Category: News Feeds

Blockbuster Cuomo Sexual Harassment Report: You won’t be surprised, but it is an interesting read.

More Biglaw Firms Tell Attorneys To Get Vaxxed: Good.

Meme Of The Day: What’s holding us back.

Cravath’s Back To The Office Plan: Plus they move to business casual, like pretty much every other firm.

Killed Biglaw Associate Remembered: Rest in peace.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According data from the American Bar Association, Black attorneys make up what percentage of all lawyers?

Hint: They found that Black attorneys have seen a decline (although only slightly) in proportional representation from 2011.

See the answer on the next page.

This week, I continue my written interview with prominent author and performance coach, Denise Shull, who took on Showtime and the creators of the hit show “Billions” in the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit over their mistreatment of her and alleged violation of her IP rights. While her case proved unsuccessful, she has graciously offered to discuss her experiences and frustrations with the litigation process on these pages. As I indicated last week, I have no stake in the outcome of her dispute with “Billions” as anything other than an interested observer — and if someone from Showtime Legal, one of the executive producers, or the outside legal team wants to participate in a similar interview for this audience, the invitation remains open.

Now to the remainder of my interview with Denise. As usual, I have added some brief commentary to Denise’s answers below but have otherwise presented her answers to my questions as she provided them.

Gaston Kroub: What do you suspect was behind the refusal of the “Billions” team to either settle with you or live up to their promise of hiring you to consult for the show?

Denise Shull: In the big picture, originality is what they are selling. If they have original ideas, then they are marketable creators. If they are simply taking from others, then not only do they have to pay in dollars, but they would pay in reputation.

Also, in February of 2016, I was told by a very senior executive at Showtime that there was a battle between the creators over money. I suspect I was also caught up in that.

GK: As I mentioned when I profiled Denise’s case for the first time on these pages, the role of emotion in IP cases is an oft-underestimated driver of behavior that can seem to an outside observer as irrational. At the heart of things here, at least in my view, is an unwillingness by the showrunning team to reckon with the way they led Denise into thinking that there was a continuing role for her to play with respect to the show. But it makes sense that if communication between the showrunners was not ideal with each other, that outside people would be even likelier collateral damage to whatever disputes plagued the creative team internally. On top of that potential dynamic, it can be very difficult as an IP plaintiff to get to a reasonable settlement once a legal team is brought in for the express purpose of getting the case tossed with early motion practice. Was a simple and fair settlement possible here that would have saved the parties time, expense, and aggravation? Reasonable minds could differ on the answer to that question. For her part, however, Denise’s answer suggests that external hurdles to such a settlement made such a result a major challenge in her case.

GK: What was most surprising to you about the litigation process?

DS: To be blunt, how much like the show it seems to be.

For example, I understood the pleading stage to be about “is this complaint plausible?” Judge Daniels ultimately determined, partially through a “quick internet search,” that my work was generic and therefore my claim implausible. Yet it’s my understanding that these sorts of judicial notices normally aren’t for disputable facts and require opportunities for the plaintiffs to respond. We weren’t offered that. Why? Why does the indisputable fact that the showrunners, actress, and marketing each requested my help, not supersede this internet search?

Furthermore, every single instance of dialogue analysis contained substantive errors. Alpha in the hedge fund world is a specific arithmetic measure of performance yet the SDNY declared I could not copyright the idea of an alpha male. Another particularly egregious example is the court’s misunderstanding of what happened [in Season 1’s 11th episode] “Magical Thinking.” The money losing was due to unconscious emotion being acted out with the market working like a Rorschach blot. The court said Axe’s behavior was conscious!

Or take the eating, sleeping, and exercising verbiage. We were saying that the fact both Wendy and the fictional Denise ask the question about physical aspects as their first coaching words and the fact that they do so in the same order is suspicious. Add in that the character in her background bio is from Ohio. There is less than a half of 1% chance these elements occurred by chance.

I could go on, but last, final judgment was entered in three days. I’m told this is unusually brief timing. We were then forced to try to vacate that judgment which created a much higher bar for the proposed first amended complaint that was ultimately denied as futile by the Second Circuit despite having two dozen pieces of evidence showing actual public confusion. How often is a plaintiff prevented from filing even one amended complaint?

When every single thing goes against you, when rules and norms are broken all in the defendant’s favor, one has to conclude that despite a 34-page opinion, it wasn’t even remotely a fair fight — just like in the show.

GK: One can definitely sympathize with Denise’s viewpoint, even if one also agrees that cases like hers have a high degree of difficulty, especially in the Second Circuit. The reality is that IP causes of action can be blunt tools to try to get recompense for what may be very specific and nuanced acts of trespass, making getting a favorable result against a motivated and well-resourced defendant a challenge — even when it feels like there are a plethora of facts that support the idea that the plaintiff was mistreated in some way. In Denise’s case, I can only hope that despite the fact that her litigation results were not as hoped, to say the least, that she can at least find comfort in the fact that she saw the legal process through to as final a decision as one can expect to receive in an IP case.

My thanks to Denise for the insights and cooperation, especially so close to her receiving the negative news about her case from the Second Circuit. I wish her the best of luck with continuing to build her performance coaching practice; there is a lot of beneficial work she could probably do with hard-charging IP litigators to help maximize their performance. Moreover, I greatly respect her willingness to pursue her litigation goals in the defense of her professional and personal reputation, an effort that I think should only raise and benefit her profile, even though the case itself proved unsuccessful. I am always open to conducting interviews of this type with other IP thought leaders, so feel free to reach out if you have a compelling perspective to offer.

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.

Nikola Motors founder and former executive chairman and CEO Trevor Milton was hauled away from his vertical farm in rural Utah and into federal custody in New York today. Prosecutors say that in his former life he lied about practically everything going on at the would-be electric truck revolutionary in an indictment that reads like a slightly staid edit of short-seller Hindenburg Research’s blistering report that led to Milton becoming the former executive chairman and disrupting gentleman farmer in the first place. And boy oh boy were these (allegedly) some pretty spectacular lies.

Donald Trump’s legal team does not lack for chutzpah.

After the Justice Department refused to invoke executive privilege for former executive branch employees subpoenaed in the January 6 investigation, Trump’s goon squad fired off a nastygram to witnesses threatening to get biblical if congress seeks to probe further.

“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,” huffed former Georgia congressman Doug Collins, who now represents Trump.

Note that this letter to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and the five other witnesses requested last week by the Oversight Committee does not contain an invocation of privilege. In regular Trumpland fashion, his henchmen vaguely gesture in the direction of executive privilege while making preposterously overbroad claims about presidential secrecy covering every conversation in the executive branch, even extending to conversations with outside advisors such as Steve Bannon and Sidney Powell. They never actually invoke it — much less define it — because then they’d have to defend the claim.

“I’m not claiming executive privilege because that’s the president’s power and I have no power there,” said then Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June of 2017, as he stonewalled congress, refusing to answer questions about his conversation with the president.

Rosen himself made similar non-assertions of privilege back in March, telling congress, “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.”

Which is a nice way to have your privilege cake and eat it, too!

In his letter, Collins goes so far as to quote the Supreme Court’s holding in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, crowing that “the privilege is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic. Therefore the privilege survives the individual President’s tenure.” Never mind that the Court forced Nixon to turn over everything the DOJ asked for back in 1977. Here, the privilege has never been invoked at all — vague handwaving while mumbling about the great and powerful unitary executive doesn’t count —  and it’s not clear that Donald Trump has the right to do so when he is no longer the president.

It would be one thing if Trump had argued that a particular conversation was off limits, rather than sticking two middle fingers in the air and simply refusing to cooperate with congressional oversight for four straight years. But he didn’t, and now it’s probably too late.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of the former president’s position, Collins is not seeking to block testimony by Rosen and the other former DOJ employees requested by congress. But he is stomping his feet and threatening throw a major tantrum if the Committee subpoenas anyone else.

Nonetheless, to avoid further distraction and without in any way otherwise waiving the executive privilege associated with the matters the Committees are purporting to investigate, President Trump will agree not to seek judicial intervention to prevent your testimony or the testimony of the five other former Department officials (Richard P. Donoghue, Patrick Hovakimian, Byung J. “Bjay” Pak, Bobby L. Christine, and Jeffrey B. Clark) who have already received letters from the Department similar to the July 26, 2021 letter you received, so long as the committees do not seek privileged information from any other Trump administration officials or advisors. 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.

Which is adorable! Threatening to go apeshit on a witness if the committee calls any other witnesses is just peak Trump. As if Rosen et al have an iota of authority or influence over congressional committees controlled by Democrats.

Meanwhile, ABC just broke the news that Jeffrey Clark literally tried to get the DOJ to cite nonexistent evidence of fraud and order the state of Georgia to allow the legislature to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump, despite the will of the voters.

“The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States,” Clark’s draft letter said. “The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”

And Clark, whom Trump was only prevented from installing as acting AG when his entire legal team threatened to resign, proposed an elegant solution to the problem he’d invented out of whole cloth: Why not stage a legislative coup?

“While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors.”

No doubt the Committee will be very interested in discussing it with him, as well as Donoghue, who responded “There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this.”

If Collins and the rest of the Trump Derp Squad are going to let these witnesses testify without a fight, they’ve clearly conceded the entire field. Or perhaps there’s something so awful that they’d rather let Democrats have this and save their fire power for whatever bodies they’ve got buried under Melania’s spiffy new Rose Garden.

With this crew, it’s probably both.

Letter: Trump legal team not trying to block testimony of former DOJ officials [Politico]
Rosen Letter [via Just Security]
DOJ officials rejected colleague’s request to intervene in Georgia’s election certification: Emails [ABC]

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

In today’s business world, an organization’s success or failure depends heavily on whether that organization’s employees are able to perform at a high level both individually and collectively. There can be no question that strong leadership combined with effective teamwork is THE key to attaining stability, growth, and success. Teamwork absolutely does make the dream work, but to be an effective team player, you need to win over the hearts and minds of those people with whom you work.

Credibility And Trust

So what is the difference between credibility and trust? For me, credibility is something that comes from the head while trust is something that comes from the heart. You can be one without the other, but you must work hard to establish credibility and earn trust if you want to truly be effective as an in-house counsel.

What Is Credibility?

Credibility relates to how qualified someone thinks you are to do a job. You can establish credibility by demonstrating that you are qualified to do a specific job. You start with your resume and your experience.

What Is Trust?

Trust is less tangible and is harder to establish. It is the impression you leave with another person. Earning is not easy, but losing it is.

How Do You Build Trust?

Establishing credibility is often the easy part. You can often establish credibility quickly and simply by just sharing your credentials, showing your experience, and providing solid references from other credible professionals in your field.

Establishing trust can be more challenging. Establishing trust is a process, and it does not happen overnight. It can be especially challenging for an in-house counsel when that in-house counsel does not interact with other employees in the organization on a day-to-day basis. If you want to establish trust, I would recommend consider doing the following things:

1. Consider building trust through the language you use. Be intentional about what you say and how you say it.

• You should show that you are grateful.

You need to make sure you are not simply saying the words. You need to mean what you say, and you need to give specific reason for why you are grateful. Gratitude goes a long way when you let your team members know of your gratitude immediately following the completion of a challenging project. Let each member of the team know precisely what you appreciated about their individual contribution. You need to let them know how it ensured the success of the project.

• You should show that you are open to the ideas other than your own.

You need to make sure that you are actively soliciting ideas from all team members regardless of the position that person may hold in the organization. When proposing solutions to problems, you should ask other employees for their perspectives regarding the problem as well as possible solutions. By doing that, you are not only helping your team’s individuals feel like part of the solution, your organization is more likely to arrive at the best solution possible.

• You should show that you are listening by asking thoughtful questions.

The benefits of asking thoughtful questions are many. Not only will you learn a great deal about people and processes, it will also help you bond with the person with whom you are speaking. Ask your questions as part of a conversation and resist the urge to interrogate. Watch the sequence and tone of your questions and favor the open-ended question over “closed” questions that be answered with a “yes” or a “no.”

Simone Biles, deemed one of the greatest gymnasts in Olympic history, shocked the world last week when she withdrew from the finals for the individual competition in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. She told us via Instagram: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times.” We learned that she was suffering from mental health concerns surrounding “the twisties,” a sudden loss of body control. For any gymnast, control and balance are key to athletic performance, and “the twisties” can be detrimental to both physical and mental health.

Acknowledging her condition, Biles made the conscious decision to withdraw, telling the press, “We also have to focus on ourselves, because at the end of the day, we’re human, too … . We have to protect our mind and our body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

As lawyers, we are trained to be competitive, cut-throat, and the epitome of a perfectionist. The athleticism grows within, exercising our minds to be at peak performance at all times — or we risk losing — losing the internship, succumbing to a lower ranking, or losing out on the “gold medal” for the “book award.” It’s ingrained in us from the time we enter law school — realizing that your class rank determines how your peers and professors view you and that grading onto law review is a prerequisite to landing the coveted summer associate role in Biglaw. One test at the end of the semester determines what feels like your self-worth, inherent value, and predicable path. Everyone is watching and waiting with bated breath on the day grades are released to find out who “booked” Civil Procedure or Torts, and who isn’t making it back the next semester. On interviews, you’re asked repeatedly about your grades and required to bring an unofficial transcript with you. Everything is about your performance — not your capabilities.

We talk about mental health in the legal profession, but we overlook the signs of burnout, exhaustion, depression, and broken confidence that comes with the territory of being a lawyer. We keep asking law firm lawyers to bill more, bring in more business, and return to the office in the midst an ongoing pandemic because productivity will be higher, and we “must” return to normal. We forget how the struggle of the last year-plus has taken a toll on so many working parents from two-income households, adding in homeschooling children and social isolation to the mix. For many, the pandemic has left them questioning the joy in their careers, leading to mass exoduses in search of roles that offer remote work and better mental health prioritization.

Yet, when Simone Biles spoke with raw honesty, courage, and transparency, there were people judging her withdrawal as a sign of weakness. We forget about the trauma she’s had to cope with, the physical injuries she’s dealt with along the way, and the pressure of the world watching her at just 24 years old. All of that can take a deep toll.

The No. 1 career lesson we can learn from Simone Biles is that our feelings matter, the way our body feels matters, and how we show up for ourselves (not just the outside world) matters. Taking that break, sharing your story, and having action plans for your mental well-being are key. No one should be afraid to pause, step aside, and take the time they need to in order to heal — whether it’s personal or professional. Remember, we are all fighting our own internal demons, our own self-criticism, and our own negative self-talk. Career fatigue and burnout are very real, and our mental health should never be overlooked. I applaud Simone Biles for showing all of us that standing up for yourself and your mental health is the ultimate sign of bravery.

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Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing services company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, executives, and C-suite/Board leaders for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. You can reach her by email at wendi@writingguru.net, connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.  

In July 2021, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can no longer accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation young people who were brought to this country as children without legal status. The decision has real-life consequences for thousands of young people across this country. Here’s the heartbreaking story of just one, a client I first met five years ago. For privacy, I’ve changed names and some details.

Emily was just a few months old in 2002 when her American parents adopted her from South America and brought her to the United States. A loving couple who wanted a larger family, they had adopted Emily’s older brother, Joey, a few years earlier. They now wanted a baby girl.

Emily was brought to the U.S., seemingly with all her paperwork in place. Her new parents even sought the assistance of an immigration lawyer at the time to help ease her passage. Once here, they completed the adoption process, obtained a social security number for her, and the family settled into a seemingly comfortable life.

Then, when Emily was in her mid-20s she was inexplicably terminated from her job. She had no idea why. Immigration was not even on her radar.

The family later learned that through a program known as E-verify, which allows businesses to determine the immigration eligibility of employees, her employer had determined her social security number did not grant her permission to work. Her parents were also left dumbfounded.

What they didn’t know was that between adopting Joey and Emily, U.S immigration laws had changed. A new law, titled The Child Citizenship Act of 2000, had gone into effect in 2001. Anyone adopted prior to its implementation, was automatically a citizen upon adoption. But anyone adopted after the law enacted needed to take several additional steps to make the adoptee a legal permanent resident.

Because the law changed on or around the time Emily was adopted, the latter applied to her, but no one told her parents that they needed to take additional steps to make her presence in the U.S. legal. After all, her brother Joey even had a U.S. passport.

Suddenly, Emily found herself in a world turned upside down.

I recall, from my first meeting with Emily and her parents in 2016, a loving family eager to do what was necessary. I saw the love in their eyes and imagined the pain they felt in their hearts. Emily is an elegant, soft-spoken woman with big brown eyes, and a beautiful and kind smile.

When they relayed her story, I wanted to hug them all for their misfortune. There weren’t a lot of options. Filing for the relatively new option of DACA might get her a work permit, but not a green card nor citizenship. While the parents could start the immediate-relative immigrant petition, that would not succeed because of the time she has spent in the U.S. without status. After going through their options, we decided to file both a parent-child immigrant petition so that she had something pending in case she faced deportation and a DACA application.

Our first focus was on the immigrant petition. Emily’s parents did their best to get as many of the documents as they could, but there were a few crucial pieces still missing when Emily’s mother, in her mid-50s, suddenly passed away.

With this stunning and sudden loss, the family had to take a step back from tedious paperwork and documents. And when we finally reconnected,  pressing family matters had moved immigration concerns to the back burner.

We decided to focus on the DACA application. But it had its own set of challenges. Emily had had some brushes with the law, rendering her ineligible for DACA at the time. Anyone with a gross misdemeanor is not eligible for DACA.  We started a process of post-conviction relief, a complex and time-consuming process in the local criminal courts to reopen a case. In Washington state, immigration issues are often considered in criminal proceedings. But in Emily’s case, since no one knew immigration was even a factor, it was not taken into account. It was about this time that Donald Trump rescinded DACA completely.

With this new blow, Emily began to lose hope. But we charged ahead, nonetheless, using the time to reopen her criminal case and amend all related charges and sentences that made her ineligible for DACA. With that complete, she was a DACA applicant in waiting.

The hopes of filing were renewed last year when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed new DACA applications to be filed. But by now, I had lost contact with Emily; she had given up. When we finally were able to restart the preparation process in spring 2021, she got stuck on one piece of document.

As we were awaiting the document, once again, the DACA program was shut down, this time by a judge in Texas. And once again, we’re left without the opportunity for her to get DACA. Or a green card.

DACA is a lifeline for all types of people. Emily’s is the face of many young people, adopted by American families, whose cases fell into the transition period. They were not brought to the U.S. uninspected.

“Leave the country and get in line” is not something they can do; many have nothing to return to. And don’t even get me started on “get in line.” What is needed is an immediate restoration of the DACA program. But more importantly, Congress needs to act, without delay, to create a path to citizenship for people like Emily and the millions of others like her who are otherwise Americans in every sense of the word.

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Tahmina Watson is the founding attorney of Watson Immigration Law in Seattle, where she practices US immigration law focusing on business immigration. She has been blogging about immigration law since 2008 and has written numerous articles in many publications. She is the author of Legal Heroes in the Trump Era: Be Inspired. Expand Your Impact. Change the World and The Startup Visa: Key to Job Growth and Economic Prosperity in America.  She is also the founder of The Washington Immigrant Defense Network (WIDEN), which funds and facilitates legal representation in the immigration courtroom, and co-founder of Airport Lawyers, which provided critical services during the early travel bans. Tahmina is regularly quoted in the media and is the host of the podcast Tahmina Talks Immigration. She was recently honored by the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of the 2020 Women of Influence. You can reach her by email at tahmina@watsonimmigrationlaw.com or follow her on Twitter at @tahminawatson.

Tesla stock has routinely been the most shorted security on Wall Street. Why is a bit of a mystery: For over a decade now, shorting Tesla stock has proven one of the most disastrous financial decisions anyone could make.

As a Tesla shareholder myself, I obviously believe in the financial viability of the company — although “belief” might not be the right way to describe it. The price of Tesla stock increased in the neighborhood of 6,000 percent during its first decade of existence. So, thinking that Tesla has a solid future as a going concern is more acknowledging the irrefutable evidence right in front of your eyes at this point than it is a matter of faith.

Still, the latest earnings call, and the company’s financial results from the second quarter of this year, are important in that they demonstrate the maturation of Tesla’s revenue stream. 

As different as Tesla is from its competitors, for the first time its financials, at least, are starting to resemble those of other automakers. This is not a bad sign for the prospect of Elon Musk actually carrying out his plan to skip earnings calls. (More on this later.) 

Record Profits Face Some Headwinds

For the second quarter of this year, the electric automaker largely shrugged off the global chip shortage that has plagued many companies in the auto industry to post a record $1.1 billion profit. This marks Tesla’s eighth profitable quarter in a row, and the $1.1 billion figure crushed Wall Street’s Q2 expectation of around $600 million in profits. 

It wasn’t all good news for Tesla. CEO (or “Technoking,” as he prefers to be called) Musk noted on the company’s earnings call that the much-anticipated Cybertruck could be further delayed due to parts shortages — although Tesla executives remained confident that the Cybertruck would still go into production sometime later this year. Tesla also announced an additional delay of the Tesla Semi, which is now set to launch in 2022.

Another less-than-thrilling aspect of Tesla’s second-quarter financials was its $23 million bitcoin-related impairment. In February, Tesla indicated that it would invest $1.5 billion in bitcoin. In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla reported a $101 million net gain from sales of bitcoin as the price of the cryptocurrency rose. Cryptocurrencies plunged in Q2, however, making Tesla’s bitcoin holdings significantly less valuable. While no company wants to see the price of a significant investment drop, Tesla earnings shouldn’t be affected by the fall in the value of bitcoin unless and until the company actually divests itself of more of its cryptocurrency holdings.

Profits From Core Products

Despite a few hiccups, the Q2 earnings report is still overwhelmingly good news for Tesla. This past quarter, Tesla’s pretax margin — a financial accounting tool looked to as a proxy for the operating efficiency of a company — was respectable, at about 11 percent.

What’s more, Tesla’s pretax margin did not rely heavily in Q2 on one-off items, like offloading appreciated bitcoin or selling environmental credits to other manufacturers. Costs increased modestly, by about 9 percent, but overall revenue was up a healthy 14 percent from the first quarter. Tesla’s solar and energy storage division saw massive revenue gains too. All of this, of course, was in the midst of a global pandemic and an industry-wide semiconductor shortage.

Technoking Vows Earnings-Call Abstinence

It wasn’t just the numbers that surprised Wall Street insiders though. Musk has never seemed particularly constrained by expectations, and he dashed them yet again when he said he would be unlikely to be on future earnings calls personally. “Unless there’s something important I need to say,” Musk added on his recent call with analysts and others. As to what the Technoking might think is important enough to warrant his presence on a future earnings call, only time will tell.

There is nothing that necessarily requires a CEO to be on earnings calls. Some applauded Musk’s decision to limit his time on the phone with a great many people. Indeed, Musk is famously prone to have to dial back one faux pas or another (even when committed against people who just about anyone would find annoying).

Other commentators, though, seemed to think Musk should stay on future calls to counter the threat of Tesla rivals, which are now dramatically increasing their spending in the electric vehicle segment of the market.

Musk is certainly unconventional. Yet, if he’s proven anything, it’s that there isn’t just the one stodgy old way to successfully run a company. If you ask me, after Tesla’s Q2 results, and the record of profitable quarters they cap, Musk has certainly earned a break from earnings calls.

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Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Law firms have become even more demanding. Salaries have hit new heights. Special bonuses have been introduced. Profits have soared. 

Today, we’re asking: How do you feel about your current situation?

Please take this (always) anonymous, (always) brief survey to help us gauge how the industry is doing.