Category: News Feeds

There’s certainly nothing wrong with a wellness program. It may sound hokey when you call it a wellness program, but law schools taking the initiative to improve the mental and physical well-being of their students is a laudable thing. Law school puts students through a ringer, and it’s important to keep them healthy.

But… come on.

The Ave Maria School of Law has just unveiled a $2 million fitness center for law students and faculty to serve as the physical centerpiece of “a wellness program that includes the nationally acclaimed Complete Health Improvement Program, CHIP, to improve diet and nutrition.” This is the reminder that Ave Maria exists because stoners and depressed shut-ins binge ate Domino’s throughout the 90s.

So what is CHIP?

Founded in 1988 by Dr. Hans Diehl, a national expert on lifestyle medicine, CHIP is a 12-week program to change eating and nutrition practices to plant-based food to improve health and reduce risk of chronic disease. The program has been used by 80,000 people in the U.S., often with employers bringing the program to their workforce.

So… vegans. Great, we need to give lawyers another reason to feel superior to everyone else. Oh, did I say lawyers? I shouldn’t have because Ave Maria continues to boast a woeful 53.4 percent bar passage rate coupled with its 55.7 percent employment score. So we’re really only half talking about lawyers and vegans. Kind of like pescatarian paralegals.

Right now, students need to opt into the dietary program but they can look to a test group of faculty and staff who have already been through the system:

The group collectively lost 47 pounds and there was a drop of 448 points combined in triglyceride (fat in the blood) levels, along with 10 participants lowering their blood pressure.

Except… there were only 11 participants. So they dropped an average of 4 and a half pounds? That’s not a weight loss program, that’s a nasty cold. Jenny Craig doesn’t make commercials, “I lost 3 lbs. and I feel great!”

Look, getting healthy is all well and good. But Ave Maria is tagging kids with roughly a $240K bill to have a 50-50 shot at a job and when it comes time to make investments in the school, the answer probably shouldn’t be hiring trainers and diet experts. Is this supposed to entice someone to enroll in the school? “Gee, well, it looks from my LSAT that I’m probably not going to be employable as a lawyer but maybe I can take out a mortgage to eat seaweed for three years from a law school based on cardboard pizza.”

Avoid the Noid.

Ave Maria School of Law debuts wellness program for students and faculty [Naples News]

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.

An executive from the biologics arm of Korean conglomerate Samsung faces arrest as part of a probe into the company’s accounting practices.

The Korean wire service Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday that a court in Seoul issued an arrest warrant for the executive from the Incheon, Korea-based contract manufacturing organization Samsung BioLogics, a senior executive vice president surnamed Lee. The arrest is part of an accounting scandal in which Samsung BioLogics allegedly inflated its value ahead of its 2016 initial public offering, after which executives from the company – led by CEO Kim Tae-han – destroyed evidence of the maneuver. Kim appeared in court two weeks ago in Seoul for a hearing to determine whether to issue a warrant for his arrest. Lee is the eighth Samsung BioLogics executive to be arrested.

It is alleged that Lee decided at a meeting on May 5, 2018 to destroy or manipulate documents and accounting data for Samsung BioLogics and also Samsung Bioepis, a joint venture it has with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company Biogen. The news agency quoted the judge as expressing concern Lee may try to destroy evidence.

The joint venture between Samsung and Biogen was formed in December 2011, with Samsung owning an 85 percent stake and Biogen owning 15 percent.

It is alleged that Samsung BioLogics changed the method it used to calculate the value of its stake in Samsung Bioepis, resulting in Samsung BioLogics reporting a sudden profit in 2015. The alleged fraud amounts to 4.5 trillion won, or $3.9 billion.

Samsung BioLogics and Samsung Bioepis did not respond to requests for comment. Biogen declined to comment.

Samsung Bioepis’ main focus is on biosimilars. It currently markets several in the U.S., including Eticovo (etanercept-ykro), a biosimilar of Amgen’s autoimmune disease drug Enbrel. Another is Ontruzant (trastuzumab-dttb), a biosimilar of Roche’s Herceptin. Other product candidates in its pipeline include biosimilars of Roche’s cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) and eye drug Lucentis (ranibizumab) and Alexion’s Soliris (eculizumab), used to treat rare blood disorders. It is also developing a novel biologic, ulinastatin-fc, for digestive system disease.

Photo: Samsung BioLogics

The demise of Toys R Us, the retailer that fueled our childhoods, is a complex and sad tale. It was never as simple as getting crushed by Amazon’s online sales as some suggest. Certainly failing to build an online empire of its own while Amazon prepared to eat Geoffrey the Giraffe’s lunch didn’t help, but neither did a string of private equity owners who treated the store as their private capital loss.

It turns out the “R” in the name was as backward as the business model.

Speaking of private equity, it shouldn’t shock you to learn that Toys R Us was in deep with Kirkland & Ellis — the megafirm that’s fueled its meteoric rise to the top of the Am Law 100 by becoming the go-to private equity shop in the world.

With Toys R Us going down the tubes, Kirkland showed up at the bankruptcy proceedings with a hefty bill for services rendered — specifically its bankruptcy representation. In a sense, Kirkland is the last one to pick up something cool from Toys R Us, in this case $56 million for a little over a year of work. Not a bad haul, but not as cool as Omega Supreme.

Now that the firm has some cold hard cash lying around, perhaps Kirkland will join Gunderson in offering some summer bonuses.

Kirkland & Ellis Awarded $56 Million in Toys ‘R’ Us Bankruptcy [Big Law Business]

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.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings has indicated that he will move forward with contempt votes for Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, after their latest decisions to ignore Congressional subpoenas.

For all the good that will do.

Holding these people in contempt is absolutely the right action, albeit one that will yield no operative results, unless Elijah Cummings or some other Congressional Democrat is willing to lay hands on Barr and Ross and lock them in a basement under Congress.

I’m serious about the “Representative arrest” thing. It’s clear that Trump’s Department of Justice, led by the aforementioned Barr, will not use its executive authority to actually punish people like William Barr for ignoring Congressional subpoenas. However, the contempt of Congress statute clearly states that a person found in contempt can be imprisoned for up to 12 months. If Congress arrests these people, it’s not clear to me who, if anybody, has the authority to set them free. At the very least, I’d like to see a de novo court case on the issue, while Barr and Ross are cooling their heels in Nancy Pelosi’s powder room.

But, I grudgingly recognize that asking Congressional Democrats to treat the Trump administration as a unique threat that requires unique responses is asking too much of Congressional Democrats. Oliver Cromwell is not walking through that door. The House will hold these people in contempt, these people will laugh and snigger at the process, and all I’m supposed to do is give money to the DCCC so that red state Democrats can continue their quest to offer a slightly less racist alternative to the Republican party.

Sorry, this is all so freaking pointless. The Trump administration is going to get away with defying Congress, and there’s nothing Congress is prepared to do to stop them. Whatever, I guess I’ll just look forward to having my vote suppressed in 2020, and gerrymandered out of existence in 2022. I’m going to go outside and play catch with my kids before Trump makes it a crime for black children to have “recreation time,” and Democrats throw up their hands and say the policy polls too well with white people in suburban Philadelphia for them to do anything about it.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may go unnoticed by white people with landlines.

House likely to hold William Barr, Wilbur Ross in contempt after subpoena demands are rejected [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is just some guy nobody freaking listens to anyway.

I, like many first-year associates, am now working full-time at a firm where I began working as a summer associate between my 2L and 3L years of law school. However, this summer, I’m lucky enough to be on the other side of the summer associate program, and am one of the attorneys tasked with training and supervising the summer associates. Throughout my (limited) experience managing summer associates, I’ve learned that supervised delegation, combined with a conscious effort on your part to implement your own advice, is the key to a great summer experience for you and your summer associates.

KNOW WHEN AND WHAT TO DELEGATE TO SUMMER ASSOCIATES

When I arrived at our firm as a summer associate a few years ago, I was eager to get the practical research and drafting experience that I felt I was missing in law school and actively sought out as much work as I could get. This year’s summers (which we call Legal Apprentices) are no exception. And that’s a good thing. My colleagues and I like to give summer associates work revolving around research, discovery, and, on occasion, drafting.

Delegation is key to making sure that each summer has the substantive work they need in order to have the experience they have come to expect. However, knowing when, and what to delegate is easier said than done.

There is no science to knowing when it is better to delegate an assignment or to complete it yourself. In my time as an intern supervisor, I’ve relied on a non-exhaustive list of factors including: client management, efficiency, the opportunity cost of you doing the task compared to another activity, and the difference in the total cost to the client.

If and when you do decide to delegate a task to a summer, best practice is to follow up any in-person meeting with an email containing a summary of the task, and any interim deadlines which you set, in order to make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding how to complete the task. While important not to over-do it, checking-in during the middle of an assignment helps make sure that your instructions were clear, and streamlines your editing process.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

Like anything in our personal and professional lives, it is important, as a supervising attorney, to, as the saying goes, “practice what you preach.” Cliché’s aside, following your own advice is important not only to set a good example for your summer associates (and hopefully reinforce the best-practices and behavior that you just explained), it can be helpful for you too. After all, we’re all busy, and often skip the important step of deeply thinking through our assignments which delegating requires.

By knowing when and what to delegate, and making sure you follow your own advice, you can make sure that the summer experience is great for everyone involved.

David Forrest is an attorney for Balestriere Fariello. He graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in June 2018. David works on all aspects of complex commercial litigation and arbitration from pre-filing investigations to trial and appeals. You can reach him by email at david.a.forrest@balestrierefariello.com.

As a public school, Alabama’s “litigation bait” abortion bill became very much the University of Alabama Law School’s problem. When the school’s most visible donor — the man who gave the school some $26 million and earned his name on the door — spoke out against supporting public institutions in Alabama over the abortion bill, local politicians and the board of trustees made noises about forfeiting the money just to sever ties with the guy.

And now they have. That sure didn’t take long! But it is very much on brand for this debate that the Trustees were forced to make a drastic, life-altering decision within days.

University of Alabama trustees voted Friday to return a record $21.5 million donation from controversial donor Hugh Culverhouse Jr. and rename the law school. Culverhouse had originally pledged a total of $26.5 million.

The school claims it had unrelated difficulties in working with Culverhouse. It just so happens that these difficulties came to a head at the precise moment that the state government passed an abortion bill and Culverhouse raised constitutional objections. It’s not particularly great timing for the school. And they wasted no time getting petty with the break — sending folks to remove the guy’s name within minutes.

https://twitter.com/reidreporterguy/status/1137020745727524864/

It’s tempting to buy the school’s argument that they’re not a political actor in all this and that they really had perfectly apolitical issues with Culverhouse. But then you look at exactly who’s on the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. Kay Ivey, the governor behind this law, is president ex-officio. You know she’s been talking to these folks. It’s a political body — it’s explicitly responsible to the state government.

So now the school’s giving up over $20 million to own the libs. This is where boycotts break down. When the party on the other end just doesn’t care about money, there’s not much a boycott can really do.

UA trustees return $21.5 million donation, rename law school [Al.com]

Earlier: Donor Tells Students Not To Go To Law School Bearing His Name

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.

In late May, Swiss national Richard Le Vieux, who ran a successful coffee, avocado and macadamia nut export business for three decades, appeared in court in the Chipinge district, charged with refusing to vacate part of his Farfell coffee estate.

Under former President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe enacted laws to allow black people to claim farms owned by whites. However, Mr Mugabe was ousted in 2017, and his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to end evictions and compensate affected farmers, as part of his drive to attract investors with the promise that “Zimbabwe is open for business”.

Eighteen months has passed since the coup that unseated Mr Mugabe took place, and Zimbabwe’s efforts to re-invent itself appear to be coming unstuck. The arrest of Mr Le Vieux comes at the worst possible time for the country.

“This absolutely makes me angry,” says Vince Musewe, an economist at Manicaland Capital Partners in eastern Zimbabwe. “I am busy trying to promote investment and this happens. And of course, it increases perceived country risk.”

This year, Zimbabwe has seen its worst maize harvest in a decade, leaving up to 5 million people facing hunger. A devastating cyclone plunged large swathes of land underwater in the eastern part of the country in March. Before that, a drought had delayed crop planting.

At the same time, many of the once-thriving commercial farms are under-utilised, occupied by subsistence farmers who struggle to produce commercial quantities of crops for resale. As part of Zimbabwe’s attempt to revive its agricultural sector, the government pledged to pay reparations to evicted white farmers, those in financial straits and the elderly, to help them get back on their feet.

The government estimates it will pay out $3 billion, although the Commercial Farmers Union puts the figure at closer to $10bn. The two sides are still negotiating the final number.

Payment to those in financial difficulty has also begun, finance minister Mthuli Ncube said in a statement last week, with 737 farmers registered.

However, as the warrant issued against Mr Le Vieux indicates, not everyone in the Zimbabwean ruling elite is on board with reversing the Mugabe-era land policy.

World Farming Organisation president Theo de Jager says even compensation payouts are facing opposition within the ruling ZanuPF party.

“White farmers who were expropriated without compensation in Zimbabwe have high hopes to receive the first interim compensation this week, but apparently some government officials are still trying to block it,” he said.

Making peace with the farmers is not only about bringing stability to agriculture – it is also about ending targeted sanctions on the country. Currently, the US in particular maintains a list of senior government officials that cannot do business – or travel to – the US.

Targeted sanctions were introduced in the early 2000s, when Grace Mugabe notoriously would regularly commandeer aircraft from the state airline, Air Zimbabwe, to jet off to London and go for marathon shopping sprees at Harrods.

The Mugabes were barred from the US and Europe, as were senior Zanu PF officials. Among them was Mr Mnangagwa himself. In the years since, Zanu PF leaders have used the sanctions to muddy debate, blaming them for the country’s poor financial health.

At the same time, the US has enacted a piece of legislation to financially support a democratic government in the country, The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (Zdera). This has yet to take effect, according to the US embassy in Harare.

“Only 140 out of 16 million Zimbabweans are on the targeted sanctions list,” US ambassador Brian Nichols said via the official US Harare embassy Twitter account. “Zdera has never been enacted, but if the government delivers on the reforms it committed to, Zimbabwe will meet the requirements of Zdera.”

The raising of sanctions has therefore become something of a rallying cry for Zanu PF supporters over the years.

Mr Mnangagwa may have hoped lifting them following the end of farm land grabs would have cemented his shaky authority over the party, and served as an easy public relations win for his administration.

Mr Mnangagwa himself has pushed this line. “Our economy was greatly affected by the sanctions imposed on us nearly now close to 18 years,” he said in Harare last week, quoted in state media. “Under the new dispensation, we have said with or without sanctions, we must focus on developing our economy.”

The offer to compensate farmers in spite of the country’s dire financial position may be a sign of just how desperate Mr Mnangagwa is to do just that, analysts say.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe must now contend with food shortages and a restive population. In a touch of irony, some of the emergency food imports it needs will likely come from ex-Zimbabwean farmers now settled in neighbouring countries such as Mozambique and Zambia.

By some estimates, nearly half of commercial farmers in Zambia are Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe has made efforts to lure them back, offering 99-year leases and making promises of low-interest loans.

However, even if they wanted to return, they would struggle to rebuild in a fluid environment where money is in short supply. Banks continue to ration how much depositors can withdraw. The primary currency since 2009 has been the US dollar, which of course Zimbabwe cannot print. Instead, it relies on export earnings to bring dollars into its system.

Now, with the arrest of Mr Le Vieux, selling the return narrative will be even more difficult. The issue has clearly alarmed the Zimbabwean government, and state media reports that the matter is “being discussed at the highest level”.

Still, it does show that Mr Mnangagwa’s authority is not guaranteed. Many of Mr Mugabe’s supporters want the remaining white farmers to be evicted. Mr Mugabe, his family and inner circle benefited directly from the evictions. The Mugabes took personal possession of farmland, with some reports saying they owned as many as 21 at the time of his removal from office.

In May, debt collectors said they would soon auction off equipment on the Mugabes’ farms to pay off debt. Trucks, tractors and harvesters will go under the hammer, while the farms themselves will likely end up owned by the state.

It now remains to be seen whether Mr Mnangagwa can overcome sceptism that his administration can undo years of misrule and return the agricultural sector to prosperity. He was after all a central figure in the Mugabe administration since it was formed in 1980.

Zimbabwean analyst Hopewell Chin’ono says it is easily forgotten that Mr Mnangagwa was part of the cabinet that crafted the country’s land reform programme.

“Someone once told me that Zimbabweans were silly to believe that Robert Mugabe was authoring Zimbabwe’s miseries alone,” he says. “It is now self-evident that he was only the face of the script, and that the authors are the ones who are now in charge. His removal has changed little.”