A new book by Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris takes a look at the notion about “mean girls,” “queen bees,” and women’s competitiveness with each other in office settings.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications interviews Kramer about “It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict at Work and the Bias that Built It,” and the conclusion that there is no empirical evidence that women have more intense or frequent conflicts in working with other women than men do in working with other men or that women and men do in working together.

“The enduring notion that women are mean to—or hostile or antagonistic or competitive with—other women, can be explained, in part, by the fact that women often hold other women to higher interpersonal behavioral standards than men do,” Kramer, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery,  says in the interview.

Read the article.

By Josh Taylor, Smokeball

Insufficient data security practices lead to devastating consequences for small law firms. Breaches can inflict irreversible damage to a firm’s reputation, finances and client relationships. So why aren’t they taking cybersecurity seriously?

A recent American Bar Association survey uncovered this lack of concern, finding that only 42% of firms took action to increase digital security measures last year. Of these, 27% did so to better protect client or contract data. While lawyers spend their time looking out for clients’ risks and liabilities, the data suggests this diligence doesn’t extend to internal matters.

Exactis’ 2018 data leak shows how small business security lapses balloon into a much larger crisis. This breach exposed the personal information of over 230 million people and 110 million businesses, demonstrating that even smaller-scale businesses store massive amounts of sensitive data and face a constant threat as their data pool grows.

While small law firms may not have a long roster of big-name clients, they store a significant amount of personal details and business information. Clients trust them to protect sensitive business information like proprietary data, financial details and confidential deals. Leaks and breaches have severe ramifications, causing clients to walk out, IT headaches, financial worries and regulatory violations.

An accident or technical error may have created the breach, but innocent causes don’t render firms immune from serious business consequences. Each law office is responsible for preventing and quickly responding to leaks or attacks. Technical aspects of cybersecurity may overwhelm some small firms, but improving data protection and online safety practices doesn’t have to be complicated. Law firms bolstering digital security can start by keeping in mind a few simple tips:

Make Security People Powered

Small law firms don’t often face the organized cyber threats that plague larger organizations. Their risks tend to lie within the firm itself, stemming from workers that lack the technological savvy to sidestep malicious schemes. Ransomware and phishing scams rely on human error, and untrained employees open the door for them to poach important private records.

Implementing regular training for all employees assists organizations in avoiding personnel-caused breaches. This way, staff stay updated on how best to protect themselves and the firm from nefarious email schemes and other tactics cybercriminals use to siphon off personal data. Additionally, law offices should cultivate channels for quick information distribution to allow employees to respond quickly during data leaks. Training programs may increase costs and responsibilities up front, but pay off later on by warding off detrimental security issues.

Invest In Updated Tech

The phrase “small law office” doesn’t typically conjure up images of futuristic operations and state-of-the-art technology. But more than hurting firms’ reputations, this digital sluggishness produces security risks. Offices running on inconsistent operating systems, outdated software and unsecured Wi-Fi networks take on a higher vulnerability. Fortunately, these technology issues are easily fixed. Scheduling regular hardware and software updates and frequently changing the internet password helps fortify firms’ defenses.

Though it may seem obvious, it’s worth noting the large role passwords play in ensuring smaller firms’ security. One weak link opens the floodgates to your entire database of client information. Keep login information for sensitive data on a need-to-know basis, and consider using a password manager for all employees. Frequently changing passwords, though a small step, provides another line of protection against cyber threats.

Reduce In-Office Risks

Traditional, lock-and-key security is an easy concept to grasp, but digital security is a hazier concept. Fortunately for firms not familiar with technology-driven data protection, the two share some common ground.

Some believe that on-site servers make data safer, but this is a misconception. Seeing storage equipment physically in the office may be reassuring, but centralizing this information just compounds the risk. For example, burglars breaking into a small law firm could then take much more than basic office hardware. Backing up and housing data in the cloud lowers this hazard for organizations, removing important data from the risks inherent in physical spaces.

Another seemingly innocuous practice that poses security issues is carelessness with paper documents. More firms are adopting digital document software, but paper remains popular at many small firms. These documents also expose confidential information if left in plain view or accidentally included in social media photos. Just like with digital risks, reminding employees of security best practices helps suppress future issues.

Just like any business entrusted with sensitive data, law firms must commit to shielding themselves and clients from data breaches. Leaks at small offices quickly expand into a big problem. As data storage demands continue growing, firms can introduce simple technology and security improvements that protect client information and preserve their reputation.

A few Biglaw firms raised starting salaries for first-year associates to $190,000 last June, but a study by the National Association for Law Placement reveals that most firms held to a more modest course on starting salaries in 2018.

Above the Law reports on the NALP study, which found that only 29.3 percent of reported first-year associate salaries hit the $190,000 mark. Smaller firms and firms with head counts between 501 and 700 didn’t budge and reported flat associate salary growth in 2018, writes Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

Most of the top first-year salaries were at firms in the major markets.

Read the Above the Law article.

Jones Day is objecting to the use of pseudonyms for four of the six plaintiffs who have sued the Biglaw firm for allegedly discriminating against female partners and associates in compensation.

Above the Law reports that the firm told the judge hearing some of the cases that “the court’s approval of the pseudonyms itself impugns Jones Day’s reputation by implying, without basis in evidence, that Jones Day would improperly retaliate against the Jane Does if their identities were made public.”

The firm’s motion said that “pseudonyms prevent the public—including clients, potential clients, lateral recruits, and law students—from fully evaluating the Does’ allegations and credibility.”

Read the Above the Law article.

Proposals to allow the use of trade names in law firm advertising drew a big response to proposals by the State Bar of Texas to change ad rules, writes Bruce Vincent in a blog post for Muse Communications.

Response to the ad proposal and other possible revisions led the State Bar of Texas’ Committee on Rules and Referenda to scrap the original proposal and issue a new one based on the committee’s work and public comments.

“Several attorneys supported the idea of using trade names but most people who weighed in say it is a bad idea,” Vincent writes. “Those in favor typically argued that they were put at a competitive disadvantage by not being allowed to use trade names. Those on the other side often went to great lengths to explain why they think trade names will hurt the profession.”

The Bar also drew responses on the “specialist” label in advertising and on the requirement to have lawyer websites preapproved by the Bar — for a fee.

Read the article.

Bloomberg Law reports that the former chair of Dentons government contracts practice group claims that the firm owes her more than $390,000, but the firm has fired back, saying she owes the firm almost $2 million in client fees.

Jessica Abrahams, now at Drinker Biddle & Reath, claims Dentons breached a contract that guaranteed she’d have the funds in her capital account returned to her if she left the firm.

Dentons responded in a statement that when Abrahams left, “Dentons was owed more than $1.8 million from her clients and those fees and costs largely remain outstanding today.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

By Greg Hoover

What value does an in-house legal department bring to the company? We are the lawyers that know our clients best. We understand the business at a fundamental level and understand how the legal environment affects operations. Often, we also serve as the buyer of outside legal services, ensuring that the company receives value for money. To outside counsel, we are something of a professional client; one that makes our living hiring other lawyers, managing the attorneys so selected, and expressing the wishes of the company. The tools and resources we use to get our jobs done are, for the most part, invisible to our clients so long as we remain the primary gatekeeper.

Just as technology has introduced a number of new tools to make us more efficient, new models like online freelance attorney marketplaces have opened up a world of opportunity, which in some cases can give the tried and true firm model a run for its money.

When to Stick with Status Quo Firm Relationships

Most in-house legal departments do not rely on a single attorney or firm to provide all of their outside services. After all, it is highly unlikely that the best attorneys in each jurisdiction and practice area needed by the company work for the same firm. Instead, we assemble a team of lawyers from our contacts. This generally yields better results for our client in terms of cost, effectiveness, and conflicts management. After all, the best employment discrimination litigator in the city is probably not the best patent attorney.

In some cases, sticking with this status quo model of retaining outside help is the prudent route to take. Those instances include:

1. If you, as the in-house lawyer, are unable to manage the freelance attorney. Some in-house lawyers are skilled managers of attorneys and support staff; some are not. Managing outside counsel, whether a firm or a freelancer, is a skill that some in-house lawyers never pick up. If you would rather not review the pleadings and just trust the relationship partner to get it right, then maybe hiring a freelancer isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you will be reviewing the work before anything is set in stone, and you track deadlines and know how to set expectations, then managing a freelancer will come naturally to you.

2. When defining the scope of a complex engagement presents a challenge, breaking out the Rolodex of known firm attorneys makes sense. In these cases, an issue comes up and the initial goal of the general counsel is simply to mitigate damage. The in-house department may not know enough about the issue to even frame the issue and define a successful outcome for the company. However, most of us are capable of doing a little research and at least getting a general idea of the type of attorney to hire and making a first pass at issue-spotting a fact pattern. If you can do that much, you can probably frame the issue sufficiently to at least get a memo from a freelance attorney outlining next steps. Then you can make the decision to parse out another piece of the case to a freelancer, expand the scope of your original freelancer, or, when necessary, hire a firm for a more full-scope representation.

When and How to Use Online Freelance Attorneys

Before we get into the when and how of using freelance attorneys, let’s pause and consider whether this new contract attorney model is really different than the tried-and-true firm model. Aren’t freelance attorneys signed to projects for specific matters really just outside counsel in all but the name? What separates the senior associate at Dewey, Cheetam, and Howe, LLP from the contract attorney available for hire on a freelance network? Or, perhaps the more pertinent question is: what separates the contract attorney Dewey, Cheetam, and Howe would have hired from the one available on one of these online marketplaces? The pool of attorneys interested in working as contract attorneys used to vary significantly by location and practice area. There are large pools of SEC attorneys in New York City; not so many in Minneapolis. With the advent of the internet and some relatively recent ethics opinions, most attorneys can now work as contract attorneys in most locations. The pool of contract attorneys available to the big firm in another city is now available to the in-house lawyer via the internet.

For smaller in-house legal teams, hiring and managing contract attorneys through online freelance marketplaces provides speed, control and affordability that cannot be achieved hiring outside counsel at a law firm. For example, many law firm malpractice policies require that a partner be assigned to a case, even if all of the work will be done by an associate who is perfectly competent to do the work. This not only adds time for the partner to review the work, but also the overhead to pay for the partner’s time. Suddenly, a 2-hour task becomes a 4-billable-hour exercise, when the in-house counsel would have probably been satisfied with the first draft! To compound matters, without a preexisting relationship, in-house counsel usually do not get to select the associate or associates assigned to their matter. This means that they will get whomever is available, even if another associate could have done the task for less money. If the firm is especially busy or the work is in a niche area of the law, the law firm is likely to hire contract attorneys anyway, and add their markup. All of this adds up to a bigger bill and less control for the client.

However, unlike the execution of a project with a contract attorney, which depends less on the direct involvement of the hiring in-house counsel, the freelance attorney model requires involvement and supervision from in-house counsel. Online platforms help by automating communication flows, and more sophisticated ones like LAWCLERK have the ability to create “Teams” of subject matter experts like a virtual Rolodex. Another benefit is the flexibility to scale up and down as projects ebb and flow.

Getting started is easy. Although each online freelance marketplace will vary slightly, I’m most familiar with LAWCLERK so this process is based on my own experience.

1. Scope the Project: To begin, define the project and deliverable that you want from a contract attorney. Remember, the contract attorney doesn’t know more about the case than you tell them. For example, let’s say you represent a Nevada corporation that does business nationwide. You learn that a company in Georgia is soliciting your customers with the assistance of one of your former employees. The employee signed a nondisclosure agreement when he began working for you, but it is not clear if it is enforceable across the country or even applicable in this situation. You want a memo on the causes of action that may be available to you in Nevada or Georgia.

2. Set a Price and Post It: Now that you know what you want to receive, it is time to decide a price. Understand that freelance attorneys are running their own firms and have overhead expenses and downtime like every firm. They aren’t paralegals receiving a salary whether they’re working or not or receiving benefits from a benevolent third party. The freelancer might not have hard office expenses or staff, but there are things like office equipment, insurance, and bar memberships to pay for. Those are real costs and must be compensated for. An under-priced research memo might be the most expensive advice you ever get. Price the work in line with what you know the project will take to complete. Once you develop a relationship with a few contract attorneys, you can poll them in advance regarding pricing.

When posting a project, the posting attorney sets a fixed price for the delivery of the project and a due date. Contract attorneys hired through the platform agree to perform the work described for a fixed fee only, so there are no surprise bills for the hiring attorney. Then, the money is deposited with the online platform provider and the project is posted. Attorneys with expertise in the relevant area of the law receive an alert informing them that a project matching their interests is available. They are then directed to the platform to submit their name and a short message expressing their interest. After the application period expires, the posting attorney selects the contract attorney they think will best accomplish the task and ask them to clear conflicts. After reviewing the relevant rules of professional conduct and the parties, the contract attorney accepts the case and receives access to the case documents uploaded to the platform.

3. Completion of the Project and Payment: Once the project is accepted, the attorneys can message each other through a portal within the platform. When the project is completed, the contract attorney will send the deliverable to the hiring attorney through the portal. The hiring attorney will then have 96 hours to approve or reject the deliverable and can be unilaterally extended for another 96 hours if needed. If the hiring attorney does nothing, the project is automatically approved at the expiration of the review period. A day or two after the deliverable is approved, the contract attorney is paid. No invoices to review, no check requests to write, no W-9 to chase. Under current law, the corporation does not need to issue a 1099-MISC to the contract attorney, as they are paid through a third-party payment platform. If the contract attorney exceeds the threshold to require tax documents (presently $20,000 per year), then the payment platform is responsible for that filing.

4. Managing Disputes: By now, you’re probably wondering what happens when you aren’t satisfied with the contract attorney’s work. With LAWCLERK, the platform will hold the funds pending resolution and serve as the arbitrator of the issue. This provides a degree of expediency and detached judgment often not available in disputes with outside firms.

5. Rinse and Repeat: Once you have received the deliverable and the contract attorney is paid, you can create another post for the next steps, be it a demand letter, pleading, or more research. You can direct a project to particular contract attorney before posting it to the community writ large. Another convenient feature of the platform is the ability to form teams with which you can build a rapport and direct work when you need someone who understands your preferences in a way that is only learned through repeat work.

I am not here to advocate replacing your entire outside counsel network with freelance attorneys. I am suggesting that it is a good substitute for matters which are well-defined and which might be handled more cost effectively outside the traditional law firm model. After all, the job of a general counsel is to ensure the legal needs of the corporation are met, and it is incumbent upon each of us to be good stewards of the shareholders’ money.

About the Author: Greg Hoover is the in-house counsel to a small division of a Fortune 100 company. His work focuses on general business law, government contracts, international sales of goods, and export controls.

Law firms are facing choices about how to grapple with the fact that many Baby Boomer lawyers—the massive generation born between 1946 and 1964—aren’t looking to leave their practices anytime soon, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Some firms have mandatory retirement ages and other limits on attorneys’ practices after a certain juncture. But plenty of them don’t,” points out Bloomberg correspondent Elizabeth Olson. “Whether to mandate retirement is complicated for law firms looking to continue positive relationships with longtime partners, while at the same time ensuring those partners’ client relationships are passed smoothly along to the next generation.”

 Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison took a hit on social media in December when a partnership promotion photo appeared to show just one woman and 11 white men.

The ABA Journal points out that the law firm later said the partnership class actually included one woman, one Latino and one LGBTQ partner, making it 25% diverse.

Now a new report released by the nonprofit group Lawyers of Color shows Paul Weiss with the highest percentage of black lawyers out of 400 law firms surveyed. The report says 8.27 percent of Paul Weiss’ lawyers are black. The average of black lawyers across the 400 firms surveyed was 3.2 percent.

Read the ABA Journal article.

Special counsel Robert Mueller could have an enormous payday waiting for him at his pick of prestigious law firms whenever he finishes the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according the Washingtonian.

Reporter Marisa M. Kashino quotes Jeffrey Lowe, the Washington managing partner of legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa: “Firms that can pay $5 million will offer $5 million [annually]. If they can pay between $5 million and $10 million, that can be the number, too.”

Before becoming special counsel, Mueller was a partner in the DC office of WilmerHale, where he earned nearly $3.5 million, well above the firm’s average partner compensation.

Read the Washingtonian article.

Above the Law reports on a law firm’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against an associate who wants to leave the firm.

Senior editor Kathryn Rubino describes the suit filed by the Preis PLC law firm:

The firm recently sued Jane “Megan” Daily, a soon-to-be former associate leaving after a year at the firm. The petition alleges a breach of contract and damages — the firm says it lost $10,000 by training Daily for the year because “more experienced attorneys must take time away from other tasks to supervise and mentor new hires, further costing the firm significant lost billing time.”

Read the Above the Law article.

Legal marketers can take a cue from Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo, whose KonMari method essentially boils down to taking stock of everything you own and then eliminating whatever fails to bring you joy, writes Bruce Vincent of Muse Communications.

That means figuring out what you’re using to do your job and getting rid of anything that doesn’t help you accomplish your firm’s marketing goals.

He begins by extolling the virtues of lists, especially contact lists. He offers some tips about how to organize and maintain those lists of contacts for maximum efficiency.

The article also discusses the value of — and methods — of organizing and maintaining digital files. It ends with a plea for avoiding distracting clutter in an office, an approach Marie Kondo would heartily endorse.

Read the article.

The discovery of hidden cameras, microphones and recording equipment in a Florida law firm has led to firings, lawsuits and the departure of a name partner, according to The Palm Beach Post.

It all started when a staffer at Steinger, Iscoe & Greene in Palm Beach County found drywall debris in her office. That discovery led to wires connected to the surveillance equipment. After police were called, it was discovered that some wires had been cut and a video recording device was missing, according to a lawyer representing the firm in an invasion of privacy lawsuit.

Two associates who were fired have sued the firm, and name partner Gary Iscoe, who reportedly received an undisclosed amount of money as part of a confidential agreement, has resigned.

“It’s very John Grisham,” said attorney Michael Pike, who is representing the firm in the lawsuit aimed at finding out who the spies were.

Read the Palm Beach Post article.

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against Morrison & Foerster accuses the firm of expending “an exorbitant and excessive amount of time” running up the bill for clients, reports Above the Law.

The five plaintiffs hired the firm to handle the winding down of the entities.

They allege that MoFo had 34 different timekeepers bill 669 hours at a cost of $484,321 during a two-month period.

“The complaint also says while the firm had arranged for $625,319 to be paid to its trust account, it also “unilaterally decided to pay itself from these funds—although this was never authorized. This left $170,978 in the trust account,” according to Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

 Read the Above the Law article.

Bloomberg Law is reporting that a former Winston & Strawn LLP intellectual property attorney can litigate—and can’t be forced to arbitrate—her pay, bias, and retaliation claims.

The California Supreme Court declined to review an appellate ruling that the arbitration agreement Constance Ramos signed as an income partner contained unfair provisions that couldn’t be separated from the rest of the agreement, according to Bloomberg’s Joyce Cutler.

Under those provisions, Ramos would have been required to pay half the costs, and she would be subject to secrecy clauses that would have prevented her from interviewing potential witnesses.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax — accused by two women of sexual assault — faces more than just official scrutiny over the allegations; because he’s a partner in Morrison & Foerster, he’s under investigation by his firm, too.

CNN reports:

“Amid the allegations, Fairfax’s law firm told employees he is taking a leave of absence, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN. The memo states the firm of Morrison & Foerster, of which Fairfax is a partner, has retained outside counsel to conduct an investigation. ‘Justin has agreed to cooperate with the firm’s investigation,’ the memo states.”

Above the Law reports that Fairfax hired Beth Wilkinson of Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz after the first allegations of sexual assault surfaced.

Bloomberg Law reports that the makers of IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence tool have been in quiet, informal discussions with a small group of prominent law firms in a bid to launch an expansion of offerings for firms and to help them collaborate around AI.

Brian Kuhn, co-founder and global leader of the Watson legal practice at IBM, said the company until now has mostly focused its legal business marketing of Watson to legal departments within large corporations, according to Bloomberg’s Sam Skolnick.

Kuhn said the company is preparing for a large-scale entrance into the American and British law firm markets, adding to its existing arrangements with U.S. and U.K.-based firms already in place.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Three senior in-house attorneys discussed best practices for collaborating with outside counsel during a panel discussion at Ward and Smith’s 2018 In-House Counsel Seminar, with a focus on leveraging technology, controlling legal spend, and managing succession.

A report on the discussion is posted on the Ward and Smith website.

Ward and Smith attorney Paul Fanning moderated a panel featuring Brian Holland, General Counsel for Global Knowledge, Kelly Clay, Global eDiscovery Counsel and Head of Data Governance at GlaxoSmithKline, and Ken Hammer, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions.

Read the article.

General counsels and chief legal officers at more than 170 companies have signed an open letter telling law firms they expect their lawyers to “reflect the diversity of the legal community and the companies and the customers we serve,” reports the ABA Journal.

“The letter was drafted after an online photo of 12 new partners at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison drew attention because it appeared to show 11 white men and just one woman,” writes the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss. “The firm later said the partnership class also includes one Latino and one LGBTQ partner.”

A New York Times article on the subject said that more than 20 women and people of color described obstacles to achieving diversity at Paul, Weiss, with many saying that opportunities to be groomed for partner are harder to come by for women and minorities.

Read the Journal article.

The rules governing legal advertising for Texas attorneys and law firms are scheduled for some significant changes in the coming months, writes Bruce Vincent of Muse Communications in an online summary of the revised advertising rules to help legal professionals prepare.

In his post, he discusses the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct rules governing lawyer advertising that are up for revision and the substantive differences compared to the status quo, including rules on trade names, verdict amounts and specialization, prohibited solicitations, submissions to ad review, and exempt communications.

Read the article.