Category: News Feeds

Update 8/29/19: Utah Supreme Court Votes to Approve Pilot Allowing Non-Traditional Legal Services.

Faced with an ever-widening gap in access to legal services, a Utah task force has called for “profoundly reimagining the way legal services are regulated in order to harness the power of entrepreneurship, capital, and machine learning in the legal arena.”

Appointed by the Utah Supreme Court to study innovative approaches to increasing access to and affordability of legal services, the Utah Work Group on Regulatory Reform has proposed a new structure for the regulation of legal services that would provide for broad-based investment and participation in business entities that provide legal services, including non-lawyer investment in and ownership of these entities.

In a newly issued report, Narrowing the Access-to-Justice Gap by Reimagining Regulation, the work group recommended that regulatory reform occur in two ways:

• Substantially loosening regulatory restrictions on the corporate practice of law, lawyer advertising, solicitation, and fee arrangements, including referrals and fee sharing.
• Simultaneously establishing a new regulatory body, under the supervision of the Supreme Court, to advance and implement a risk-based, empirically-grounded regulatory process for legal service entities.

This new regulatory body would solicit non-traditional sources of legal services, including non-lawyers and technology companies, and allow them to test innovative legal service models and delivery systems through a “regulatory sandbox,” an approach that would permit innovation in designated areas while addressing risk and generating data to inform the regulatory process.

This Utah report comes on the heels of recommendations by a State Bar of California task force to make sweeping changes in the lawyer regulatory structure in that state. These moves and others signal increasing recognition by bar officials in the U.S. that addressing the justice gap will require significant changes in the regulation of legal services.

The Utah Supreme Court created the work group at the request of the Utah State Bar. It is chaired by Supreme Court Justice Deno Himonas and Salt Lake City lawyer John Lund, a past-president of the bar.

The bar’s request to the court, which came in the form of a letter from immediate past-president H. Dickson Burton, asked the court to appoint a working group “to promptly study possible reforms and make recommendations for revisions, possibly major revisions, to the rules of professional responsibility so as to permit lawyers to more effectively and more affordably provide legal services and do related promotion of those services.”

The working group’s report provides extensive details on the scope of the justice gap in the United States, noting that the U.S. ranks 99th out of 126 countries in access to and affordability of civil justice. At the same time, the report notes that we “live in an age when disruptive innovation is occurring non-stop,” including in the justice system. The potential for these disruptions to benefit access to justice, the report says, are significant.

“If legal services can be provided to litigants and those with potential legal problems in a much more cost effective way, then true access to justice becomes possible for millions of people who currently get no help and do nothing. Technology, especially online legal services, exponentially increases the potential to improve access to justice. But it also simultaneously increases the risk of legal and practical harm to users if those services are not of sufficient quality. However, the potential benefits are too large to pass up, so changing how legal services are regulated to both open the door to innovation and protect litigants and other users in responsible ways is critical.”

To that end, the report calls for fundamental reform of how legal services are regulation — steps, it says, that require “equal parts courage, caution, imagination and deliberation.”

As already noted, one aspect of that reform is to loosen restrictions on lawyers — specifically restrictions on lawyer advertising, fee sharing, and non-lawyer ownership of and investment in law firms. In particular, the report endorsed a recommendation recently made by an Arizona task force to get rid of Rule 5.4 — the rule that prohibits non-lawyer ownership — and to allow lawyers and non-lawyers to form alternative business structures.

The second aspect of the reform called for in the report is to create a new regulatory body whose purpose would be to ensure that consumers have access to a “well-developed, high-quality, innovative, and competitive market for legal services.”

“The explicit goal of this approach is to develop a regulatory framework that allows, supports, and encourages the growth of a vibrant market for legal services in Utah and, ultimately, across the United States.”

In fulfilling that mission, the regulator would focus on the evidence of risk to consumers of new approaches to providing legal services and ways to mitigate any risks.

The report further suggests that the new regulatory body be developed in two phases. In phase one, an implementation task force would develop the funding and framework for this new regulatory entity and establish a pilot program to evaluate its operations. In phase two, the recommendations that come out of the first phase will be implemented in the form of an independent, non-profit regulator with authority over some or all legal services.

As outlined in the report, a key component of the first phase is a so-called legal regulatory sandbox.

“The regulatory sandbox is a policy structure that creates a controlled environment in which new consumer-centered innovations, which may be illegal (or unethical) under current regulations, can be piloted and evaluated. The goal is to allow the Court and aspiring innovators to develop new offerings that could benefit the public, validate them with the public, and understand how current regulations might need to be selectively or permanently relaxed to permit these and other innovations.”

Examples of participants in this sandbox, the report says, could be an accounting firm proposing to offer legal services alongside its accounting services, a technology startup using AI to help consumers complete legal documents, or a non-profit proposing to allow paralegals to provide limited legal advice without lawyer supervision.

The report concludes with a request to the Utah Supreme Court that it adopt the recommendations and direct their prompt implementation. That would include establishing the phase one regulator and delegating regulatory authority to run the sandbox. It would also require the court to exempt providers chosen to participate in the sandbox from limitations on the unauthorized practice of law and to make clear that lawyers who work with such providers would not be subject to discipline.

In addition to the two chairs mentioned above, others who served on this working group were: H. Dickson Burton, the bar’s immediate past president; Thomas Clarke, who recently retired as vice president of research and technology at the National Center for State Courts; Cathy Dupont, deputy administrator of the Utah State Courts; and Gillian Hadfield, professor of law and professor of strategic management, University of Toronto Faculty of Law (and recent guest on my LawNext podcast).

Also: Margaret Hagan, director of the Legal Design Lab and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School; Steve Johnson, past chair of the court’s Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct; Lucy Ricca, former executive director of and current fellow with the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession; Gordon Smith, dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University and Glen L. Farr Professor of Law; Heather White, past co-chair of the Bar Innovation in Law Practice Committee; and Elizabeth Wright, general counsel to the bar.

As an informed voter, I can’t imagine being swayed by a political attack ad. Like, I know there are people who are swayed by them, I just can’t imagine being such a person. Like, who says: “This person has a decades long career I can read and learn about, but did you see the way she LAUGHED? She seems like a B who hates black people.” The attack ad breaks into some deep part of our reptilian brain and is meant to override thought and learning with pure emotion.

That’s why an “attack” ad based on a candidate’s support for the Delaware Court of Chancery is inherently a bad idea. NOBODY has a deep emotional connection with the Chancery Court, and I’m including that 11-19 people who actually know what it is. That’s also why this the weirdest attack ad I’ve ever seen. It’s the “who’s gonna do it, YOU Lt. Weinberg?” of random explosions of deep anger. You’ve got to see it:

What. The. Hell? I mean, don’t get me wrong, the Delaware Chancery Court IS “too white and too male.” But that’s not what is really going on here.

Okay, let me explain the Chancery Court and why we’re seeing an ad about it.

The Chancery Court is the court of origin of equity disputes in Delaware. Put plainly, corporate litigation in Delaware ends up in Chancery Court. The key feature here is that the Chancery Court is not a jury court. Nor is it an appellate court. It’s a trial court where one judge (or “chancellor”) gets to make the final ruling. In Delaware, those judges are experts in corporate law.

The Chancery Court is a big reason so many corporations are incorporated in Delaware. When there’s a corporate governance issue, or a shareholder dispute, often times these companies have to be sued where they’re incorporated. In Delaware, that means you end up being sued in the Court of Chancery, and that’s one easy way to avoid a pesky jury who might not take kindly to your corporate shenanigans.

But wait, there’s more. The Court of Chancery religiously applies the “business judgement rule.” That’s a common-law rule that says that as long as the corporate overlords were acting in “good faith” and being “reasonably prudent,” then courts should restrain themselves from imposing liability, even if their actions turned out to be disastrous. It is not the kind of rule you want to hear about when you want to sue the CEO of your company.

Over half of the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ are incorporated in Delaware. The entire state exists as a kind of corporate loophole for companies to avoid jury trials over their internal decision making. Yes, the Court of Chancery serves the laudable function of having business law “experts” make business law decisions. But they’re also irreparably “pro-business,” in a way retards the ability of the law to demand corporate accountability.

The Court consists of five Chancellors, chosen by the Governor of Delaware to serve 12 year terms. Two additional “masters” are chosen by the head Chancellor. The court is overwhelming white and male. The first African-American to sit on the court was nominated in… 2015! Tamika Montgomery-Reeves is still there, but that took a while, didn’t it? When she joined the court in 2015, she was the first woman nominated to the court since 1994.

Of course Joe Biden supports the Court of Chancery. He was the Senator from Delaware! This is, like Delaware’s thing. I’m sure it’s not hard to dig up footage of the Senator from Delaware saying Delaware’s corporate expertise is a good thing. And, while we’re here, I’m sure it’s not hard to dig up footage of Elizabeth Warren saying that there should be more transparency in corporate regulations. I don’t even know if they actually disagree about the Court of Chancery: one probably thinks it’s generally good and one probably thinks it could generally be improved.

Of course, none of that explains, AT ALL, why there’s a freaking attack ad based on the Delaware Court of Chancery. No, for that we have to look at the ad’s buyer. Nobody’s campaign decided this would be a good idea. Instead this is part of the anti-Biden ad buy made by Shirley Shawe. She’s buying half a million dollars of ads against Biden in the early states because (wait for it) she blames the Court of Chancery for a business dispute that cost her son a lot of money:

Shawe’s interest in the Chancery Court stems from the legal problems of her son’s translation software company, TransPerfect, which was embroiled in very costly years-long litigation in the chancery system. According to Salisbury ABC local station WMDT-TV, Shawe owned a 1% stake in the company during the dispute. Delaware Business Now last year quoted a source claiming the price tag of the legal squabble totaled a quarter of a billion dollars.

This seems like a good time to mention that Shawe is a Republican.

Elizabeth Warren has said that the ad should be taken down and Biden says it mischaracterizes his position.

Like just about every attack ad, there’s not actual “there” there. There’s always more to the story than the people paying for the attack ad would like to convey. Here, The Court of Chancery is an really weird thing that should absolutely be reformed. It’s also got almost nothing to do with Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, or the 2020 Presidential campaign.

The more you know, the less angry Republicans can fool you.

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.

Way back in May, the legal world got its first taste of the 2019 round of summer bonuses when Gunderson stepped up and offered associates a little taste of bonus cash. After a summer pay extravaganza last year that saw associate salaries spike and summer bonuses to boot making for a very, very fine year for attorneys. No one expected a repeat of 2018, but Gunderson’s move seemed to kick off another season of small but appreciated bonuses.

And then… nothing. The legal industry went on radio silence. Revenue is up, yet firms seem much more cautious this year. Whether that stems form honest recessionary fears or the knowledge that they can plausibly write-off their thrift as a response to recessionary fears is less clear.

But with summer dying down, Patterson Belknap has decided it’s able to share some of the wealth with its associates. Perhaps more exciting, in a nod to the mostly bygone era where associates were treated as professional colleagues rather than revenue vectors, the bonus will be offered without any hourly requirement and every associate will get the full amount for their class year (with provisions for newcomer pro-rating and those on part-time schedules).

Here’s what the good folks of Patterson are looking at:

Class of 2019 $7500
Class of 2018 $7500
Class of 2017 $7500
Class of 2016 $10000
Class of 2015 $10000
Class of 2014 $12500
Class of 2013 $15000
Class of 2012 $30000
Class of 2011+ $40000

The firm’s memo notes that they aren’t in a position to make summer bonuses are annual tradition, but that they respect that exceptional financial performance — like the firm’s turned in over the first half of 2019 — calls for some remunerative celebration.

Congratulations to everyone at the firm. Hopefully some more firms will join the party.

(Full text of the memo on the next page…)

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

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Earlier: Gunderson Announces Summer Bonuses — Your Move Am Law 100!
Where In The World Are… Your Summer Bonuses?

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.

Over the past week, people have started to notice that Rob Lowe’s official Instagram account has a pair of prominent, devastating trolls who manage to keep showing up in the comments. Unfortunately for Lowe, his online nemeses are his sons Johnny and Matthew and their unending barrage of ribbing is easily the most entertaining part of Lowe’s social media presence.

Recently, like most people over 50, Rob sent around that dumb pseudo-legalese Instagram privacy notification that crops up every few months. Usually the scam targets Facebook because that’s where most old people are, but when it migrated to Instagram, Lowe put down his Atkins bar long enough to protect his rights under the Rome Statute or whatever and post this nonsense. Johnny refused to let it go:

Matthew, for those who haven’t kept up on the Lowe family, earned his J.D. from Loyola. He most definitely knows this makes no sense, but he presumably was too shocked to reply before his brother.

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.

Last week, I spent a four hot and humid days in sunny Orlando at ILTACON 2019. As always, it was a whirlwind of activity and the days passed quickly; and before I knew it, I was back on a plane and headed homeward.

But my time there was well spent. I had many opportunities to learn about the latest and greatest in legal technology, while also connecting with old friends and meeting new ones.

When I wasn’t networking or exploring the massive Exhibit Hall floor, I was meeting with representatives from a number of forward-thinking legal technology companies that caught my eye.

I’ll be covering these meetings in a 2-part blog post series. In today’s column, Part 1, I’ll share the latest news from ZERØ, Diligen, ALN and Fastcase.

One of the products I learned about, ZERØ, was of particular interest to me since it uses AI in a really interesting and useful way: to manage email. I learned from Ryan Steadman, ZERØ’s Chief Revenue Officer, that since its debut one year ago, the company now has nearly 50 percent of AmLaw 100 firms using its product either in production or exceptions testing. The reason it’s gained so much traction in such a short time is because it offers a solution to a gap in the market by providing AI natural language processing software — on both mobile devices and desktop computers — that scans all incoming emails and then facilitates the secure filing of the emails into a firm’s document management or billing systems. As part of this process, the software captures the billable time spent reading and responding to emails.

I also caught up with Erez Bustan, CEO of American LegalNet (ALN) and he got me up to date on the company’s latest news. ALN provides a number of useful software solutions, including: 1) court rules-based calendaring tools, 2) legal docketing and calendaring tools, and 3) automated court and agency forms. At ILTACON, ALN announced its integration with ZERØ. The integration combines ALN’s calendaring and docketing platform eDockets and its AutoDocket Pro feature so that litigation-related emails and documents from ALN’s software can be automatically filed into a law firm’s document management software using ZERØ’s AI technology.

I also learned about the latest Diligen news from Laura van Wyngaarden, Diligen’s co-founder and COO. Diligen provides AI-powered contract review software that is used by law firms, legal service providers, and corporate counsel. Using this software, teams can easily collaborate and manage the entire contract review process. At ILTACON Laura shared the recent news of the release of Diligen Prodigy, a new training system that is designed to quickly train Diligen to recognize new contract clauses in as little as 10 to 20 minutes. This allows its customers the ability to customize the software to meet their specific needs by expanding the range of concepts the contract analysis system can identify.

And last, but certainly not least, I met with Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase. We talked about their focus on expanding the types of content available to Fastcase subscribers. Over the past year, Fastcase has made the following treatises and data available via its legal research platform: 1) a catalog of bankruptcy publications through a partnership with the American Bankruptcy Institute, 2) expert witness profiles as a result of partnerships with JurisPro and Courtroom Insight, 3) paid access to certain ABA publications, 4) public records search and analytics through a partnership with TransUnion, and 5) James Publishing’s entire library of treatises, books, and practice guides. In other words, at Fastcase, content is king, and Fastcase  customers are the beneficiary of this newfound focus.

That’s just a taste of what I learned during press briefings at this year’s conference. Check back next week for the second installment of my ILTACON round up to learn the latest news from Intapp, NetDocuments, iManage, and LexisNexis.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist 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 @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

The California Supreme Court has hired a retired appeals court justice and his law firm to probe the State Bar’s disclosure of bar exam topics prior to the July test.

Arthur G. Scotland, a former administrative presiding justice of the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento, will lead the investigation. California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye served on the Third District bench with Scotland for several years.

The state Supreme Court also hired the Sacramento firm where Scotland works, Nielsen Merksamer, to assist with the probe.

The $60,000 contract runs through the end of 2019. Scotland will be paid $995 an hour for his work. The hourly rates for the other attorneys at Nielsen Merksamer expected to assist with the work range from $375 to $675. The State Bar will cover the costs.

The court’s announcement follows its July statement that it would conduct “a thorough and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the disclosure, and that appropriate steps are taken to protect the integrity of the bar examination and identify and address any consequences.”

Just days prior to the July exam, the State Bar sent some law school deans a list of the general subjects to be tested on the essay and performance test portions. This early release prompted the bar to disclose the topics to all test takers.

The scandal was a significant setback for an agency that seemed to be making progress on other fronts.

The State Bar also recently announced the hiring of a former California employment lawyer and mediator to investigate the topics disclosure.

Jean Gaskill, an inactive California attorney based in Oregon, will be paid $200 an hour for work on the probe. 

Gaskill previously worked for the now-defunct Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison law firm.

As for former Justice Scotland, his career included more than 21 years on the appellate bench and almost two years as a Sacramento County Superior Court judge.

“After retiring from the Court of Appeal in 2010, he reactivated his license to practice law and represented the President pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly in a successful lawsuit against the State Controller, regarding the constitutional requirements for passage of a balanced budget bill,” the California Supreme Court said in a release.

Scotland joined Nielsen Merksamer in 2012.

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With a name like Atticus Finch is it really a surprise that you wind up going to law school? That’s right, there’s a real 1L at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, named Atticus Finch after the iconic character in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.

And while it may seem like an appropriate name since Atticus’s parents, Matthew and Ian Finch, are both lawyers, this really isn’t a case of fathers pre-determining their son’s career. See, as reported by Texas Lawyer, Matthew and Ian gave their son the name Angus at birth, but after reading Mockingbird at the tender age of 7 he was inspired to change his name.

Now the fictional Atticus is certainly inspirational, but that wasn’t the only motivating factor behind the name change. As a child the real-life Atticus had recently moved right around the time McDonalds started marketing its Angus beef burger. As he says, “It wasn’t a good time to be a kid changing schools with a name of Angus in Texas.”

So at 8 years old, and after using the name Atticus for about a year beforehand, his parents assisted him in getting his name legally changed;

“I used Atticus as much as I could. Even though my parents did all of the legal work, I had to show up in court and explain to the judge [that] I wasn’t running from the law,” Finch recalls of that court hearing when he was a child.

Finch said the fictional Atticus Finch inspired him, because of the respect the character commanded in the book and movie, and his dedication to justice. It also helped that both of Finch’s parents were lawyers, he said.

Atticus doesn’t regret the name change, but the somewhat unusual moniker didn’t stop kids from ridiculing his name. But now that he’s in law school he says, “The jokes definitely got better.”

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).

Donald Trump has ordered his subordinates to break the law in order to help his reelection campaign and promised to pardon them if they ever face prosecution. And yes, we’re all losing our capacity for outrage after 32 months of dozen-a-day dumpster fires. But this particular conflagration is a big one, so let’s not allow exhaustion to turn it into a one-day story. Because this is very, very bad.

At countless pitchfork MAGA rallies, candidate Trump stood at the podium and promised to build a wall on the southern border. He promised that Mexico would pay for it, too, but no one talks about that now. Maybe it’s going on China’s tab along with the tariffs, who knows?

The Washington Post reports that the President “directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules.” Eminent domain litigation can drag on for years, but Trump ordered his subordinates to just “take the land.” Which sounds illegal — because it is — but the President waved away those pesky concerns about future prosecution saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” to subordinates hung up on sissy stuff like knowingly violating multiple federal statutes.

He’s not even pretending this has anything to do with effective immigration enforcement. Trump has been told repeatedly that the $3.6 billion in defense spending he’s about steal after shouting “National Emergency” would be more effectively spent by ramping up immigration and deportation spending. But then Trump shut down his critics by noting the “loud cheers the wall brought at rallies,” and so our nation’s laws must yield to the MAGA applause-o-meter.

Timing is of the essence, of course, with voters heading to the polls in just 14 months. CBP officials told the US Army Corps last week that the new sections of Trump’s border wall must “completed before the next presidential election.” And if they have to violate the Administrative Procedures Act to do it, Trump will be more than willing to retroactively bless it by abusing his constitutional pardon power.

Trump also has many #Thoughts on the construction process. The entire wall is to be painted black, in accordance with the Mad King’s latest whim, despite the fact that this will increase the cost by $70 to $133 million. And the anti-climbing plates had to go after the President declared them unsightly, replaced by sharpened spikes the better to impale our enemies upon, one assumes. Oh, and Trump is leaning hard on the Army Corps to award contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company supported by his ally Sen. Kevin Cramer. Because when you’re this deep into corruption and lawlessness, what’s a little more blatant cronyism among friends.

So the construction equipment is rolling into environmentally sensitive areas because the President waived environmental impact studies due to the very serious emergency, and the Post reports that “CBP has suggested no longer writing risk-assessment memos ‘related to the fact that we don’t have real estate rights and how this will impact construction.’” How does one assess the risk of a blatantly unlawful government seizure of hundreds of parcels of privately owned real estate? Probably best to skip it entirely.

The White House is pushing back against the Post story, criticizing reporters for being such humorless losers who can’t even take a joke. Because who wouldn’t laugh if the Commander in Chief issued an unlawful order and then promised to make the consequence disappear like magic? LOL, that there is comedy gold!

Or maybe the Washington Post made the whole thing up, desperate for copy because they can’t get any of the consummate professionals staffing the White House to leak embarrassing details about the Maniac in Chief.

Except, whoops, CNN just confirmed the Post’s reporting that Trump dangled pardons to induce CBP employees to break the law. And Donald Trump would never, ever stoop to watching FAKE NEWS CNN, but five minutes after the broadcast, he was out there denying it again.

Who ya gonna believe, Donald Trump or your lyin’ eyes?

‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day. [WaPo]

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

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) is deeply concerned about the deteriorating socio-economic conditions and closure of democratic space in Zimbabwe.

State of Affairs

This media brief seeks to draw your attention to the socio-political and economic challenges currently facing the country. We are worried about the political situation in our country and with an escalation of human rights violations and the collapse of the economy and resultant social service nets resulting in the millions of citizens seeking refuge in neighbouring countries and beyond. Fresh cases of arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions and abductions of unarmed civilians and civil society leaders are being reported. Multiple threats and intimidation by government officials against trade unions, civil society leaders and ordinary Zimbabweans are continuing unabated. To date, about 22 civil society leaders and human rights defenders and opposition leaders have been charged with subversion since the beginning of the year.

In August alone, police arrested over 80 citizens in Bulawayo, Chitungwiza and Harare on allegations of committing public violence. In Harare, medical facilities have recorded more than 20 cases of people who were brutally assaulted by police including a journalist, Fani Mapfumo, who was covering a peaceful protest on the 16th of August 2019. The injured include women and children.

The democratic space continues to shrink and Zimbabwe with the banning of demonstrations in all major towns signalling a state of emergency. The judiciary is now heavily compromised and is being systematically used to deny the people their fundamental rights as enshrined by Section 59 of the constitution and the expansive bill of rights in the Zimbabwean charter. We fear that if the situation continues unchecked, there are greater chances of an escalation of social unrest and instability in Zimbabwe. This might result in regional instability as Zimbabweans seek food, shelter and refugee in neighbouring countries.

Consequently,  this month, the government of Zimbabwe, through their mouthpiece the Herald newspaper on the 16th of August 2019 made sensational allegations that civil society leaders who were attending the SADC People’s Summit in Tanzania were planning to demonstrate against President Mnangagwa and were being trained to commit acts of banditry. The state went on to publish over 20 names of civil society leaders that they claim were planning to smear the image of the country. The allegations resulted in the detention and harassment of the activists upon their return to Zimbabwe. We view this move as calculated and desperate tactics by the government to instil fear amongst activists and the civil society in general.

Regionally, we  participated at this year’s SADC Peoples Summit held at the National Museum in Tanzania from the 13th to the 18th of August 2019 and the summit urged  SADC to ensure the continuation and deepening of the political reform processes in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Lesotho and Zambia in terms of human rights, democratization, constitutionalism, free and fair elections and protection of the rights of the citizens.

It is our view, therefore, that the political processes in Zimbabwe must seek to promote and consolidate democracy, peace and human security and we also maintain that resolving the current political crisis in the country is a pre-requisite for democracy and economic development.

Similarly,  in May this year, Zimbabwean authorities arrested 7 civil society leaders upon their arrival from a meeting in Maldives and charged them with subversion despite the absence of evidence that shows that they were trained in banditry.

Turning to the economy, there is a perpetual economic meltdown (resulting from the current political crisis) which has resulted in high levels of inflation and an increase in domestic debt which has compromised the government’s capacity for the provision of social services and social protection for ordinary citizens. Zimbabwe’s economy is collapsing under the burden of a) grand corruption and b) the power of a military elite which is subverting constitutional processes. The recent 76% cost of living adjustment offer to civil servants which will see the least-paid worker taking home $1 023 (less than USD100) per month is inadequate due to the high cost of living. Equally, a majority of Zimbabweans are surviving on less than USD1 a day is impacting negatively on ordinary citizens and has the potential of fuelling more conflicts in Zimbabwe.

Thought the government through Statutory Instrument SI 142 of 2019 outlawed the use of multiple currency, prices and cost of living remains benchmarked in foreign currency, hence the need to peg wages and earnings to the united states dollar.

The country is also facing an extreme drought with estimated figures of nearly 5.5 million people–a third of Zimbabwe’s population  needing food assistance by 2020,  according to a UNICEF  report in June.

Going forward

Based on the above background, which should be understood in the context of the ongoing political and economic crisis bedevilling the country, we propose the following urgent interventions:

1)    We reiterate our call for internal and inclusive stakeholders’ dialogue in Zimbabwe. It is our conviction that the dialogue process must involve all stakeholders and a national visioning process that has a civil society, government, political parties, business, religious groups and labour unions among other critical stakeholders on board. As an import of the dialogue process should produce a clear timed roadmap to the demilitarization of civilian political processes and the restoration of normalcy by focusing on key political, economic and social reforms.

2)    We urge regional and international blocs to promote and support efforts at arresting the economic downturn in Zimbabwe based on a clear reform roadmap and encourage Zimbabwe to adopt and implement pro-poor and inclusive economic policies. Efforts at economic transformation, stabilization and growth should be aimed at achieving inclusive sustainable economic growth and development.

3)    We urge the Government of Zimbabwe to stop the crackdown on human rights defenders, activists, media and the opposition, uphold and guarantee citizens’ rights as enshrined in the Zimbabwean Constitution and other regional and international human rights treaties and statutes. The Global Political Agreement (GPA) issues guaranteed by SADC/AU remain at the centre of the crisis especially the constitutional reform process. Therefore, the full implementation of the country’s constitution is equally important in promoting democracy in Zimbabwe.

4)    We urge SADC and the AU to decisively ACT by urgently and adequately intervening in the Zimbabwe situation. We are concerned that SADC is focusing on the non-event of the so-called sanctions when the country is in flames as the regional body is rendering itself irrelevant as it surely is not showing leadership on the political question in Zimbabwe. Without addressing the political and legitimacy crisis, the socio-economic dislocations will send shock waves to the entire region.

5) Call upon the Zimbabwe, government to prioritize and prepare for humanitarian assistance programs for the millions facing starvation in Zimbabwe.

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