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Disclaimer: For someone who has a severe drinking problem, the sudden stoppage of alcohol intake can cause serious health issues. Please consult a qualified addiction physician before doing so.

What do you feel like the morning after a couple of drinks? Have you ever considered trying a month without booze as a social experiment and note the changes, if any? This is the perfect month to do it. It is “Dry January.”

Imbibers across the country are checking out what it feels like to abstain from drinking alcohol for thirty one days. While it’s always a good idea to evaluate alcohol intake and how it impacts your life, you can be part of ever-growing, sober curious movement, if just for a few weeks.

We are already well into the month but there is still time to give Dry January a try. Thirty one days sound daunting? Two weeks works as well.

It’s not about being an “alcoholic.” It’s not about addiction — it is about merely evaluating lifestyle. We need to move away from associating abstinence from alcohol as something that means problem drinking.

For me, it’s admittedly a dry lifetime by choice. It started as my awareness of a severe drinking problem. Today however, it’s a lifestyle. I do not consider myself an “alcoholic.” The term, while important as a tool of self-awareness starting out, no longer has meaning to me as a self-label. As a lifestyle choice, here are the benefits, I have found:

• I enjoy a higher quality level of sleep. Even when I was not getting hammered, a couple of drinks became a sleep aid, and it was never a deep sleep. I woke up with that pressure in the head that comes with a lack of real rest.

• The mornings are lovely without the distraction of even a minor hangover or just the “blechs” that a couple of glasses of wine can bring. I am more alert mentally acute. This allows me to  get right into the day rather than “ease” into it.

• My eating habits are more balanced. Even a few drinks would invariably lead to choices more towards more “impulsive munchie” food choices. Don’t get me wrong, I am big believer in “eat to live” not “live to eat” but I also believe in balanced options and alcohol skewed that for me.

• My morning energy level is much better and overall more balanced throughout the day. That does not mean I don’t get the “sleepies’ like everyone else but without the low level, alcohol disruption, I can get my workout in more consistently. I am more focused in the work I do.

• Without question, my personal relationships have improved. Even a low-level hangover can make a person irritable, causing conflict that would not otherwise be there.

This month or any month, consider a timed reset on your relationship with alcohol. No judgment. No stigma. If you decide it’s not for you, have one for me.

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Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

Last September, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) resigned his House seat and announced that he’d be pleading guilty to securities fraud and lying to a federal agent.

Collins famously raced out of a White House picnic to call his son and shout, “SELL!” after getting word that the drug he’d hoped would cure AIDS and cancer and MS and probably athlete’s foot, too, had failed its clinical trial.  Which is what those spoilsports at the SEC refer to as “classic insider trading.” Collins went on to win re-election in 2018 despite having an 11-count federal indictment hanging over his head, and proclaimed his innocence and intention to run again in 2020 right up until September 30, 2019, when he finally tapped out.

The U.S. Probation Office is recommending a year and a day in custody for the former politician, which is a significant downward departure from the 46 to 57 months laid out in his plea agreement. But Collins has a better offer — how about no jail time at all! And he compiled a whole 58-page motion with 10 attachments full of letters all attesting to what a good, kind, honest man he is and telling U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick that this living saint deserves to serve any sentence on home confinement at his new house in Florida.

Collins even went so far as to send a mass email to all his supporters — and former supporters, apparently — pleading with them to send letters to the court pleading for leniency on his behalf. This may have been something of a tactical error, however as evidenced by the 88 pages of letters Judge Broderick entered into the docket yesterday. While House Speaker John Boehner may think his former colleague is entitled to leniency, but it appears Mr. Collins’ former constituents have other ideas.

In advocating for a stiff [and] severe sentence for Mr. Collins, including substantial jail time, I can only say this: if this man does not serve an extended period in jail, something is seriously wrong with our judicial system. There’s no one for whom a lengthy period of incarceration is more appropriate. — David Wiles

Ouch.

It is my opinion that he shows no remorse but his actions show only the desire to escape responsibility for his actions. My hope is that the maximum sentence would fit the crimes and damage done. — Harry E. Winnicki

Perhaps that email request was a tactical error.

Mr. Collins violated the rules of conduct for a member of congress. Mr. Collins assured his fellow members of congress, (lied to them), that he always followed ethical rules in his investments. Mr. Collins defamed Louise Slaughter, a fellow member of congress. These actions reveal that Mr. Collins is not remorseful for his actions. — William C. Fine

That would be a reference to Rep. Louise Slaughter, whom Collins described as a “despicable human being” who filed “fabricated allegations” of insider trading against him with the House Ethics Committee out of blinding hatred for Donald Trump. It appears that his former constituent James Renfrew also remembers that, after Slaughter’s death in 2018, “Mr. Collins, vindictively, was the only member of Congress from New York who voted against naming the local post office in her memory. He owes Ms. Slaughter’s family an enormous apology!” That, too, might possibly have been a tactical error.

During his lazy years winning our gerrymandered, 27th congressional district, Mr. Collins made no effort to visit or otherwise personally stay in contact with his constituents. He has used his political power to misrepresent and swindle. Mr. Collins has demonstrated distaste for the rule of law. He’s selfish, profiteering for himself and his family has been on full display diss honoring the Congress. Though his lawyers may plead for leniency, I hope you give him the full measure of his convictions. — Hal Bauer, PhD (PS: Collins stole our trust in the federal government.)

And speaking of profiteering, The Buffalo News reported Monday that Collins appears to have liquidated all the donations from his 2020 campaign account and transferred them to … himself.

On Dec. 20, Collins transferred $146,393.71 out of the campaign committee he’s been using in recent years and sent it to his 1998 campaign committee. That same day, he repaid himself $146,393.71 out of that 1998 campaign committee — 22 years after he loaned that committee hundreds of thousands of dollars to wage his race against [then-Rep. John J.] LaFalce.

Told about Collins’ move, LaFalce seemed less than impressed.

But will Judge Broderick be impressed? Or will he heed the recommendation of Cynthia Lankenau, DVM, “to help Mr. Collins clearly see his [serious]  wrongdoing and sentence him to the maximum amount allowable under the statute”? Tune in on January 17 to find out.

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Troutman Sanders and Pepper Hamilton have voted to merge, creating a 23 office, 1100 attorney Am Law 50 firm they’re calling Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders. The deal will take effect on April 1.

The merger, which we’ve been tracking for awhile, is actually one of the rare Biglaw mergers that makes a lot of sense. The two firms don’t overlap all that much with only 3 redundant offices to be sorted out and while Troutman was roughly 40 slots ahead of Pepper Hamilton in Am Law’s ratings, the firm’s RPL numbers were in the same ballpark, greasing the wheels for the merger.

When we last discussed the mechanics of a dying law firm, we talked a lot about how overaggressive mergers often kick off the countdown to a firm’s demise. Looking into the next decade, mergers are going to continue to ramp up and the demarcation between the firms that make it and the firms that don’t — putting aside the elite Am Law 25 or so — is likely to be whose mergers make the most sense. Troutman and Pepper think they’ve hit the sweet spot.

Troutman Sanders, Pepper Hamilton Vote to Seal Merger Deal [American Lawyer]

Earlier: Pepper Hamilton And Troutman Sanders Planning To Merge
In Memoriam… To All The Law Firms We Lost Last Decade

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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 his arrest for alleged membership in a wide-ranging global insider-trading ring, Goldman Sachs VP Bryan Cohen said there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the $24,000 in cash he’d hidden in a sunglasses case in his apartment, the reason having something to do with Frenchness and cultural hoarding or whatever. And maybe there is a perfectly innocent explanation for it, and maybe that’s it, but Cohen does have one confession to make: There’s no innocent explanation for the aforementioned, no-longer-merely-alleged membership in said insider-trading ring.

With the 2010s wrapping up, Joe and Kathryn focus on all the law firms we’ve lost over the last decade. Industry pressures, bad strategies, and fraud allegations managed to put several former mainstays to rest over the last 10 years. What lessons can we take from the demise of these once-proud firms? Where is this whole profession heading? Will this next recession finish off what 2009 started?

Protecting a company from nation-state actors was likely not an elective for many attorneys now practicing in the field. And lawyers are generally trained to trust subject matter experts so even if cybersecurity had been part of the curriculum, there would still be a sense of overwhelming deference to our counterparts in the security world. But in today’s digital world where cyber threats don’t limit themselves to just one stakeholder, there’s an undeniable need for lawyers to be part of the collaborative drumbeat of cyber vigilance within any organization.

So when the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — a federal agency that was established two years ago to serve as “the Nation’s risk advisor” under the Department of Homeland Security — disseminated guidance this week on how companies should be thinking about the increased risk of nation-state actors attacking U.S. companies in light of heightened conflicts with Iran, lawyers took note.

That a U.S. corporation could face cyber consequences from the United States’ killing of top Revolutionary Guards commander, Major General Qassim Suleimani, is the new normal for corporate counsel given the declaration by the government of Iran and its supreme leader of Iran’s intent to strike back at the U.S.

The threat of cyber attacks against the U.S., its companies, and its critical infrastructure is imminent. Iran has long been an active source of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks which were quelled since 2015 when former President Barack Obama signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Tehran.

A year ago, CISA came out with its user-friendly Cyber Essentials guidance in line with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework, propagated by the Department of Commerce, to help small businesses understand the importance of cybersecurity. That guidance is a jumping off point for cyber readiness within organizations, broken down into six “Essential Elements of a Culture of Cyber Readiness” where organizations “living the culture” demonstrate best practices within those elements. The guidance concludes with list of steps that small businesses can take immediately to increase organizational preparedness against cyber risks. These include backing up data, implementing multifactor authentication, enabling automatic updates, patching, and having experts on standby for help.

Years later, as general counsel of a technology-enabled cyber services and investigations firm, I no longer have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines of debates about what it means to properly protect the organization from security threats. But, quite frankly, none of us lawyers do. Ask any board member — cyber risk is no longer just a problem for the IT department.

Actively Defending Against Cyber Threats

Proactively addressing a company’s security posture means adopting an approach that proactively identifies and solves against known and unknown threats using best-in-class tools and experts. That stance -– call it “Active Defense” — includes advanced threat hunting and attack methodologies, the use of deception technologies to confuse attackers, and elite intelligence collection and analysis techniques. Within companies, there is a growing sense that internal teams can learn from external teams of experts who bring in varied backgrounds and see things differently, as an outsider. The purpose of these so-called purple teams, where an internal blue team is paired with an external red team to identify and shut down weaknesses within an organization’s security stance (whether physical or virtual), is to strengthen the organization against outside threats. Beyond the color spectrum, this recognition of the ever-growing risk presented by sophisticated malicious actors operating unchecked against the private sector is mirrored by the ever-growing opportunities for threat actors who can access advanced exploits more readily than ever before.

The calculation of the proper level of threat protection is specific to the organization. Assume that if you’re a company doing business with the U.S. government or part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, you’re going to need to lodge a stronger defense. Recommendations for shoring up on cyber from CISA include:

• More frequent backups of data and storing backups offline, including backups of information critical to company operations
• Creating and rehearsing an incident response plan
• Implementing multi-factor authentication
• Minimizing account privileges
• Regularly scanning networks and systems
• Automatically patching vulnerabilities
• Monitoring network traffic
• Whitelisting applications so that only approved programs are allowed to run on the network
• Temporarily increasing the frequency of password changes on your system
• Increasing the logging functions on your system to better monitor activity
• Training staff on cybersecurity best practices
• Conducting a cybersecurity risk analysis of the organization

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Jennifer DeTrani is General Counsel and EVP of Nisos, a technology-enabled cybersecurity firm. She co-founded a secure messaging platform, Wickr, where she served as General Counsel for five years. You can connect with Jennifer on Wickr (dtrain), LinkedIn or by email at dtrain@nisos.com.

In what I am choosing to see as a sign of good things to come, Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced yesterday she is cancer free. Thank goodness.

In an interview with CNN published Wednesday, the Notorious one said, “I’m cancer free. That’s good.” Over the summer, the justice shared her worrying diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which required a three-week course of radiation therapy. In a statement following the treatment , the Supreme Court said the “tumor was treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body.” But it’s really nice to hear RBG confirm the positive news all these months later.

This most recent bout of cancer was Justice Ginsburg’s fourth. In 1999 she was treated for colorectal cancer, she had an earlier diagnosis pancreatic cancer in 2009, and she was treated for malignant nodules in her lungs in 2019.  Let’s hope, that like a cat, she has a few more lives left.

2020 is already off to a great start.

In my previous column I reviewed a children’s book written by a lawyer explaining what lawyer moms do at work. So I figured it made perfect sense to follow up with a post about a book written by women lawyers for women lawyers. The book is aptly titled “50 Lessons for Women Lawyers From Women Lawyers.” It was published last year and is edited by Nora Riva Bergman, a lawyer who is a certified practice advisor for lawyers.

The timing couldn’t be better for a book like this. Women have been graduating from law school at rates similar to their male colleagues for more than a decade now, but according to a report issued by the ABA last year, “The 2019 Profile of the Legal Profession,” the percentage of women lawyers who are actively practicing law has remained stagnant for the past three years.

By way of comparison, the number of actively practicing women lawyers in 2009 was 31%. That percentage has only increased slightly since, with the ratio of men to women lawyers at nearly 2:1 in 2019; 64% of lawyers were men, while only 36% are women.

For that reason, whenever I learn that a young woman in my family is interested in becoming a lawyer, I jump onto my soapbox and provide a host of unsolicited advice about practicing law as a woman. I can’t help myself; I want to fully prepare her for the realities of law practice. And, I want her to understand that her vision of what her career path as a lawyer will look like and her definition of success will undoubtedly change over time — and that’s okay.

Or, as I explain in Lesson 6 in this book:

You define success, no one else. It is so important for young attorneys — especially women — to acknowledge and embrace this concept … [Y]ou need to define success for yourself and understand that your concept of success must be flexible, since both time and your frame of reference tend to alter your vision of success as well. If you buy into someone else’s concept of “success,” you are bound to be miserable.

Of course, that advice is offered from my particular perspective based on my experience as a woman attorney; not all women lawyers — or lawyers in general — would necessarily agree with me. But that’s the great thing about this book: it offers 50 different lessons from 50 different women lawyers, all of whom have had diverse career paths that inform their unique perspectives.

For example, in Lesson 2, Heidi Alexander, the deputy director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, provides her take on the value of being flexible and embracing change as you navigate your career path:

Oftentimes, as attorneys, we are forced to put up a facade. We do it to appear confident and serve as the most effective advocate for our clients. This makes it even more difficult for us to let go and embrace change. Sometimes removing that facade … can produce remarkable results … I encourage you to stop and “smell the flowers.” It may lead you to new experiences and opportunities, and even satisfaction in your life and career.

In Lesson 10, Maria-Vittoria “Giugi” Carminati, a women’s advocate, intersectional activist, and blogger offers this astute and succinct piece of advice that all lawyers should follow: “Other lawyers will take as much as they can from you if you let them. Don’t let them; it’s not worth it.”

Anne Kevlin, managing partner for a national insurance defense law firm, tackles gaslighting in the workplace in Lesson 25. She explains why it’s important to be able to recognize it and selectively ignore the message sent by a colleague who uses that manipulative tactic in the workplace:

Especially for women, confidence can be elusive. By focusing on what others think of us, rather than our own sense of right and wrong, good and bad, and what works for the paths we choose for ourselves, we lose our own view of what we bring to the table. Women should instead focus on the successes and achievements we have accomplished in our careers, and the lessons we have learned when things didn’t go according to plan. Trusted superiors, peers, mentors, or friends and family members who do not work with us, may be the best judge of what is fair criticism and what is inappropriate gaslighting.

Mistakes and how to handle them are the focus of Lesson 32. Paula Litt, a partner in the Chicago office of Honigman LLP, explains that, “Mistakes happen, even to the best. Understand them, deal with them, learn from them. And move on.” According to Litt, this is advice that all lawyers should take to heart, but women lawyers in particular need to master this lesson, since we’re seen as “interlopers in a man’s world … [and] cannot allow our mistakes and how we handle them to feed the narrative.”

Last, but not least, in Lesson 48, Jeanine Williams, a chief assistant attorney for the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, implores women lawyers to learn to say no. Otherwise you end up agreeing to partake in activities that interfere with your life goals. So she suggests that you take time to prioritize your goals, and then start declining to participate in anything that diverts you from your goals:

If you need to start small, do so. Say “no” when someone tries to sell something to you. Work your way up to saying “no” to small favors. Then, it’s time to take it up to the big asks. You’re not saying “no” to the person, you’re saying “no” to the question. More importantly, you’re saying “yes” to something you value more.

And that’s just a taste of the insightful and useful advice that you’ll find in this book. There’s lots more where that came from. So what are you waiting for? Grab a copy for yourself today or give a copy to the woman lawyer (or future lawyer) in your life. You  won’t regret it.

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Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

* Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced yesterday in a new interview that she is cancer free. [USA Today]

* Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his criminal case to recuse himself over comments the judge made about Weinstein texting in court. [NBC News]

* Rod Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General, has announced his post-Justice Department plans. [Washington Post]

* Jennifer Lopez’s Hustlers character is suing the movie’s production company for defamation and other causes of action. [Hollywood Reporter]

* An attorney has been arrested for allegedly obstructing justice for the benefit of his son. [Daily Herald]

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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.