$11K/Month Just Doesn’t Buy What It Used To: Biglaw partner accused of squatting in a mansion.
Yikes: Allegations of rampant sexual misconduct at USC.
So, This Doesn’t Look Great: Trump trying to get his midnight appointments game on.
Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!
According to Vault’s 2021 rankings, which intellectual property boutique takes the top spot?
Hint: The firm was founded only 10 years ago by some Kirkland & Ellis refugees.
See the answer on the next page.
A new Bloomberg Businessweek feature takes a deep dive into a niche area of Labor Department data, and the numbers suggest that the Trump administration’s “America First” policies have failed to slow the movement of jobs overseas.
The publication looks at applications for Trade Adjustment Assistance, a DOL program that provides aid to workers adversely affected by international trade, noting that the data indicates “an enduring trend rather than a revolution”:
In the first three and a half years of Trump’s presidency the U.S. Department of Labor approved 1,996 petitions covering 184,888 jobs shifted overseas. During the equivalent period of President Barack Obama’s second term, 1,811 petitions were approved covering 172,336 workers.
Click below for the full article.
Factory Jobs Still Head Offshore Despite Trump Promises [Bloomberg Businessweek]
Jeremy Barker is the director of content marketing for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with questions or comments and to connect on LinkedIn.
Mel Wulf (courtesy photo)
It’s a gloomy, rainy afternoon on Riverside Drive when 93-year-old Melvin Wulf wakes up from his nap to declare the recent Amy Coney Barrett hearings a “right-wing debacle,” and the would-be Justice a “crazed right winger.” But the man is no mere alte kakker.
Once upon a time, back in the 1960s and ‘70s, Wulf was the legal director of the A.C.L.U., and argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, “more than 99 percent of the rest of the lawyers in this country,” as he is quick to point out. Nonetheless he knows the truth. To the extent he is well-known, it is not for his own accomplishments, but rather those of the young woman whom he brought in to join him at the A.C.L.U., 50 years ago this fall: Barrett’s predecessor — though it feels so wrong to call her that — Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Wulf first met Ginsburg back in the summer of 1944, when he was a 16-year-old waiter at Camp Che-Na-Wah, a Jewish girls’ camp in the Adirondacks, and she, then known as Kiki Bader, was the niece of the camp’s owners, and part of the group of 12-year-old girls whom he served.
Not that Wulf had the vaguest recollection of what she looked like back then, as he told me by phone from his pre-war apartment, “I was interested in the older girls. The girls my age.”
And yet, when he and Ginsburg next met up again, 26 years later, in 1970, it quickly became clear that Ginsburg not only remembered Wulf as her camp waiter, but also from his star turn as Richard Dauntless in Che-Na-Wah’s 1944 rendition of Ruddigore.
Writing to him just a few weeks later in a bid to get the A.C.L.U.’s backing for Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue — a case which, like many that Ginsburg would take on, involved sex discrimination against a man — she seamlessly invoked the language of Wulf’s character. Calling the lawsuit “as neat a craft as one could find to test sex-based discrimination against the Constitution,” she vowed that she and her husband Marty would not only take the case to federal court in Denver, but “if our achievement is not glorious there, we will make a valorous try at the Supreme Court.”
The Gilbert and Sullivan flattery worked. Wulf gave Ginsburg the A.C.L.U.’s backing, and she not only went on to become co-founder of its Women’s Rights Project, but also the A.C.L.U.’s General Counsel, as well as a member of its board. (She also won Moritz.)
All of this pleased the dauntless Melvin until 1977, when he got caught on the wrong side of internal A.C.L.U. politics, and suddenly needed some institutional support of his own. “I asked her to come to my defense and she told me it was ‘not in her political interest,’” said Wulf. “She didn’t say why.” Perhaps he might have met with success if only he had instead sung her this line of Richard Dauntless: “‘Plead for him as though it was for your own father.’”
After the breach, the two never spoke again — case closed on their relationship, or so it seemed — and Wulf went on to private practice with an emphasis on First Amendment libel defense.
But then in 2017, a very strange thing happened. Wulf received a call from his nephew in L.A., reporting that he had just auditioned for a film in which his uncle was a character. That film would become the Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, and in it, Wulf would be played for all of his aggressive bluster by a mustachioed Justin Theroux.
“That representation of me, my wife hates it,” said Wulf. “Remember there was a portrayal of moot court in preparation for arguing the Moritz case in which I was very harsh with [Ruth]? It never happened. There was never any such moot court,” at which point I could hear Wulf’s British wife in the background, practically begging him for a chance to speak.
“I’m a bit more pissed off about the representation because I’m younger, and he’s older and more philosophical,” explained Deirdre Wulf, who told me that she would have preferred if Upper West Sider Mark Ruffalo had played her husband. “Luckily because Mel is very deaf and there were no closed captions, he couldn’t hear the dialogue. . . To this day I don’t want him to watch the movie on Netflix because they have closed captions and he would be able to read the dialogue and it would be demoralizing.”
“You’re telling her all the wrong things!” yelled Mel.
Nonetheless Deirdre continued. “Mel’s right,” she mused. “The past is the past and he’s had a wonderful and interesting and exciting career, and that was just a small part of it. He never ever looked back on it, or brought up her name, or bragged about the connection. Never.”
“Not true!” said Mel, taking back the phone. “That’s misinformation! I talked about my connection to Ruth frequently across the years and it was I who started her on her road to the Supreme Court. I did! People were amused.”
Now, watching as the Republicans begin to dismantle Ginsburg’s legacy via the all-but-assured installment of Barrett, Wulf is adamant about the need for political payback. The Republicans “deserve to get screwed royally by a packed court,” he says. “In a sense, they’re packing it right now.”
According to Wulf, Barrett may turn out to be “worse than Scalia, but that’s pretty hard to imagine that anybody is worse than Scalia. Scalia was the worst right-wing judge that ever sat on the Supreme Court.”
Given his dismal view of the Justice, I can’t help but ask Wulf what he made of the famously close, if unlikely, friendship between Scalia and Ginsburg. “I didn’t find it admirable, actually,” he tells me. “Just because they liked opera? I don’t know what was going through Ruth’s mind. Maybe she was just a lot more generous than I am.”
Now the afternoon is getting darker, and Wulf has a stack of reading that awaits: The New York Review, and The London Review, and some non-fiction political books that he has gotten from the recently reopened public library. Nonetheless Wulf is trying to remember the word he used to describe Barrett’s emotionless appearance when he and his wife watched her Senate confirmation hearings. “What’s the word when people just sit there and don’t move? D,” he calls. “How did I refer to the candidate what’s-her-name? I said ‘something-ic.’”
“Something like ‘robotic,’” ever faithful Deirdre promptly calls back.
“But no,” says Mel. “It was a very good word, actually.”
Five hours later I answer the phone and hear his voice: “The word is ‘catatonic.’”
Johanna Berkman’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, New York magazine, Air Mail, Lit Hub, Glamour, and many other publications. She is writing a book called “Color Wars and Campfires: The Cult and Culture of America’s Camps.” Her writing can be found at johannaberkman.com and you can find her on Twitter @johanna_berkman and on Instagram @johannaberkman.
The indefatigable 90-Day Known Expert Series rolls on into WEEK SIX. This week’s episodes include “Research in the Wild” and “The Stages of Grief and Categories.”
Make sure you take advantage of the show’s Q&A feature. You can ask Mike questions about the latest episode and he’ll answer at the end of the next episode. Just submit your question in the form at the bottom of this post.
Quibi founders Jeff Katzenberg and Meg Whitman knew that had cracked the nut of the next big thing in Hollywood, knew it in spite of the fact that everyone else on the planet didn’t seem to want it, knew they were going to revolutionize things because they knew the Gen Zers and other young people better than they knew themselves. Indeed, no one may have known it yet, but everyone was craving lavishly funded short-form videos to watch on their phones, so much so that they could launch it amidst a pandemic during which no one had to actually leave the room in which their televisions or laptops reside. Alas, the quickest bite of all was Quibi itself, an idea so good that no one would pay to watch it, and so lucrative that none of the 700 million SPACs out there were willing to so much as give it a sniff.
Quibi, the short-form entertainment service for mobile devices, announced on Wednesday that it will shut down, just over six months after its service launched…. The company said in its announcement that it’s making a proactive decision to preserve shareholder equity, and will return the remaining funds to investors. Quibi alerted its investors and employees of the news Wednesday afternoon.
“While we have enough capital to continue operating for a significant period of time, we made the difficult decision to wind down the business, return cash to our shareholders, and say goodbye to our talented colleagues with grace,” Whitman said in a press release. “We continue to believe that there is an attractive market for premium, short-form content. Over the coming months we will be working hard to find buyers for these valuable assets who can leverage them to their full potential.”
Even by her own not-especially-impressive standards, Whitman’s tenure at Quibi was a disaster. The company was a going concern for less time than her campaign for governor of California, and arguably ended even more ignominiously. (Whitman lost that 2010 race to a 72-year-old guy seeking his old job back after 28 years of failed presidential runs by 13 points; Quibi blew through $1.4 billion in just two years and garnered roughly half as many subscribers as Whitman votes a decade ago.) Sorry, Margaret: Looks like you probably should have taken the Uber job.
Happy Halloween! It’s almost time for the spooky, sugar-fueled festivities of the best holiday of the year. And while Halloween may look very different during a pandemic, there’s still plenty of room for fun, games, and candy.
In anticipation of All Hallow’s Eve, we bring you three of the strangest and arguably hilarious laws that exist for the sole purpose of avoiding dangerous situations (or perhaps just all that fun?) on Halloween night.
That’s right! If you are a resident of Bellville (or just want to trick-or-treat in the city limits) you had better be under age 12 – or in eighth grade or below. Why, you ask? Bellville’s mayor believed that Halloween was just for the kiddos and that there should be an age limit on knocking on strangers’ doors demanding candy. I guess the rest of us will have find our sugar rush at the 50% off sales on November 1! (We’ll be by the Reese’s).
Sidebar: one teen has some strategies for avoiding the “unfair discrimination” of her peers. The kid might be a lawyer someday.
The origins of this one are probably obvious – masks are often associated with nefarious actors like bank robbers or little league umpires. In Walnut Creek, you need a permit from the sheriff to wear a mask on public grounds – no exceptions for Halloween costumes. Need proof? Here’s the actual code.
Due to “some problems” they had with clown costumes, Vendragues banned them in 2014. The mayor’s office stated that the law was passed to “avoid any disruption… by evil clowns,” after a “terror wave” of clowns harassing innocent bystanders. Does anyone really mind this rule? Considering creepy clowns have popped up in towns in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, maybe we need more of this. *Shudders*
To dig into some truly scary stuff for lawyers, like ethical violations for mishandling evidence or cybersecurity and the risk to election systems, check out Lawline’s free trial.
Happy Halloween, all! Remember: friends don’t let friends dress up like clowns.
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This post was originally published on October 19, 2018
(Image via Getty)
Another day, another Biglaw firm that’s decided to do away with its COVID-19 austerity measures. This time, a firm that earlier admitted that it perhaps overreacted to the coronavirus crisis is making a move. Which one could it be?
It’s Loeb & Loeb. Back in April, the firm announced some salary cuts as a way to avoid layoffs. Partners took the hardest hit, with draws slashed by 20 percent. Income partners, senior counsel, of counsel, associates, and senior staff had their salaries cut by 15 percent and paralegals and other staff saw 10 percent cuts. Then, effective September 1, the firm partially rolled back those compensation cuts by 60 percent for income partners, senior counsel, of counsel, associates, paralegals, and staff, while the reductions for monthly capital partner draws remained in place. Now, all of that is changing.
As reported by Bloomberg Law, the firm will be completely eliminating its salary cuts. Chair Kenneth Florin announced via email that Loeb & Loeb “continues to outperform our initial financial projections for the pandemic,” so all compensation cuts will be eliminated and partner draws restored, retroactive to October 1.
Congratulations to everyone at the firm on the exciting news.
If your firm or organization is slashing salaries or restoring previous cuts, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).
If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.
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.
(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Just days before the election and with everything perpetually on fire, the Trump administration snuck in a little-noticed broadside against the civil service this week. In an Executive Order issued late Wednesday evening, the president converted hundreds of thousands of nonpartisan bureaucrats, hired for their subject matter expertise, into political appointees, who can be hired or fired at the pleasure of the president.
Because what’s plaguing the CDC is too many employees who can’t be booted out for refusing to endorse the latest quack COVID treatment the MyPillow guy convinces the president to get behind, right?
Remember when Donald Trump insisted that Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama and even took a Sharpie to a weather map to “prove” himself right? Under this new order, the National Weather Service employees who dared to contradict him with actual meteorological projections could be fired for it.
Rationalizing the move as necessary to restore good governance and allow poor performers to be weeded out without all those pesky civil service and union protections, the order reclassifies huge swathes of the federal bureaucracy as “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions,” language heretofore used to describe political appointees.
And it tasks the Office of Personnel Management with compiling a list of government employees to be recategorized by January 19, 2021, i.e. the day before the inauguration.
As Richard Loeb, senior policy counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, told the Washington Post, if Trump loses in November, he could expedite this “declaration of war on the civil service” by firing thousand of workers he’s long referred to as the “Deep State.” The loss of competent experts would cripple an incoming Biden administration.
Worse still, a lame duck President Trump could use the order to “burrow in” his own political appointees by reclassifying them as career bureaucrats, making it difficult for an incoming Biden administration to get rid of them, as former government ethics chief Walter Shaub explained to The Independent.
Creating the new category — known as “Schedule F” — and moving current civil servants into it could allow a lame-duck President Trump to cripple his successor’s administration by firing any career federal employees who’ve been included on the list. It also could allow Trump administration officials to skirt prohibitions against “burrowing in” — the heavily restricted practice of converting political appointees (known as “Schedule C” employees) into career civil servants — by hiring them under the new category for positions which would not end with Trump’s term. Another provision orders agencies to take steps to prohibit removing “Schedule F” appointees from their jobs on the grounds of “political affiliation,” which could potentially prevent a future administration from firing unqualified appointees because of their association with President Trump.
“It’s a two-pronged attack — a Hail Mary pass to enable them to do some burrowing in if they lose the election,” said Walter Shaub, who ran the US Office of Government Ethics during the last four years of the Obama administration and first six months of the Trump administration. “But if they win the election, then anything goes for the destruction of the civil service… [This could] take us back to the spoils system and all the corruption that comes with it.”
Can’t take your eyes off these f***ers for a minute!
So, who will Trump be replacing Dr. Anthony Fauci with on November 4? Dr. Oz? Dr. Phil? Dr. Pepper?
Can’t hardly wait.
Trump issues sweeping order for tens of thousands of career federal employees to lose civil service protections [WaPo]
Trump just quietly passed an executive order that could destroy a future Biden administration [Independent]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.