The 2020 Lateral Partner Satisfaction Survey, released by legal search firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, reveals that the top reason for law firm partners to make lateral moves is lack of confidence in firm management and strategy.

“The next most-often cited reasons were a lack of support to build their practice (about 35%), dislike of their firm’s culture (about 31%) and compensation (about 31%). The lawyers were allowed to choose more than one factor,” reports the  ABA Journal.

The survey also shows that many partners are making life-changing decisions with very little due diligence.

Read the survey.

Read the  ABA Journal‘s report.

Above the Law reports that Reed Smith has announced a global Mental Health Task Force to help Reed Smith’s team address mental health issues as they arise.

Partner Kimberly Gold, inaugural chair of the task force, describes the firm’s plan:

“The mission of this task force is to ensure that our lawyers and professional staff have access to help whenever they or their family members experience or are at risk of experiencing mental health or substance use issues. We will also challenge the well-documented stigma surrounding these issues and cultivate a workplace culture that promotes psychological wellness and positive help-seeking behaviors.”

Read the Above the Law article.

David Drummond, the chief legal officer of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and one of its most senior executives, is leaving the internet giant amid an investigation into his relationships with women who worked at the company, reports The New York Times.

His resignation comes more than a year after 20,000 Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace relationships, writes the Times‘ Daisuke Wakabayashi.

“Some employees inside Google were dismayed that Mr. Drummond was not forced to leave after the details of an extramarital relationship he had with a woman who worked for him became public,” Wakabayashi continues. “The concerns about Mr. Drummond’s workplace romances took on new life when he recently married another woman from Google’s legal department.”

Read the  NY Times article.

Bloomberg Law takes a look at the hundreds of Kirkland & Ellis hard-working, non-share partners who live in a sort of limbo—a solid step above associate status, but still well-short of achieving the coveted position of equity partner, where they are able to share in the firm’s largesse.

Bloomberg’s Roy Strom explains:

“It’s an exchange that helps fuel the bottom line at one of the world’s richest law firms: Kirkland gets non-share partners’ blood, sweat, and tears, and billable hours. And in return, non-share partners bank on the experience and contacts gained at Kirkland in hopes that despite the significant blow of not getting coveted Kirkland shares, they can land well elsewhere.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

“Clauses in employment contracts may appear benign when a contract is signed, but then later balloon into serious problems.” warns Devin R. Bates and Lauren Grinder in Mitchell Williams’ Between the Lines.

This article addresses several commonly litigated issues. They caution that “There is no one-size-fits-all solution for employment contracting, but it would be wise to heed the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Read the article.

The former general counsel of Faraday & Future Inc. sued the company for $106 million Jan. 3, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Hong Liu, a China expert, claimed in Manhattan federal court that the electric car startup lured him away from a Mayer Brown LLP partnership by fraudulently overstating its prospects.

He alleges top executives made false claims about a pending $2 billion investment to persuade him to abandon his lucrative practice and move his family from New York to California. The investment didn’t materialize, and Liu alleges he was fired after less than a year without receiving the compensation he’d been promised: $6 million in cash and 20 million shares—valued at $100 million—in Faraday affiliate Smart King Ltd.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Bloomberg Law reports that Apple Inc. general counsel Katherine Adams earned more than $25.2 million in total compensation during 2019, down slightly from a year earlier, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed Jan. 3.

Adams receives $1 million in annual cash compensation, with the balance coming in the form of restricted stock awards in the company.

“Adams replaced the retiring Bruce Sewell as the company’s general counsel, having previously spent 14 years in-house at Honeywell International Inc., the last eight of which she served as its in-house legal chief,” writes Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter. “Before that Adams spent a decade at Sidley Austin, where she was an associate and partner.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Careful drafting of employment arbitration agreements due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision affecting an employer’s ability to enforce such agreements is critical, warn Art Silbergel and Kacey Riccomini in a post on Thompson Coburn’s website.

The publication states “In the interim, employers and their counsel need to carefully consider options in drafting arbitration agreements that address the new law that may help in compelling a court complainant to arbitrate the claims. Anyone creating, revising or reviewing agreements to arbitrate employment disputes should consider” their 23 tips.

Read the article.

When it comes to physician employment agreements, non-compete provisions can be controversial and tricky, warns A. Kevin Troutman in Fisher Phillips’ Non-Compete and Trade Secrets Blog.

Such provisions can “restrict a doctor from practicing in a specified geographic area for a stipulated period of time after termination of their employment,” he writes. “The key question is when do such provisions become unreasonable? The analysis becomes even more complicated when factoring in the unique bond between patients and their doctors. After all, most patients’ sense of loyalty lies with their physician, not with a particular hospital, clinic or medical group.”

Read the article.

The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics will present its Internal Investigations Workshop, January 22-24, 2020, in San Francisco.

The workshop provides two days of focused training on conducting compliance-related internal investigations. The domestic workshops also offer an optional third day post conference. Experienced compliance professionals who have in-depth experience in the challenges and opportunities in conducting internal investigations will lead the training.

Topics include:

• Understanding and assessing the initial allegation of wrongdoing
• Creating an investigation plan
• Gathering evidence
• Conducting interviews, including the subject of the investigation
• Conclusions and root-cause analysis
• Writing your report
• Avoiding pitfalls and legal risks

Register for the event or get details.

More than 20 percent of associates at Texas-based litigation powerhouse Susman Godfrey will have total compensation of at least $500,000 for 2019, the firm announced.

Above the Law reports on the firm’s new scale:

“Susman has a history giving out massive bonuses. 2019 has brought another year of big bonuses at the firm. But they didn’t just repeat the big bonuses from last year, they actually added to them.”

Bonuses range as high as $235,000 for Susman Godfrey associates in the 2011 law school graduation class.

Read the Above the Law article.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s longtime general counsel Allan Rauch is among six senior executives departing the company as part of a corporate restructuring announced Dec. 17, reports Bloomberg Law.

The home goods retailer named a former subordinate of Rauch’s to succeed him as general counsel on an interim basis.

Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter writes that the new interim GC, Michael Callahan, is a former vice president and corporate counsel with more than 25 years of experience in the company’s law department.

Rauch joined the company in 1994 and became general counsel in 1996.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

A NAVEX Global webinar will address the top 10 risk and compliance trends for 2020.

The complimentary event will be Wednesday, Jan. 15. 2020, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET.

In 2020, several critical issues are sure to impact the business landscape, including: election year turmoil, updates to regulatory requirements, digital environment impact, new agency guidance, data privacy, workplace behavioral shifts, and more, NAVEX says in its invitation.

Participants in the webinar will hear how experts are predicting these upcoming trends will provoke, shape and inspire organizational shifts and program improvements.

Register for the webinar.

A Davis Wright Tremaine post illustrates the application of a forum selection clause in a contract.

In Down-Lite International, Inc. v. Chad Altbaier, a federal magistrate judge denied defendant’s motion to transfer venue from Ohio to California largely because the parties’ forum selection clause designated Ohio as the venue for disputes.

Down-Lite’s holding illustrates that courts tend to enforce forum selection clauses unless there is a compelling showing of prejudice to the party opposing the agreed-upon forum, according to the post.

Read the article.

While prohibiting disparagement of co-workers, products and services is lawful, prohibiting disparagement generally of the employer, management, or policies is not, according to a memo from the  National Labor Relations Board, the Office of General Counsel.

Fiona W. Ong discusses the memo in an article for Shaw Rosenthal.

The memo was in part a response to a law firm’s employee agreements that contained a provision prohibiting critical comments about the firm. Several former employees posted negative reviews about the firm on various websites, including Glassdoor.com, Indeed.com, Avvo, Yelp, and Yahoo.business. The law firm then filed suit against them for breach of contract and defamation.

Read the article.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utah Transit Authority’s former general counsel is suing the agency for $300,000 in deferred bonuses and benefits that leaders had voided as “unconscionably high.”

The agency responded in state district court by counter-suing Bruce Jones, alleging “fraud and legal malpractice.”

Jones claims he negotiated for the bonuses in exchange for keeping his base salary lower. The agency claims Jones represented “both himself and UTA in salary negotiations” on contracts that gave him the generous benefits, which were never approved by the board.

Read the Tribune article.

Associates at Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz can thank management for setting a standard-breaking bonus scale for Biglaw associates, according to a report by Above the Law.

The firm, with offices in Washington, Los Angeles and New York, set a bonus scale that is 1.5 times the going market rate. Above the Law senior editor Staci Zaretsky writes that this is the fourth time the firm has beaten the market on bonuses since it opened four years ago.

Senior associates and those in the class of 2012 are in line for bonuses of $150,000.

Read the Above the Law article.

Jones Day has filed a motion seeking sanctions against plaintiffs who filed a $200 million lawsuit alleging that the law firm discriminates based on gender and motherhood, reports the ABA Journal.

The firm alleges in the sanctions motion that the plaintiffs made up the lawsuit’s pay-bias claims “out of whole cloth” and seeks their dismissal, writes the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss. Jones Day also is seeking an order for the plaintiffs’ lawyers to pay fees and costs that the firm spent to litigate the motion.

Jones Day has claimed that the plaintiffs in the original suit wrongly assumed that female associates at the firm were paid less than their male counterparts.

Read the  ABA Journal article.

The office of the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel has released an advice memorandum finding an employer violated federal labor law by requiring employees to sign a broad non-disparagement agreement at the time of hire, according to a Kramer Levin post.

The memo referred to a case in which a law firm required all newly hired support staff and attorneys to sign an employment agreement containing a non-disparagement provision, according to the post’s authors, Kevin B. Leblang and Emily M. Wajert.

The GC rejected the law firm’s reasoning for the broad provision, explaining that “[t]he employer’s asserted interest . . . is not a unique interest nor strong enough to outweigh the significant interference the [provision] has with employee rights.”

Read the article.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas compelled arbitration in a putative Fair Labor Standards Act class action based on language in a “notice to employees” that put the plaintiffs on notice that they were agreeing to arbitrate claims in an incorporated (and hyperlinked) arbitration agreement, according to Carlton Fields; Reinsurance Focus.

Author Brendan Gooley adds that the court also rejected various other defenses to arbitration raised by the plaintiffs in an attempt to avoid arbitration.

The court found that the notice to employees contained sufficient language to incorporate the arbitration agreement by reference, and the notice to employees was also clear on that point.

Read the article.