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It’s that time of year again where we look back, take stock of the year in law, count the bonuses rolling in and order another round. With that in mind, we’re throwing a holiday party here in New York, and you’re invited!

So, if you want to grab some drinks and food on ATL, RSVP here! This year we’ll have our party on December 10th at Houndstooth Pub on 8th Avenue at 37th Street.

Want to brag about your bonus? Share a war story? Take a break from studying for finals? Catch up with your favorite (it’s me, I know it is) ATL editor? All are welcome!

Here are the details:

When: Tuesday, December 10th
Where: 520 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018
Time: 6pm – whenever we stop drinking

Remember to RSVP soon to guarantee your spot and we’ll see you in December.

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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).

Before starting my own practice earlier this year, I worked at a number of law firms. Although each of those shops offered various job perks, all of them allowed attorneys to take time off for vacations. Each of the firms where I worked had a different vacation policy, and a few had unlimited vacation policies.

Under that kind of vacation policy, firms basically tell associates that they can take off as much time as they want so long as they meet their billable hour requirements and satisfy client expectations. At first blush, this might seem like a great perk, since this policy can afford associates greater flexibility and more vacation time than in other shops. However, law firms often have selfish reasons for instituting unlimited vacation policies.

One reason why firms might not want to give associates a set number of vacation days is because they do not want to pay attorneys for unused vacation time when they leave their jobs. Many firms, as well as companies in other industries, offer employees a set amount of vacation time, usually two to four weeks. Some firms even allow associates to roll over a certain number of unused vacation days from year to year. At a number of law firms (and companies in other industries), when an associate leaves, the attorney will be paid for any unused vacation time.

I worked at one firm that had such a policy, and paying associates for any unused vacation time gave attorneys a number of options. Associates could use their vacation days to take time off, or if they were like me, and did not prefer to go on vacations, they could pocket more money when they departed the firm. That system provides financial benefits to associates and, to the benefit of firms, may prevent attorneys from taking time off frivolously.

However, if firms do not designate a set number of vacation days to which each employee is entitled, they can completely sidestep the issue of paying for unused vacation time. As a result, firms can save a substantial amount of money by having an unlimited vacation policy. Accordingly, firms should not be given credit for having an unlimited vacation policy, since firms can realize significant financial benefits from such a policy.

In addition, having an unlimited vacation policy makes it difficult for associates to understand how much time they can take off in a given year, which may force attorneys to go on vacation less frequently. For instance, I once worked at a firm that did not pay attorneys for unused vacation time but guaranteed each attorney a set number of vacation days each year. Since the number of vacation days was established, people were encouraged to take time off to avoid missing out on this perk.

One time, I took off for nearly three weeks at the end of one year, since I had the vacation time, and I would lose the vacation days if I didn’t use them. I selected the last several weeks of the year to take off (since litigation is usually pretty slow around this time), and it felt great not being bothered and having so much time to myself. It goes without saying that attorneys at this firm had a better work-life balance than at other shops, mainly because the guidelines about vacation time were clear and respected.

However, if firms do not specify how much vacation time each attorney can take, it might be more difficult to assess how much vacation time is reasonable and what expectations are around the office. Ambiguous expectations may not only impact associates but also affect management. Indeed, partners I worked with at firms that had unlimited vacation policies did not respect vacation days as much as partners at firms that had set policies.

For instance, I had a friend — who worked with me at a firm which had an unlimited vacation policy — who needed to take two weeks or so off from work to go on a honeymoon. A two-week vacation is not a big deal at many firms, especially when a number of shops offer four weeks of paid vacation each year. However, a partner criticized the associate for taking so much time off and sternly reminded the attorney to make up for lost billable hours upon returning to the office. If this firm had a fixed vacation policy, the partner possibly would have respected the associate’s vacation time more and not given the attorney such a hard time for taking time off. When firms blur expectations about vacations and don’t establish clear rights when it comes to taking time off, it is much easier for managers to be harsh to attorneys for taking vacations.

In the end, some shops advertise unlimited vacation policies as a great perk, and it might be easy for associates to think that there are only benefits to such a policy. However, firms often institute such policies for selfish reasons, since firms can realize financial benefits from such policies, and not designating a set number of vacation days can make it difficult for associates to take time off.

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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.

Black Friday, in a lot of ways, is like the Christmas holiday it precedes. It has been around for so long, we forget why we are even performing the rituals we use to celebrate it.

When Scott Walker was having a Twitter meltdown earlier this month over his successor going back to having a “holiday tree” instead of the “Christmas tree” Walker changed the moniker to when he was in office, he apparently had no idea that sawing down pine trees and putting them in our living rooms didn’t originally have a damn thing to do with Christmas, Christians, or Christ. Go ahead and go on Google Maps and look up Bethlehem. It’s near Jerusalem. They have versions of evergreens there, and a lot of pines in Israel now were brought in by the Jewish National Fund in the twentieth century. But I’m sorry to break it to you: During his life, Jesus never encountered a blue spruce. Neither did the pagans from whom we stole the tradition of putting evergreens in our houses around December (blue spruce is native to North America, as is the absolutely most popular type of Christmas tree, the balsam fir). Starting around the fourth century, European pagans decorated their homes with evergreen branches local to, you know, Europe, so as to brighten their joints up during the drab winter season. Romans also used evergreen branches to decorate for their December 17 to December 23 Saturnalia festival. It was not until much, much later that Americans embraced their pagan predecessors’ pine-based seasonal decorations as a Christmas tradition. Early puritanical American Christians, in fact, loathed the winter tree-decorating tradition as a “heathen” ritual and “pagan mockery.”

My point is not just that Scott Walker is intolerable (though he clearly is). My point is that not even our traditions are our traditions. They are things we inherited from earlier generations, bastardized, forgot why we did them in the first place, and tragically put on a pedestal just because they’d been around so long. A tradition is hard to change, but traditions were spun from whole cloth in the first place, often for reasons that no longer make sense, and they can and should be changed when they’ve outlived their usefulness.

Which brings me back to Black Friday. Black Friday is a relatively recent tradition but a tradition nonetheless. The most oft-repeated Black Friday origin story is that the day after Thanksgiving was the day that struggling retailers went from being in the “red” for the year to being in the “black” for the year, as multitudes of Christmas shoppers swarmed the mall on their day off to get deals on presents.

Well, that’s a nice story, but not exactly accurate. While the term “Black Friday” itself has been used in a lot of other historical contexts, its first known use to refer to day-after-Thanksgiving shopping was in 1950s Philadelphia, when Philly cops used it to describe the melee that swamped the city’s shopping centers before the big Army-Navy football game held there on the Saturday after Thanksgiving every year (and yeah, the use of the phrase was about as racist as you’d expect). Calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” went on for years in Philly before it finally caught on in the rest of the country. Starting in the late 1980s, retailers all collectively breathed a sigh of relief as the nation as a whole pretty much swallowed the more positive (and fabricated) “red to black” accounting books origin story of Black Friday.

So, as you go to trample your fellow citizens this Black Friday so that you can maybe pick up a $150 TV, ask yourself why you are doing this. You can put up a Christmas tree and enjoy it with pure motives, just like you can go shopping for Black Friday deals without evil in your heart. But if you’re doing the former, know you’re ultimately doing it because a bunch of people who did not believe in Jesus did it a long time ago, and if you’re doing the later, know you’re ultimately doing it because a bunch of racist 1950s Philly cops got together to crack jokes.

Speaking against my own interests as someone who owns mutual fund shares with a lot of retailers in them, maybe just don’t Black Friday this year. I haven’t been in a home with kids in the past ten years in which there wasn’t a room where I wasn’t ankle deep in toys. Not to pick on the youngest Americans; I have three brown leather motorcycle jackets. Three! We all have so much stuff. We don’t really need the stuff we already have, let alone more of it.

Black Friday started as a garbage holiday, and its transformation from racist cop lingo to materialistic retail orgy hasn’t improved it all that much. I’m going to be doing my best this year to not buy anything on Black Friday, and to the extent I do ultimately give people seasonal gifts, to make them Science Museum memberships and comedy tickets and nice dinners out. I’d rather give a gift that helps build a relationship than just another thing to throw on someone’s treasure pile. This year, buy something intangible that’s going to force you to spend time with good people. Maybe try it again next year. You might just develop a tradition actually worth hanging on to.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

The Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA), a group of doctors, including specialists who had remained on duty at the country’s hospitals, while junior doctors began a boycott in September for higher pay, announced the strike in a move that is set to worsen the country’s already dire health situation.

‘Silent genocide’

The senior doctors described the situation at the country’s hospitals as a silent genocide, saying doctors are forced to work without basics such as bandages, gloves, and syringes.

“We have watched the past few months as the situation in our hospitals continues to deteriorate.

“In March this year, the situation in hospitals deteriorated to the point where there were no bandages, gloves, and syringes available forcing senior doctors to highlight the dire situation publicly. It is important to find out why this has taken so long to be resolved as a silent genocide continues to be perpetrated upon the people of Zimbabwe,” the statement said.

The doctor’s association said its members could no longer cope with such conditions and demanded the reinstatement of those that were dismissed over the strike.

The government has responded to Tuesday’s announcement from the senior doctors by issuing notices for disciplinary hearings against them and advertising their jobs.

“The Ministry of Health and Child Care will publish before the end of this week, an advert in the press for all posts that have become vacant as a result of these disciplinary cases,” Minister of Information Monica Mutsvangwa told Zimbabwe’s cabinet on Tuesday.

“The authorities are so vindictive that they went to the theatre to hand a letter to a doctor who was finishing up an emergency operation.

“For the record, senior doctors will not be re-applying to come back to work. We do not accept that one can be dismissed for being incapacitated to come to work in an unsafe environment with nothing to use. We reiterate we are not on strike,” the doctor’s group said in a statement.

“We are incapacitated like all other doctors, both financially and in terms of tools of the trade. Thus we are unable to continue subsidizing the employer and reporting for duty,” Shingai Nyaguse, SHDA president told CNN.

Since September, Zimbabwean junior doctors have been engaged in a battle with the government over conditions of service and poor pay, which they say has been eroded by hyperinflation in the country.

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The company must explore and penetrate the international market to boost sales volumes and plans 11 international tenders in 2020, according to acting Chief Executive Officer Rob de Pretto.

“All those big companies like De Beers and Alrosa are also doing it, so we must also be there with them,” De Pretto said in an emailed response to questions. “Harare is not a choice with many international buyers. By going to Dubai, Hong Kong, Antwerp and all those places, that is where the international buyers are.”

The tenders will be conducted by the Minerals Marketing Corp. of Zimbabwe. In its third auction of the year in September, MMCZ offered 316,000 carats in the capital, Harare, which attracted buying interest from Belgium, Dubai, India, Israel and South Africa, it said at the time.

ZCDC has cut its diamond production forecast for this year by 24% to 3.1 million carats, but sees a rebound to 6.12 million carats in 2020. In total, the nation expects 4.1 million carats output this year from 2.8 million carats in 2018. At the peak of production in 2012, the southern African country’s output was 12 million carats.

Buyers purchasing from African mines and selling to stores in cities such as New York, London and Hong Kong are being squeezed by oversupply and tighter bank financing. De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond producer, is said to have lowered prices by 5% at its sale this month to cushion the middlemen that trade and polish its rough gems.

GETTY IMAGESDroughts, poor rains and natural disasters have contributed to the food shortage

Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation, a UN official has warned.

More than 60% of the country’s 14 million people are considered food-insecure, according to the findings.

Hyperinflation, poverty, natural disasters and economic sanctions were among the identified causes.

Women and children were “bearing the brunt of the crisis” with 90% of children aged six months to two years not consuming enough food.

Hilal Elver, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, reported her findings following an 11-day visit to the country.

“I cannot stress enough the urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe,” she said, adding that the crisis continues to worsen.

She said many of the people she met could only afford one meal a day and that most of the children she met were stunted and underweight.

“The harrowing stories I heard from resilient grandmothers, mothers or aunts desperately trying to save their children from starvation, in the midst of their daily hardships, will remain with me.”

Chronic malnutrition is endemic throughout the country, in rural and urban areas.

Droughts and erratic weather has hurt agricultural production, while rampant inflation has exacerbated the problems.

Ms Elver said the Zimbabweans she spoke to “explained that even if food is generally available in supermarkets, the erosion of their incomes combined with an inflation skyrocketing to more than 490%, made them food insecure”.

She indentified other contributing causes to the crisis, including widespread corruption and economic sanctions.

She also noted Zimbabwe was among the four highest food-insecure nations, alongside conflict-ravaged countries.

Ms Elver said her initial findings will be followed by a more detailed report next year, but called for “immediate reform”.

“Steps could be taken at the national level to respect, protect and fulfil the Government’s human rights obligations, and internationally, by putting an end to all economic sanctions,” she said. “The extraordinarily resilient people of Zimbabwe deserve no less.”

Post published in: Featured

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES SERIES 44/2019

Cancellation of Public Accounts Committee Meetings Until Further Notice

Please note that Parliament has cancelled all meetings of the Public Accounts Committee [PAC] until the dispute over its chairmanship has been resolved by the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders.

This includes the meeting that was due to take place tomorrow morning, Friday 29th November.

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

Post published in: Featured

The Combined Harare Residents Association joins the rest of the world in commemorating the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence.

We take great cognizance of the need to create safe spaces for women and girls around the world.

CHRA is however concerned over the erratic water situation in Harare that has led to victimization of women and girls.

Due to their societal roles, women and girls bear the brunt of water shortages and quite often have to walk long distances, and sometimes during the night to search for water.

This has exposed them to physical as well as verbal abuse at water points such as boreholes where there is a sharp increase in WATER WARS.

Cases of rape/sexual abuse as well as physical abuse of women and girls at water points in Harare are on the increase. The capital has turned out to be an unsafe space for women and girls due to the continued water shortages.

In some cases, unruly males controlling water points in Harare are also demanding sexual favors and this is also a pointer to how the water situation in Harare has left women and girls exposed to abuse.

We are concerned that if the water situation in Harare is not addressed, the cases will continue to rise. Restoring constant and consistent water supplies in Harare means restoring women and girls’ dignity as well as creating safe spaces for them.

In this respect, we implore the government to invest in restoring Harare’s water infrastructure as well as to invest in the building of more water sources since Harare’s main water supply, Lake Chivero has been overwhelmed.

We take note of the government’s commitment to build the Kunzvi Dam, which is supposed to augment Harare’s water supply but we however would like to point out that the $259 Million allocated for the project in the national budget is  a paltry amount.

Dam building is a capital project that requires serious investment and commitment from duty bearers.

As the world commemorates the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender based violence, CHRA takes this opportunity to remind the Zimbabwean government of its obligation under international law and the constitution, to protect the right to water and sanitation.

In 2010, the Zimbabwean government voted for the United Nations General Assembly resolution on the right to water and sanitation and as CHRA, we implore the government to honor this obligation.

We are also concerned about the continued allocation of paltry amounts for the procurement of water treatment chemicals to the City of Harare as this has also worsened the water situation in the capital.

CHRA Recommends the Following:

• Government should declare the water crisis a national disaster and open up to humanitarian assistance
• Immediate interventions to stop construction on and destruction of wetlands.
• Urgent institutional reform in Harare City Council and development of clear accountability systems to ensure fiscal discipline
• Prioritization of construction of water sources eg Kunzvi and Musami dams
• Improved waste management practices to reduce pollution of the primary water source, Lake Chivero.

As CHRA, we will be embarking on a campaign to document cases of abuse of women at water points with a view of assisting the victims as well as bringing the perpetrators to boo

Post published in: Featured

“More than 60% of the population of a country once seen as the breadbasket of Africa is now considered food-insecure, with most households unable to obtain enough food to meet basic needs due to hyperinflation,” said Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, presenting a preliminary statement at the end of an 11-day visit.

“In rural areas, a staggering 5.5 million people are currently facing food insecurity, as poor rains and erratic weather patterns are impacting harvests and livelihoods. In urban areas, an estimated 2.2 million people are food-insecure and lack access to minimum public services, including health and safe water.

“These are shocking figures and the crisis continues to worsen due to poverty and high unemployment, widespread corruption, severe price instabilities, lack of purchasing power, poor agricultural productivity, natural disasters, recurrent droughts and unilateral economic sanctions.”

Elver said women and children were bearing the brunt of the crisis.

“The majority of the children I met were stunted and underweight,” she said. “Child deaths from severe malnutrition have been rising in the past few months. 90 % of Zimbabwean children aged six months to two years are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet.

“I saw the ravaging effects of malnutrition on infants deprived of breast feeding because of their own mothers’ lack of access to adequate food.

“In a desperate effort to find alternative means of livelihood, some women and children are resorting to coping mechanisms that violate their most fundamental human rights and freedoms. As a result, school drop-outs, early marriage, domestic violence, prostitution and sexual exploitation are on the rise throughout Zimbabwe.”

Elver said people she met in the drought-affected areas of Masvingo and Mwenezi, located in the driest regions of the country, told her they ate only one portion of cooked maize a day. Women, the elderly and children are barely able to meet their minimum food needs and are largely dependent on food assistance, while most of the men are abroad seeking work, she added.

“Without access to a diversified and nutritious diet, rural Zimbabweans, particularly younger children, barely survive,” she said, adding that the agricultural and food system needs immediate reform.

“I strongly urge the Government to take the necessary measures to reduce the country’s dependence on imported food, particularly maize, and to support alternative wheats to diversify the diet. The Government should create the conditions for the production of traditional seeds to ensure the country’s self-sufficiency and preparedness for the climate shocks that hit the country.”

The Special Rapporteur said the crisis in Zimbabwe’s cities was no less severe than in rural areas.

“I witnessed some of the devastating consequences of the acute economic crisis in the streets of Harare, with people waiting for hours on long lines in front of gas stations, banks, and water dispensaries,” she said.

“The Zimbabweans I spoke to in Harare and its suburbs explained that even if food was widely available in markets, the erosion of their incomes combined with an inflation skyrocketing to over 490%, made them suffer from food insecurity, also impacting the middle-class.

Elver also said that she received “disturbing” information that public hospitals have been reaching out to humanitarian organizations after their own medicine and food stocks were exhausted.

Elver also received indication that the distribution of lands or food had been manipulated for political ends throughout the last two decades, favoring those who support the ruling political party.

“I call on the Government of Zimbabwe to live up to its zero hunger commitment without any discrimination,” Elver said.

Zimbabwe counts amongst the four highest food insecure States, alongside conflict ravaged countries, the expert noted.

“A Government official I met in Harare told me that ‘Food security is national security’. Never has this been truer than in today’s Zimbabwe.

“As food insecurity and land mismanagement increase the risks of civil unrest, I urgently call on the Government, all political parties and the international community to come together to put an end to this spiraling crisis before it morphs into a full-blown conflict.

“Steps could be taken at the national level to respect, protect and fulfill the Government’s human rights obligations, and internationally, by putting an end to all economic sanctions. The extraordinarily resilient people of Zimbabwe deserve no less.”

Post published in: Featured