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Earlier this week, Donald Trump expressed his confidence in Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. This declaration mirrored his expressions of confidence in FBI Director James Comey or attorney Marc Kasowitz and ended the same way: with Acosta tossed to the curb. The embattled cabinet official resigned today after the world finally caught up with the Miami Herald in reporting on Acosta’s handling of billionaire admitted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case.

The dreaded “vote of confidence” doesn’t necessarily exile someone from Trump’s good graces. In Acosta’s case, he was given an opportunity to appear before the press and put on the sort of combative, no apologies performance that salvaged Slimy McBrewsky’s Supreme Court nomination. But (unlike Alan Dershowitz, another other public figure locked into Epstein’s downfall), Acosta royally bombed his opportunity to impress Trump. Minutes after his press conference, we predicted, “If this was his pitch, expect to see him gone within the week.”

And now he is.

With this, the administration’s brutal labor policy isn’t going to change. Some unconfirmed “acting Secretary” will take over and continue the assault on workers. At this point, it’s not likely that Trump would even try to nominate someone and invite a Senate hearing that might cast some light on administration policy. Opacity is part of the strategy at this point.

And with a mounting scandal that toppled a federal cabinet job, Acosta isn’t likely to feel much of a pinch either. While the SDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office is pursuing the Epstein case through the Public Corruption Unit — a move that could signal pending charges against Acosta — let’s embrace the cynicism and assume that assignment was more an effort to shield the case from being quietly killed and will ultimately pass on trying to charge a former federal prosecutor.

So what happens to Acosta? A double Harvard grad who clerked for Sam Alito, worked for Kirkland & Ellis, taught classes at ostensible law school George Mason, led a law school, and served on the NLRB, as a U.S. Attorney, and, obviously, a cabinet secretary isn’t going to stay unemployed for long. Someone is going to wait 10 minutes for this hubbub to die down and then hand Acosta a few million to hop on the letterhead and bolster their “star” partnership ranks. Whether it’s a return trip to Kirkland & Ellis or a jump to unapologetic Trump firm Jones Day, it doesn’t really matter.

Alex Acosta is, pending prosecution, is going to get a raise out of all this deal. There’s just a point where failure, even the sort of gross failure that spurs a federal judge to call out your serious “material omissions,” don’t lead to any consequences. Some people just get to fail upward. That’s where we are.

Let’s check in on Acosta next year… he’s probably going to be doing just fine.

Earlier: Alex Acosta Just Delivered A Dumpster Fire Of A Press Conference
Alan Dershowitz Says He Thinks He Should’ve Gotten Epstein A BETTER Deal In Wild Doubling-Down Interview

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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.

Last year, Alex van der Zwaan, a former associate at the London office of Skadden Arps, pleaded guilty to charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. He’d worked on the controversial report written by the firm justifying the prosecution of former Russian-aligned Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s political rivals, and was indicted for lying to investigators in the Russia probe about his communications with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates. He served 30 days in jail and was fined $20,000. Though that wasn’t the end of his punishment.

His lawyers already acknowledged that van der Zwaan’s career as a lawyer was functionally over when he pleaded guilty to a felony saying his “professional life has been destroyed” as part of their sentencing memo in the case. And now comes the final nail in his career as an attorney.

As reported by Law.com, van der Zwaan’s law license was taken away by the U.K.’s Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), and he was ordered to pay costs totaling $3,878. The outcome was part of an agreed upon deal, and van der Zwaan has accepted responsibility for his actions:

An SDT document published Thursday said: “The respondent accepts full responsibility, admits that he is solely responsible for his conduct, and is remorseful and has demonstrated a high degree of insight.”

Van der Zwaan had been an associate at Skadden for 10 years before he got caught up in the Mueller probe and was fired from the Biglaw giant in 2017.

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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).

The Kariba Dam. Picture: GETTY IMAGES/DEAGOSTINI

Armed prison guards patrol outside the court where Job Sikhala, opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) deputy chairman and lawmaker was expected to appear, in Harare, Zimbabwe, July 10, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Job Sikhala is accused of advocating the overthrow of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and was not asked to plead when he appeared before a magistrate in rural Bikita, hundreds of km (miles) south of the capital.

Lawyer Alec Muchadehama said Sikhala complained to the court that he had been taken to Bikita despite undertakings by prosecutors that his trial would be held in Harare.

The lawmaker and opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) deputy chairman was, however, told to come back to court on July 24 and will remain in prison custody unless he is granted bail. The bail hearing is on Monday.

“We have applied for bail at the High Court today. He (Sikhala) had many complains against the conduct of the police, who put a hood on his head so he could not see where they were taking him. They also denied him his medication,” Muchadehama said.

The charges against Sikhala emanate from a video circulating on social media, in which the politicians appears to be seen and heard telling supporters at a weekend rally: “We are going to take the fight to the doorsteps of Emmerson Mnangagwa, we are going to overthrow him before 2023, that is not a joke.”

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video. Sikhala, through his lawyer, has denied the charge.

More than a dozen government opponents have this year faced similar charges, with critics saying this shows that under Mnangagwa, the government is reverting to harsh Robert Mugabe-era security laws to muzzle the opposition.

Mugabe, who ruled the country for 37 years, was removed after an army coup in November 2017. But Mnangagwa’s promise to break with his predecessor’s past policies and tactics and usher in economic prosperity is yet to be realized.

The MDC, which maintains that Mnangagwa rigged last year’s presidential vote, routinely says it will use all constitutional means to remove the president, without giving more specifics.

In Harare, MDC leader Nelson Chamisa repeated his party’s demand for political talks with the ruling party but only if there was international mediation with a view to guaranteed “free and fair” elections in future.

Post published in: Featured

Lawyers, especially more established ones, enjoy referring to the vocation of law not as a mere business, but as a profession. Anyone can own a business, but having a profession requires something special. “Profession” carries connotations of grandeur, learning, following a higher duty to society as a whole. In contrast, “business” is just the gauche act of making money. Businesses are run by Gordon Gekko; Atticus Finch was a member of a profession.

It’s fun to pretend to be a Philosopher-King or -Queen, dispensing wisdom and authority from on high while ignoring the petty economics. Philosophers don’t need to get their hands dirty with math. They have people for that. So long as the Philosopher carefully listens and gives wise counsel, the kingdom will prosper, the peasants will rejoice, and the offices will remain wood-paneled, because that is the way of things.

Ask Ozymandias how that worked out for him.

The world is changing, and the grand profession of law is changing with it. We’re in the early stages of a war for our life, and it’s not the lofty sages that will shape the future of our industry. It’s the scrappy businesspeople who are willing to get their hands dirty, crunch numbers, and make bold choices.

A War On All Fronts

The battle for market share is being fought by more combatants than you might realize. Alternative legal service providers are stealing commoditized market share, and in some instances even traditional bespoke legal work. The Big Four accounting firms are expanding the scope of their consultation services, and boxing law firms out in the process. Legal-oriented startups run by non-lawyers are trying to disrupt the basic fabric of the industry. In-house legal departments in search of efficiency (or internal budget allocations) are keeping more work in house than ever before. The monopoly we enjoyed for decades is being consistently eroded, and when you start with a monopoly, you have nowhere to go but down.

The way this erosion has played out in the Biglaw market has been fascinating, but troubling. The market as a whole for law firm services has been sluggish, seemingly missing out on the past ten years of economic recovery. But it hasn’t been sluggish all over. The top 1 percent of firms are growing massively, and solos and boutiques are chugging along fine. It’s the middle market that’s feeling the squeeze. Midsized firms are struggling to keep their market share. As the overall pie continues to shrink, that segment of the market will be fighting harder amongst itself for fewer dollars. And if and when the next recession hits, a bloodbath will likely ensue.

The scariest part about all of this is how few lawyers even realize this battle is going on. It’s been such a slow boil for the past decade that it’s been easy to miss. We all felt the crunch when the Great Recession set in, shifted hard into a low-expectation mindset while we rode out the downturn, and never really shifted back out. Ten years of moderate growth has been greeted, year over year, as good news. But compared to the overall economy, the legal market has barely bounced back at all. Slow growth has been the norm for so long, many have started to think their firm’s performance has been acceptable, maybe even healthy, when in fact it’s tenuous at best.

Markets change, and industries die. Magazines used to be big business. They set the cultural conversation. When was the last time you bought a magazine outside of an airport? Thanks to some intrepid Wikipedia editors, you can pull up a list of magazines that have died as their industry contracted. You can also find virtual graveyards for the big box department stores and retailers that have crumbled under the weight of competing with the internet.

Mismanagement and bad fortune surely took down their share of the victims listed above, but if you look at the dates these companies folded, an overwhelming number have come in the last 20 years. A tsunami was incoming for the industry as a whole, and only a lucky few made it to high ground in time.

Law firms that don’t recognize the fundamental problems facing our industry run the same risk. Too many firms are coasting on inertia and are unprepared for a shock to their system. Even outwardly thriving firms like Sedgwick can turn out to be brittle and vulnerable when a bad turn comes. Any firm that isn’t actively planning for the downturn may be just a few years from closing its doors.

To survive this war, firms need to be disciplined and realistic. They need to embrace financial planning, educate themselves in complex analytics, push partners for creativity and efficiency, and work hard on accurately understanding, allocating, and cutting their costs. They need to emphasize diversity in hiring and promotion to maximize the skill sets and communities at their disposal. They need to get scrappy, clever, and clear-eyed. They need to run themselves like a business, not a Victorian intellectual salon.

Gordon Gekko Need Not Apply

To be clear, I’m not advocating for the return of Gordon Gekko, nor am I advocating we abandon the higher goals we traditionally aspire to. The legal industry is under siege, but we should not jettison our better selves entirely in the name of staying alive and making money. We can and should run ourselves smarter, while at the same time remaining humane, caring, and reflective. For all the unearned bluster we sometimes ascribe it, it still means something to have a profession. We owe ourselves, and the society that has given us so much, to remember that.

The notion that we are a profession and not a business will do us no favors in the next decade. Neither will the idea that we must cut throats, pillage, and plunder to survive. To make it through the coming reckoning, we need to balance the scales between the professional and the business sides of our industry. We need to find the productive middle ground between Atticus Finch and Saul Goodman. Above all we have to survive, both body and soul.

The first step to surviving a war is knowing that you’re in one. Now it’s time to decide what kind of soldiers we choose to be. Choose wisely.

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James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

* Conviction sends Bitcoin boss from blockchain to chain gang. [Law360]

* Remember Popkin & Stern? Probably not since it collapsed in 1991. Its wild bankruptcy tale is finally coming to an end after art fights and marriage proposals. [Stltoday]

* Drug smugglers are now suing their lawyers for saying they knew Alex Acosta but failed to get an “Epstein deal.” This “Rule of Law” thing is not going well, folks. [Miami Herald]

* Effort to quash the House subpoena of Trump’s accountants heads to the DC Circuit today where new judge Neomi Rao will have an early opportunity to cook up some kooky ramblings to justify a purely political decision. [National Law Journal]

* Andrew Cuomo steps up to disenfranchise voters to shield his political stooges. [Sunnyside Post]

* Municipality hacks keep striking and it’s a real problem for everyone’s privacy. [Legaltech News]

* R. Kelly arrested on new charges. [Huffington Post]

INTERNATIONAL – Zimbabwe is seeking to revamp its investment markets after it held its first treasury bills auction on Tuesday to revamp capital markets.Unchained treasury bills issuance under former leader Robert Mugabe worsened the country’s economic plight as they were used to fund the government’s expenditures.

Permanent secretary for treasury George Guvamatanga said yesterday that the treasury bills and bond markets were now being re-shaped.

Guvamatanga said that the first auction in years was held on Tuesday.

The highest bid rate was 47percent against 13percent stacked against a weighted average of 16.5percent to 19percent.

“We will be coming to the market with an Infrastructure Bond soon to be supported by a ring-fenced structure utilising Zimbabwe National Roads Authority (Zinara) cashflows to support road construction,” added Guvamatanga.

Investment analyst Steve Charangwa said there would be no withholding tax or any taxes on payoffs on the infrastructure bond be levied.

He said that a government guarantee would appeal to foreign fund managers.

“Issue size matters for liquidity and please get Zinara to also make the market for its bonds,” he explained.

Brokerage and investment advisory firm IH Securities said that the “Zimbabwe government had successfully relaunched the bills auction, despite testing the market in a period where the treasury has no need for the money”.

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has been touting a budget surplus of nearly ZWL500million (R19.6m) as signalling the government’s success in effectively managing fiscal spaces.

“The government is no longer running huge fiscal deficits.

“Inflation or other challenges on the exchange rate are caused by the creation of money,” Guvamatanga said.

Annually since 2011, legal research company Fastcase has named the Fastcase 50, an award that honors “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders.” Today, Fastcase named its 2019 honorees, a list that includes practicing lawyers, legal academics, law librarians, corporate counsel, journalists, company executives, bar leaders, and government officials.

[Full disclosure: I was included on the inaugural 2011 list.]

“The Fastcase 50 is one of our team’s favorite events every year, and our ninth class is one of our strongest,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters in a statement announcing this year’s 50 honorees. “These honorees are journalists, lawyers, information professionals, pioneers, and entrepreneurs who inspire us. We’re happy to share the light of their work as a beacon for all of us.”

Full information on this year’s winners can be found at www.fastcase.com/fastcase50. They are:

• Anette Aav, Director, IT Law Programme, University of Tartu.
• Charlotte Alexander, Director, Legal Analytics Lab; Associate Professor, Georgia State University.
• Jason Barnwell, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft.
• Raymond Bayley, CEO and Co-Founder, Novus Law LLC.
• Kim Bennett, Founder, K Bennett Law.
• Jess Birken, Founder, Birken Law Office.
• Michael Bommarito, CEO and Co-Founder, LexPredict; Adjunct Professor of Law, Michigan State University; Head of Research, ReInventLaw Laboratory.
• Brenda Castello, Executive Director and CFO, New Mexico Compilation Commission.
• Jack Cushman, Fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School.
• Michael Dreeben, Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice (retired).
• Marlene Gebauer, Global Director of Strategic Legal Insights, Greenberg Traurig LLP.
• Anusia Gillespie, U.S. Director of Innovation, Eversheds Sutherland.
• Gillian Hadfield, Professor of Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law; Author, Rules For a Flat World.
• Brad Heath, D.C. Justice and Investigations Editor, USA Today.
• Seamus Hughes, Program on Extremism Deputy Director, George Washington University.
• Darla Jackson, Research and Electronic Resources Librarian, The University of Oklahoma College of Law.
• Sukesh Kamra, National Director, Knowledge Management, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada.
• Catherine Krow, Founder and CEO, Digitory Legal.
• Marie Kulbeth, COO and General Counsel, SixFifty.
• Christian Lang, Head of Strategy, Reynen Court; Founder, NY Legal Tech Meetup.
• Marc Lauritsen, Founder and President, Capstone Practice Systems.
• James Lee, Co-Founder and CEO, LegalMation; Founding Partner, LTL Attorneys LLP.
• Erin Levine, Founder and CEO, Hello Divorce.
• Tiffany Li, Resident Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School.
• Jason Lockhart, Partner, McAngus Goudelock & Courie (MGC).
• Mike Maschke, CEO, Sensi Enterprises, Inc..
• Tony Mauro, Supreme Court Correspondent, ALM’s Supreme Court Brief.
• Dorna Moini, Founder and CEO, Documate.
• Cat Moon, Director of Innovation Design and Adjunct Professor, Vanderbilt Law School.
• Ian Nelson, Co-Founder, Hotshot Legal.
• Craig Newton, Co-Director, Cornell Legal Information Institute.
• Jonah Paransky, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions.
• Keith Porcaro, Co-Founder, Digital Public; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center.
• Seth Price, Founder, BluShark Digital; Founding Partner, Price Benowitz LLP.
• Jayne Reardon, Executive Director, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism.
• Erika Rickard, Senior Officer, Civil Legal System Modernization, The Pew Charitable Trusts.
• Heather Rosing, President, California Lawyers Association; CFO and Shareholder, Klinedinst PC.
• Jim Shelar, Former Chief Law Librarian, Arnold & Porter (In Memoriam).
• Janine Sickmeyer, CEO and Founder, NextChapter.
• George Simons, Co-Founder, Lawble; Founder, SoloSuit; Co-Organizer, Global Legal Hackathon.
• Scott Sipe, Associate Publisher, Carolina Academic Press.
• Ed Sohn, Managing Director, EY.
• Alyza Tarmohamed, Senior Director, LegalVIEW Bill Analyzer, Wolters Kluwer.
• Jason Tashea, Legal Affairs Journalist, ABA Journal; Founder and Director, Justice Codes; Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law.
• Roberta Tepper, Lawyer Assistance Programs Director, State Bar of Arizona.
• Renee Thompson, Mediator, Upchurch Watson White & Max; Executive Committee Member and Incoming Chair of the Board Technology Committee, The Florida Bar.
• Shawn Tuma, Partner, Spencer Fane.
• Anand Upadhye, Attorney and Vice President of Business Development, Casetext.
• Susan Williams, Reporter of Decisions, Arkansas Supreme Court.
• Miguel Willis, Founder, Access To Justice Fellows; Presidential Innovation Fellow, Law School Admission Council.

Fastcase says it will be celebrating the recipients during the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting this week in Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to all.