Protection Corporation Amendment Bill
21. Competition Amendment Bill
22. Petroleum Amendment Bill
23. Medical Aid Societies Bill
24. Persons with Disabilities Bill
25. Private Voluntary Organisations Bill
26. Prisons and Correctional Services Bill

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

Post published in: Featured

This is the interview the MDC Deputy National Spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka had with the ZBC on Friday, 18 October 2019. ZBC in its wisdom or possibly lack of it decided not to flight the interview.

I am long on record as hating Halloween. Halloween involves: children begging in the streets like vagrants, white people offending me with their face, unleashing “sexy” costumes in a pathetic attempt to make up for 364 days of sexual repression, an entire movie industry that revolves around white people being too complacent to react appropriately to supernatural events, the shaming of sex offenders, rapidly rotting gourds, and, as a parent, an intense amount of time, effort or money spent on meeting the fickle imaginations of your children. If I could exorcise one feature of our culture… well, it would be Republicans. But Halloween would be in my top five.

The only good part about Halloween, for me, is that I’m a content producer and Halloween always brings opportunities to talk about people who screw up, incredibly and publicly, when trying to make something out of this dead-ass holiday. And “Halloween came early” this year, thanks to the creative geniuses at the Atlanta District Attorney’s Office.

The Paulding County DA put up a little Halloween display in their lobby. When I first saw the story, I didn’t know what the big deal was. Here it is from WSB-TV:

Crime scene, skeleton, Halloween. This checks out. I mean, who cares? Who even goes to the DA’s office anyway… OH WAIT:

Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant talked to a local ethics expert, who called the display wildly unprofessional and said it has the potential to retraumatize crime victims who have to come to the office to talk to prosecutors.

Diamant spoke to the woman who took the picture. Lauri Newsome said she went to the district attorney’s office with a few family members to try to get a meeting with District Attorney Dick Donovan about a sensitive case.

She was outraged to find the fake crime scene.

“You step back. It startles you,” Newsome said. “It doesn’t help how you’re feeling. I think if I’d had a family member murdered it would have affected me worse.”

Newsome fought back tears as she described being startled by the display.

I mean, I wouldn’t have thought of it this way. But, there again, this is why I don’t truck with Halloween. What the hell is the upside? “I really feel better about the administration of justice, now that I know my local D.A. can be SPOOKY!”– said no one, ever. Even though I feel like this woman’s complaint is a little overwrought, the value of D.A. lobby skeletons is so de minimus that I can’t understand why anybody would bother in the first place.

‘Cause that’s the other thing about Halloween, people who screw up VOLUNTEERED to do this to themselves. Last year, I dealt with people — white people, MULTIPLE white people — asking me if it was “okay” for them to PAINT THEIR KIDS IN BLACKFACE so they could go as Black Panther. Like, blackface UNDER the Black Panther mask… JUST IN CASE! And, after saying “JESUS CHRIST WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?” the question that always rattled around in my head was why. Why would you volunteer to do anything slightly questionable for the sake of Halloween? How drab is your life that you need to spice things up with this kind of forced BS? If you need to dress up that badly, go see Rise of Skywalker dressed as Chewbacca LIKE A FREAKING ADULT.

Anyway, I’ve lost my train of thought about the D.A. Umm… yeah, don’t spookify murder victims when your business involves meeting with the families of murder victims. Seems like a solid rule.

Another good rule: If you are not 100 percent confident that you know all the rules, just sit on your pumpkin and ride this holiday out.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

In the compliance world — especially as it relates to deal-making and neutralizing corruption — due diligence is risk assessment commandment. When, however, is enhanced due diligence warranted? What motivates firms to decide if a third party should undergo an even stricter, more refined level of scrutiny? What are the costs and challenges?

The importance of enhanced due diligence is borne out in results from the recently completed Compliance Week Survey on Anti-Bribery and Corruption, conducted in conjunction with Refinitiv.

The pitch for an EDD program is a straightforward one: No enhanced due diligence investigation is ever the same. By undertaking a detailed review of new and existing customers and third parties, you can help guard against reputation and regulatory risk.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents to the survey said they put at least some of their third parties through these enhanced reviews with an eye toward safeguarding their reputations and complying with both foreign and domestic legal demands. The goal: Reducing uncertainty and risk and making more informed, safe, and profitable business decisions.

What were the biggest challenges firms face at the enhanced due diligence stage of their screening process? Responses included cost of enhanced checks (30.7 percent); lack of knowledge (31.3 percent); delivery time (16.9 percent); and data security (14.5 percent). On a scale of 1-5 (where five was the strongest), respondents were asked which factors weighed heaviest in their decision on whether enhanced due diligence was needed. Top answers included geographical risk, political risk, industry-related risk, past behavior, and the importance of the third party to the business. To grasp when enhanced due diligence — increased screening and analysis of otherwise standard data collection — is necessary, we turned to Kevin Bogdanov, Director of Market Development – Risk, Americas for Refinitiv’s customer and third-party risk management business. He is currently exploring how data, technology, automation, and AI will disrupt and redefine of Know-Your-Customer and third-party risk compliance.

“Enhanced due diligence really just fulfills a role within a certain stage of the due-diligence cycle,” he says. “You’ve got a risk assessment that your company will usually leverage and using that assessment you will determine what is risky for your business, in terms of cyber-security, inquests, bribery, corruption, or whatever. So, off the back of that, you might want to determine where there might be heightened exposure that requires greater due diligence to make sure that you really go out to those problematic areas.” “These are just a couple of examples,” he adds. “But if any of these criteria or a combination of these criteria exist, then that is going to necessitate a greater level of due diligence. You would ideally have a risk matrix and risk assessment from the onset to determine what matters to you in terms of where your risk is and then, if any of those criteria are established in the available data, you would obviously go ahead and warrant some deeper diligence.”

Once committed to that process, does enhanced due diligence retain a given life span? The answer: “Sort of.” “There is a process here, an end process, ideally,” Bogdanov says. “Obviously, you can’t sort of screen, or take your diligence at a point in time, and assume that nothing changes. However, if you just look at a couple of examples of things that can change — ownership structures, loans, joint ventures, new product lines, and new markets that the businesses will enter — any one of these changes may be a trigger. Another big one is mergers and acquisitions.” “Any of these types of changes will fundamentally upend in the level of risk and the type of risk that is inherent in a third party. So, what you need to do is you need to establish a cadence and framework for continuous monitoring of those parties.”

Keep reading / access the full report…

A second woman, this one a former Human Resources manager at the firm, has come forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior against former DLA Piper partner Louis Lehot. The woman anonymously filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging Lehot intimidated her and that she was “physically afraid” to be around him, going so far as to say she was uncomfortable being in the building when Lehot was in the office.

The HR manager further alleges that when she complained about Lehot’s inappropriate behavior she was told “Louis is just Louis.” She also says that despite a history of positive performance reviews she was fired from the firm after she complained about Lehot.

Earlier this month, DLA Piper partner Vanina Guerrero released an open letter to the firm, and filed a complaint with the EEOC, alleging that Lehot, repeatedly sexually assaulted her. She also wants the firm to release her from their mandatory arbitration agreement so she can pursue her claims in court. The firm has been conspicuously silent on the forced arbitration agreement — despite the attention their arbitration stance in this case has garnered, but, they did announce that Lehot had been let go from the firm. Then the firm put Guerrero on leave, saying they’d uncovered allegations unrelated to Lehot during their investigation of her claims. Lehot released a statement yesterday contesting the allegations against him and saying Guerrero was “exploiting” the #MeToo movement.

As reported by Law.com, Jeanne Christensen, partner at Wigdor who represents both women, took the opportunity to lash out at the firm’s response to the allegations against Lehot, saying, “The era of DLA Piper protecting its male rainmaking partners at the expense of the physical and emotional safety of the firm’s female employees must come to an end.” She went on to say:

“How many more women must come forward with tales of abuse by Louis Lehot before DLA Piper stops retaliating against female employees who dare report misconduct by male partners?” said Wigdor partner Jeanne Christensen, who represents both women. “Having now watched DLA Piper engage in a public campaign of victim-blaming and retaliation against Ms. Guerrero, it would come as no surprise if other women at DLA Piper with relevant information are terrified of coming forward,” she said in a prepared statement.

DLA Piper responded to the latest round of allegations, saying this development was designed to distract from the firm’s investigation into Guerrero and contesting the allegations:

“Consistent with Ms. Christensen’s previous communications with the media, her most recent letter is filled with inaccuracies and falsehoods, which will be demonstrated through the proper channels at EEOC,” the firm said.

Lehot has not yet responded to these new allegations.

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).