“The opening debate of the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday afternoon was supposed to be merely about the trial rules. But members of President Donald Trump’s legal team wasted no time telling a number of lies before things really got going.” reports Vox.

“Though getting facts wrong might be somewhat understandable in the context of extemporaneous statements, these falsehoods came in the context of prepared remarks read by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow.”

Read Vox‘s 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.

The Black General Counsel 2025 Initiative has launched a new online portal designed to help get 100 African American lawyers in chief legal officer or general counsel positions at top companies within the next five years, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

“April Miller Boise, a former managing partner of Thompson Hine’s Cleveland office, co-founded the Black GC Initiative in 2017 with Ernest Tuckett III, a former general counsel of Dutch chemical giant Akzo Nobel NV’s Americas arm. Tuckett joined Thompson Hine’s Chicago office as senior counsel late last year,” writes Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter.

Now Boise has taken a new job as executive vice president and general counsel at Eaton Corp. plc, a global power management conglomerate and Thompson Hine client.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

ACC-Northeast and RFP Advisory Group will present a webinar designed to teach how to use a request for proposal (RFP) as a tool to better manage outside counsel.

Using the RFP process effectively can help a legal department pick the law firms that are the best fit for a company and its existing needs/budget, ACC says.

The event will be Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, at 1 p.m. EST.

The webinar will cover how to use an RFP to:

* create a preferred provider panel

* identify the best firm for a specific matter or project

* convert your pricing structure from the billable hour to an alternative fee arrangement (AFA)

* incorporate the latest technology and innovations into your legal strategy

* increase the diversity of the lawyers working on your matters

* create a set of outside counsel guidelines for your law firms to abide by

Attendees will learn the latest trends in how RFPs are being used, and best practices in how to structure and execute a successful RFP, the sponsors said.

Register for the webinar.

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.

BitPay, the largest global blockchain payments provider, announced Eden D. Doniger has joined the company as general counsel and chief compliance officer.

A BitPay release said that she is responsible for building and innovating the company’s legal, compliance and government affairs programs, as the company and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole continue to expand.

Donigerjoined BitPay after more than eight years as assistant general counsel at Cox Enterprises, a Fortune 100 global company.

Prior to Cox, Doniger practiced law at top tier law firms in Atlanta and New York and was an adjunct professor at Georgia State University. She began her legal career as a clerk for a federal district court judge in New Orleans.

Doniger received her Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal. She is a J. William Fulbright Scholar and received her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, where she studied Slavic Literature and Languages and competed as an NCAA Division I Scholar-Athlete on the women’s squash team. She serves on the board of Hands On Atlanta, the largest non-profit organization in Atlanta serving the community’s civic needs.

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.

Tesla’s general counsel is leaving the company, meaning the company has now lost three general counsels in the past year.

CNBC reports that Jonathan Chang, who was GC at Tesla since February, has taken a position as general counsel at SambaNova.

Chang’s predecessor, Dane Butswinkas, left the company in February 2019 after just two months on the job because he was not a good cultural fit, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC at the time.

Read the CNBC 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.

Bloomberg Law reports that at least a dozen in-house lawyers were among the 2,400 layoffs last week at the parent of co-working giant WeWork.

“The WeWork layoffs followed an aborted $3.5 billion initial public offering, the departure of former CEO Adam Neumann, and a tentative $9.5 billion bailout by Japan’s SoftBank Group, which has temporarily saved the faltering company,” writes Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter.

WeWork lawyers in New York and San Francisco, along with some in outlying offices, were let go, one of the in-house lawyers told Bloomberg.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP announces that Denson N. Franklin III, a partner in the firm’s Birmingham office, has been appointed senior vice president and general counsel of Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials Company, which announced the appointment Oct. 15.

In a release, the firm said Franklin will be transitioning from the firm over the next few months and will take on his new role in December.

A member of the S&P 500 index, Vulcan is the nation’s largest producer of construction aggregates – primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel – and a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete.

A member of Bradley’s Corporate and Securities Practice Group, Franklin has focused his practice on corporate, mergers and acquisitions, finance transaction, and federal and state securities matters. He has represented clients ranging from established companies with global operations to early stage businesses. He has advised companies on a broad range of issues affecting their businesses, including clients in the information services, manufacturing, distribution and service, construction and engineering, construction materials, transportation and technology industries. Franklin has counseled companies and their boards on corporate governance and compliance issues, as well as family-owned businesses with ownership that spans multiple generations. In addition, he has advised emerging growth companies in their formation and funding, and has worked with companies from inception through venture capital funding and initial public offering or sale. He also has advised clients with respect to their overseas operations and acquisitions outside the United States.

Franklin received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and his Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) from Birmingham-Southern College.

Image by Tony webster

The ABA Journal reports that an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit claims that the former general counsel of Wynn Resorts approved a “secret undercover operation” to gather derogatory information about a former salon employee who provided information to the Wall Street Journal.

Plaintiffs claim that former Wynn general counsel Kim Sinatra was part of a civil conspiracy targeting Jorgen Nielsen, the former artistic director of a salon at Wynn Las Vegas.

The Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss reports: “The suit alleges that Sinatra and two other defendants participated in a plan to send ‘an undercover operative’ posing as a client to the new salon that employed Nielsen. The place was the salon at Palms Casino Resort.”

Read the  ABA Journal article.

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP will present a CLE program for in-house lawyers only to help attendees learn how to identify and disseminate pro bono opportunities and become familiar with special rules that apply to in-house lawyers.

The event will be Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019, with registration and a hosted breakfast beginning at 8 a.m. Pacific time. The program will last from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PT. Lunch will be provided.

This program will be hosted in the firm’s Seattle office and broadcasted to each of the firm’s other locations: Anchorage, Bellevue, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

Presenters from Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile, Starbucks panelists about how to:

* Develop a strong and impactful pro bono program
* Build a CSR, sustainability, and community arm
* Institute pro bono policy and establish a pro bono form bank
* Form or recalibrate/energize a pro bono committee
* Identify meaningful pro bono opportunities
* Enter into corporate partnerships with PPPs
* Comply with ethical rules regarding in-house pro bono work

Attendees will receive a resource manual with sample polices, forms, briefs, templates and a menu of pro bono opportunities.

The keynote will be by Lucy Lee Helm, chief partner officer at Starbucks

For registration or questions: JoannaBoisen@dwt.com

According to Equilar’s latest General Counsel Pay Trends study, which crunches pay data from publicly traded companies in the U.S., male general counsel make on average 18.6 percent more than women in the same roles, reports Above the Law.

That gap is the largest recorded since Equilar began studying the metric in 2014.

The report shows that “in the 2017 to 2018 period, median GC compensation for men increased — from $2.52 million to $2.63 million — while median pay for women GCs fell — from $2.44 million to $2.21 million,” writes Above the Law’s Kathryn Rubino.

The publication analyzes the compensation of general counsel disclosed in SEC filings for the past five fiscal years. The companies are the 500 largest, by reported revenue, U.S.-headquartered companies that trade on one of the three major U.S. stock exchanges.

Read the Above the Law article.

Steven Fabrizio, a high-level executive at the Motion Picture Association of America, has been fired by the organization following his arrest on charges he sexually abused and blackmailed a woman he contacted through an online dating service for “sugar daddies,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

The MPAA’s senior executive vice president and global general counsel for the MPAA was arrested Aug. 23 after the woman told Washington, D.C., police he coerced her into sex by threatening her, according to a report filed by the officers, writes the Times‘ Ryan Faughnder.

The MPAA is the lobbying arm of film studios Walt Disney Co., Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and Netflix.

Read the LA Times article.

Image by Elliott Brown

Two years ago, Tony West, then the general counsel for Pepsi, took a look at a newspaper exposé about Uber and told a colleague: “Man, I’m glad I’m not the GC of that company, they’ve got some real problems.”

Business Insider tells how West came to become the top lawyer at the once-troubled company.

A few months after West saw the exposé, Dara Khosrowshahi, who had recently taken over the helm of Uber following the ousting of founder Travis Kalanick, pitched West, a former federal prosecutor, on the idea of joining Uber.

“I left that meeting in a very different mind space, in terms of both thinking about what an incredible opportunity this was, and clearly the challenges the company was facing at that time, which really fit my resume,” he said.

Read the Business Insider article.

By Matthew Prinn
RFP Advisory Group

In April, BTI Consulting published a post titled 22% of Clients Bring on New GCs: New Game, New Rules, New Rates.

The post notes the following two implications for law firms about general counsel actions when they join a new company.

• This is only the beginning of a trend. The growth rate in retiring baby boomers will increase before it drops—expect a steady stream of new GCs. Plan ahead and develop a standard set of protocols to welcome all new GCs—and build yourself some serious relationships with this untapped source of new business.

• Almost every new GC puts out an RFP for legal services somewhere between 18 and 24 months into their tenure. Take control and offer to help write the RFP. Avoid the RFP by introducing yourself and befriending the new GC early on. Help with onboarding and start the conversation about complexity. *Source BTI Consulting

What I wanted to focus on in this blog post was the sentences that reference industry feedback that almost every new GC issues an RFP. I’ve noted below 4 reasons why it’s a smart move for new GC’s to do this.

To Better Understand the Company’s Historical Legal Spend Management Process and Strategy

One of the things an RFP allows you to do is audit your historical legal spend strategy. While some companies have a system in place that may have captured this information, most new general counsel will not have that luxury. This is a good opportunity for general counsel to issue a Request for Information (“RFI”). What this means is that they issue a document to the current law firms letting them know that they will be issuing an RFP down the line and inviting them to be considered for an invite to the RFP by requesting historical data from law firms in areas such as:

• How much each firm has billed per year broken down by type of law/practice
• Descriptions and results derived in key matters
• Billing structures used (hourly/AFAs, etc)
• Pricing discounts
• Key relationship managers
• Areas of service/legal capabilities

To Ensure Your Company is Receiving the Most Value for Your Dollar

RFPs allow newly hired general counsel to revise your pricing strategy with outside counsel. A new general counsel will want to confirm that they are paying “market” rates and see how each firm’s rate card compares to peer firms. RFPs can also be used as a tool to help convert legal services from the hourly billing model to a more cost effective alternative fee arrangement (“AFA”). Volume discounts can also be incorporated via the RFP process to incentivize law firms to provide more value in exchange for a larger volume of work be seeing to the law firm. New general counsel have significant leverage at the onset of a new role because law firms will often be aggressive with pricing in order to keep the work from being moved to another provider that the GC may have a historical relationship with from her past company. General counsel often find savings of 20% or higher off total annual legal spend when an RFP is properly used with law firms.

To Set Consistent Outside Counsel Guidelines
One of the most under-looked benefits of issuing an RFP is that it allows the company to create a single set of guidelines and expectations that every law firm must agree to in order to be a preferred provider. These guidelines allow a new corporate counsel to ensure that for each law firm they use, they have agreed to abide by your preferred methods of client service, billing, staffing and to ensure they have the proper level of cyber security in place for your data. Many of the historical issues that the company may have had with outside counsel law firms should be addressed in the outside counsel guidelines that are included as part of the RFP process.

To Identify Ways to Incorporate Alternative Legal Service Providers
RFPs provide a great opportunity for general counsel to consider how and where alternative legal service providers might be able to be incorporated into their legal spend management strategy. General counsel can use the RFP as a tool to invite ALSPs to respond, but also to query law firms as to how they best incorporate or collaborate with them to reduce overall legal spend. Even if a company may not be ready to make the change, the RFP provides them the opportunity to learn about how these new companies are impacting the legal industry.

While there are many more reasons as to why an RFP can be a great tool for newly hired corporate counsel, the above 4 reasons highlight some of the top issues that an RFP can address. For more information on how RFPs are impacting the legal industry please visit our webinar on RFP Best Practices which was created for corporate counsel who may be looking to issue an RFP but who do not have an in-house legal operations or procurement team.

Matthew Prinn is a Principal with RFP Advisory Group.

In the age of information overload, in-house counsel and C-suite executives are resolute in valuing utility above other content attributes. That these busy decision-makers prioritize actionable information and insights is understandable – but how the two groups define utility is quite different, according to the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey.

The survey, by strategic communications firm Greentarget and consulting firm Zeughauser Group, compares the two groups’ information consumption preferences. This yielded important takeaways in an era when C-suite executives can be as engaged in hiring a law firm as in-house legal officers, who can wield heavy influence in hiring consulting, accounting and other professional services firms.

At a high level, the two groups are in lockstep – but there are significant differences. They prefer different types of content, have varying thoughts on why content misses the mark and diverge about how they can be effectively targeted on social or other digital media. The survey – in its ninth edition since its initial release in 2010 – is the first to offer such an in-depth, side-by-side comparison.

“Over the past decade, we’ve unearthed important insights about the content preferences of decision-makers, and the 2019 study offers our most compelling findings to date that professional services marketers can’t afford to ignore,” said John Corey, founding partner of Greentarget. “This year, by comparing the likes and dislikes of in-house counsel and C-suite executives, we’re providing greater context for marketers along with actionable guidance on the ever-elusive pursuit of bringing the right content to the right audiences on the right platforms at the right time.”

Comparing In-House Counsel and C-Suite Executives

• Traditional Media Still Highly Trusted – and Accessed: Both in-house counsel and C-suite executives highly value traditional media, even in the age of so-called “fake news.” C-suite executives placed the highest value on traditional media at 82 percent (up from 74 percent in the 2018 survey). Additionally, 79 percent of in-house counsel said traditional media is most valuable, about the same as the 80 percent who responded that way last year. The findings speak to this audience’s continued desire for curation and the role professional editors play in determining what stories and topics are most important.

• In-House Counsel Like Articles, but the C-Suite Prefers Interactive Charts:

In a revealing comparison about both the personalities and job responsibilities of the two groups surveyed, in-house counsel said their preferred content type was articles and C-suite executives picked interactive charts. Relatedly, in-house counsel picked educational as their most valued content attribute while C-suite executives chose relevance and ease of access. This makes sense as lawyers tend to take in longer-form information, and interactive charts enable C-level executives to quickly absorb complex information.

• What Makes Content Miss: The two groups also differed on why content can miss the mark. Fifty-one percent of in-house counsel said content misses most often because it’s “too salesy” while the same percentage of C-suite executives chose “not sufficiently relevant.

• LinkedIn Lessons: Fifty-three percent of in-house counsel said they find value in LinkedIn as a platform, but just 29 percent agree that it is effectively used by outside law firms. C-suite executives were more satisfied with LinkedIn’s content targeting, with 63 percent saying it is effective.

• Do Law Firms Overemphasize Rankings? CMOs say peer-driven rankings or listing services command more resources than any category of firm content aside from trade publications and traditional media. But just 9 percent of in-house counsel find the rankings “very important” when researching firms for potential hire. Forty-one percent say the rankings are “somewhat important,” which may suggest that such rankings are limited to a validation effect, an important consideration for CMOs allocating resources.

A Continued Lack of Documented Content Strategy

This year’s survey, which queried 100 in-house counsel and 100 C-suite executives, was also the first since 2017 to query law firm chief marketing officers (30 in total) about, among other things, their approaches to content strategy and marketing resource allocation, among other topics. While firms need strategic roadmaps to guide their content development and distribution efforts more than ever, just 25 percent of the law firm marketing officers said they had documented content strategies. That’s slightly down from two years ago.

“Law firms, just like all professional service organizations, understand how content can help build their brands and differentiate their organizations – but many are creating more content without documented strategies,” said Mary K. Young, a partner with Zeughauser Group. “Their reliance on implicit strategy is likely a response to the complexities of prioritizing certain practices or sectors within firms. Though it may be difficult for marketers to publicly prioritize certain practices, we encourage them to emphasize the types of content and distribution preferences that best meet the needs of audiences most critical to the firm’s success.”

Several Trump administration officials have personal or professional ties to Boeing’s man at the center of the 737 Max jetliner crash drama. He’s J. Michael Luttig, the longtime general counsel whom the company reassigned to lead its 737 response, reports Bloomberg.

“When he was a federal appellate court judge, Luttig brought on dozens of promising young clerks who are now spread throughout the judiciary and beyond,” explain Bloomberg’s Tom Schoenberg, Julie Johnsson and Peter Robison. “In more than a decade at Chicago-based Boeing, he stocked his department with ex-government lawyers. He also tapped Kirkland [& Ellis LLP], which has a big Chicago presence, for matters as varied as acquisitions and contract disputes.”

Luttig also is wired into the Supreme Court. He was a groomsman at the wedding of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Aman Demoz Solomon, an American who was working in Singapore as general counsel for a real estate investment management company, died in a five-story fall in a Singapore mall, according to The Straits Times.

The report said Solomon. 35, had been based in Singapore since February last year as general counsel and chief compliance officer for real estate investment management firm CBRE Global Investors Asia Pacific.

The 2008 graduate of Harvard Law School previously worked at global law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Davis Polk & Wardwell as an associate.

Read the Straits Times article.