MOVING BACK TO EARTH - At this point, the phrase “apples to oranges” is an insufficient caveat when comparing 2022 data to 2021 data. It’s more like “apples to beach balls”—which is why the double-digit year-over-year drop in lateral moves should be taken with a whole mine full of salt. It’s important to remember (as if you could forget) that 2021 saw record levels of corporate transactions, driving the level of demand for legal talent to equally unprecedented heights. As a result, October and November’s 14% contraction in partner-level lateral movement and 25% contraction in associate lateral movement look stark because they represent a downturn from a period of lateral movement in 2021 that firms had, quite literally, never seen before, explained Michael Ellenhorn, founder and CEO of investigative intelligence firm Decipher, which provided the data. So which laterals are most in demand at the moment? Law.com’s Justin Henry has the details.
FOOL DISCLOSURE - Sure, 2022 could potentially go down as the “Year of” a lot of things. But for many lawyers, it will live in infamy as the Year of Damaging Data Disclosures, from the calculated (see: the Dobbs decision) to the extremely uncalculated (see: the Alex Jones e-discovery faux pas; see also: the Jan. 6 emails). Needless to say, while workplaces have embraced technology, expedited further by the pandemic years, whether staff education and legal practices have kept up is another matter. If nothing else, the startling disclosures from 2022 have brought the issue of data access controls and methods of protection front and center. Shawn Tuma, a partner at Spencer Fane, told Law.com’s Isha Marathe that if the series of unplanned data disclosures have taught the community anything, it’s that “[w]e can’t really protect everything.” “We can try, but the odds are pretty good that there are going to be vulnerabilities somewhere,” Tuma said. “So, we should try to protect the whole data environment, but then use a layered approach by asking: ‘Where is our most sensitive data? What’s our most risky data?’ The data is the risk.”
