April 29, 2019, 4:36 pm CDT
Photo by metamorworks/Shutterstock.com.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Jobs for Class of ’18 overall see ‘modest increase’ but with fewer graduates than last year
Legal Education
Photo by metamorworks/Shutterstock.com.
There was a slight uptick in law firm, government and public interest jobs for the Class of 2018, according to employment outcomes released Monday by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
For law students graduating in 2018, 78.6% had full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required or JD-advantage jobs within about 10 months after graduation, according to a news release. Comparably, 75.3% of the Class of 2017 reported similar positions last year, but the Class of 2018 had 583 fewer members, according to an online table posted by the legal ed section. That, coupled with a “modest increase” in jobs, led to the employment increase, according to the release.
“The results show a continued uptick in the employment picture for newly minted lawyers. This is an encouraging trend although gradual. As fewer lawyers graduate, more on a percentage basis are finding jobs. In short, the market is working as we would expect,” says Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, in a statement.
The table breaks down jobs by employer category. While there was a 0.7% percentage point increase in the percentage of graduates employed at law firms for the Class of 2018 compared to the previous year, the number of graduates employed at firms decreased from 16,021 in 2017 to 15,995 in 2018. Also, there were 1,687 reported graduates employed in public interest law in 2018, compared to 1,625 for the Class of 2017. In other sectors, there was a 0.7 percentage point decrease in business and industry positions and a 0.1 percentage point increase in government work.
When employment outcomes were released for the Class of 2017 last year, the data showed percentage decreases in entry-level hiring at law firms, the government, academia and public interest.
“That’s more reasonable than it was five years ago, but it’s not establishing law school as a winning proposition,” says Deborah Jones Merritt, a professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Among law schools with more than 90% of their 2018 graduates in long-term, full-time, bar-passage-required positions are Columbia University, with 93.5%; the University of Virginia, with 92.6%; and the University of Chicago, with 91.3%.
Law schools that are not on probation or operating under a teach-out agreement, with less than 40% of their 2018 graduates in long-term, full-time jobs that require bar passage include Golden Gate University, with 32.5%; Western New England University, with 33.8%; and the University of the District of Columbia, with 38.8%.
The number of law school graduates has declined in each of the last few years. However, in 2018, law school attendance increased, a phenomenon known as the “Trump bump,” in reference to the idea that more people have become interested in becoming lawyers ever since Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president.
“The really interesting question is what happens when the number of law school graduates starts to increase, which it will three years from now, by about 3%,” says Bernard A. Burk, a former assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and an ex-litigation partner at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin who now blogs at the Faculty Lounge.
Photo by metamorworks/Shutterstock.com.
Cartoon Caption: Is the queen’s lawyer all smoke and mirrors?
Cartoon Caption Contest
Congrats to April’s winning contest contributor, Peter B. Winterburn of Memphis, Tennessee. His caption below will appear in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.
“Their final offer is no time at the pound but two months wearing a collar, on leash at the park at all times, and you have to tell them where you buried the bones.”
How the contest works: Readers are asked to consider what’s happening in the cartoon in this post and submit clever, original captions. ABA Journal staff will review entries, pick their favorites, then ask readers to vote on the best of the bunch.
How to enter: Submit the caption you think best fits the scene depicted in the cartoon above by emailing captionsabajournalcom with “May Caption Contest” in the subject line.
Deadline for entry: Contest entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. CT on Sunday, May 12.
The prize: Bragging rights. Plus, the winning caption and credit to the caption writer will appear in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.
For complete rules, click this link. To view winning cartoons from this year, check out this gallery or follow the Cartoon Caption Contest RSS feed.
April 29, 2019, 2:47 pm CDT
Mirror, mirror on the wall, does the queen’s lawyer have some magic tricks up his sleeve to win the case, or is he just reflecting on it? Send us your best caption for this cartoon. The winner of the May challenge will see their caption and credit printed in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.
Congrats to April’s winning contest contributor, Peter B. Winterburn of Memphis, Tennessee. His caption below will appear in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.
“Their final offer is no time at the pound but two months wearing a collar, on leash at the park at all times, and you have to tell them where you buried the bones.”
2019 Cartoons of the Month
A look back at this year's cartoon caption contest winners
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/cartoon-caption-is-the-queens-lawyer-all-smoke-and-mirrors/
Dispute over White House aide’s hush agreement should be tossed from federal court, DOJ argues
First Amendment
Image from Shutterstock.com.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to toss a lawsuit filed by a former White House communications aide who is seeking to prevent enforcement of a nondisclosure agreement he signed with the Trump campaign.
The DOJ argues that a private arbitration is required to decide whether the former aide, Cliff Sims, may sue in federal court, the Hollywood Reporter reports. Sims’ nondisclosure agreement included an arbitration clause that requires an arbitrator to decide on the validity of the clause, according to the the brief, filed April 25.
The dispute stems from Sims’ book, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House. The Trump campaign had filed an arbitration claim against Sims in January after the book was published.
Sims responded with a lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., federal court Feb. 11, that claims the nondisclosure and arbitration agreement he signed with the Trump campaign can’t be used to stifle his First Amendment rights, the New York Times has reported.
Sims said the government was engaging in a “subterfuge” to use the Trump campaign to silence Sims “when it is really the intense powers of the presidency coming down upon a sole individual.”
In its April 25 brief, the government refers to the Trump campaign as a private employer, the Hollywood Reporter points out. “Private employers do not violate the First Amendment when they bring claims in arbitration to enforce a nondisclosure agreement even if the employee they are enforcing that agreement against later served in government,” the brief says.
The brief goes beyond the arbitration dispute to argue that courts can’t grant an injunction or declaratory relief against the president in his official capacity for executive decisions. The government also argues that Sims can’t prove an injury necessary to obtain standing, since his book has been published and he promoted it on media tours.
“Nowhere does plaintiff make allegations showing how the campaign’s initiation of an arbitration action has had the effect of censoring, silencing or even chilling his speech,” the brief says.
April 29, 2019, 12:39 pm CDT
Image from Shutterstock.com.
Google Q1 revenues $36.3 billion but miss Wall Street expectations
Google parent Alphabet reported its Q1 earnings Monday, with shares at $11.90. While shares exceeded analyst expectations, revenue fell short.
The company reported overall revenue at $36.34 billion, which was shy of the $37.33 billion expected by Wall Street. Shares are down roughly 5 percent in after-hours trading.
Mobile and YouTube drove gains. Ad revenues came in at $30.7 billion. Mobile search and YouTube were substantially responsible for revenue growth, which was up 17 percent year-over-year. On the earnings call Google CEO Sundar Pichai pointed out that “over 70 percent” of Google advertisers are using automated ad products during mention of Google’s ML and AI initiatives.
Net income was $6.7 billion, but would have been $8.3 billion but for a $1.7 billion European Commission antitrust fine. Other bets, which houses Waymo and other business units, came in at $170 billion. Revenues were generated primarily by Google fiber and the Verily Life Sciences unit.
Paid clicks growth slows. Paid clicks increased 39 percent year-over-year but decreased 9 percent sequentially. Cost-per-click was down 19 percent compared to last year – but up 5 percent since Q4 2018. Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) came in at $6.86 billion (22 percent of ad revenue), while analysts expected TAC of $7.26 billion.
While paid clicks were up YoY, growth of paid clicks has declined vs. earlier quarters. This was attributed substantially to the deceleration of growth in YouTube ad clicks. Google hinted that smart display and smart speaker Home Hub and Google Home Mini were performing well and teased an announcement in this category at the forthcoming Google I/O.
Why we should care. Google continues to be one of two dominant players in digital advertising. However it will emphasize and promote new growth areas such as content, hardware and its cloud businesses, as ad-revenues may no longer be able to generate the kinds of growth that investors demand.
Paid clicks growth slows. Paid clicks increased 39 percent year-over-year but decreased 9 percent sequentially. Cost-per-click was down 19 percent compared to last year – but up 5 percent since Q4 2018. Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) came in at $6.86 billion (22 percent of ad revenue), while analysts expected TAC of $7.26 billion.
While paid clicks were up YoY, growth of paid clicks has declined vs. earlier quarters. This was attributed substantially to the deceleration of growth in YouTube ad clicks. Google hinted that smart display and smart speaker Home Hub and Google Home Mini were performing well and teased an announcement in this category at the forthcoming Google I/O.
Why we should care. Google continues to be one of two dominant players in digital advertising. However it will emphasize and promote new growth areas such as content, hardware and its cloud businesses, as ad-revenues may no longer be able to generate the kinds of growth that investors demand.
About The Author
Monday, April 29, 2019
4 years after Orange County jailhouse informant scandal, investigation closes with no penalties
Criminal Justice
Orange County public defender Scott Sanders (right) leveled explosive allegations that prosecutors maintained a secret database and planted jailhouse informants next to high-value defendants. AP Photo.
In March 2015, the California Attorney General’s office announced it would look into allegations that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department had violated the rights of criminal defendants. As the ABA Journal reported in 2016, a public defender in the county had uncovered evidence that those offices were systematically planting informants with prisoners in violation of their right to counsel—and then deliberately not telling the defense.
Four years later, that public defender says the AG’s office is now done with its investigation—an event marked not with an announcement and a full report, but only with a passing mention in a related case. According to the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times and OC Weekly, Deputy Attorney General Darren Shaffer said in court April 19 that the investigation had ended without any criminal charges or other penalties.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, the defense lawyer who uncovered what he says is decades of cheating, was in court seeking records related to certain sheriff’s deputies who are witnesses against his client Oscar Galeno Garcia. Sanders said he believes their credibility as witnesses could be affected by their histories with the informant program. Knowing that there’s an exception to disclosure of the records for ongoing investigations, Sanders asked if the attorney general’s office was still investigating. Shaffer said the investigation was closed.
It was the first Sanders had heard of it, even though he brought the matter to light and his clients have an interest in the outcome.
“It’s just so irresponsible,” says Sanders. “If we didn’t have that litigation going on right then, would they have ever told us or just let it sit there?”
The attorney general’s office did not respond to two requests for comment.
The attorney general’s investigation was under criticism from the start. The office first became drawn into the matter when Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals recused the entire district attorney’s office from the mass murder case of Scott Dekraai, who killed his ex-wife and seven other people at the beauty salon where she was working. The attorney general’s office stepped in as prosecutor and immediately appealed the recusal order, arguing that the DA’s office had no conflict of interest because the Sheriff’s Department was responsible for all the misconduct.
California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal called this argument “nonsense” when it upheld the recusal.
Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, now one of the state’s senators and a presidential candidate, told the New York Times in February that she “knew misconduct had occurred” in the Orange County informant matter, but she declined to take a broader look at the District Attorney’s office because “it was being handled at the local level.”
It’s unclear what she meant by “handled.” Former district attorney Tony Rackauckas publicly backed his prosecutors, and none were disciplined for their roles in the matter, although one resigned voluntarily. The office insisted to the ABA Journal in 2016 that its prosecutors were adequately trained on their constitutional duties.
On Wednesday, however, a press release from new DA Todd Spitzer—who took office in January—said he was launching a new investigation into the matter, calling it a second phase of its jailhouse informant reforms. A spokesperson for the office said it has instituted multiple reforms already, including launching a new Conviction Integrity Panel for reviewing suspect cases; installing a chief ethics officer and a crime victim ombudsman; and making a policy of using jailhouse informants only with strong corroboration and approval from Spitzer himself. The spokesperson also said deputy DAs caught withholding evidence will be disciplined, and noted that in March, the office fired an attorney who was accused of withholding evidence in an unrelated case. (The DA’s office declined to say who this was, but the office recently dismissed Sandra Nassar, who—unlike the deputy DAs involved in the jailhouse informant matter—had been disciplined by the State Bar of California.)
The four-year AG’s investigation has frequently been the stated reason when the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has declined to comment on the matter.
Sanders says it also went on so long that it went beyond California’s three-year statute of limitations on perjury, which he believes some sheriff’s deputies could have been charged with. Two of those deputies have retired with full benefits, and others who worked on informant matters have been promoted.
“I believe they haven’t been investigating for years, and even the little investigation they did wasn’t real,” he says.
The judge in Garcia’s case denied Sanders’ motions to recuse the DA’s office and permit discovery of the AG’s office’s records. Sanders is considering an appeal and intends to keep trying to discover information in other cases.
The AG’s investigation was not the only investigation into the Sheriff’s Department and district Attorney’s office’s handling of jailhouse informants. An investigation by an Orange County grand jury concluded in 2017 that the Sheriff’s Department’s jailhouse informant program was a “myth,” despite contradictory testimony before Goethals. A panel organized by Rackauckas—who last fall lost an election that was partly about the informant scandal—suggested several reforms in early 2016. Newly elected Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes relaunched an internal investigation into the matter in January. The Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment on this before deadline.
And the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was investigating the matter in late 2016. DOJ did not respond to a request for comment, but the new district attorney, Todd Spitzer, told the Los Angeles Times that his office has trouble keeping up with the federal government’s extensive discovery requests, suggesting that the DOJ investigation is active. He said he’s handed over nearly 100 case files to the DOJ.
By contrast, a letter Spitzer sent to the attorney general’s office Tuesday notes that his office has not received any questions or requests for documents from them since Harris announced that investigation in 2015. He asked that office for the status of its investigation.
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 6:30 am CDT
Orange County public defender Scott Sanders (right) leveled explosive allegations that prosecutors maintained a secret database and planted jailhouse informants next to high-value defendants. AP Photo.
AG Barr to testify over Mueller report before House and Senate next week
Attorney General
Special counsel Robert Mueller and U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Photos from Wikimedia Commons.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is expected to testify before House and Senate panels on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation next week.
The attorney general will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on May 2, one day after he answers questions about Mueller’s findings on Russian election interference and obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Hill reports. Politico also has coverage.
On Wednesday, Barr directed John Gore, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, not to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The committee wanted to question Gore about his role in the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
A day earlier, the White House blocked Carl Kline, the former director of White House personnel security, from testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform about the security clearance process.
Barr released a redacted version of Mueller’s 448-page report April 18 and emphasized that it found no collusion with the Russian government by Trump, by anyone associated with his campaign or by any American.
Barr said although Mueller found that Russia did attempt to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s assertions on collusion were correct. “As he said in the beginning, there was, in fact, no collusion,” Barr said.
Democrats have criticized Barr about his release and interpretation of Mueller’s findings and have asked that he provide the full report and related evidence to Congress, the Hill reports. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat in New York, has issued a subpoena for the documents, demanding that the DOJ comply by May 1.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Our top picks from Mueller report media coverage”
ABAJournal.com: “ABA president urges Barr to reconsider detention of some asylum-seekers”
ABAJournal.com: “Mueller report to be released Thursday; Barr says info in these 4 categories could be redacted”
ABAJournal.com: “AG Barr plans to use color-coding to explain Mueller report redactions”
ABA Journal: “The executive branch pushes the boundaries of the separation of powers”
ABAJournal.com: “Judge blocks citizenship question on 2020 census, cites ‘veritable smorgasbord’ of violations”
ABAJournal.com: “Second federal judge blocks census citizenship question in a broader ruling than the first”
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 11:49 am CDT
Special counsel Robert Mueller and U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Photos from Wikimedia Commons.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Parole requests don’t get an automatic thumbs-down from Brooklyn district attorney
Criminal Justice
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced that his office will “cease our previous practice of ordinarily opposing parole.” Photo from Shutterstock.com.
In 1996, when Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez was just starting out as a junior prosecutor, his younger brother was shot and killed in the Bronx.
“I know how much the loss of my brother impacted my family,” said Gonzalez, who was 27 at the time. “My father never got over it.”
When the man convicted of the shooting came up for parole after serving 10 years for manslaughter, Gonzalez’s father told the parole board he opposed it. Release was denied. Two years, later, however, the board voted to grant the parole.
“Ironically, when that process was over,” Gonzalez said in a recent interview, “knowing that this guy was punished and was put through the system, and my father didn’t have to go to parole hearings anymore, there was a sense of closure. I believe in the rule of law and that is what the law allowed for, and we have moved on with our lives.”
In the 18 months since he was elected the borough’s chief law enforcement officer, Gonzalez has rarely spoken of that personal tragedy from almost a quarter of a century ago. But he cited the experience as one that has helped shape his thinking as he has wrestled with how his office, New York state’s second largest, should handle those it convicts of serious crimes after they go to prison.
Prosecutors around the country almost always turn thumbs-down on parole requests. But at his office, Gonzalez plans to change that.
Posted April 26, 2019, 1:54 pm CDT
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced that his office will “cease our previous practice of ordinarily opposing parole.” Photo from Shutterstock.com.
‘ABSENT EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES’
In a memo this month to the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which oversees both the 47,000 men and women in the state’s prisons as well as another 36,000 who are under post-release supervision, Gonzalez announced that his office will “cease our previous practice of ordinarily opposing parole.” Instead, Gonzalez wrote, his office will now consent to parole at the initial hearing for all those who entered into plea agreements—as people do in 90 percent of cases—once they have completed their minimum sentence, “absent extraordinary circumstances and subject to their conduct during incarceration.” For people who were convicted at trial, the DA stated, his office will for the first time consider supporting parole for individuals who were age 23 or younger and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Gonzalez will also make it a policy for his office to seek the minimum probation and parole required by law. Prosecutors seeking lengthier terms will now have to state their reasons in writing to a supervisor, he said. “If they committed a crime, they should be punished,” said Gonzalez. “But shouldn’t we be reserving the maximum supervision for the person we are saying is the biggest threat?” Gonzalez said he recognized that opposition to his reforms is likely from police and others. “I view my job holistically,” he said. “I believe it is about public safety, but also about promoting trust in our criminal justice system.” By law, New York’s parole board must solicit statements from crime victims, as well as a recommendation from the district attorney’s office that won the original conviction. “It’s often a form letter restating the crime and saying the applicant needs to remain in prison,” said Robert Dennison, who served as chairman of the state’s Board of Parole under former Gov. George Pataki. Gonzalez wrote many such letters himself. At the end of a trial, he said, he was told to draft a letter for the file recommending parole be denied at hearings many years in the future. Parole letters for defendants who had pleaded guilty were even more perfunctory. Most, Gonzalez said, were written by summer college or law school interns.A NEW DA IN TOWN
Since then, however, leadership has changed in the Brooklyn DA’s office, and its perspective has shifted. It is now nationally renowned for its efforts to redress wrongful convictions. A unit established by Gonzalez’s predecessor, Kenneth Thompson, has reversed convictions for 25 individuals since 2014. When Thompson died of cancer, Gonzalez, who was Thompson’s top deputy, stepped in as interim DA. At the time, many expressed concern that the low-key career prosecutor, with no political experience, might jettison Thompson’s reforms. But since winning election in November 2017, becoming the state’s first elected Latino district attorney, Gonzalez, who is 50 years old and was raised in tough sections of Williamsburg and East New York, has embarked on his own reforms, including changes to bail and prosecution policies. His new parole effort, he said, will be merged with the conviction review unit in a new Post-Conviction Justice Bureau. The bureau will also assist in helping people seal old criminal records and address applications for clemency received from the governor’s office. “To continuously keep people in jail for terms longer than they need to be in there, simply as more punishment, is unjust and unfair,” Gonzalez said. “We made a deal with them that after 15 years or 20 years or whatever the number, they would be eligible to get a fair hearing on parole, and largely they are not.” Prosecutors, he said, “were still putting overemphasis on the nature of the crime in ways that are unfair because the person can never do anything about the nature of the crime.” The new policies have the potential to increase dramatically the number of men and women from Brooklyn who get released from prison. The borough sends the second highest number of people to prison, after Manhattan, among state counties. Last year, 832 from Brooklyn went to prison for new convictions, while 1,251 who were convicted in the borough came home. About 5,000 men and women remain in state custody who were convicted in Kings County, a little more than 10 percent of the prison population. The parole board has also been changing; last year, it approved 44 percent of those considered for parole, the highest rate in more than a decade.BLANKET POLICY
Eugene O’Donnell, a former assistant DA in both Brooklyn and Queens who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that routinely denying parole was a way to avoid blame if the person was released and committed another crime. But O’Donnell, who also spent three years as a New York City police officer, cautioned against a policy that presumes that all those who have served their minimum sentences are ready to return safely to the streets. “Replacing a no-need-to-think blanket policy of incarceration with a no-need-to-think blanket policy of relaxation of accountability is a mistake,” he said. “If anybody thinks there aren’t people who are bad to the bone walking around Brooklyn, they are naive.” Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the general counsel for the Brooklyn DA who helped formulate the new policies, said the office will keep careful watch for those potential problems. “It is not this reckless, ‘just open the door to our prisons’ approach,” she said. “If we think it is justified for public safety, there will be times when the right thing to do will be to recommend against parole.” Once implemented, Gonzalez’s new parole policies will help point the way for others, said Miriam Krinsky, who heads the Los Angeles-based Fair and Just Prosecution, a group that aids newly elected district attorneys. “We are going to start to see this become the gold standard as well for how we think about correcting past injustices,” she said, “and having a broader lens on what the responsibility of the DA is to do that.” This story was published in partnership with the City. The article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. 04/26/2019New program will pay some law school admittees to defer studies and work in public interest
Legal Education
Image from Shutterstock.com.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges recently announced a program that funds yearlong public interest positions for individuals admitted to a handful of prestigious law schools who are willing to put off their studies for one year.
The Weil Legal Innovators Program will fund the public interest work of 10 prelaw students, Bloomberg Law reports, at 20 preselected organizations. Individuals accepted to law school at Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania are eligible to apply for the program, which for the first year will run from July 2020 to July 2021.
Applications open Nov. 15, according to the law firm’s website, and the deadline to apply is Feb. 28, 2020. Those accepted will receive a $50,000 annual salary, health benefits and a $10,000 law school scholarship. Nonprofits hosting the participants get $40,000. If applicants want to work at an organization that is not one of the 20 listed, the law firm will consider other groups on a limited basis.
Also, participants are eligible for Weil Gotshal’s summer associate program; however, Barry M. Wolf, the law firm’s executive partner who chairs its management committee, told Bloomberg that there’s no expectation that participants must join the law firm after graduation.
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 2:08 pm CDT
Image from Shutterstock.com.
Russian who pleaded guilty to conspiracy sentenced to 18 months
Criminal Justice
Maria Butina. Photo from Shutterstock.com.
Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday for conspiring to be a Russian agent in the U.S. without registering with the Justice Department.
The Russian gun rights activist pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in December to conspiring with a senior Russian official to access the National Rifle Association and other groups until she was arrested in July. She will be credited for the nine months she has already served and deported to Russia after her prison term ends. NPR, the Washington Post, CNN and Rolling Stone have coverage.
According to her plea deal, Butina claimed she worked for several years on a scheme to establish “unofficial lines of communications” with Americans who could influence U.S. politics under the direction of former Russian government official Alexander Torshin, according to the Washington Post.
Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Butina’s argument that her intelligence work stemmed from her ambition to bring peace between the United States and Russia, saying that Butina’s participation was “not a simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student,” Rolling Stone says.
Chutkan said Butina engaged in work that was “sophisticated” and “dangerous,” according to CNN.
Butina said she “harmed the American people” by failing to register as a foreign agent, NPR reports. She also said in court that she would have registered if she knew it was required.
“Now I beg for mercy, and the chance to go home and restart my life,” she said before sentencing.
Butina was the first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence the 2016 election, but her case was separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. It was instead handled by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Her boyfriend, longtime GOP fundraiser and NRA supporter Paul Erickson, assisted in her outreach to Republicans, including Donald Trump’s campaign, and faces federal investment fraud charges in a another case, NPR reports.
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 12:31 pm CDT
Maria Butina. Photo from Shutterstock.com.
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/russian-who-pleaded-guilty-to-conspiracy-sentenced-to-18-months/
Google bug may select unrelated canonical URLs, could impact indexing
Google tweeted Thursday that it may have selected unrelated canonical URLs for some pages and that breadcrumb trails on mobile might show the unrelated URLs.
It also said that, in rare instances, this could prevent proper indexing.
Here’s the tweet:
Breadcrumbs show a page’s position in the hierarchy of the site and appear under titles in the search results. Google did not say whether this latest issue is related to the indexing, Search Console report and News bugs that we’ve witnessed over the last few weeks. What we can do. Google did not offer any actions for webmasters or SEOs to take. But, if you suspect that your pages are affected, you can view the Google-selected canonical URL by heading to your Search Console and entering your page’s address into the URL Inspection tool. If there’s a better canonical URL than the one that appears, follow the steps on Google’s duplicate URL help page to suggest a new one. Why we should care. This is the fourth bug that Google has disclosed in April, and it is still resolving issues with Search Console reports, which has some SEOs frustrated over its general lack of reliability as of late. Although Google was transparent about the existence of an issue, it has yet to provide more useful, detailed information on how the problem is affecting users. Is the bug resulting in incorrect pages on SERPs? Is it showing the correct pages but linking elsewhere? All of this information could be useful for SEOs and webmasters trying to do some damage control.We’re aware for some pages, there’s an issue where we may have selected an unrelated canonical URL. In turn, breadcrumb trails on mobile might reflect the unrelated URLs. In rare cases, it might prevent proper indexing. We’ve been fixing this & will update when fully resolved.
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) April 25, 2019
About The Author
George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Parental rights of prisoners get a shield of protection
Criminal Justice
Image from Shutterstock.com.
The state of Indiana is on the verge of enacting a law that will make sure parents in prison don’t have their parental rights terminated because of their imprisonment alone, an issue the Marshall Project first reported on in December.
At least 32,000 mothers and fathers nationally—none of them accused of child abuse—have permanently lost their children while locked up, often for minor crimes, according to a Marshall Project analysis that was cited in committee hearings for the Indiana legislation.
Two formerly incarcerated women, as part of a fellowship to work at the state assembly, helped write the bill and have been meeting with lawmakers for weeks to lobby for its passage. It was passed by both houses of the legislature and is expected to be signed by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb in the coming days.
“I’m elated,” said Christina Kovats, one of the women, who also helps run an innovative prisoner-reentry program that the Marshall Project covered in 2017. “This is about families who are just trying to stay together from prison—families without a voice. Hopefully we were a voice for them.”
The bill will allow Indiana’s judges to delay or dismiss terminations of incarcerated parents’ rights if the parents have shown they have maintained a relationship with their children and continue to play a meaningful role in the kids’ lives.
The Marshall Project report in December found that a 1997 federal law championed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, known as the Adoption and Safe Families Act, created a 15-month time limit for most children to be adopted out of foster care.
As a result, parents incarcerated for more than 15 months—as most prisoners are—can face the irrevocable loss of their kids, especially since attending family court is next to impossible from confinement.
“This is the family separation crisis that no one knows about,” said Kathleen Creamer, a family attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia.
In recent years, a handful of states including New York, Washington and Illinois have passed legislation helping imprisoned parents keep their children, including by extending the 15-month timeline.
Kovats and her colleague, Kristina Byers, began their lobbying work from behind bars, where they were on a team that testified before the state assembly by videoconference about issues affecting women in lockup. Now out, they have been a constant presence in lawmakers’ offices, advocating for reforms on issues ranging from driver’s license revocations to drug-free zones.
“We’re also trying to give people in power an actual picture of what incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people look like, to shift the stigma,” Kovats said. “We’re not hiding shanks … we just have policy proposals.”
Kovats and Byers got the idea for the incarcerated parents bill from a friend at the Indiana Women’s Prison who’d had her own parental rights terminated. They studied Washington state’s legislation as a model, met with child-services officials, wrote a draft version and got it sponsored by a representative who has endorsed their work in the past, Karlee Macer, a Democrat.
As the bill proceeded through both chambers of the assembly, conservative lawmakers introduced an amendment weakening it to take away protection from parents convicted of some crimes, including murder, rape or molestation of a child.
The bill doesn’t ensure that parents in prison get regular visitation with their children and access to all of their family court hearings.
But it still offers a dramatic change from a status quo in which, according to the Marshall Project’s analysis, mothers and fathers who had a child placed in foster care because they are incarcerated—but who had not been accused of child abuse, neglect, endangerment or even drug or alcohol use—were more likely to have their parental rights terminated than those who physically or sexually assault their kids.
“This is just the beginning,” said Byers. “We’ve created a presence in a world I would’ve never imagined we’d be welcome in.”
This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 3:24 pm CDT
Image from Shutterstock.com.
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/parental-rights-of-prisoners-get-a-shield-of-protection/
Number of prisoners hits 9-year low, but some states are resisting the trend
Criminal Justice
The number of people in U.S. prisons fell to a nine-year low of just under 1.5 million last year, a 1.3 percent decrease, according to a report released recently by the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.
The prison population declined in 31 states last year, bringing the number of people in state custody down to about 1.3 million. In the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which holds a smaller share of the nation’s prisoners, the population in custody edged down 1.6 percent to 180,000.
Advocates for prison reform have come to rely on Vera’s data as the federal reports are increasingly outdated. The Bureau of Justice Statistics compiles a comprehensive data set on people in prison, which includes demographic information. But because of budget cuts, the latest report, released Thursday, covers prisoners in 2017.
Timely data on the people in prison helps analysts and legislators understand where criminal justice changes are having the biggest impact, said Jacob Kang-Brown, one of the study’s authors. “This report shows whether states are following through and reducing the number of people that are locked up in prison,” he said, and which are “bucking the trend.”
Vera compiled prison population numbers for each year directly from the BOP and state corrections departments. If the numbers were not available online, they requested data from communications or statistics officials.
Researchers credit sentencing reductions and other criminal justice changes at the state and federal levels for the decline. In recent years many state legislators have passed measures to increase opportunities for probation and parole, and to lessen penalties for some crimes. Still, in several states incarceration is rising. In some instances, reforms have backfired. Many states have opted to use probation in lieu of incarceration only to wind up sending more people to prison for technical violations.
Posted April 26, 2019, 2:36 pm CDT
VIOLENT CRIME AT HISTORIC LOWS
In some states, crime rates have dropped to historic lows, which has also slowed the pace of incarceration. New York experienced one of the largest single-year declines in prison population, continuing a decadelong trend. In 2017, the legislature did not pass any criminal justice measures that specifically addressed sentencing or the prison population. Yet between 2017 and 2018 the state incarcerated nearly 3,000 fewer people, as the prison population fell to roughly 47,000. Crime in New York is at its lowest level since 1975, which prison officials say is behind the decrease in incarceration. Earlier this year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to close up to three prisons as a result of the shrinking prison population.SENTENCING AND OTHER LEGISLATIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE CHANGES
Violent crime in Missouri, in contrast to New York, is rising, and the prison population steadily increased between 2010 and 2017. But for the past several years, lawmakers have been looking for ways to relieve their overcrowded and expensive prison system. In 2014, they passed a bill to reduce criminal sentences for the first time since the 1970s. Prison officials credit the 2014 law changes, which went into effect in 2017, for reducing the number of state prisoners to about 30,000 last year, down from 32,000 the previous year. The new law reduced marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, which carries no prison time, and also cut sentences for some felonies. After the landmark legislation went into effect, former Gov. Eric Greitens commissioned a task force to transform the state’s prison system and signed on the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Council of State Governments to help. In June 2018, Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation increasing mental health and substance abuse treatment for people on parole or probation, and adding a new state-run task force to combat violent crime.INCARCERATION IS RISING IN HIGHLY RURAL STATES
To be sure, the prison population rose in 19 states. Texas, Indiana and Colorado had the largest overall increases, adding nearly 1,000, 900 and 400 new prisoners, respectively. Several states with relatively small prison populations, including Wyoming, Iowa and Vermont, had the largest one-year percentage changes. Indiana had one of the largest such increases at 3.3 percent, bringing its prison population to roughly 27,000 people. With the devastation of the heroin epidemic in the background, prosecutors in rural counties have been pushing for lengthy prison sentences. As a result, one county in Indiana “sent more people to prison per capita than nearly any other county in the United States,” according to a 2016 analysis by the New York Times. States should take a data-driven approach to understanding why the prison population keeps rising, said Jake Horowitz, director of the Pew Charitable Trust’s public safety performance project. “The focus has, to date, been primarily on individuals convicted of drug and property offenses, or those revoked for probation or parole violations,” Horowitz said. Now states are realizing they might have to go further and think about other kinds of crimes, such as those involving violence, as well as the primary reasons why people enter the prison in the first place, he said. This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. 04/26/2019The SEO Advantages of Machine-Readable HTML5 Semantic Markup
Semantic HTML5 provides us with an opportunity to improve our websites and optimize for search engines. We can take full advantage of these opportunities by using machine-readable semantic HTML5 elements to describe page outlines. Specially-named containers can help search engines and browsers more easily identify how our pages are arranged.
For example,
<header> is its own element now, as is <nav>, and so on. You have the ability to describe your page outline using these terms. By the way, it’s important not confuse <header> with heading containers (<h1>). These also have semantic rules we should follow; specifically about their relative level, as you’ll see below.
Here’s a look at the SEO opportunities with HTML5 elements and how and why to use them.
Genuine Articles
Perhaps the most important semantic HTML5 element is<article>. This can be used in such a way that your ideal content gets parsed into screen readers and reader views, and search engines will find a hard-coded signal for unique content on the page. You can test to see how this works with a page loaded in your browser by toggling the reader view.
If you don’t see your toggle switch or there is no <article> container in page code, you don’t get the option at all or it won’t load anything separately. If you get content in the reader view, it will be that content which the webmaster wrapped in a single <article> container. As developers we get to style these containers with direct specificity.
Multiple Articles
Although it’s not syntactically incorrect to have more than one<article> element per page, it’s still not a good idea. You don’t get reader view options this way, and there are no search engine benefits either. For blog homepages that list posts, you may think of each blog post as an “article,” except that an excerpt of an article is not the real thing.
Instead, try using the semantically correct <section> element for each post summary where related details are gathered. <section> can correctly nest as a child of <article> in this case. The parent-child relationship between <article> and <section> can be reversed, but we wouldn’t recommend it unless circumstances make that logical.
Let a single <article> wrap a page’s unique content:
<body itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/WebSite"> <a class="visually-hidden focusable" href="#main">Skip Navigation</a> <header id="top" class="margin-bottom-small"> <nav class="container container-small"> <div class="row"> <div class="grid-full"> ... </div> </div> </nav> </header> <main id="main" tabindex="-1" class="content"> <article class="container container-small"> <header> <h1>SEO for Developers by Detlef Johnson</h1> </header> <section class="row"> <div class="grid-half"> <h2>Semantic HTML5</h2> <p>We're doing HTML5 semantic elements ...
Technical Debt
Technical debt is aging code in the codebase that looks to be no fun to replace or refactor away. The most common technical debt takes the form of un-insightful variable names and database column names. SEO practitioners often dispense advice reactive to their own painful embedded technical debt. Implementing semantic HTML5 may be a bit like that. If you’re using a modern framework with a templating language like JSX, and everything is a<div> or a <span>, renaming for successfully implementing <main>, <article>, <header>, <nav>, <footer>, <aside>, <section>, can seem daunting, depending how early in the process you are. The longer you wait the more that technical debt compounds.
Semantic Details
Many of us prefer skipping what we initially think are smaller details for a process of writing code that is going to work, especially when under deadlines. We use what operations we have in place to publish websites and apps with minimal effort in order to be productive. We use frameworks, task runners, and tooling to great effectiveness. We’re constantly eyeing shiny new things to learn. We also know that unaddressed details can immensely compound technical debt down the road. In the long run, you don’t want all your elements named after the same<div> and <span> elements. Your code will become less and less recognizable over time. Organize your code into logical elements. Use the elements HTML5 provides out of the box.
Semantic SEO Outline
In SEO we’ve long known about headings, particularly the top-level<h1> heading. What makes them special is the meaning they convey about document and section outlines. Start your document outline with elements <main>, <header>, and perhaps one or two <nav> containers (one per link grouping). Then you’ll likely want to use <article> to wrap unique content with <header>, headings, and perhaps its own <footer>.
<article class="container container-small"> <header> <h1>SEO for Developers by Detlef Johnson</h1> </header> <section class="row"> <div class="grid-half"> <h2>Semantic HTML5</h2> <p>We're doing HTML5 semantic elements ... <h3>Articles and Sections</h3> <p>Article and Section elements should have at least one heading ... <h3>Headings</h3> <p>Headings provide 6 levels for organizing content ...Each
<section> ought to have at least one heading; probably more. Your headings will outline what makes the best sense in descending order of levels from <h1> through to content with heading <h6>. Think of them as you would bullets and outline levels. It’s rare that you’ll actually use all 6 levels, but they’ll be at your disposal when you want them.
SEO the Semantics
You’ll hear advice from the SEO community that there should always only be one<h1> element per page, all on its own. That’s solid advice. Think of it as the whole page heading. However, it’s definitely not wrong to have more than one — it depends on your document outline. You may elect to bump up the top heading in a <section> or <aside>, or you may show different <h1> content between desktop and mobile.
Use Headings
Each<section> should definitely have a heading, perhaps beginning with level two (<h2>), and descending from there, depending on the content for that section. Use your best judgement and get hints from the W3C validation service. This can warn you when you’re missing <section> headings. Each section can have its own <header> and <footer>, which makes sense when you think about it.
Webmaster Tip: Encode an admin-only set of quick links in a site-wide header or footer, and insert the canonical page spelling for the name value pair so you can click and check page validation more quickly than with other tools like bookmarks.
Taking Aside
As for<aside>, it’s been suggested that these containers are suitable for related content that is not part of the unique content identified by <article>, like an advertising block. These can still be unique to the page, of course. The <aside> will nest nicely in <article> or <section> and can stand on its own, as well. The <aside> container can also have headings <header>, and <footer> — it’s totally up to you.
Footer Wrapper
That should be enough information to get you started. When you’re ready to wrap up your HTML5 semantic markup, you can use the<footer> element for the page footer with its site-wide links in one or more <nav> elements. Most of these Semantic HTML5 elements are treated as block elements by default unless otherwise noted.
Support even the oldest browsers with the following sample polyfill:
<!--> <script> document.createElement("article"); document.createElement("aside"); document.createElement("footer"); document.createElement("header"); document.createElement("nav"); document.createElement("section"); </script>
<!-->
Takeaway: Be Descriptive
The most important thing to look for when you’re otherwise using a semantically sensible<div> to wrap a chunk of content as a grouping for one of the above, is to ask yourself the question: Can I use a more descriptive element? Will it work with my application code? Can I, for example, style it using row class names or other grid logic? Your answer should be yes until you’ve taken full advantage of HTML5 semantic markup.
About The Author
Detlef Johnson is Editor at Large for Third Door Media. He writes a column for Search Engine Land entitled "Technical SEO for Developers.” Detlef is one of the original group of pioneering webmasters who established the professional SEO field more than 20 years ago. Since then he has worked for major search engine technology providers, managed programming and marketing teams for Chicago Tribune, and consulted for numerous entities including Fortune 500 companies. Detlef has a strong understanding of Technical SEO and a passion for Web programming. As a noted technology moderator at our SMX conference series, Detlef will continue to promote SEO excellence combined with marketing-programmer features and webmaster tips.
https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/the-seo-advantages-of-machine-readable-html5-semantic-markup/
Trump re-election campaign has topped $8M in legal fees in 2 years
Election Law
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees since he took office in 2017.
In ABC News’ analysis of campaign finance records, the Trump campaign spent nearly $1.7 million on legal expenses in the first three months of 2019. More than $1.2 million of that went to former White House counsel Don McGahn’s firm, Jones Day, which has represented Trump and his campaign since 2015.
Jones Day remained the largest recipient of the Trump campaign’s legal expenses, earning more than $5.6 million even after McGahn left the firm to work at the White House in 2017, according to ABC News.
The Trump campaign has helped pay legal bills for the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have been involved in investigations and lawsuits during Trump’s first two years in office, ABC News reports. The campaign also paid a portion of legal fees for Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.
In its analysis, ABC News also noted that Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman, the firm that represented the Trump Organization in the Trump University lawsuit that led to a $25 million settlement with the attendees in 2016, received $76,415 in the first three months of 2019. The firm only received $55,668 throughout 2018.
ABC News provided some perspective on the Trump re-election campaign’s spending, saying that campaign finance reports show that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign spent about $2.7 million in legal fees in the same amount of time. President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign only spent about $260,000 in legal fees in the first two years of his presidency, records showed.
It’s difficult to determine the legal spending of President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign because of changes in Federal Election Commission campaign expenditures and the timing of various investigations that happened during his presidency, according to ABC News.
04/26/2019
Posted April 26, 2019, 3:54 pm CDT
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/trump-re-election-campaign-has-topped-8m-in-legal-fees-in-2-years/
Friday, April 26, 2019
Equal Rights Amendment will get a hearing before House Judiciary Committee next week
Report from Governmental Affairs
Image from Shutterstock.
The House Judiciary Committee expects to hold the first hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment in 36 years on Tuesday, April 30, committee chairman Jerrold Nadler recently announced. Nadler (D-N.Y.) has said that passage of the ERA is long overdue, and called it an “embarrassment for our nation” not to have an unequivocal statement in our Constitution guaranteeing equal rights for women when most other countries do.
The ABA has long advocated for gender equality and fully supports ratification of the ERA, adopting policies on it in 1972, 1974 and 2016.
“The ERA is needed to assure that gender equality is recognized as a fundamental, irrevocable right protected by the highest law of the land,” ABA President Bob Carlson said in recent advocacy letters.
Thirty-seven states have already ratified the amendment. Citizens in three other states have been actively urging their government to do the same this year alone. Virginia just voted down ratification, while demonstrations and advocacy efforts are currently ongoing in Arizona and North Carolina.
The ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1972 when women’s equality was subject to national debate. Congress set a 1982 deadline for getting 38 states to ratify the amendment, a deadline that has long since passed. While having one more state ratify the amendment now would be a watershed moment, Congress would still need to resolve issues involving expiration of the previously established deadline before it can become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. Legislation to address these issues was introduced in the past Congress and may be reintroduced during the 116th Congress.
Although the ABA has not taken a position on proposed legislative solutions, it remains committed to constitutional equality for women and to ratification and implementation of the ERA.
If ultimately ratified, the ERA would allow for three immediate effects:
Posted April 25, 2019, 4:25 pm CDT
Image from Shutterstock.
- It would establish gender equality as a fundamental and irrevocable tenet of our society.
- It would require judges to apply the highest level of scrutiny in deciding sex discrimination cases.
- It would protect and reinforce existing gender equality laws.
Public defenders ask to step down from Parkland shooting case
Public Defenders
Photo by Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com.
Two public defenders representing Nikolas Cruz—the suspect in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead and another 17 injured in 2018—unexpectedly requested to be removed from his case Wednesday.
Broward County public defender Howard Finkelstein and his chief assistant Gordon Weekes said in a notice to the court that they recently learned their 20-year-old client will receive $432,000 from his late mother’s life insurance policy and will no longer qualify for free legal representation under state law, according to the Associated Press, Newsweek and the Washington Post.
“By statute, we can only represent the poor and indigent,” Weekes told the AP. “We are asking to withdraw from the case because the defendant is no longer poor.”
It is unclear how Cruz would manage the money from prison or if he would actually receive the inheritance. The victims’ families are suing Cruz in civil lawsuits and could claim that the payout should go to them.
“The victims’ families’ lawyers are probably going to move to freeze those assets,” Finkelstein told the Washington Post. “Because of their significant trauma and awful loss, they’re entitled under the law to receive monetary damages. So if they freeze those assets, then he doesn’t have access to them.”
Cruz has said that he wants any money from his mother’s estate or insurance to go to victims and their families, the AP says. Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia in November 2017, three months before the Parkland shooting.
The public defenders said Cruz was likely to receive only about $30,000 from his mother’s policy at a court hearing last year. Finkelstein told the Washington Post they were shocked by the actual amount.
Weekes said they cannot help Cruz hire a private criminal defense attorney or advise him on the inheritance, the AP says.
Judge Elizabeth Scherer is presiding over the criminal case and has not set a hearing on the public defenders’ withdrawal motion.
Cruz is charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder arising from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he was a student. He faces a possible death sentence.
On Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis did not exceed his authority when he suspended Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel over the Parkland shooting and an earlier shooting at the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport that killed five people.
The governor had issued an executive order suspending Israel in January, blaming his deputies’ lack of training and an untimely response to the shootings.
04/25/2019
Posted April 25, 2019, 3:44 pm CDT
Photo by Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com.
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/public-defenders-ask-to-step-down-from-parkland-shooting-case/
Federal judge sides with female inmates who filed class action suit over widespread sleep deprivation
Posted April 24, 2019, 12:32 pm CDT
No more 2:30 a.m. pill calls, 4 a.m. breakfasts or noisy overnight maintenance in jails in one San Francisco Bay Area county, a federal judge ruled Monday. In a preliminary injunction order, District Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California ruled in favor of a group of female Alameda County inmates who filed a class action lawsuit in December alleging that widespread sleep deprivation amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Associated Press have coverage. Donato ordered lights-out hours to increase one hour during the week and two hours during weekends and holidays, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Lights were previously kept off from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office claimed that early-morning pill calls were necessary for inmates who had diabetes and other ailments, the San Francisco Chronicle says. The sheriff’s office also contended that early breakfast ensured that inmates could get to court appointments on time. Donato described himself as “very sleep-deprivation sensitive” and said he didn’t understand why “people are poked and probed at three in the morning” at a March preliminary hearing, according to previous San Francisco Chronicle coverage of the case. Civil rights attorneys Yolanda Huang and Dennis Cunningham represent the inmates. Huang told the San Francisco Chronicle that they “hope that the county jail understands that well-rested prisoners will always be more cooperative than tired prisoners.” The judge’s decision will remain in effect while the inmates’ class action lawsuit progresses. 04/24/2019Alert Communications Featured on Episode #221 Lawyerist Podcast
We're excited to announce Alert Communications is featured on this week's Lawyerist Podcast, episode #221.
Tom Ball, Director of Sales & Marketing at Alert Communications, dives into our legal-only intake and retainer services. He shares insight into how lawyers can review their client intake process with the help of our Client Intake Scorecard.
This episode, the Second Annual State of the Legal Profession, covers:
- What it means to lead a large and multifaceted legal organization in a time of technology change and innovation
- The ABA’s new membership dues structure, what it hopes to achieve, and what a much-diminished ABA membership would mean for the practice of law
- Hot-button ethics issues like non-lawyer ownership and advertising regulations
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/alert-communications-featured-on-episode-221-lawyerist-podcast/
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Cooley Law gets new dean with academic support background
Posted April 24, 2019, 4:12 pm CDT
James McGrath, a professor and associate dean at Texas A&M University School of Law, has been tapped to serve as president and dean at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. The school announced Tuesday that McGrath will take the reins on July 1, becoming the third president and sixth dean in the Cooley Law School’s history. During his time as Texas A&M dean, McGrath oversaw academic support, bar passage and compliance at the school, according to his bio. In November 2017, Cooley Law School was found to be out of compliance with an ABA admissions standard, but in March 2018 the council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar found that the law school was back in compliance. In October 2018, the law school dismissed its federal lawsuit against the ABA, alleging Higher Education Act and common law due process violations. Cooley Law School’s ultimate bar passage rate is 69.02 percent, according to ABA data. “I hear the things they say about Cooley, and I’m here to fix that,” McGrath told the ABA Journal. Texas A&M’s ultimate bar passage rate is 93.34 percent, according to ABA data, and McGrath says that teaching students to be intuitive learners who have good self-assessment skills and can relate what they are learning to what they already know is key to pulling graduates through the bar. Also, he’d like to “right size” the law school—which according to its 509 report has a total of 1,269 students—with no faculty cuts. He adds that many law schools have tried to keep their class sizes the same, despite a shrinking applicant pool. “That wasn’t a very good approach, which in hindsight we all know,” says McGrath, who favors delivering legal education in innovative ways, as opposed to the “old-sage-on-the-stage” model. McGrath will succeed interim president Jeffrey Martlew, a retired Michigan state court judge. Don LeDuc, the law school’s former dean, retired in August 2018. Prior to law school, McGrath was a corpsman in the U.S. Air Force, as well as an AIDS and LGBTQ activist. He also owned Rocket, a Providence, Rhode Island, nightclub. He earned his law degree at Howard University School of Law in 1997, and a master’s degree from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2000. He also has an LLM from Temple University, granted in 2002, and was a Fulbright Scholar. 04/24/2019https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/cooley-law-gets-new-dean-with-academic-support-background/
When Trial is Too Expensive for Law Firms
Who bears trial expenses? The lawyers, at least initially. Ultimately, costs and attorneys' fees are deducted from any judgment or settlement.
The text of the letter tells recipients that "Judge Goodwin has set a series of aggressive deadlines designed to push your case towards a trial." Good, right? That's what most plaintiffs want, I suspect.
But wait. The letter continues: "The imposition of these deadlines creates a problem--complying with them will require significant time and significant expense which, in turn, will make settling your Ethicon claim in the near future more difficult." Now, that seems odd. Why would that be? A credible threat of trial is what raises settlement values and creates the pressure to settle in the first place.
Here's the clincher: the firm wants its clients to dismiss their claim without prejudice to avoid trial. "To avoid this problem" (i.e., the problem of expense for the law firm) "we have reached a potential agreement with Ethicon to dismiss your claim without prejudice. This means that your case will no longer be subject to the deadlines that will decrease any near term settlement amount to you by increasing your costs."
Wow. So, the law firm wants their clients to dismiss their cases so that the firm can avoid the expense of actually having to take a case to trial? The letter then mentions that the firm "believe that it is in your best interest to dismiss your Ethicon case without prejudice" and notes that it recommends that the client accept "your Ethicon settlement offer."
Then, "unless you direct us not to, we will be dismissing your claim against Ethicon without prejudice."
I'm speechless.
The entire letter has been replicated below:
*CORRESPONDENCE ALSO SENT AS HARDCOPY VIA UPS*
Good Morning,
We hope this email finds you well. We would like to share important an important update regarding your transvaginal mesh claim against Ethicon.
As you know, your case is pending in the Ethicon multidistrict litigation (MDL) in West Virginia, overseen by Judge Goodwin. Despite the fact that your Ethicon case is part of a settlement process, Judge Goodwin has set a series of aggressive deadlines designed to push your case towards a trial. The imposition of these deadlines creates a problem – complying with them will require significant time and significant expense which, in turn, will make settling your Ethicon claim in the near future more difficult.
To avoid this problem, we have reached a potential agreement with Ethicon to dismiss your claim without prejudice. This means that your case will no longer be subject to the deadlines that will decrease any near term settlement amount to you by increasing your costs. Because the proposed dismissal is without prejudice, you are entitled to re-file your case against Ethicon in the event that you ultimately reject your settlement offer. Ethicon, however, has required that any such refiling not happen for one year from the date of dismissal. Ethicon wants to insure that the settlement process be allowed to run its course without interference from cases in litigation.
After considering the pros and cons of this potential agreement with Ethicon, we believe that it is in your best interest to dismiss your Ethicon case without prejudice. We have written to you separately regarding your Ethicon settlement offer and have recommended that you accept the same, however, you chose to request a further review with the Special Master. Though the Special Master is currently reviewing those requests, we believe that the proposed agreement regarding dismissal without prejudice strikes a balance that allows the settlement process to continue without interference.
Accordingly, unless you direct us not to, we will be dismissing your claim against Ethicon without prejudice. If you do not want us to dismiss your claim without prejudice in accordance with the above, you must contact us by April 24, 2019, and tell us the same.
If we do not hear from you on or before that date, we will dismiss your claim against Ethicon without prejudice. If you have any questions or concerns, or wish to inform us of your desire not to dismiss you claim, our toll free number is (877) 810-4808. We look forward to hearing from you.
| Ann Jaye Case Manager Transvaginal Mesh Litigation Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz | 17 E. Main Street, Suite 200 Pensacola, FL 32502 Phone: (850) 202-1010 Toll Free: (888) 255-AWKO (2956) Facsimile: (850) 916-7449 Email: ajaye@awkolaw.com |
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/when-trial-is-too-expensive-for-law-firms/
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