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Is it appropriate for an attorney to make false representations about himself in a court filing? Asking for a former federal prosecutor who seems to have neglected to pay his bar dues in DC.

So when America’s Mayor stated on his application to appear pro hac vice on behalf of the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania that “I am a member of the bar in good standing in every jurisdiction where I am admitted to practice,” he was perhaps a bit wide of the mark.

As we noted on these pages a year ago, Mr. Giuliani appeared to practicing law in the District while on inactive status.

Nonetheless, the president’s pro bono attorney’s application was approved by U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, so, unless that approval is revoked due to lack of candor by a member of the bar, Giuliani will presumably appear on behalf of the Trump campaign at this afternoon’s hearing.

Giuliani joins the third set of lawyers since the Trump campaign filed suit against the Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonewealth Kathy Boockvar on November 9. Porter Wright Morris & Arthur withdrew their appearance on the 12th, and the two Texas lawyers who replaced them noped out yesterday.

Judge Brann refused to allow local counsel Linda Kerns to withdraw her appearance immediately, although she seems likely to be replaced by Harrisburg attorney and talk show host Marc Scaringi. On his November 7 show, Scaringi opined that “There really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency, including these lawsuits. At the end of the day, in my view, the litigation will not work. It will not reverse this election.”

What prompted Mr. Scaringi’s change of heart in the intervening days? Surely not the progress of the Pennsylvania case, which was massively curtailed after the Third Circuit ruled that political candidates lack standing to sue the Commonwealth to enforce its own election laws. The Trump campaign massively pared back its complaint, nixing five counts of action relating to the alleged exclusion of Republican observers during the vote count.

In the remaining two counts, the campaign charges that the four counties which contacted voters who had mailed in defective ballots and allowed them to vote provisionally violated the Equal Protection rights of citizens in other counties. Despite the fact that the Secretary of Commonwealth encouraged all the counties to do exactly that.

As the defendant noted in a motion to dismiss filed yesterday:

The Secretary disseminated her guidance regarding this issue to all counties; the fact that some counties opted not to embrace such an option does not mean that those counties that did violated the Constitution. Election practices need not cater to the lowest common denominator, and Plaintiffs’ arguments would improperly penalize those counties that took steps to ensure the enfranchisement of voters by helping them avoid ballot disqualification.

Upon entering his appearance yesterday, Mr. Scaringi requested a postponement of today’s hearing so he could familiarize himself with the case. This motion was immediately denied by Judge Brann, who seemed unimpressed with such a request being issued at 7:40 p.m. on the eve of a 1:30 p.m. hearing.

Which leaves us with a federal hearing in a critically important — if totally doomed — election case, in which the incumbent president is represented by one attorney who has requested to withdraw her appearance, one attorney who has publicly said the case is crap, and one attorney who hasn’t entered is appearance in a federal court since 1992, already misrepresented himself to the court, and recently got caught by Borat with his hand down his pants.

Because … 2020.

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Attorneys for GOP-controlled states seeking to kill the Affordable Care Act told the Supreme Court last week that at least some of the 12 million people who newly enrolled in Medicaid signed up only because of the law’s requirement that people have insurance coverage — although a tax penalty no longer exists.

The statement drew a rebuke from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said it belies reason. Several health experts also questioned the argument that poor people apply for Medicaid not because they need help getting health care but to meet the ACA’s individual mandate for coverage.

The point is vital to the Republicans’ case to overturn the ACA, an effort supported by the Trump administration. The states are trying to prove they were harmed by the 2010 health law — and thus have “legal standing” to challenge its constitutionality. They argue their Medicaid spending increased because of the mandate, even though Congress eliminated the tax penalty for not having health coverage in 2019. Even when the penalty existed, most poor people were exempt because of their low income.

Under the ACA, states can opt to expand Medicaid eligibility to all adults earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $17,600 for an individual. States and the federal government share the cost of their care.

If the states cannot prove they have standing, the justices can toss their case without ruling on its merits. The case also involves two individuals who purchased private insurance from Texas and are suing to have the law overturned.

The Medicaid costs issue was one of several ways Texas and other GOP-controlled states participating in the lawsuit say they were harmed by the ACA even after the individual mandate penalty was reduced to zero. Several justices, including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, posed questions about whether the states had standing.

The case heard last Tuesday, California v. Texas, was the third time the high court has taken up a major suit on the ACA. Republican attorneys general in 18 states and the Trump administration want the entire law struck down, a move that would threaten coverage for more than 20 million people, as well as millions of others with preexisting conditions, including COVID-19.

Even if the court rules the states have legal standing, the ACA opponents must prove the elimination of a penalty makes the entire law unconstitutional.

The Republican states assert that since the law was upheld under Congress’ taxing powers by the Supreme Court in 2012, once the tax penalty is gone, the entire law must fall, too.

A group of Democratic-controlled states led by California and the Democratic House of Representatives are urging the court to keep the law in place.

Sotomayor raised serious doubts about the plaintiffs’ Medicaid argument and whether the states had suffered injury.

“At some point, common sense seems to me would say: Huh?” Sotomayor told Kyle Hawkins, Texas’ solicitor general, who is leading the GOP states’ legal fight. She questioned whether it seemed reasonable that once Medicaid enrollees are told there is no tax penalty for people who don’t have coverage they would “enroll now, when they didn’t enroll when they thought there was a tax? Does that make any sense to you?”

Hawkins defended his case, saying states need to show that only one person signed up for Medicaid because of the individual mandate. “There’s a substantial likelihood of at least one person signing up for a state Medicaid program, which, of course, would cause at least one dollar in injury and satisfy the standing requirement,” he said.

He cited a Congressional Budget Office report issued in 2017, when lawmakers were considering the change in the penalty. It said some people would continue to buy insurance or seek coverage “solely because of a willingness to comply with the law,” even if the individual mandate penalty were eliminated.

Few surveys have asked Medicaid enrollees why they signed up for the program.

One of them, by University of Michigan researchers that same year, posed the question to 1,750 adults who had become eligible for Medicaid in the state as a result of the ACA expansion. The most common reasons respondents gave for enrolling were that they had lost other health coverage and had a medical condition that required care. Just 2% of respondents cited the need to avoid the individual mandate tax penalty.

With the tax penalty eliminated, legal and health policy experts said, it’s likely the share of respondents signing up for Medicaid because of the health coverage mandate has dropped closer to zero.

Richard Kay, a law professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, said it’s clear most people don’t seek coverage because of the individual mandate — particularly since there is no longer a financial penalty. But there could be a few who still do.

“Do you stop at a stop sign if you are in the country and no one is around for miles?” he said. “It’s not impossible that some people get insurance just because the law requires them.”

Kay said there is no precise guidance on how courts decide whether a plaintiff has been penalized enough to prove it has legal standing. “It’s a very confused area of the law,” he said.

Pratik Shah, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group fighting to preserve the law, said the plaintiffs in the case have not proved standing.

“It does not make logical sense,” he said of the argument that state budgets were harmed by people signing up for Medicaid even after the individual mandate penalty was eliminated.

“It’s hard to see how the 2017 amendment to the health law would have forced more people into Medicaid,” he said. “If they weren’t signed up before, they would be less likely to get it without the penalty.”

The court is expected to rule on the case by the end of June.

Photo: artisteer, Getty Images

When I went to the NYU School of Law, my Contracts professor had to take a leave of absence mid-semester and was replaced by another faculty member. We continued with the same material, but with the subtle differences in emphasis professors are bound to have and confusion over who would grade the exams, the school decided to give everyone a Pass/Fail mark for that semester. And you know what? Nothing dire came from that move. We all moved on and all got our jobs and everything was fine because Biglaw interviewers are capable of understanding “we had two professors, so it was a mess.”

Which is why I feel a sense of deja vu when I learn that NYU has a Civ Pro section with three professors right now and the school is playing coy about whether or not it’s going to call the game and issue a Pass/Fail grade.

It all started when Arthur Miller fell and suffered a spinal injury. Professor Miller is thankfully on the mend, but the school’s approach to covering his class created an epic patchwork involving joining John Sexton’s section for class, but having Harold Koh teach a separate part of the class, and then Professor Miller grading everything at the end? I guess? Look at this schedule:

First, you will be provided remote access to Professor Sexton’s Civil Procedure class.

Second, on Mondays and Wednesdays, you will attend Professor Sexton’s class synchronously and remotely (8:40-10:20).

Third, on Tuesday and Thursday, you are conflicted by other classes from attending the hybrid elements of Professor Sexton’s class; so, you will be responsible for attending class asynchronously through the video of the class, with the Thursday/Friday option that is described below.

Fourth, on Tuesdays you must use the asynchronous video; but, on Thursday you may choose either to watch the video of Professor Sexton’s treatment of the material or to attend a remote class on Friday on the same material (In the slot regularly scheduled for your Civil Procedure class) taught by Professor Harold Koh.

That reads like one of those terrible take-home exams that says, “You must answer three of these questions, but if you answer 1 you cannot answer question 4 and if you answer 3 you must also answer question 8….” You’re already in law school, you don’t need to do another LSAT game just to answer the exam.

Anyway, the zany arrangement outlined above was the original best-case scenario. The schedule has actually changed multiple times since, including the announcement of the emergency addition of three more lectures because the calendar they came up with left students short of ABA minimum requirements.

And this is just the “How it started” of this meme. How’s it going, you ask?

We have no coherent syllabus, and it is unclear which cases and concepts we are expected to have covered. This is exacerbated by TA review sessions that cover material we have not addressed in class. There have also been multiple times where our professors contradict each other: Professor Miller referencing material that we did not cover in his absence; similar but different explanations of the Byrd test from Professors Koh and Sexton; in-class disagreement between Professors Sexton and Miller about federal statutes; etc. This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that we were given three separate descriptions of the applicability of the Erie doctrine, a topic that is confusing enough on its own. It is still unclear which nuanced interpretation of the doctrine we will be expected to apply on the exam. To make up for the ambiguity and confusion, we often have to resort to rewatching multiple Panopto class recordings in order to figure out what exactly we are supposed to take away from each class block. The net effect is akin to a game of connect-the-dots – but one where each “dot” is always in flux.

That’s from a letter signed by the majority of the section seeking a Pass/Fail option under these circumstances. In a lot of ways, these students are getting the best Civ Pro education around — they’re not only covering the material but watching how top scholars can quibble about the margins. That said, what’s good for actual learning is not always a great recipe for grading.

After a whole semester of Spring 2020 Pass/Fails, maybe law schools are gun shy about heaping on more, but these 1Ls weren’t privy to any of that and shouldn’t be penalized for it. There’s a long-standing precedent at NYU of issuing Pass/Fail when the professor hands off the class to other professors. In 2017, the school did it for an elective course, the school definitely did it for my 1L course, and it’s time to do it for this course.

It’s always unfortunate to remove a data point and all, but trust me that everyone turns out alright.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Thankfully, fortunately, and mercifully, the 2020 election is now over (and maybe even President Donald Trump is starting to acknowledge this). We can now start thinking about what to expect from a Biden-Harris administration.

For example, who might President Biden nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court, if he’s fortunate enough to have the opportunity? During the Democratic primaries, he publicly pledged to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. I agree with the many legal analysts, such as Noah Feldman and Joe Patrice, who have identified Justice Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as the frontrunners. They’re impeccably credentialed, highly respected, eminently confirmable, and sufficiently young (Kruger is 44, Jackson is 50).

An outside pick, as I suggested on Twitter, might be Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Judge Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams, former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, whose voter registration efforts played a major role in helping Biden prevail in Georgia — and the President-elect owes the Abrams family a debt of gratitude. (Stacey Abrams has also occasionally been mentioned as a possible SCOTUS justice herself — she’s a lawyer, and she and I were law school classmates, in fact — but Stacy’s interests lie elsewhere.)

Of course, whether President Biden even gets a Supreme Court nomination remains to be seen. I highly doubt that any of the Republican-appointed justices plan on retiring during the next four years. And since the oldest among them, Justice Clarence Thomas, is just 72 — a spring chicken by SCOTUS standards — I’d be surprised to see any of them leave the Court involuntarily.

We do know, however, that President Biden will get to pick an attorney general — which brings me to my topic for today. Who will serve as attorney general during the Biden-Harris administration? As I did for the most recent Supreme Court nomination, I’ll handicap the field.

One caveat: the AG pick will not be made in a vacuum. Because Democratic presidents generally care more about diversity than Republican presidents, they have a harder time putting together a Cabinet. Making sure the Cabinet is diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, and other considerations — possibly including party affiliation, if Biden decides to include a Republican as a gesture of goodwill — can turn into an LSAT logic game from hell. So who gets the nod as attorney general will depend not just on her own qualifications for the role, but how she fits in demographically with the rest of the Cabinet.

Doug Jones: 3-to-1 odds (25 percent)

Age: 66
Current role: U.S. Senator from Alabama (since January 3, 2018)
Education: University of Alabama (B.A.), Samford University (J.D.)
Prosecutorial experience: U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama (1997-2001); Assistant U.S. Attorney (1980-1984)

I consider Jones, who recently lost his re-election bid in super-conservative Alabama, to be the frontrunner. As a former AUSA and then U.S. Attorney, he has extensive prosecutorial experience and an impressive record as a prosecutor, winning acclaim for successfully prosecuting two members of the Ku Klux Klan for their roles in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. He’s also a friend of the President-elect, having worked on Biden’s first presidential campaign back in 1988.

Doug Jones is not only extremely qualified, he’s also the easiest to confirm. Senators tend to be nice to their former colleagues when it comes to confirmation; recall how Hillary Clinton, one of the most controversial figures in modern politics, was confirmed as Secretary of State by a vote of 94-2. And Jones is well-liked within the chamber, not just within his own caucus but among Republicans as well (partly because of his strong record of bipartisanship in sponsoring legislation).

Jones’s main (and perhaps only) liability: he’s a straight white guy. So whether he gets the nomination will depend in significant part on whether there’s enough diversity in the rest of the Cabinet.

Sally Yates: 3-to-1 odds (25 percent)

Age: 60
Current role: Partner, King & Spalding
Education: University of Georgia (B.A., J.D.)
Prosecutorial experience: Deputy Attorney General (2015-2017); U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia (2010-2015); Assistant U.S. Attorney (1989-2004).

Like Jones, Sally Yates is amply qualified to serve as attorney general. And she actually held the role in an acting capacity for 10 days early in the Trump administration, during which she became a hero of the resistance after getting fired for refusing to defend President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” (i.e., his executive order barring entry to the United States by foreign nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries).

This controversial capstone to her career in government shouldn’t overshadow the fact that Yates has more than 25 years of prosecutorial experience, dating back to her hiring as an AUSA by then-U.S. Attorney Bob Barr (yes, that Bob Barr, later a prominent Republican congressman). As an AUSA, Yates gained fame from prosecuting Eric Rudolph, the domestic terrorist responsible for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

Yates is definitely a top contender — as reflected in the prominent speaking role she was given in the Democratic National Convention that nominated Joe Biden. Her main liability, at least compared to Doug Jones, is that she might be a somewhat heavier lift in terms of confirmation. Even though she’s really a career prosecutor and shouldn’t be controversial, some Republican senators, especially those beholden to President Trump and his base, might oppose her because of her “insubordination” in refusing to defend the Muslim ban.

I think Yates could still win confirmation. The filibuster of executive-branch nominees is no longer a thing, at the end of the day, I think she’d win support from at least some combination of Senators Collins, Murkowski, and Romney.

Xavier Becerra: 4-to-1 odds (20 percent)

Age: 62
Current role: Attorney General of California (since January 24, 2017)
Education: Stanford University (B.A., J.D.)
Prosecutorial experience: Attorney General of California (2017-present); Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice (1987-1990)

Becerra doesn’t have as much prosecutorial experience as either Jones or Yates — and he has never been a federal prosecutor, just a state prosecutor — but he’s definitely in the mix. He’s popular among progressives, based on his track record not just as California AG but as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 24 years, and as a Mexican American, he’d add diversity to the Cabinet.

His odds as AG would be better if not for the fact that he’s also in the running for two other plum posts. First, Governor Gavin Newsom might want to appoint Becerra to the Senate seat that will be vacated by Kamala Harris in January (and Becerra previously replaced Harris as California AG). Second, Becerra could end up being nominated for Secretary of Homeland Security.

Tom Perez: 4-to-1 odds (20 percent)

Age: 59
Current role: Chair, Democratic National Committee (since February 25, 2017)
Education: Brown University (A.B.), Harvard University (J.D., M.P.P.)
Prosecutorial experience: Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division (2009-2013); Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division (1998); Attorney, Civil Rights Division (1989-1995)

If Perez were to become attorney general, it would be his second stint in the Cabinet, since he previously served as Secretary of Labor under President Obama (2013-2017). Perez has significant DOJ experience, having served as both AAG for the Civil Rights Division in the Obama administration and as a line attorney and later deputy assistant attorney general in the CRD in the Clinton administration. He’d also bring diversity to the Cabinet, as the son of two first-generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

But Perez’s current role as chair of the DNC hasn’t endeared him to Republicans. And even before this, he wasn’t the most popular on the other side of the aisle; he was confirmed as Labor Secretary without any Republican support, the first time in history that a Cabinet nominee won confirmation on a strict party-line vote. So he’s a bit of a long shot for AG (plus it’s possible he could get nominated for a return engagement as Labor Secretary instead).

The field: 10-to-1 odds (9 percent)

In craps, the field is a sucker bet — and that’s probably the case in the Biden AG sweepstakes too. The four frontrunners are so far ahead of the other contenders that two separate Cabinet speculation stories, those of the New York Times and Politico, feature the same four names.

But even if they might be long shots, some of the contenders in the field would actually be very solid picks for AG. One is Jeh Johnson, current Paul Weiss partner and former Secretary of Homeland Security (and former General Counsel of the Department of Defense; I had the pleasure of profiling him when he held that role). A second is Senator Amy Klobuchar, who served as Hennepin County Attorney before joining the U.S. Senate. A third is Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner (mentioned above), who served as an assistant U.S. attorney (2010-2014) before taking the bench.

All are qualified to serve and all would, I believe, serve admirably in the role. But there are challenges to their AG chances. Jeh Johnson is a victim of his own success: he’s in the running for Secretary of Defense (and would make history as the first Black SecDef), as well as Director of National Intelligence. Amy Klobuchar’s record as Hennepin County Attorney — during which she increased prosecutions, except against police officers accused of misconduct — garnered much criticism from civil-rights groups both during her presidential run and when she was being considered as a possible Biden VP (in the wake of the horrific killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — part of Hennepin County, her former jurisdiction). And Judge Gardner, a relatively new judge (appointed in 2014), might not want to give up a lifetime appointment to the federal bench for an AG stint of uncertain duration.

So there’s a lot of uncertainty and fluidity in the race for attorney general. But one thing’s for sure: when it comes to possible AG picks, President-elect Biden enjoys an embarrassment of riches.

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David Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a writer, speaker, and legal recruiter at Lateral Link, where he is a managing director in the New York office. David’s book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. David previously worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

Jay Clayton’s Christmas list is pretty short: He wants the U.S. Attorney’s job for the Southern District of New York. Unfortunately for him, his patron and golfing buddy, the president of the United States, is very much on the naughty list for 78 million (and counting) American voters, and so the office he seeks is no longer really in Donald Trump’s gift. Unlike many others in the president’s orbit, Clayton seems to realize that the party’s over, as demonstrated by just how little he seems to care about his current job, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It all started so innocuously. Just a simple batch of a dozen-and-a-half patent infringement lawsuits filed in East Texas. All asserting a single patent, aimed at porn content providers for providing content to a website that enabled certain video tagging functionality. In a column back in August, I discussed the strategic thinking behind the choice of defendants and venue, while noting that the true target, Internet porn megalith Pornhub, was itself embracing an active defense approach to the patent owner’s claims, as evidenced by its filing of a Delaware declaratory judgment lawsuit of its own. I foresaw that filing the DJ complaint would be just one element of what I expected Pornhub’s defensive approach would entail, forecasting that “I would not be surprised to see Pornhub file an IPR in short order” as part of Pornhub’s taking advantage of “the panoply of options available to a determined accused infringer, even what that party is initially attacked indirectly.”

Predicting that Pornhub’s active defense would include an IPR filing was not a hard call to make. So I was not surprised when an IPR was filed (against the initial patent asserted in the East Texas cases) in late September by Pornhub’s parent company. IPRs are a first-line defense for accused infringers in modern patent litigation after all. But the battle between Pornhub, its content partners, and patent owner Haulstars has escalated even further, giving us a prime opportunity to consider how patent owners and accused infringers aim to gain a legal advantage over each other in today’s patent litigation landscape. For now, it seems that mutual aggression is the order of the day, with neither side failing to seize an opportunity to expand the battle map.

We can assume that the end result of the legal wrangling will be some kind of settlement, as it is in the majority of patent disputes. To get there, however, determined opponents like Pornhub and Haulstars are engaging each other ever more often in a rapid-fire series of legal entanglements, spanning different courts and the USPTO. Which is precisely the state of affairs in our patent battle of interest. In addition to the original East Texas and Delaware patent cases, in a span of a few months we have added the assertion of eight additional patents against Pornhub by Haulstars in a West Texas filing docketed — a case filed on the same day as Pornhub’s own IPR filing. Four legal venues, nine total patents at issue, all before a single decision on the merits. Welcome to patent assertion circa 2020.

One easy conclusion is that neither of the combatants is scared to escalate against the other, with each espousing the view that projecting strength is the path to victory. Take Haulstars’ decision to add eight patents into the fray, while opening up a second Texas front, as an example. The message is clear — Haulstars sees this dispute as worth digging deep into its portfolio and putting its patent assets at risk in order to get the results it seeks. To that end, its complaint lays out a detailed invention story explaining how the patented technology is at the core of Haulstars’ own success in providing the  “de facto industry standard for interactive video.” In addition, the complaint goes into extensive detail as to how interactive video technology is used by Pornhub to make money, presumably lots of it. The signal is an obvious one. Haulstars is seeking “real money” from Pornhub, and will do all it can to get it. Just as Pornhub is doing its best to negate the threat from Haulstars with its own filings of the IPR and DJ complaint.

Along those lines, it was not surprising to see Haulstars itself decide to take an active approach in terms of trying to preserve its choice of Texas as its preferred venue for the adjudication of its claims. To that end, it filed a (still-pending) motion to dismiss in the Delaware declaratory judgment action, arguing that its Texas lawsuits against Pornhub’s content partners does not give rise to declaratory judgment jurisdiction. At the same time, those content partners have filed a motion to stay the original East Texas lawsuit pending the resolution of Pornhub’s IPR filing. Yes, it is a dizzying pace of filings and counter-filings, for a set of cases that are in their infancy. But that is how the patent litigation game is now played, at least for cases that are important to the parties.

Ultimately, absent settlement, these are just the opposing salvos in what is shaping up to be a multiyear battle by these companies across multiple fronts. In the interim, we can hope that Pornhub users will remain (blissfully?) unaware of the patent wranglings. For IP litigators interested in seeing how sophisticated litigants thrust-and-parry against each other, however, these cases are already very interesting to watch. We will see how things turn out as this patent porn war plays on.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

It’s officially Biglaw bonus season (even though only one firm has announced 2020 bonuses thus far), so why not give employees the added bonus of eliminating COVID-19 austerity measures and reinstating all salaries in full?

That’s what’s happening at Schiff Hardin, a firm that brought in $186,437,000 gross revenue in 2019, ranking 158th on the Am Law 200. If you recall, back in April, the firm instituted some of the largest associate pay cuts we’d heard about during the coronavirus crisis. While the majority of attorneys saw a 15 percent compensation cut, certain practice areas took an astonishing 50 percent hit. Staff making $100,000+ were also subject to up to a 15 percent cut, and the firm also laid off some staff members.

After months of suffering, all of this bad news is finally coming to and end.

A spokesperson for Schiff Hardin provided the below statement, which details all of the steps the firm took to make associates and staff whole:

Like other firms, Schiff Hardin has been carefully managing its business in response to the economic impact of the pandemic. Beginning in April we reduced some attorney and staff salaries. Despite the challenges 2020 has presented, the firm has performed well. We restored everyone’s salaries for the second quarter in August and for the third quarter in October. We are pleased that we will also restore salaries for the fourth quarter at the end of December, so that our attorneys and staff receive their full salaries for the entire year.

Congratulations to Schiff Hardin for its excellent performance. With their salaries restored, the firm’s employees are sure to have an extra happy holiday season.

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.

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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.