Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
Which two law schools are tied for schools with the highest first-time bar pass rate in 2020?
Hint: An impressive 98.91 percent of 2020 grads at these school who sat for the bar exam passed on their first try.
See the answer on the next page.
While the government’s proposed modifications to HIPAA primarily aim to make it easier for patients to access their health data, there are may be some unintended consequences.
That’s according to Laura Hoffman, assistant director of federal affairs at the American Medical Association, who spoke on a panel organized by healthcare consultancy Sirona Strategies about the proposed changes to HIPAA Privacy Rule.
One of the changes involves allowing patients to receive their medical information via personal health applications — smartphone apps, for example — which are often developed and operated by third-party technology companies. But these companies are generally not governed by HIPAA, opening up patient health data to potential misuse, Hoffman said.
“The patient isn’t the only one getting the information in that situation, and so you wind up exposing information to tech platforms, app developers and others,” she said.
That exposed information can then be shared with data brokers who create profiles on individuals, which can be used for potentially nefarious purposes. For example, it creates a gating opportunity where some people may get certain opportunities based on those profiles, and others are barred from those same opportunities, Hoffman said.
This has already happened in housing where the government sued Facebook for alleged housing discrimination. The suit claims that the tech giant used data-mining practices to only allow certain users to see housing advertisements based on demographic data, like race, religion and national origin.
“So, individually, we may not care if these kinds of profiles are created, but when you think systemically, and when you think about the opportunities that are afforded certain people based on data versus those that are not, it becomes a bigger conversation,” she said.
To combat this potential issue, there needs to be federal legislation, said Deven McGraw, co-founder and chief regulatory officer of Ciitizen, during the panel discussion. Though companies may put up privacy notices and have patients click through their terms and conditions, it is pretty clear that few, if any, consumers actually read through it.
“The ability to get a consumer to check a box is pretty easy, it’s alarmingly easy,” she said. “You could have essentially…an app that’s merely just a conduit for data that’s really serving a third party’s business interests.”
Another proposed change that could leave private health information exposed is requiring covered entities to respond to oral requests for health information. Currently, patients have to make those requests to providers in writing and signed by the individual, said Peg Schmidt, chief privacy officer at Advocate Aurora Health, during the discussion.
“My concern about oral requests is the potential for them to lead to impermissible disclosures,” she said.
The Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Illinois-based health system uses signatures to verify that a patient is in fact making that request, even if it is being delivered by another person. Without that, it becomes harder for the provider to ensure that the request is legitimate, she said.
Further, there is a higher risk of the request being misunderstood or not recorded accurately.
“I see so many things that could go wrong,” Schmidt said.
It would be preferable to give covered entities the option of responding to oral requests, rather than requiring it, she said.
The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services announced the proposed changes in December, which one healthcare lawyer described as the biggest modifications to HIPAA in the past seven years. The public comment period for the proposals ends May 6.
Photo: Dzmitry Skazau, Getty Images
Colorado’s Gov. Jared Polis is poised, any day now, to sign into law new legislation passed by Colorado’s State Assembly codifying best practices when it comes to surrogacy.
A Major Victory
Colorado’s House and Senate Committees heard emotional and compelling testimony over the past few months, in favor of the passage of surrogacy-supportive legislation. One witness testified to turning to surrogacy to have a child after ten (10!) failed adoptions. She explained that the reality of surrogacy is not the stories of celebrities hoping to preserve their figures but those of regular people who very much want to be parents. (And, by the way, please don’t tell people struggling to have children to “just adopt”!)
Judith Hoechst, a Colorado assisted reproductive technology attorney, was part of the team leading the effort to pass the new law. She testified as to her own story — she almost died in the delivery room with her first child, but knew that her family was not yet complete. She described turning to surrogacy in California, knowing that California law would protect both the surrogate and her family. “Loving families are formed in many ways, among them, surrogacy. Because of my son’s birth it was important to me to work to codify best practices and balanced protections for Colorado parents and surrogates. Denver undoubtedly has some of the best fertility clinics in the country. Now intended parents and surrogates under the care of Colorado fertility clinics can feel safer knowing they are legally protected here”.
What Does It Do?
In one sense, the new law will change very little. Most fertility clinics already require that surrogates meet certain important requirements. But the bill now puts some of those requirements into state law. These include for a surrogate to:
So nothing crazy onerous. And intended parents have their own basic requirements, which also include being over 21 years of age or older, undergoing a medical evaluation, and having independent legal counsel of their choosing by an attorney licensed in Colorado through the arrangement.
What It (Importantly) Does Not Include
Colorado’s surrogacy bill does not require that intended parent(s) be married, straight, or genetically related to their child. The bill recognizes that families take many forms, and provides helpful and broad protections. By contrast, some states require intended parents to be married in order to receive parental recognition under state law.
Additionally, the law recognizes that some Coloradans may grow their families with the help of donated sperm, eggs, or embryos. The new law-to-be makes it clear that the intended parents would have the protection of state law regardless of their genetic connection — or lack thereof — to their child. This is especially important in light of the horrific legal situations other parents have faced.
For example, Jay Timmons and Rick Olson went through surrogacy in Wisconsin, and were shocked when their case — which everyone believed to be a routine determination of parentage in a surrogacy arrangement — was assigned to a judge with views hostile to the process. The judge declared that their son, Jacob, was actually a legal orphan. Only after a nightmare of a year, when the judge stepped down to run for office, was their case reassigned and their parental rights swiftly recognized by Wisconsin law. Thanks to Colorado’s new law, a judge with anti-LGBTQ+ views, or other idiosyncratic ideas of who should be permitted to be a family, would not be left to their own devices to make similar extreme and harmful rulings.
Genetic (Traditional) Surrogacy
A vast majority of surrogacy arrangements in the United States and in Colorado occur in the form of “gestational” surrogacy, where the surrogate has no genetic link to the child. By contrast, “genetic surrogacy,” also known as “traditional surrogacy,” is where the surrogate is also genetically related to the child she is carrying and is, in a sense, both an egg donor and a surrogate simultaneously. Despite genetic surrogacy being relative rare, Colorado’s surrogacy bill addresses traditional surrogacy on equal footing as gestational surrogacy, putting in place parallel legal safeguards and procedures for both types.
No Out-Of-State Attorneys
Colorado assisted reproductive technology attorneys, as well as out-of-state attorneys in the field, should take particular note of the sections applying to attorney representation and parentage orders. Sorry, attorneys licenses in other states, but the bill provides that both the surrogate and the intended parents must have Colorado legal representation throughout the arrangement. Under current practices, frequently attorneys — including, at times, non-Colorado-licensed attorneys — only provide representation in the contract phase before the pregnancy and for the parentage legal phase after the pregnancy. Now, Colorado attorneys will need to be clear that their representation is for the length of the surrogacy arrangements.
Further, in a surrogacy arrangement, the parties must generally obtain a court order determining parentage to override the legal presumption that the person giving birth is the parent of the child. Previously, such a court order could have been obtained in another state and provided to a Colorado hospital and Colorado vital records directly. The new legislation requires that an out-of-state parentage order would need to be registered (aka domesticated) in a Colorado court first. Thus, the new law makes it financially and logistically less desirable to obtain a parentage order in a state other than Colorado.
Once Polis signs this bill, a huge congrats will be owed to bill sponsors Rep. Meg Froelich and Sen. Joann Ginal, as well as Colorado for its recognition of the exponentially increasing use of surrogacy in modern family building and for passing laws supportive and protective of surrogates, intended parents, and the children alike.
Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.
Currently, long-term capital gains — the profits made by selling appreciated assets held for more than one year — are taxed at a maximum of 20 percent for higher-income individuals.
Individuals with a taxable income of between $40,000 and $441,450 pay a more modest 15 percent tax rate on long-term capital gains, and those with an income below $40,000 owe no long-term capital gains tax at all.
Under current tax law, higher-income individuals may also owe an additional 3.8 percent net investment income tax on both long-term and short-term capital gains. As the law stands, income earned through the appreciation of a capital asset is almost always taxed at a lower rate than income earned through employment.
That might soon be changing, at least for certain higher earners. President Joe Biden recently unveiled a new policy that, if it becomes law, would hike the long-term capital gains tax for the highest earners to 43.4 percent (which would include the existing 3.8 percent capital gains surtax). In contrast, the current top marginal tax rate for wage income stands at 37 percent.
For most retail investors, this is hardly reason to panic. The new highest long-term capital gains rate would only apply to those making more than $1 million on an annual basis. Furthermore, tax experts are expecting there to be exemptions to the new highest capital gains rate for some taxpayers, including business owners.
Any major change in tax law calls for a reexamination of potential tax liability for high-earning organizations and individuals. Yet, more broadly, most economists are not expecting a major dent in equities markets if the higher capital gains rate becomes law. Following a one-day swoon in U.S. stocks when the planned capital gains tax increase was first announced, markets rebounded robustly the following day.
A report from UBS Global Wealth Management found that from a historical perspective, there is “no relationship” between the performance of the stock market and changes to the capital gains tax rate. UBS analysts expected equity market volatility based on an increase in the capital gains rate, to the extent there was any at all, to “be very short-lived.” LPL Financial broadly agreed with the conclusions of UBS, citing the state of the broader economy as being far more important to stock index performance in the past than were changes to the capital gains rate.
Additionally, although he had not previously announced plans for a specific top rate, President Biden has hardly been circumspect about his general intention to raise taxes on higher earners and on passive forms of income. Thus, many investors believe any effect of a higher capital gains rate has probably already been priced into the market. Others though, including some high-profile hedge fund managers, believe that the effect on stock market indexes has been minimal because President Biden’s proposed top rate of 43.4 percent does not have a realistic chance at becoming law.
Goldman Sachs economists predict that President Biden’s top 43.4 percent capital gains rate will never become law, and instead foresee a compromise top capital gains rate of 28 percent. Any increase in the capital gains rate would require the backing of all 50 Senate Democrats, because no Republican senator is expected to support any increase to the capital gains rate. An increase to the capital gains rate could be accomplished through reconciliation, meaning it would be immune to a Republican filibuster and would only require a simple Senate majority. Although Democrats could not lose a single Democratic senator in ushering in an increased capital gains rate, it is worth noting that a substantial majority of voters generally favor increasing taxes on the very wealthy, including a modest majority of even Republican voters.
It remains to be seen whether a top tax rate of 43.4 percent will become a reality for investors who make more than $1 million a year. But even a far more modest tax hike would be a significant change for top earners, and even the more optimistic fund managers accept the high probability of some kind of increase from today’s historically low capital gains rate making it into law.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
Imagine a world where you don’t have to worry about billing while on vacation.
Attorneys are spending much more time with a bunch of things at home. There’s not a corresponding decrease in professional responsibilities. That’s a mathematical formula for disaster. You can give people thousands of vacation hours a year. But if you don’t want to decrease billable hours, then nobody will take it.
— Jarrett Green, a wellness consultant and former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom attorney, commenting on the negative role that billable hour targets play on attorney mental health in the legal industry. As first reported here at Above the Law, some firms, like Orrick, are taking action on this front, and have added 40 billable, bonus-eligible vacation hours to attorneys’ schedules.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Of all the possible federal court reforms to pursue, cleaning up filing requirements ranks fairly low. Supreme Court justices don’t adhere to any defined set of ethics, transparency is almost non-existent, and the system is designed to disfavor age and experience in favor of promoting youth and inexperience to exert dead hand presidential legacies for decades.
But even if filing papers isn’t as weighty as those concerns… this nonsense is out of hand.
That’s University of Missouri School of Law’s Professor Dennis Crouch, author of the the Patently-O blog, doing a little spot checking of the Federal Circuit and finding the incidence of attorneys being forced to refile at exactly 100 percent.
This is admittedly a small sample size, but the odds that 10 consecutive appellate attorneys are running slapdash operations strains credulity.
Thankfully, Professor Crouch didn’t stop at 10:
Remember, this is the Federal Circuit we’re talking about, one of the last places in the federal judiciary to find pro se litigants and N00b attorneys. It boasts the most specialized bar in the whole system and lawyers are still constantly getting dinged.
Is it something unique to the Federal Circuit? Do they just have a more technical read on filing requirements because they’re all tech geeks in robes? There does seem to be something to the argument that this is a bit parochial, and perhaps the Federal Circuit — because of its unique place in the system — guards the exclusivity of its bar by playing up as many byzantine local wrinkles as possible. But while local and individual rules always introduce mischief into the process — and smack of a sense of judicial entitlement that’s problematic on a whole other level — the “invisible” local rule takes this to a new level:
“Does not actually require this.” That’s the chef’s kiss on this.
This is unacceptable for any court. Enforcing general uniformity in filing helps courts efficiently consider arguments, but when it gets to the level of “you put a blank where you meant ‘N/A’ so we’re rejecting the whole filing,” it’s just a court unnecessarily jacking up client fees by forcing attorneys to sacrifice valuable time crafting substantive argument to play arbitrary gatekeeper games. And before anyone says, “it’s not costing clients because lawyers shouldn’t charge for redoing the work,” I’m not even talking about that. Lawyers are billing clients extra to cross all these capricious “T”s in order to file it right the first time.
And this goes for the entire court system. We’ve discussed before how technical filing rules discourage pro se filers, a problem that’s only going to get worse as hiring legal counsel becomes less and less accessible to more and more people. It’s also an obstacle for pro hac counsel. Sidney Powell’s struggles to file a metric tonne of garbage on the federal courts were funny, but it probably shouldn’t be that hard for a former federal prosecutor to get a paper filed.
Again, this may not be the biggest problem in the judiciary, but it may be the only one where we can generate some quick and easy bipartisan support. So please, we’re begging you, do something about this.
And if anyone is thinking of citing this article in a formal request of the powers that be, remember to consider any specific local or individual rules before you do.
Punctilious Docketing Review [Patently-O]
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.
We told you the associate lateral market is hot like fire rn. And boy, we weren’t kidding. We all know — and have covered ad nauseam — that special bonuses are sweeping through the elite of Biglaw, which are likely part of a calculated move to keep associates happy enough to stay put at their current firms. And other perks are being thrown into the mix — like $1,000 worth of takeout or $1,500 in exercise equipment.
But Biglaw giants looking to entice associates away from their firms are also here to play. And Kirkland & Ellis, the firm consistently taking in the most money in gross revenue, has plenty of money to throw at new hires. As reported by Law.com, they aren’t shy about it either:
For instance, Kirkland offered a third-year associate at another firm a $150,000 signing bonus; offered another candidate $50,000, plus a possible top year-end bonus and an earlier path to partnership; and offered a retention bonus to a current associate to match a signing bonus from another firm, according to a source familiar with the bonuses.
In fact, Chicago-based recruiter Kay Hoppe characterizes this as “the most aggressive associate market in history,” so it’s no wonder firms are doing everything in their power to woo the best associates:
“I handle elite partner [moves]. Everybody wants them, But more than them, they need associates,” Hoppe said. “There’s more need than there is talent. And I wouldn’t fault Kirkland or anybody else for doing what they are doing for bringing in top associates.”
“The whole thing is upside down right now,” she said about the demand for associates compared with partners. “I have no problem with a firm offering a great associate the world, because they’re needed. And the best of the best provide something that is invaluable to the clients, to the partners and to their peers.”
It’s good to see firms realizing they need to up their game to keep their associates or to attract new ones. And for all the associates out there, go find your bliss (or at least the Biglaw firm that can give you the nearest simulacrum of happy).
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).
All of us are subject to scammers in many parts of our lives. Indeed, people routinely receive scam emails, text messages, and other communications trying to acquire money or private information from the victim. As many attorneys know from firsthand experience, small firm lawyers are often approached by well-organized and sophisticated scammers. Such scammers prey on the fact that lawyers may have trust accounts with client money and might be hungry to originate new business. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of awareness of common scamming tactics used against small firm lawyers, and I have heard about colleagues who have been victimized by scammers. I am far from an expert on scammers and their techniques, but it is important to convey information about these scammers so lawyers can protect themselves and their clients from being targets of scammers.
Common Scams Against Small Firm Lawyers
In my experience, there are several common scams employed against lawyers and their clients. One involves wire fraud whereby scammers spoof email addresses to make it look like a lawyer is sending an email to a client about wire details. In some situations, the fake email address is off by a letter, and the scammers copy the signature block of a lawyer so clients quickly glancing at the email think that the email originated from their lawyer and that the wire details are genuine. Sometimes, lawyers themselves are subject to such spoofing, and it is important to check all email addresses to ensure they are legitimate.
Another common scam is the asset-purchase agreement fraud. A client will ask a lawyer to handle an asset purchase and act as the escrow agent for the transaction. A wire is made into the lawyer’s trust account, and then the lawyer writes a check to the scammers with proceeds. Then, the wire is reversed and any legitimate money in the lawyer’s account leaves with the check written to the scammer. As an extension of this, scammers also sometimes falsely engage a lawyer to handle an employment law matter, breach of contract case, or other issue that settles quickly. The lawyer receives a settlement check that looks legitimate and deposits the check into their trust account. The lawyer then writes a real check from their trust account, and the attorney later discovers the check they deposited was not legitimate — but any real money in their trust account leaves with the real check they wrote. Scammers may try variations of these scams as well.
Warning Signs
Many law firms accept solicitations from the internet, so attorneys need to carefully discern warning signs of questionable matters. Scammers almost never wish to speak on the phone and will almost always try to communicate exclusively through email. In addition, scammers will almost never negotiate terms in a retainer agreement, and they will always insist that attorneys’ fees come from funds to be held in escrow so that they can avoid paying real money to retain the lawyer’s services. Moreover, scammers usually have inconsistencies in their operations. For instance, they may list a telephone number and an address in different geographic locations, and they may not understand how transactions work. As another example, a scammer may tell you that documents will be mailed to your office when email is the normal way a transaction is handled so they can avoid providing information immediately.
Moreover, all of the warning signs people use to detect phishing, spoofing, and other scamming activities apply to lawyers. For instance, scammers may not have a good grasp of English and write documents with spelling and grammatical errors. In addition, scammers may provide compensation terms that are simply too good to be true because the transaction is fake.
Due Diligence
There are steps that lawyers can take to more conclusively prove whether a matter is a scam. For one, lawyers should try to never accept work unless they have at least spoken to a potential client on the phone. Scammers may also make false websites and email addresses in order to perpetuate their scam. However, lawyers can check the ICANN directory and search the domain name for email addresses and websites created by the scammers. If the domains were registered recently using unusual registrars and with addresses that seem suspicious, it is more likely that the potential clients are scammers.
If you receive a check that is questionable, you should call the bank listed on the check if the paper purports to be a certified check, and the individual or business purportedly issuing the check in other instances. Banks and companies are usually appreciative and helpful when assisting lawyers in verifying the legitimacy of transactions. Moreover, lawyers should not write checks from trust accounts until funds have settled, and lawyers should wait as long as possible before issuing checks to have the most time possible for the legitimacy of funds to be verified. Lawyers should, above all else, use common sense when dealing with potential scammers and not let the desire to originate new business keep them from conducting due diligence.
In sum, all of us know that scammers exist in many facets of our lives, and we understand how bad actors attempt to acquire money and private information from others. Although lawyers are common targets of scammers, with some understanding of typical scams and how to conduct due diligence to avoid scammers, lawyers can help protect themselves and clients from bad actors.
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.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Is it a big deal when the feds raid a lawyer’s office and seize all his electronic devices? Asking for Rudy Giuliani, who got a visit from his friendly neighborhood FBI agent this morning and will finally quit texting reporters for at least as long as it takes him to get down to the Apple store and set up a new phone.
In fact, he got two visits, since agents knocked on the door at both his apartment and his office, the New York Times was first to report. But don’t worry, Rudy’ll be back to providing wildly incriminating copy in no time — it’s not like he can stop himself..
The Southern District of New York has been scrutinizing the president’s free lawyer for years, focusing on his business dealings in Ukraine, hamhanded efforts to gin up dirt on President Biden and his son Hunter, and a more successful attempt to get the American government to fire our Ukrainian ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch.
Along the way, Giuliani negotiated but did not execute an agreement with the sitting Ukrainian chief prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to locate stolen assets — apparently the $7 billion Giuliani fantasized that Biden absconded with using a publicly traded Franklin Templeton global bond fund.
Lutsenko loathed Yovanovitch, who backed anti-corruption forces in Ukraine, much to his consternation. The ambassador was also viewed as an obstacle to Russia-friendly oligarchs and their American allies, including Guiliani’s recently indicted buddies Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who sought to remake the board of Ukraine’s state-owned oil company for their own enrichment.
Whether or not Giuliani got paid directly by the Ukrainian government, he vigorously applied himself to advocating for Lutsenko’s goals. This is perhaps why career DOJ officials were prepared to go after him for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
But they were blocked by Bill Barr and other political appointees at Main Justice, who effectively protected the president’s lawyer for more than a year. Before the election, investigators were put off because any public pursuit of Guiliani might affect the vote. And after November, as Guiliani spearheaded efforts to get the election results overturned, DOJ bigwigs continued to drag their heels.
With Merrick Garland at its head now, the DOJ is finally willing to move. And so was the magistrate judge, who found probable cause to believe that there was evidence of a crime in Rudy’s office.
But Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello, of Garth Brooks pardon dangle fame, is incensed that the Department wouldn’t agree to interview his client and simply take his word for it that no crimes were committed.
“What they did today was legal thuggery,” he huffed to the Times. “Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States.”
DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM?
Well, yes, we do. Rudy’s the guy who elevated the perp walk to high art and dispatched the NYPD to engage in hundreds of thousands of illegal searches in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Which makes it even more remarkable that a judge approved this warrant. But keep talking — or better yet, tweet through the pain, fella.
Federal Investigators Search Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment and Office [NYT]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
Biglaw firms are still trying to cobble together ideas on how to safely get their attorneys and staff back into the office, and one of the most prestigious firms in the country has announced a reopening plan that will have everyone back at their desks just two weeks after summer’s official start date.
According to our sources, Sullivan & Cromwell — a firm that brought in gross revenue of $1,555,441,000 in 2020, placing it at No. 18 in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — is requiring all employees to return to the office in person on July 6. The news of the full reopening of the firm’s U.S. offices was announced earlier this month during a call with all lawyers. No email has been sent out on the matter.
Suffice it to say that the numerous associates we’ve heard from are far from happy with the situation. Why’s that? Because the firm has reportedly not made any mention of the possibility of remote, work-from-home arrangements going forward.
Here are some of the more detailed accounts of the firm’s reopening plans:
Sullivan and Cromwell is targeting a mandatory back to office by July 6, including summer associates, for all U.S. offices. No memo but this has been stated on multiple occasions, including the annual firm update and on weekly all lawyers zoom meetings. There has not been any mention of allowing anyone to do a partial work from home arrangement post-July 6. My understanding is this is one of the earliest among New York law firms. Associates are generally unhappy with the very early target date.
Wow S&C is taking a very different approach from Davis Polk. Everyone will be brought back in early July and summers will be there in person in June. We were told this is what people want and have been asking for. But we were never surveyed and I don’t actually know lawyers or staff who want a mandatory 100% return to the office the day after July 4 weekend. No memo or email, probably to prevent coverage. On the same call where leadership announced this, they would not commit to any hybrid flexibility in the future and said that we would all have to see how things go.
Above the Law reached out to Sullivan & Cromwell’s media relations team as well as the firm’s executive director with a request for comment but did not hear back before publication. If and when we do, we will provide an update here.
Are any other firms planning to reopen their offices before Labor Day and without any remote work options? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.
As soon as you find out about reopening plans at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.