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Survey statistics from a recently released survey conducted by the American Bar Association show that lawyers were stressed out before the onset of COVID-19, and the pandemic has only made things worse. Of course, that’s not surprising since it’s safe to say that the effects of the pandemic have stressed out just about everyone one way or another!

The survey at issue — the Profile of the Profession 2021 — compiles data collected by the ABA from a number of different surveys, most of which were conducted in 2020 and 2021. In the report, you’ll find statistics on a host of issues relating to the legal profession, including lawyer demographics, the pandemic and its impact on the practice of law, lawyers’ perspectives on retirement and the future, and much more.

Because the pandemic continues to impact the legal industry and the lives and practices of lawyers, the data regarding the stress and well-being of legal professionals was of particular interest. We all know that the practice of law can be anxiety-inducing in and of itself, and as you’ll see below, the uncertainties of the pandemic have only served to exacerbate stress levels for attorneys.

Pandemic-Related Stress

First, let’s take a look at how the pandemic has affected the overall well-being of lawyers. The lawyers surveyed were asked whether the pandemic had added to their work stress levels, and more than a third (40%) reported that their overall work-related stress levels had increased.

Notably, and in line with an oft-reported pandemic trend, people of color were disproportionately affected by the pandemic’s impact, with 48% of lawyers of color sharing that work-related stressors had increased.

Similarly, the responses to this question varied significantly between men and women. More than half (52%) of women lawyers shared that their stress levels had increased, whereas only 34 percent of men did so.

Overall Stress

The disparity between women and men isn’t surprising since the survey results also showed that overall, even before the pandemic, women reported higher stress levels. Specifically, two-thirds of women (67%) reported moderate or severe stress compared with less than half of men (49%). As a result, more women than men felt burned out due to the practice of law, with 24 percent of women sharing that they’d considered leaving the legal profession due to mental health problems, burnout or stress, compared to only 17 percent of men.

The survey results also showed that the pressures of practicing law, some of which are self-imposed, can take their toll and lead to burnout. For example, when lawyers were asked to describe their work week and how they approached time off, the data showed that lawyers rarely cut themselves a break:

• 38% said they often work long hours
• 9% said they “never stop working”
• 25% said they failed to take adequate breaks during the workday
• 32% said they feel pressure to not take vacation time.

Given those responses, it’s no wonder that lawyers have high levels of burnout. Unfortunately, the survey results indicated that despite the high stress levels, many law firms fail to provide adequate mental health support for their employees. In fact, only a little more than half (56%) of lawyers surveyed agreed that their employers supported their mental health needs. One example of a failure to support lawyers is shown by the fact that only 26 percent of survey respondents reported that their law firm provides information on 12-step programs or other mental health resources.

Concern Regarding The Return To Work

Last, but not least, as discussed above, the pandemic has only added to lawyers’ stress levels. Most recently, concerns have centered around returning to in-office work.

The future return to the office was a source of conflicting feelings for many of the lawyers surveyed. Lawyers from firms with 250 or more attorneys expressed the most concern about the return to the office. Of those lawyers, 71 percent indicated that they were concerned about safety issues related to being inside an office building during 2021 and 2022. Areas of concern included lack of ventilation and poor security in public spaces. Similar concerns were reported by lawyers from firms with 100 to 249 lawyers, 68 percent of whom were reluctant to return to the office, as were 75 percent of lawyers from firms with 50 to 99 lawyers.

In comparison, solo and small firm lawyers were less concerned. Only 42 percent of solo practitioners were reluctant to return to the office, as were just over half (54%) of lawyers from small firms with 2 to 9 attorneys.

So no matter how you slice and dice the data, lawyers are stressed out. The overall effects of the pandemic have only made things worse for many of them, and the recent uncertainty regarding the return to work isn’t helping matters.

What about you? Are you experiencing pandemic burnout? How do you feel about the return to in-office work?

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Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Jaclyn S. Alcantara to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

To address the lack of gender diversity in the upper echelons of the legal profession, top firms and corporations have bolstered family-friendly benefits, such as extended parental leave, flexible hours, hybrid or remote work, and childcare supplements. Of course, such benefits are far from universal, but there is no denying that parental benefits are now the standard. These benefits represent important progress in a profession traditionally marked by its long hours and high levels of stress. Indeed, the early years of an attorney’s career also tend to coincide with first-time motherhood for many.

Being a lawyer mom is hard, but incredibly rewarding.

Being a lawyer mom in waiting, on the other hand, is just plain hard.

One in eight couples will struggle with infertility. The majority of private health insurance plans do not cover IUI and IVF treatments. Even when pregnancy is achieved, one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. One survey found that 68% of people would consider a job change to ensure they have fertility coverage (this figure increases to 90% for those who have experienced fertility struggles). It is clear that these issues matter to employees.

Nevertheless, challenges associated with infertility, miscarriage, and adoption often remain out of sight and out of mind, making family-building difficulties a blind spot for employers in the legal profession and beyond. Managing partners and corporate leaders are typically past child-bearing age and were brought up in a time where such issues were “personal” and thus kept private. Sadly, silence and stigma surrounding these struggles can obscure the negative impact infertility has on an employee’s mental well-being and career progress.

I struggled with infertility in my late-20s. The heartache, isolation, anxiety, and financial strain of it seemed to touch nearly every aspect of my life during the two-and-a-half years it took to conceive our daughter. But I was one of the lucky ones. Not everyone’s infertility journey is as relatively short, or ends so happily. Some suffer multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF, experience a failed private adoption, or go through multiple miscarriages. The physical and emotional toll of infertility is tremendous and, due to constraints of age and biology, often falls at a time when an attorney is simultaneously expected to prove her dedication and fitness for future partnership in the form of high billable hours.

Still, if infertility and adoption are so expensive, is it too big of an ask for the legal profession to better support employees’ pre-baby efforts while we press for more family-friendly policies post-baby? The family-building benefits offered by Starbucks may suggest otherwise. In 2017, the ubiquitous coffee shop chain made headlines for providing its employees with $20,000 for IVF, including for its part-time baristas making $10,000 per year on average. Starbucks’ Family Expansion Reimbursement program also helps with adoption costs and recently expanded to assist with surrogacy, IUI, and fertility medications not covered by health insurance.

The reality is that supporting employees in their family-building endeavor does not need to be a costly proposition. In fact, it can be a boon for recruitment and retention — particularly for women in the profession. (Make no mistake, infertility is not only a female problem. But the physical burdens associated with IVF and miscarriage are predominantly borne by women.)

One simple way to start is by educating employees on the ways in which their employer’s current benefits can help. This can be as simple as including a “family-building” subsection within the employee handbook or benefits guide. This subsection can discuss options like using FSAs or HSAs for infertility treatments, even when health insurance will not cover these medical options. This subsection can also encourage the use of mental health benefits throughout the family-building process. Studies have shown the rates of depression in women struggling with infertility are similar to those in women battling cancer. Many employers already offer easy-to-access EAPs for counseling. During the pandemic, more counselors have begun offering remote sessions, making counseling more convenient and accessible than ever before.

Likewise, having specific leave policies in place for fertility treatments or bereavement days following a miscarriage can cost relatively little, but provide a priceless benefit by showing compassion and support to an employee during an indescribably trying time. Many employers state that they handle these delicate situations on a case-by-case basis, but this can be problematic. An unwritten policy runs the risk of inequitable application and makes an employee feel like they are asking for special treatment, instead of claiming a benefit that is already theirs for the taking when needed.

Needless to say, the most desirable family-building benefits do require some investment and employer buy-in — though perhaps not as much as employers might presume. For example, typical private health insurance plans do not cover IUI and IVF unless mandated by the state in which they work, and only about one third of U.S. states mandate any infertility coverage. And yet, in a 2021 survey on fertility benefits, employers were asked if covering infertility benefits had resulted in a measurable, significant increase in medical plan cost; an astounding 97% said they have not experienced a significant cost increase, including employers that currently cover IVF. Likewise, in Massachusetts, where IVF coverage is mandated, a state-commissioned study found that the mandate adds as little as 54 cents to $4.44 per person per month.

That’s right! For less than the cost of one cup of coffee per person per month, your firm can be almost as family-friendly as Starbucks! In all seriousness, few things foster loyalty like making it possible for a mother’s child to exist. Supporting family-building efforts is a win-win for employers and employees alike.

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Jaclyn S. Alcantara is an of counsel attorney at Shook, Hardy, & Bacon in Kansas City, Missouri, specializing in patent prosecution and counseling. She is also a former board member of Kansas City Infertility Awareness. Jaclyn met her husband in high school orchestra, and together they are parents to one inquisitive, dino-obsessed elementary-aged daughter. More about her legal practice can be found on her firm bio page and she can be reached by email at jalcantara@shb.com. 

On Monday, Donald Trump’s lawyer Doug Collins fired off a nastygram to multiple former Justice Department Officials greenlighting their testimony in a House investigation of the events leading up to the January 6 Insurrection.

“Please be advised that the Department’s purported waiver and authorization are unlawful, and that President Trump continues to assert that the non-public information the Committees seek is and should be protected from disclosure by the executive privilege,” Collins wrote to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, although he eventually conceded that “President Trump will agree not to seek judicial intervention to prevent your testimony[.]”

After the DOJ told Rosen and several other potential witnesses that it would be inappropriate to claim privilege in the January 6 inquiry, Trump faced the uncertain prospect of attempting to make a post-presidential assertion of executive privilege on his own account. So instead his legal team contented themselves with threatening the witnesses with fire and brimstone if congress decides to call more witnesses — as if Jeff Rosen controls House Democrats.

Everything will be fine “so long as the committees do not seek privileged information from any other Trump administration officials or advisors,” the old man yelled at the cloud. “If the committees do seek such information, however, we will take all necessary and appropriate steps, on President Trump’s behalf, to defend the Office of the Presidency.”

Rosen’s former deputy Patrick Hovakimian promptly sat down the next morning with House Oversight Committee staff for a transcribed interview, Politico reports, and multiple other witnesses are already scheduled.

But Collins hadn’t quite given up the ghost. Continuing the long Trump tradition of gesturing vaguely in the direction of executive privilege without actually invoking it, the former congressman called up Fox News Tuesday, just to put it out there that these witnesses can just refuse to answer questions on their own. You know, if they don’t feel like answering for some reason.

“We’ve always stood up for this privilege, except in this case and only under these terms,” Collins said, referring to the DOJ’s refusal to order its former officials to keep quiet.

“I would hope they would honor that,” he said, when asked if Rosen and the other witnesses should testify about Trump’s efforts to use the DOJ to overturn the will of the voters. “The former president still believes those are privileged communications that are covered under executive privilege.”

So Monday he threatened to go apeshit if any further witnesses are called. And Tuesday he unsubtly asked the current witnesses to keep playing the executive-privilege-but-not-really game with congress. Very cool, very legal.

It’s not clear whether Collins’s gambit will work. In March, Rosen refused to answer congressional queries about his conversations with the president, saying “When you ask me about communications with the president, I as a lawyer don’t get to make the decision on whether I can reveal private conversations. Other people make that decision, and I’ve been asked today to stick to within the ground rules that I have to abide by.” When asked by Rep. Gerry Connolly to explain who exactly those “other people” were, Rosen declined to elaborate.

But even if some witnesses decline to cooperate with congressional investigations, the truth is all coming out. Politico got a copy of a January 3, 2021 resignation letter drafted by Hovakimian for himself and Richard Donoghue to be released to all senior colleagues in the event that Trump made good on his threats to oust Rosen in favor of Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official who hoped to use the Department to ratfuck the election and keep Trump in the White House.

“This evening, after Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen over the course of the last week repeatedly refused the President’s direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends, the President removed Jeff from the Department,” Hovakimian wrote. “PADAG Rich Donoghue and I resign from the Department, effective immediately.”

Trump was dissuaded from making Clark acting AG after his entire senior legal team threatened to resign, so Hovakimian and Donoghue never had to send the email. But they’re certainly going to be asked about “direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends” when they sit down for a chat with congress. And Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney has already released Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes  of the phone call in which Trump demanded that Rosen “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”

So good luck keeping all that under wraps by mumbling something about executive privilege. As Collins himself might say, in his inimitable corn fried auctioneer voice, that dog won’t hunt.

Top DOJ official drafted resignation email amid Trump election pressure [Politico]
Trump foreshadows executive privilege fight in election investigations, but won’t try to block testimony yet [Fox News]

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

I guess [Davis Polk] didn’t get the memo about America being the land of the free and home of the brave.

— an unnamed partner at a Magic Circle firm in London, commenting on Davis Polk’s “no vaccine, no office entry” policy, in response to a Law.com International survey on the firm’s new safety measures. Seventy-five percent of survey respondents were in favor of Davis Polk’s vaccine mandate. “COVID-19 is the greatest public health challenge in our life times and radical action is required if society is ever to return to normal,” said a U.S.-based partner at a Magic Circle firm. “Only with near universal vaccination can we reach herd immunity and limit the development of variants.”

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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.

To dispense with whatever minuscule doubt the reader may have, this is obviously a story about George Mason University Law School. The program, which rebranded itself as ASSLaw^[1] a few years ago continues to live up to its name. The law school that prides itself on the tirelessly academic study of America’s most sacred legal document (Atlas Shrugged) is now in the midst of a legal battle over whether or not an educational institution can mandate vaccines for staff.

If this sounds like a question that already got laughed out of a federal appellate court, you’d be right! But if first you don’t succeed… try and waste judicial resources again.

Here’s the complaint.

Todd Zywicki has already contracted COVID and recovered, which he reasons should exempt him from any vaccination requirement. The university, however, says everyone needs proof of vaccination or must continue wearing masks and distancing. That places the school very much within the guidance of national public health officials and the consensus of medical professionals. But, Zywicki’s personal immunologist doesn’t think he should get it so therefore the whole medical establishment needs to reorient around him.

And, of course, there are valid reasons why someone might not be able to get the vaccine. But if you’re wondering why GMU’s reasonable caveat that the unvaccinated just continue wearing masks doesn’t resolve literally every one of Zywicki’s complaints:

Yet, if Professor Zywicki follows his doctor’s advice and elects not to take the vaccine, that will diminish his efficacy in performing his professional responsibilities by hamstringing him in various ways, such as requiring him to wear a mask that has no public health value given his naturally acquired immunity.

Ah. That little known side effect of masks that make one unable to explain what “consideration” means. He later describes wearing a mask as “punitive” because he’s basically that wacko from the Trader Joe’s line with a law degree.

Of course most of the complaint is an effort to diminish the efficacy of vaccines based on cherry-picking data from various studies circulating around your uncle’s Facebook page. However, before going into his criticisms, Zywicki is conscientious enough to resolve the logical gap facing conservatives everywhere in the second real sentence of the whole complaint.

Since then, and because of the federal government’s “Operation Warp Speed,” three separate coronavirus vaccines have been developed and approved more swiftly than any other vaccine in our nation’s history.

The shorter version is “These vaccines suck… but thankfully Dear Leader Trump delivered them to us through a government spending program that we’re going to pretend didn’t violate most every opinion my colleagues have ever expressed about the ‘free market’ and ‘government overreach.’” Masterful mental gymnastics.

Like a lot of GMU Law’s worldview, it’s not so much that Zywicki’s wrong as that he’s an “ASSoL” as one might say. His natural immunity, derived from a bout with the disease early last year, may in his case offer sufficient antibody protection. But the vaccine isn’t going to wipe that out. And even if he thinks he’s going to be fine, wearing a mask isn’t going to hurt. In short, there’s no reason not to comply with a policy designed to prevent the further spread of the disease except he doesn’t want to because FREEDOM!^TM

I mean, would the Founders have forced employees to get a vaccine? Oh. Yes, they would have and in fact did. I’m no expert on this whole “original public meaning” thing, but this seems significant. I wonder if Washington had a carveout for anyone who had already survived a case of small pox?

At the end of the day, Zywicki’s only concern as far as doubling up his immunity with a vaccine is the possibility of side effects, as explained here:

Put differently, as a matter of simple logic, one cannot be certain about the long-term effects of a vaccine that has existed only for approximately a year, and thus cannot have been studied over a substantial period of time.

As a matter of simple logic!

Of course, there are rare side effects experienced by some who’ve gotten the vaccine. One working theory is that those experiencing horrific side effects are also those who would have had catastrophically bad cases of COVID. Whether that pans out or not, there doesn’t appear to be much to suggest someone who already had a mild case would then have one of these deadly reactions due to the vaccine.

His first count asserts that he’s being forced to undergo unwanted medical care for which he cites the deep constitutional record in this space. The state can’t forcibly treat a prisoner — check and citations! The state can prevent mentally incapacitated individuals from life terminating treatments — check and citations!

Coercing employees to receive an EUA vaccine for a virus that presents a near-zero risk of illness or death to them and which they are exceedingly unlikely to pass on to others, because those employees already possess natural immunity to the virus, violates the liberty and privacy interests that the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments protect.

Not so much with the citations on this one. But protecting liberty requires constant vigilance. It’s like the saying goes, “First they came for the people who thought masks were punitive, and I did not speak out—because I was not a fucking idiot.

This is also a claim that this policy constitutes a due process violation. That’s weird because this doesn’t seem coercive at all especially with all the caveats.

It is less appreciated in legal circles that, to prevail, unconstitutional conditions claims do not need to establish that a challenged government policy amounts to coercion.

Oh, is it now?

For example, in Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513 (1958)…

I’ll stop you right there and aver that this 1958 case is going to be the only citation for this principle. The whole section amounts to a repudiation of vaccine requirements of all kinds, because even though he contends that he’s unique for having had the disease and not yet lost his antibodies, he also says it’s a constitutional violation to make someone prove that fact in order to get out of the policy meaning in the landscape he’s seeking there just can’t be vaccination rules for any vaccines at all.

Then there’s a lot of bureaucratic jiggery-pokery about whether an “Emergency Use Authorization” prevents the school from having a policy because of the Supremacy Clause and 1983 claim to bring it all home.

Is there a reason why employers can’t impose an entirely reasonable vaccine requirement upon employees? No. Does the fact that the university is public change this? As we learned in the Indiana case, no. Is there any the free marketeers at GMU can’t just and pursue their careers elsewhere if they don’t like this policy? Absolutely no.^[2]

If only George Mason Law really grasped the essence of the free market.

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[1] Antonin Scalia School of Law… sometimes also denoted as ASSoL.
[2] For a rundown of more reasons he’s going to lose, check out this law professor’s take.

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.

There are several signs of a good friend. Most people agree dollar should not be one of them. But, if you’re anything like me, one of the first things you want to do when you are gainfully employed is spread the love around. And who better to sprinkle a dollar or two on than a friend? As kids, many of us have covered a friend’s soda or meal. As teenagers and young adults, much of the same, but with the implicit understanding that the debt would be repaid or that they would cover the next round. As adults with jobs and Netflix addictions, sometimes the “Who pays?” question gets decided by “who asked us out” or “who makes the most.”

Has your schedule been so busy that you only meet up with your friends when you organize it? Is the pay gap between you and your boys more of a pay chasm? Who looks at the bill when it lands on the table? Who touches it? Has getting paid more changed the way you think about gift giving among friends? I’d love to know.

Send your stories to cwilliams@abovethelaw.com with the subject line “I Got It.” All information that is read and shared will be anonymous unless requested otherwise. Let’s figure it out together.

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. Before that, he wrote columns for an online magazine named The Muse Collaborative under the pen name Knehmo. He endured the great state of Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com.

In a year filled with uncertainty, legal data helps make sense of 2020 litigation trends where the naked eye could not. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the legal landscape in unimaginable ways, and firms both big and small were not immune to the challenges it imposed.

Now more than ever, making decisions informed by data is vital to law firm success and stability. Utilizing legal data gives firms of any size the ability to better understand their competition, scope out business opportunities, and identify lateral recruits.

For the second year in a row, UniCourt has released its TrueLaw Litigation Index, highlighting the top 200 law firms for civil litigation across all federal U.S. District Courts. To produce the insights in this report, UniCourt downloads the data for every new civil case filed in U.S. District Court from PACER, and uses artificial intelligence and automation technologies to organize, clean, and structure the data to determine the real-world law firms involved in litigation.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at 2020’s top federal civil litigation law firm: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, LLP. We’ll also review a breakdown of Vorys’ cases, their top clients, and the story behind how they outranked other law firms in federal District Court litigation last year.

How Vorys Moved Up In the Rankings

Founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1909, Vorys takes pride in the firm’s history of success and growth from a four-person operation to a mid-sized powerhouse with nearly 375 lawyers across four states and the District of Columbia. Since its inception, Vorys has represented a wide variety of clients from children’s hospitals to Fortune 500 companies, and has been recognized as “bringing the same level of confidence and reliability as the big firms” to its clients.

Their confidence paid off in 2020, when the firm topped the charts of the TrueLaw Litigation Index by outperforming all other firms practicing in U.S. District Courts. Much like last year’s frontrunner, Williams & Connolly, the bulk of Vorys’ litigation came from one attorney. William D. Kloss, Jr., handled 4,218 cases for Vorys, most all of which were personal injury disputes representing Davol Inc. and its parent company C. R. Bard, Inc, which was previously acquired by Becton, Dickinson and Company. Unlike Williams & Connolly, however, the lion’s share of Vorys’ litigation took place in a single federal district in Ohio. 

Here is a breakdown of Vorys’ top five jurisdictions for all cases handled in 2020:

1. Southern District of Ohio: 4221
2. Northern District of Ohio: 27
3. Western District of Pennsylvania: 11
4. Northern District of Texas: 10
5. Central District of California: 8

But the data doesn’t stop there. With access to litigation data, we can see what Vory’s primary practice areas were in 2020, who their top performing litigators were, and even who their top clients were. Below we’ll discuss some of these data points for Vorys and what they mean in the larger context of leveraging intelligence gathered from data.

Digging into the Data

Access to litigation intelligence gives firms the data-driven insights they need to develop targeted business development, gather competitive intelligence, and power their knowledge management and legal analytics initiatives. 

A breakdown of a law firm’s caseload can tell you a number of things, the most obvious being the case types which are most commonly handled by the firm. However, they can also give insights into potential areas of growth for the firm. When viewing these data points across a span of a couple years, trends become more apparent, allowing you to quickly point to specific case types on the rise and those that are dwindling year after year. 

Here are Vorys’ top ten case types in 2020:

1. Personal Injury – Medical/Pharmaceutical Product Liability: 2,737
2. Personal Injury – Other Product Liability: 1,364
3. Property – Real Property Product Liability: 60
4. Contract – Other Contract: 32
5. Intellectual Property – Trademark: 21
6. Labor – Employee Benefit: 18
7. Civil Right – Employment Discrimination: 14
8. Intellectual Property – Patent: 12
9. Civil Right – Other Disability Discrimination: 7
10. Labor – Labor Standard: 5

In addition to better understanding the practice area distribution of a law firm’s litigation profile, it is also important to look at who their clients are. 

A firm’s client roster indicates more than just who they do business with, it illustrates long-standing relationships with key corporate clients and reveals the relative strengths or weaknesses of those relationships. This in turn, can underscore a law firm’s financial health and well-being. It can also provide competitors and legal support firms critical intelligence on openings for business development opportunities lying just under the surface.

In 2020, Vorys represented a number of clients with household names across the finance, insurance, retail, and food services industries. Here, we’ve showcased some of Vorys’ most prominent clients across these industries:

Finance

1. Fifth Third Bank
2. First Financial Bank
3. Heritage Bank
4. Huntington National Bank
5. North Side Bank and Trust Company
6. PNC Bank National Association
7. PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
8. U.S. Bancorp
9. US Bank National Association
10. Vanguard Securities, Inc.

Insurance

1. Integrity Life Insurance Company
2. American Alternative Insurance Corporation of Delaware
3. Community Insurance, Inc.
4. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
5. The Western and Southern Life Insurance
6. Columbus Life Insurance Company
7. Gerber Life Insurance Company

Retail

1. Mary Kay, Inc.
2. Big Lots Stores, Inc.
3. General Nutrition Corporation
4. Mattress Firm, Inc.
5. Abercrombie & Fitch Management Co.
6. Victoria’s Secret Stores, L.L.C.
7. Bath & Body Works Direct, Inc.
8. Safelite Solutions, L.L.C.
9. Skullcandy
10. Nintendo of America Inc.

Food Services

1. The Kroger Co.
2. Bob Evans Restaurants, L.L.C.
3. Foodfirst Global Restaurants, Inc.
4. Wholesale Beer & Wine Association of Ohio

When assessing the strength of a law firm’s litigation practice, it is important to also look at who their top litigators are and how spread out their case volume is across the firm. This data can be used for a range of business development and legal marketing efforts, from legal support firms interested in targeting rainmakers who might need their services in future litigation work to competitor firms seeking the best lateral candidates with large books of business to poach. Here are Vorys top ten attorneys from last year, including Mr. Kloss, Jr.:

1. William Darrell Kloss, Jr.: 4,218
2. Daniel J. Clark: 17
3. Kent Allen Britt: 11
4. Michael J. Garvin: 11
5. Aaron M. Williams: 10
6. John R. Conley: 8
7. Rex W. Miller, II: 8
8. Patrick R. Akers: 7
9. Amanda M. Miggo: 7
10. Mark C. Zheng: 7

While any one of the data points we’ve reviewed on Vory’s litigation can provide a window into how the firm fared during 2020 and open up a new line of inquiries into the firm’s performance, they mean so much more when taken together as a whole. 

By looking at a firm’s litigation by jurisdiction, practice area, their clients, and their attorneys, we can see a more complete picture of who the firm is and gather actionable intelligence in the process. 

Further, we can dig even deeper into a firm’s litigation profile by adding in other data points like the statuses of pending litigation, how long it took to close out certain types of cases, and whether the firm obtained judgments, settlements, or dismissals for their clients. With litigation data we can see the forest, the trees, and everything in between.

To learn more about the TrueLaw Litigation Index, check our recent blog post where we explain how this year’s report was developed, provide a rundown of the top ten firms for civil litigation in 2020, and reveal which firms saw the largest gains and losses in the rankings from 2019 to 2020.

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Josh Blandi is the CEO and Co-Founder of UniCourt, a SaaS offering using machine learning to disrupt the way court data is organized, accessed, and used. UniCourt provides Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS) via our APIs to AmLaw 50 firms and Fortune 500 businesses for accessing normalized court data for business development and intelligence, analytics, machine learning models, process automation, background checks, investigations, and underwriting.

If you thought the only thing trending among law firms right now was vaccination mandates, then please take a step back and behold the compensation adjustments that are still spreading from firm to firm, almost as quickly as the Delta variant.

The latest firm to increase associate salaries is Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, a national trial and litigation boutique that was just named as one of the top midsize law firms to work for in the country. The firm was ranked at No. 11, missing the Top 10 firms by just a hair.

According to a recent press release, first-year associates at Wheeler Trigg will now earn starting salaries of $180,000, a sum that reportedly leads the market for Denver-based firms. All other associates at the firm will receive commensurate market raises. These salary increases don’t come close to the new Davis Polk scale, but more money is more money.

“We are proud that we have long been able to attract the nation’s top young litigators to practice in Denver,” said WTO Partner & Recruiting Chair, Andrew Unthank. “With this salary increase, WTO continues to send a strong message to associates looking for a sophisticated option beyond the coastal law firms.”

“Our model generously rewards lawyers while providing clients with value that our coastal competitors can’t match,” said Unthank. “At every step, we offer young lawyers unparalleled stand-up and client-facing opportunities to develop into the next generation of trial and litigation leaders. This approach is the keystone of our client value proposition, promote-from-within culture, and continued organic growth.”

This model is a bit black-boxy for our liking, but as we keep saying, a raise is a raise is a raise. If you’d like to help us crack the compensation code for Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell for other class years, please feel free to send us an email. We will be sure to keep you anonymous.

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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.

As the country experiences an upswing in infections driven almost exclusively by the unvaccinated, law firms are taking a harder and harder line against vaccine holdouts.

Early in the process of office reopenings, firms were “encouraging” attorneys and staff to get the vaccine. At the time, firms relied upon the inherent professionalism of employees to do the right thing without wrapping the firm up in needless mandates. And this probably got the workforce almost all the way there!

But if we’ve learned two things over the last 18 months or so it’s that (1) “almost all the way” isn’t really how vaccines work best and (2) there are dolts in literally all educational strata who will screw up an invitation to do the right thing.

So we’ve entered the era of mandated vaccination to return to work, up to and including policies that shut off identity card access to the buildings until workers can prove they’ve taken the absolutely bare minimum steps to protect their co-workers and their families.

And, of course, we’re seeing planned reopenings delayed. We have three new announcements along these lines today.

Paul Weiss informed the firm’s workforce via email today that due to the Delta variant, it will indefinitely postpone the planned “phase 2” office reopening from September 13. A new date will be announced roughly 30 days ahead of the ultimate reopening.

In the meantime, “all Paul, Weiss personnel and visitors will be required to be fully vaccinated to enter our U.S. offices” as of August 9 and anyone who has failed to provide proof of vaccination by that date will have card keys deactivated. Masks and distancing will remain in effect in all office common areas for the time being.

Simpson Thacher basically laid out the whole above history of firm responses to the vaccine in one paragraph:

In prior updates, we strongly encouraged everyone to receive a COVID-19 vaccination as soon as possible for their own safety and that of their colleagues and loved ones. Given the emergence of the more contagious
Delta variant and the resultant increase in COVID-19 cases across the country, we believe vaccination is an essential component of our efforts to create a safe working environment for all our employees. We understand that a high percentage of our attorneys and professional staff have already been fully vaccinated.

TL;DR We relied on people to get vaccines, most of you did, some of you didn’t, and this is why we can’t have nice things.

Starting Monday, everyone is required to be vaccinated to go back to the Simpson offices.

Over at Winston & Strawn, the firm announced that beginning today, it is “requiring all attorneys and staff to be fully vaccinated before coming into our offices, with the expectation that all individuals will be fully vaccinated no later than the end of September.” The firm is also offering up to 4 hours of paid time off to get the vaccine with additional time available in the event of adverse reactions.

For those with legitimate reasons that they cannot get the vaccine, the firm urges them to speak with HR about a medical or religious accommodation. “Please note that you will be asked to engage in the interactive process to determine if a reasonable accommodation is required and will be asked for support for your request.” This of course can double as a quality control measure as anyone who cites “HIPPA” has no place working in a firm that deals with actual laws in the real world.

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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.

Back in March, we talked about NYU adjunct Linda Lacewell, the Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, who found herself deeply embroiled in an ethics scandal of her own over edits made to official government reports that downplayed the severity of Cuomo’s decision to send elderly COVID patients back to nursing homes to alleviate the hospital bed crunch that — as a reminder — were missing because Cuomo spent the previous several years eliminating them. This all went down right as Cuomo was selling his new book about his COVID response.

Apparently ethical quandaries aren’t easy to miss at senior levels of the Cuomo administration, as Lacewell is also named in the NYAG’s sexual harassment investigation report. The folks at Campus Reform are all over this because they exist to complain about vaccination policies and courses that mention racism, but occasionally near-sighted squirrels find a nut.

According to the report, Lacewell was among a number of top aides who “described Ms. Boylan as crazy and having a political agenda,” checking up on her LinkedIn profile, and allegedly discussed recording a phone call from one of the accuser’s co-workers like some The Wire cosplay. Lacewell is also mentioned as a key contributor in the governor’s damage control campaign, including circulating letters questioning the harassment allegations and a statement from women who worked with the governor and thought he was a stand up guy.

Which… is not good. But it’s also part of Sexual Harassment 101.

That’s why the first thing “successful” — at least for many years — harassers do is build a network of loyal friends who “never see that side of him.” They can then ride the resulting cognitive dissonance into creating a gang that informally bullies people into silence. Sometimes, a harasser can find a posse that actively embraces a hostile, harassing work environment. But it’s also not entirely common, and the subtle recruitment of confused allies crops up much more often.

Because cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. If your friend and professional patron for years, if not decades, is suddenly facing accusations for behavior you’ve never witnessed, it’s going to put you on the defensive. The “believe women” catchphrase gets a lot of flack from lawyers who try to cast it as perverting the presumption of innocence, and if that were a jury instruction I’d agree. But the point of the admonition to believe women isn’t really about changing the justice process, it’s a mantra to remain vigilant in the face of that dissonance. “Believe women” is there to make you stop for half a second before calling an accuser unstable just because they’ve named your buddy.

This doesn’t by any means absolve Lacewell if she really pushed an effort to silence a victim. Even if someone doesn’t realize they’re in too deep with a bad actor, it’s still important how far they take it. It’s one thing to draft a letter declaring that this behavior is uncharacteristic and fails to comport with personal experience and another to denigrate the accuser as crazy right off the bat.

There’s a line in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, “it’s not an excuse, it’s a reason” that always stuck with me. The point is there’s value in recognizing how people who should know better can get into bad situations. A reductive view of a harasser’s network as like-minded trolls sells short the many different ways people get sucked into enabling powerful harassers.

More often than not, it’s a slow poison that turns environments hostile. Stay constantly on guard against becoming a tool in that web.

Lacewell isn’t scheduled to teach at NYU in the coming semester and may never teach again. The school told Campus Reform that they are monitoring the situation. Still, it’s a bad look for any who ever taught ethics.

Earlier: NYU Law School Ethics Professor Embroiled In Major Ethics Scandal

How Cuomo’s office sought help from prominent liberal advocates as it pushed to discredit an accuser [Washington Post]

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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.