Category: News Feeds

“Assuming all of the same precautions are taken, why can someone safely walk down a grocery store aisle but not a pew? And why can someone safely interact with a brave deliverywoman but not with a stoic minister?” asks the 6th Circuit in an opinion quoted by Justice Kavanaugh in his dissent from the majority’s refusal to enjoin restrictions on churches in California.

According to Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, church attendance involves quickly walking through the pew before dropping a couple of bills on the collection plate en route to the golf course. Similarly, the arrival of the Amazon delivery truck prompts an immediate congregation of neighbors to assemble in close proximity for an hour or two huddled in someone’s rumpus room, raptly absorbing her brave counsel and singing hymns of praise.

It’s quite an assumption, and one that Justice Roberts was unwilling to go along with, siding with the four liberal Justices late Friday night to uphold California’s emergency coronavirus restrictions capping church attendance at 25 percent of maximum occupancy or 100 people.

Late Friday night, the Supreme Court released a 5-4 decision in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Gavin Newsom, upholding the California governor’s emergency restrictions and signaling that the court is unlikely to side with the Justice Department’s push to treat stay-at-home orders as violations of the First Amendment.

“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” he wrote for the majority. “Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

Which acknowledges the fact that, here on planet earth, churches are the loci of multiple “super spreader” events, and grocery stores are not. Because you’re highly unlikely to inhale enough droplets to get infected with the virus in the five seconds when you scurry past someone else in the pasta aisle, but among 61 choir members who attended a March 10 choir practice in Skagit County, Washington, 53 were diagnosed with the virus after 2.5 hours of deep breathing in a confined space.

But apparently, four Justices who haven’t assembled in the same room for months and who are taking the unprecedented step of hearing oral arguments over Zoom, disagree, writing in dissent, “In sum, California’s 25% occupancy cap on religious worship services indisputably discriminates against religion, and such discrimination violates the First Amendment.”

Because CHURCH is to MOVIE THEATER as GROCERY STORE is to … RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION! Indisputably.

ON APPLICATION FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF [SOUTH BAY UNITED PENTECOSTAL CHURCH, ET AL. v. GAVIN NEWSOM, GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, ET AL., 590 U. S. ____ (2020) (May 29, 2020)]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

We invite you to join a conversation between Myisha Frazier (Google Legal Director) and Catherine Kemnitz (Axiom SVP, Head of Legal) on Thursday, June 4th, 2020 at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT.

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A billion-dollar Biglaw firm has announced even more COVID-19 austerity measures. Reed Smith, which already announced salary cuts, told associates today that their salary cuts would be extended through the end of the year and that they’d be deeper than before.

Back in March, the firm announced that they were slowing partner cash distributions, emphasizing that business is good, but made the move as a “precaution” and “bracing for the short-term and potential long-term economic impacts of COVID-19” before even more partner compensation cuts were announced. Then in April, they announced associate pay will be cut by 15 percent for May through the end of August.

Now we hear that the salary cuts will continue through the end of the year, and they’re getting bigger. According to sources at the firm:

Reed Smith held an all associates call today. The previously announced 15% salary cuts for associates will continue until August, and from August to December it will increase to 20%. Associates are pissed, especially those who have remained extremely busy and are billing hours normally throughout this time.

Sandy Thomas, Reed Smith’s global managing partner, provided the following statement outlining the austerity measures, which contextualizes the pay cuts on an annualized basis (which reflects a smaller number than the 20 percent cuts to their paycheck that associates can expect from August to December):

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our priorities have always been to protect the health and wellbeing of our people, to safeguard jobs wherever possible, to provide the highest quality service to our clients, and to manage the firm prudently. As a result of the prolonged economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to take further actions to ensure our business emerges from the pandemic in a position of strength.

Reed Smith’s owners, rightly, continue to bear the largest share of the financial burden of the firm’s actions. As we continue to manage the challenges created by the crisis, today we are taking further actions that affect the firm’s lawyers and professional staff across the United States, Europe and the Middle East. They include:

· The previously implemented lawyer compensation reductions will be extended through the end of the year. On an annualized basis, compensation reductions will be 14% for Fixed Share Partners, 12.5% for Counsel, and 12% for Associates.

· Most professional assistants and other select professional staff will move to a four-day week, with corresponding compensation reductions, and a small number of employees will be furloughed on a temporary basis.

· The salaries of professional staff annually earning more than $100,000 (or equivalent), who are not subject to other employment actions, will be reduced nearly 6% on an annualized basis.

· In London, the firm’s largest office, we are initiating a targeted redundancy process that will impact a small number of lawyers and staff.

The firm expects most of these measures to be temporary, and during this time, healthcare and other benefits will remain intact for all lawyers and staff.

In Asia, similar actions affecting a small percentage of lawyers and professional staff were already undertaken earlier this year.

Like all well-run businesses, during the normal course of managing the firm we continually evaluate the size and shape of our global organization to ensure that it matches the needs of our clients. This practice is as important as ever during the pandemic.

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

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

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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).

Over the past few days, protestors and journalists have been met with unjust and illegal police brutality. History has taught us that the police who commit these acts will not be prosecuted. The videos below highlight the divergent rules that apply to police compared to the rest of the populace, particularly people of color. The rule of law is an aspiration, and one that centuries-old institutions like organized police forces purport to champion. Until the law is applied equally to those institutions — especially when they use undue force against those standing up against, and highlighting, institutional racism — we will never break the cycle of injustice.

People across the United States continue to document this police brutality. Take a look for yourself.

Denver, Colorado

Atlanta, Georgia

Louisville, Kentucky

Minneapolis, Minnesota

New York City, New York

Erie, Pennsylvania

Salt Lake City, Utah

Richmond, Virginia

Seattle, Washington

Compilation Of Additional Videos

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Kyle McEntee is the executive director of Law School Transparency, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to make entry to the legal profession more transparent, affordable, and fair. You can follow him on Twitter @kpmcentee and @LSTupdates.

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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.

“First there was his self-pity — everything was someone else’s fault — and then there was his self-will — no one must oppose him on anything at any time ever.”

I just finished reading Antonia Fraser’s 1994 book, The Wives of Henry VIII, and I found that description of King Henry VIII — he of the six wives, two beheaded, and the English Reformation) on page 336. I just had to share it with you.

But that’s an aside showing how our zeitgeist infects even my recreational reading. (It may also show more than you care to know about my idea of recreational reading, but I suppose that’s another story, too.)

The substance of this post is about the cadence of meetings.

Cadence is a communications concept. If a group is working on a project, the group should meet frequently to make sure the group maintains its momentum. If a group does general oversight — the board of directors — then the group should meet less frequently.

The desire to set a cadence means, I fear, that people frequently set meetings for no reason at all.

“The appropriate cadence for this team to meet is once per month. That’s about enough for the nature of the work that the group performs.”

What happens?

“Oh, my God! The next meeting in the cycle is set for this Wednesday! We had forgotten about that. We don’t have an agenda. Can anybody gin up a few speakers to talk about something that’s arguably relevant to the group so that we fill the time?”

That conversation is routine. You hear it before many, many meetings.  And it’s an admission of defeat: “We don’t really have anything to talk about, but we have to gin up irrelevant crap to fill the time.”

At the end of the meeting, of course, everyone will praise the meeting: “Great meeting! Good speakers! Glad we did it!” Praising the meeting is no skin off the attendees’ teeth, and it’s better for your career to praise meetings than to criticize them (or to say that the meetings were entirely unnecessary). But don’t ignore the truth, despite what people say: People (or at least the people you’d like to retain) couldn’t have helped noticing that there was no reason at all to hold the meeting, no one learned anything of importance, and everyone just lost an hour out of their day.

I’m not opposed to all meetings.

Sometimes you meet because a project demands that people discuss what’s happening. That’s an extraordinarily good reason for a meeting.

I don’t mind quarterly oversight meetings. If all the group is doing is oversight, then surely some things that require oversight have occurred in the prior three months.

Sometimes scheduling meetings regularly serves a purpose, even when the participants really have nothing to discuss: “We have 1,000 illegal contracts!  We’d better get them corrected pronto. We must assign someone to be responsible for this task, and we must then schedule weekly meetings between (1) the person responsible for the task and (2) a very important person in the firm, at which we’ll discuss the progress being made on the task.” Those meetings serve a purpose: The person doing the task understands that he’s under the gun and, more importantly, he understands that God is watching him. “God is watching” meetings serve a purpose, even if the job could be accomplished without them.

In a world when we’re allowed to meet in person, meetings can improve collegiality, even if the agenda is light.

But please consider canceling meetings when you realize that you have a meeting scheduled for next week and nothing to communicate. Canceling the meeting is an entirely legitimate alternative to burdening your audience with drivel because you have nothing to say.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Although states have slowly but surely started to reopen in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, the nation has been in a state of unrest following the officer-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, with mass protests breaking out across the country in response to police brutality and racism. Unfortunately, some of these peaceful gatherings have turned into riot situations, with looting and other acts of aggression taking the place of meaningful marches across America. One of those who stands accused of taking part in these violent crimes is a Biglaw associate, or we should say a possibly former Biglaw associate — one who was furloughed earlier this spring thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Colinford Mattis, 32, stands accused of damaging New York City Police Department vehicles with Molotov cocktails during a Brooklyn protest this past weekend. Mattis was allegedly behind the wheel of a van while his passenger, Urooj Rahman, 31, a 2019 graduate of Fordham University School of Law who’s been identified as a human rights lawyer, allegedly threw an incendiary device at an unoccupied NYPD vehicle.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mattis is a 2010 graduate of Princeton University and a 2016 graduate of NYU School of Law. Mattis is a member of Pryor Cashman’s Corporate Group, but he was furloughed in April as part of the firm’s austerity measures against the pandemic. His profile page was removed from the firm’s website yesterday afternoon. Mattis’s employment status with the firm is currently under review in light of these criminal charges. Here’s a statement from the firm:

(Image via LinkedIn)

“While we were already living in fraught times, the terrible situation around the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has added painful stress to our lives,” [managing partner Ronald] Shechtman said. “As we confront critical issues around historic and ongoing racism and inequity in our society, I am saddened to see this young man allegedly involved in the worst kind of reaction to our shared outrage over what had occurred.”

Mattis and Rahman will appear today in the Eastern District of New York.

Furloughed Pryor Cashman Associate Charged With Helping Molotov Cocktail Attack During Brooklyn Protests [New York Law Journal]
Two Lawyers Arrested in Molotov Cocktail Attack on Police in Brooklyn [New York Times]

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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.

As far as Attorney General Bill Barr is concerned, the illegality of lying to the FBI and insider-trading are somewhat open questions. The illegality of marijuana, on the other hand, is open-and-shut, especially if the law against it can be used in the way preferred by his boss, which is to say cruelly and in desperate times, such as bankruptcy court, facing a woman who took a job at a pot-growing company to feed her family.

In 2017, Justice Department officials who oversee the nation’s bankruptcy courts ramped up enforcement of the federal marijuana ban on individuals with income from the cannabis industry….

Carl and Jennifer Richter of Brookville, Pa., sought court protection in November after he had a heart attack and could no longer work as a supermarket meat manager. Ms. Richter, who was working part time at a garden center, found a new job to support their two daughters as a head cultivator for cannabis business Cresco Labs Inc…. To get around the federal marijuana ban, the couple proposed segregating Jennifer Richter’s wages from her husband’s disability benefits, which would be used to fund their repayment plan. But the Justice Department argued that even if the funds were segregated, the repayment plan would undermine federal drug law.

* A disbarred attorney has been sentenced to prison for stealing his dead client’s pension for twelve years. This former lawyer puts the guys in Weekend at Bernie’s to shame. [Providence Journal]

* Two attorneys, including a Biglaw lawyer, have been charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail at an NYPD police vehicle during protests this weekend over the killing of George Floyd. [New York Daily News]

* The Supreme Court has held that states have the power to regulate how many people can attend religious services during the COVID-19 pandemic. [Vox]

* The top lawyer at the FBI is resigning, purportedly over pressure to remove officials at the Bureau who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. [CNN]

* The Minnesota Attorney General will be taking over prosecutions over the killing of George Floyd. [NBC News]

* A judge who is recovering from COVID-19 will be deciding if Washington State’s safer-at-home orders should be suspended. Have to admire this judge’s resolve. [Komo News]

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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.