Author: TSA Press

In many ways, Zoom is an incredible success story. A relative unknown before the pandemic, the company’s userbase exploded from 10 million pre-pandemic to 300 million users worldwide as of last April. One problem: like so many modern tech companies, its security and privacy practices weren’t up to snuff. Researchers found that the company’s “end-to-end encryption” didn’t actually exist. The company also came under fire for features that let employers track employees’ attention levels, and for sharing data with Facebook that wasn’t revealed in the company’s privacy policies.

While the company has taken great strides to improve most of these problems, the company received a bit of a wrist slap by the FTC this week for misleading marketing and “a series of deceptive and unfair practices that undermined the security of its users.” A settlement (pdf) and related announcement make it clear that the company repeatedly misled consumers with its marketing, particularly on the issue of end-to-end encryption:

“In reality, Zoom maintained the cryptographic keys that could allow Zoom to access the content of its customers’ meetings, and secured its Zoom Meetings, in part, with a lower level of encryption than promised. Zoom’s misleading claims gave users a false sense of security, especially for those who used the company’s platform to discuss sensitive topics such as health and financial information.

The FTC also criticized Zoom for storing some meeting recordings unencrypted in the cloud for up to two months, despite marketing claims that meetings would be encrypted immediately following session completion. The agency also criticized Zoom for bypassing Safari malware detection when it installed ZoomOpener web server software as part of a Mac desktop application update in July 2018:

“Without the ZoomOpener web server, the Safari browser would have provided users with a warning box, prior to launching the Zoom app, that asked users if they wanted to launch the app. The complaint alleges that Zoom did not implement any offsetting measures to protect users’ security, and increased users’ risk of remote video surveillance by strangers. The software remained on users’ computers even after they deleted the Zoom app, and would automatically reinstall the Zoom app—without any user action—in certain circumstances.”

The settlement itself isn’t much of one. As part of it, Zoom simply has to “establish and implement a comprehensive security program” and adhere to “a prohibition on privacy and security misrepresentations,” stuff the company insists it has already done. The settlement doesn’t come with any meaningful financial penalties or consumer compensation of any kind, resulting in some dissenting Democratic Commissioners (like commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter) arguing it wasn’t really much of a settlement at all:

“Zoom is not required to offer redress, refunds, or even notice to its customers that material claims regarding the security of its services were false. This failure of the proposed settlement does a disservice to Zoom’s customers, and substantially limits the deterrence value of the case.”

Again, Zoom should be applauded for the fact that the company has taken many concrete steps to improve things sense reports first surfaced that its privacy and security standards weren’t up to snuff. But it’s not clear that the FTC, arriving late to the party and “requiring” the company do a bunch of things it had already accomplished, really acts as much of a deterrent for the long line of companies that phone in their privacy and security standards. Especially when most of them get far less (if any) attention for similar behavior, in part because the FTC routinely lacks the resources to seriously police privacy at any real scale.

Zoom Gets An FTC Wrist Slap For Misleading Users On Security, Encryption

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

About Time: NY Governor Cuomo Signs Anti-SLAPP Law
Appeals Court Strips Immunity From Detectives Who Turned A Rape Report Into 18 Hours Of Terror For The Victim
Trumpland Apparently Just Forgot About Its Manufactured TikTok Hysteria

Virtual interviews have become the new normal during the pandemic. They come with their share of unique issues (many of us have dealt with someone stuck on mute, for instance). Fortunately, with the right preparation you can avoid most of those problems.

Our candidates have completed hundreds of virtual interviews over the last nine months, securing offers, and even joining their new employers without in-person meetings. We have learned some valuable lessons from their experiences.

Here are our top tips so that you can make the most out of your virtual interview:

Tech Considerations:

1. Use headphones, if possible, preferably with a built-in microphone. Using computer speakers without headphones can cause an echo, which is an awkward and irritating experience for everyone involved.Wired earphones help reduce the risk of audio lag and connectivity problems associated with Bluetooth. We advise against using Apple Airpods and Airpod Pros with Windows computers, as we have had several reports that Airpods can be unreliable within applications like Zoom.
2. Familiarize yourself with the video conferencing platform that you will use for your interview. If you’re already familiar with the platform, be sure to open the application ahead of time and check for software updates so you don’t run into any problems the day of the interview.
3. While most video conferencing platforms offer mobile apps, we recommend using your laptop/desktop for video interviews if possible. This ensures you have access to all video conferencing features, such as screen sharing, which are sometimes limited in mobile apps.
4. Set aside 15 minutes before your scheduled interview time to test your microphone and video. Most video conferencing applications (like Zoom) offer microphone tests. For video tests, consider using your laptop’s camera application to check the lighting and your appearance before joining the interview call.
5. Keep your computer plugged in during the interview to avoid any interruptions if your battery starts running low.
6. If you run into audio issues, you can use your phone to call the interviewer and continue the conversation by phone while on camera.  You can also use the chat function to communicate with the interviewer.
7. Optional: prepare a back-up plan in case of wifi disruptions. While outages are rare, preparing ahead of time can reduce last-minute scrambling on the off chance that you encounter any issues with home internet connectivity. Consider setting up your phone’s personal hotspot as an alternative in case you lose your regular wifi connection.

Preparing Your Interview Space:

1. Choose a quiet, private space with a strong internet signal.
2. Remember to lock the door to reduce the risk of interruption by family, roommates, or pets. Consider placing a sign on the door as a reminder for other members of your household.
3. Be mindful of the background. Your interview background is an excellent opportunity to communicate who you are. At a minimum, it should appear clean, tidy, and work appropriate. If possible, avoid a view of your kitchen or bedroom, as this can be distracting. Bookshelves, educational degrees, family photos, plants, and natural lighting in your background can all help to convey a positive first impression.
4. If you’re interviewing for a position that encourages work from home (“WFH”), consider what your background communicates about your ability to work from home effectively. Be prepared to discuss your WFH setup. Do you have a dedicated work space at home? If not, how have you adapted your space to work from home?
5. Virtual backgrounds on Zoom can be fun — and necessary in some cases — but use good judgment in determining whether your choice in background could be distracting for your interviewers. If you decide to use a virtual background, choose a professional image, like bookshelves or a solid color, and consider draping fabric in your background to create a functional green screen.

Making a Strong First Impression:

1. Choose an outfit that you feel confident in, and dress exactly how you would during an in-person interview. Wearing a strong professional outfit can help shift your mindset into focus mode, and feeling confident is a critical psychological factor in interview success. Wear a full outfit. Some of our candidates have had to stand up to grab dropped items, and it is easy to imagine a camera accidentally tilting and showing more than the shoulders up.
2. Minimize distractions. Turn off notifications on your computer, and place your phone in airplane mode to avoid an email or missed call notification interrupting your train of thought during the interview. Just this week, a candidate lost an opportunity because he was sending emails and texts during the interview, and the firm read that as a lack of serious interest.
3. Bring a glass of water into your interview space. If you’re feeling nervous, take a sip of water.
4. Raise your camera. Consider using a laptop stand or setting your laptop on top of some empty boxes (or books) to create a more flattering camera angle. Ideally, your body should be positioned in the center of frame, with the top of your head at the top of the frame and the middle of your chest at the bottom.For those who wear makeup, be sure you check your appearance using your laptop camera before the interview, as makeup can appear differently on video than it does in real life.
5. If you have time, also consider room lighting. Facing natural light sources is ideal, while sitting with your back towards a window can create a dark silhouette. You can also adjust the brightness of your laptop screen and play around with different combinations of lighting/angles ahead of time to figure out what helps you feel most confident.
6. Maintain eye contact, and practice looking into your video camera when you speak. Be mindful of appearing distracted when your gaze shifts outside the interviewer’s frame of view (e.g., writing notes might be mistaken for checking your phone).

Virtual Interview Day Checklist:

• Microphone/audio test completed
• Computer plugged in
• Door locked
• Phone silenced and computer notifications turned off
• Personal appearance and background checked using laptop camera

Whether you are interviewing in person or virtually, preparation is the key to your success. Invest an hour or two following the tips above to make the most of your interview.

Here at Lateral Link, we work closely with our candidates to help prepare them for their interviews and maximize their chances of success. If you’re a Biglaw associate or partner considering a lateral move to another firm, please feel free to contact me to learn about the state of the market and new opportunities.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Amy Savage, a Principal based in Washington, D.C., where she leads the Government Transitions Group. For 15 years she has focused on attorney hiring in the D.C. market, and her inside knowledge gives her candidates clear advantages when it comes to joining the best firms. That expertise has been instrumental in her successful placements of partners, counsel, associates, and in-house attorneys with the highest-rated practices in the D.C. region.

Amy is also a recognized expert on legal career issues. She has presented lectures at Yale Law School, serves as a D.C. market expert for Harvard Law School, and has written articles for The Legal Times and other publications. She has also testified as an expert on attorney compensation. Amy earned her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2000.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

As the world continues to mourn the loss of Alex Trebek, many are visiting the “J! Archive” database, where “Jeopardy!” superfans have compiled clues and contestants from 37 seasons of the show. 

The “J! Archive” reveals that the legal industry was significantly represented among contestants: A search for “attorney” brings up 691 player results, and “lawyer” brings up 261. (These include a few “Teen Tournament” and “College Championship” players who said they were considering a career in the law, as well as some duplicate appearances.)

Over the years, Above the Law has detailed instances where the legal industry crossed paths with the show, noting that “Jeopardy!” could be a source of meme-age anxiety for the lawyers who appeared and that attorneys have provided substantial fodder for its 400,000-plus clues. 

Indeed, the “J! Archive” shows that “lawyer” and “attorney” have a combined 954 results in the clues from the Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Tiebreaker rounds. The terms have also made 21 Final Jeopardy appearances — including two whose correct response is “Who is Atticus Finch?” and one correctly answered by “Who is Harper Lee?” 

And while we continue to grieve the loss of the show’s host, many “Jeopardy!” fans have discussed potential successors. One of Trebek’s own suggestions? A former Biglaw associate. 

The J! Archive

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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.

Once upon a time Dan Loeb was a Democrat. Then Barack Obama was mean to him, leading to one of his first rather unfortunate comparisons, and since then he’s been a pretty committed Republican, unless you happen to be the kind of Democrat who likes charter schools. So you might expect him to be a bit disappointed by last week’s result. And he might well be. But he’s probably not feeling too bad about it.

Daniel Loeb’s Third Point gained nearly $400m in a bullish bet on the outcome of the US election…. Mr Loeb had explained how, as a result of the firm’s research and use of data providers, he was not overly worried about the effect of the election on markets…. Mr Loeb has since made around a further $200m, taking gains this month to a total of around $600m, or 7 per cent. His fund was helped by Monday’s rally that lifted some of his biggest holdings such as Prudential and Walt Disney. Third Point did not respond to a request for comment.

Baker McKenzie decided to kick off the 2020 bonus season bright and early on Wednesday morning, announcing the $15K to $100K scale that we’ve seen for years now (while promising to match any increases in the market, should they occur). Thus far, the firm’s announcement has been more or less ignored.

Before you start wondering what the other firms could possibly be waiting for before making their matches, you should know that we’ve seen this before.

Last year, Milbank made the first move when it came to announcing year-end bonuses, and for five days, partners on Biglaw executive committees sat twiddling their thumbs until Cravath came forward to announce that it was matching the Milbank bonus scale. Only then did matches occur — and at a rapid pace, at that.

Cravath’s seal of approval may be what’s needed here, but let’s face it: we’re dealing with a pandemic and there are already different tiers of compensation across Biglaw.

“This year we see much more of a fragmented system with different firms doing different things,” said Nathan Peart, managing director of Major, Lindsey & Africa’s associate practice group, in an interview with Am Law. If you recall, while some firms adopted special fall bonuses on the Davis Polk scale, others decided either to commit to matching them when year-end bonus time came around or forgo them entirely.

Peart adds that the rest of the market could also be waiting for historical bonus leaders like Cravath or Milbank to make a move before jumping into the fray—a possibility Baker McKenzie seems to have hedged for, by telling its associates that the firm will match any increase to the scale.

“The market does look to the likes of Cravath and Milbank to make that market leap,” Peart said. “I don’t think Baker wants to set a figure and not have any flexibility if the market goes higher. I think it was prudent to do that … It makes sense to say ‘we’re going to match don’t worry about that.’ The psychology is very important internally for the firm.”

It looks like we’re going to have to wait impatiently for Cravath to make its move on bonuses, but for the time being, at least associates know what the bottom of the 2020 bonus market looks like. It’s just a matter of when your firm will match or beat it.

Baker McKenzie Bonuses Met With Crickets, but Likely Not for Long [American Lawyer]

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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.

Who says some good, old-fashioned pressure doesn’t work?

Just a few days after a New York Times article blowing up Jones Day and Porter Wright over their election litigation representations, Porter Wright has decided to bow out of their representation of the Donald Trump campaign in the legal battle contesting the results of the election in Pennsylvania, saying:

Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that Plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws, and current co-counsel and such other counsel as Plaintiffs may choose to engage represent Plaintiffs in this case. Plaintiffs are in the process of retaining and causing other counsel to enter an appearance herein.

This comes after a firestorm of controversy that saw Porter Wright, and other firm’s representing the president and/or his allies in election litigation like Jones Day, be accused of undermining American democracy. PACs like Lincoln Project and MeidasTouch are going after these big firms for trying to undo the free and fair election in courts, and though Porter Wright has not issued a statement on their withdrawal, it seems like it all got to be too much.

They aren’t the first Biglaw firm to ditch their election work — Snell & Wilmer also withdrew from election litigation (in Arizona). And it seems it was just in the nick of time, as MeidasTouch revealed they were ready to launch attack ads against Snell before they withdrew.

Giant firm Jones Day is still representing the Pennsylvania GOP in their election litigation. But I wouldn’t expect them to back out any time soon. Their response to the controversy thus far has been to double down on their representation.

Read the motion to withdraw below.

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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).

* A lawyer for Britney Spears claims the singer will not hold any performances until her father steps down from a court-appointed conservatorship over her. Seems like she’s at a “crossroads” and they should leave Britney alone! [Fox News]

* Check out this piece from my former boss on the possibility of President Trump being pardoned. [CNN]

* A Louisiana attorney has been reprimanded for allegedly attempting to intimidate an expert witness. [Bloomberg Law]

* The Trump Campaign is using a fair use defense to ward off a copyright infringement lawsuit involving the 80s hit “Electric Avenue.” To be fair, it’s a catchy song. [Hollywood Reporter]

* A defamation lawsuit filed against CNN by the Trump Campaign has been dismissed. Guess CNN doesn’t suck so much… [Yahoo News]

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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.

Kinney Recruiting is working with the Washington, DC, office of a global AmLaw 50 on its search for an Antitrust Associate.

We are seeking an attorney with at least two years of experience with antitrust with either the government or a law firm. We would also welcome litigation associate with an interest in antitrust and practicing cartel defense and/or merger control.

This is a global practice with over 300 attorneys and centered in DC. It is an excellent opportunity.

To learn more, please submit your resume to jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com.