Many law firms have figured out that the best way to stop the spread of swine flu is to have their sick people stay home from work. Last week, we mentioned that Akerman Senterfitt had explicitly told its associates that staying home because of swine flu would not count against their vacation time.

The stay home message has also gone out at K&L Gates. But apparently one associate didn’t get the memo and showed up to work despite having flu-like symptoms. The associate was eventually diagnosed with the H1N1 virus.

The associate drew the ire of K&L Gates managing partner Peter Kalis. All associates at K&L Gates then received a blistering email from the managing partner.

We previously reported on Ropes & Gray hoarding Tamiflu for its employees. Reaction was mixed. Some people applauded Ropes looking out for the health of their employees and their families; others feared that Ropes was unwittingly contributing to a drug-resistant strain of the H1N1 virus.

But there are many ways to prevent an outbreak of piggy pestilence at a law firm near you. One of the most, dare I say rational, measures is to make sure that people who are sick aren’t coming into work.

That’s what they are doing at Akerman Senterfitt. The Washington Post reports (gavel bang: ABA Journal) that the firm is allowing people with the sickness to take time off of work, without counting it against their allotted leave time:

When Great Falls resident Carolyn Cuppernull’s 10-year-old daughter came down with swine flu, she didn’t have to take time off work to stay home with her.

Cuppernull is senior marketing manager of the Washington office of the law firm Akerman Senterfitt. Under the group’s former policy, she would have had to use paid leave to stay home if she or a relative got sick. But the firm recently updated its rules to allow employees to stay home with full pay — without using leave time — for H1N1-related absences.

Now that’s a way to make sure your office doesn’t suffer a swine flu outbreak without potentially contributing to the mutation of a global super virus.

Of course, there is a downside.

According to the Center for Disease Control, these are the groups most at risk for swine flu:

* Children younger than 2 years old;
* Adults 65 years of age or older;
* Pregnant women and women up to 2 weeks postpartum (including following pregnancy loss)
* Persons with the following conditions:
* Chronic pulmonary (including asthma), cardiovascular (except hypertension), renal, hepatic, hematological (including sickle cell disease), or metabolic disorders (including diabetes mellitus);
* Disorders that that can compromise respiratory function or the handling of respiratory secretions or that can increase the risk for aspiration (e.g., cognitive dysfunction, spinal cord injuries, seizure disorders, or other neuromuscular disorders)
*Immunosuppression, including that caused by medications or by HIV;

Oh wait, I think the CDC forgot a group: Biglaw lawyers. Ropes & Gray apparently thinks that its lawyers are at risk — so like any good company, the firm is “stockpiling” swine flu drugs. The Boston Globe reports:

The Boston-based law firm Ropes & Gray made arrangements this month for hundreds of its employees and their families to obtain the antiviral medicine Tamiflu to protect them from swine flu, a move that the company calls a wise precaution but that public health officials criticized as medically questionable stockpiling.

Hoarding swine flu medication? Really? That is not cool.

Additional details after the jump.

Are you prepared to meet and fight the anti-vaccinators in open court? The Department of Justice is, and they are looking for a few good litigators. This is a job ad that is up on the DOJ website:

Experienced Attorney/ GS-12 to GS-14
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Torts Branch
Office of Constitutional and Specialized Torts

About the Office: The Civil Division, Torts Branch, is seeking an experienced attorney for a position in the Office of Vaccine Litigation. Trial attorneys in the Vaccine Litigation Group represent the interests of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in all cases filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. The cases involve claims of injury as a result of the receipt of certain vaccines.

Responsibilities and Opportunity Offered: The position offers a unique experience in public service. The legal and medical issues at stake in each case vary greatly. Attorneys in the section independently manage heavy case loads, and while streamlined procedures are utilized, cases frequently involve complex liability and damages issues. The position involves significant trial practice. Vaccine staff attorneys are obliged to ensure that the Vaccine Trust Fund, from which damage awards are paid, is protected and, where eligibility criteria are met, that fair compensation is distributed to those whom Congress has intended. Attorneys appear frequently before the Office of Special Masters in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and also appear before the judges of the Court, as well as in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit when handling appeals.

That’s right folks, the legal profession will find a way to benefit from Swine Flu. Special torts, special torts defense, it’s all copacetic man.

The Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Health Watch continues. This just in, from the AP:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was briefly hospitalized overnight after having a bad reaction to some medicine.

A statement from the court says Ginsburg was taken to the Washington Hospital Center Wednesday night and released Thursday morning.

Doctors say Ginsburg had an adverse reaction to a sleeping aid combined with cold medicine. She took the medicine in preparation for an overnight flight to London, but was taken off the airplane after she experienced extreme drowsiness causing her to fall from her seat.

At least she didn’t fall asleep on the bench this time. We’d wish RBG a speedy recovery, but it seems that she has already recovered.

Ginsburg Briefly Hospitalized, Released Thurs. [Associated Press]

Earlier: Breaking: Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized
Update: Justice Ginsburg Is Back on the Job

If you have a job these days, especially a job at a high-paying law firm, you should be grateful, right? Right.

But that doesn’t mean work is all sunshine and lollipops. Many attorneys continue to experience a high amount of stress, which often manifests itself in the form of illness. A friend who works at a law firm sent us this suggestion:

I’m swamped, but I had to run out of the office for a doctor’s appointment. I was diagnosed with an ulcer last year, and apparently it still hasn’t healed.

Maybe you should do an ATL piece on ostensibly stress-related illnesses suffered by attorneys. What are some of the most “popular” maladies suffered by attorneys at an inappropriately young age?

Good question. Take our survey, and a stroll through the various maladies that have afflicted Elie Mystal, after the jump.

We’re happy to report that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was hospitalized last night after feeling lightheaded, was released from Washington Hospital Center this morning. The famously hardworking jurist “was at her desk by early afternoon, the court said.”

Welcome back, Justice Ginsburg!

Justice Ginsburg Home From Hospital [AP]

Earlier: Breaking: Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized

In February of this year, Senator Jim Bunning predicted that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead in nine months from pancreatic cancer. It was a horrible and tasteless prediction, for which Senator Bunning apologized.

But might he be right? Here’s the latest news about Justice Ginsburg’s health. From the Associated Press:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized Thursday after becoming ill in her office at the court following treatment for an iron deficiency.

The 76-year-old justice, who underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in February, was taken to Washington Hospital Center at 7:45 p.m. EDT as a precaution, a statement from the court said.

The Connecticut Employment Law Blog reports on the kind of plaintiff that gives other plaintiffs a bad name:

In the middle of trial, a plaintiff (who is claiming his employment was terminated, among other reasons, in retaliation of his exercise of FMLA rights) drops a bombshell:

“[In the prior October], I learned that I had — have stage III prostate cancer with a metastatic brain lesion.”

What kind of client just blurts out “metastatic brain lesion” in open court? What kind of counsel allows that to happen?

Not surprisingly, defense counsel moved for a mistrial. The judge called a hearing, and then the idiot plaintiff had something else to say:

During the hearing, however, there’s another another unexpected development: The medical records show that the employee did not have (and never had) a metastatic brain lesion.

The plaintiff knew he didn’t have a brain lesion — though it seems self evident that something upstairs is not working properly in this guy’s head.

Is this a situation that demands more than a mistrial?

A California defense attorney has earned a spot in the ATL Lawyer of the Day hall of fame. Michael Lukehart didn’t let a weak heart stop him from defending his client. From KERO-TV:

Lukehart said he woke up at 5 a.m. on Monday with massive chest pains.

A normal non-ATL-Lawyer-of-the-Day would head to the hospital at that point. But not Lukehart.

Even though he knew something was seriously wrong, he said he was in denial. So instead of going to the hospital, Lukehart said he went to the courthouse to deliver his closing arguments on a case he was on.

Michael Lukehart’s website says he’s “passionately committed to your defense. When you hire Michael Lukehart, you hire a fearless warrior who is passionately committed to you and your case.”

In the case of Lukehart, that’s not hyperbole. Massive chest pains are no obstacle for this legal warrior. So when he finally went to the hospital, what was the diagnosis?

A Friday afternoon in August — the perfect time for a resignation. As first reported by Politico:

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) is resigning from DLA Piper law firm amid a wave of negative attention his grassroots organization, Freedom Works, has drawn for helping to organize protesters at health care town hall meetings with members of Congress.

In an interview with POLITCO Armey said that he was concerned about the media scrutiny the health care protests were drawing to the firm he has been associated with since retiring from Congress.

“The firm is busy with its business, and shouldn’t be asked to take time out from their work, to defend themselves of spurious allegations,” Armey said. “No client of this firm is going to be free to mind its own business without harassment as long as I’m associated with it.”

This is the culmination of a controversy that was brewing over the past week.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

ATL,

I was wondering whether I should get/admit to getting plastic surgery.

My issue is that if I was in L.A., I would have done it already, but Chi-town is different, and I want my co-workers to take me seriously notwithstanding the potential surgery.

Sincerely,
Too Sexy for My Face

Dear Too Sexy for My Face,

At approximately 8:43 a.m. on November 1, 2001, in an office on Central Park South, Dr. Michael Evan Sachs punched me in the nose with his scalpel. Five days after his precision beating, I removed the bandages to reveal a magnificent elf shoe perched in the middle of my face. Going into the surgery, I hoped that a new nose would solve all my problems. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

There’s nothing inherently shameful about plastic surgery; some of us were simply born monsters and require surgery to address the situation. The only shameful thing about the whole ordeal is hatching some ludicrous story to explain away your new feature(s) or banking on the fact that your colleagues aren’t observant people and don’t live for this sort of shit. If you show up at work with two Christmas hams stuffed in your shirt or half of your nose hacked off and still pale despite your “Costa Rica trip,” your colleagues will notice, mainly because they aren’t morons. And because they’re tactful professionals, they won’t confront you about it, they’ll just tear you to shreds behind your back. Keeping quiet about it doesn’t make you look discreet, it makes you seem ashamed. If you remove the shame from the equation, the vicious gossip loses its sting. There’s not really anything further for people to discuss about your surgery if you’ve already told them everything yourself.

Stop being corny and worried about whether your colleagues will think you’re vain. Of course you’re vain if you’re getting cosmetic surgery, and there is no sense in wasting time or energy disabusing yourself or coworkers of the truth. Be true to yourself, even the plastic parts.

Your friend,

Marin

Elie objectifies us all, after the jump.

It has been a tough two weeks for employees at McDermott Will & Emery. First the firm cut the salaries of summer associates. Then MWE fired 72 people.

Today, word came down to all associates and non-attorney personnel that the firm is also cutting benefits. A firm-wide memo explained:

The Firm has evaluated its employee benefit plans and is making changes effective July 1, 2009.

We began our evaluation late last year in response to the deteriorating economy and the fact that changes to employee benefits plans were occurring throughout corporate America. After a thorough review by our benefits consultants, we were informed that our plans were above market and that specific changes, if implemented, would bring our plans more in line with the market.

Right. Who wants to pay an “above market” benefit package?

Remember, McDermott is the firm that canceled aspects of its coffee service. At the point where the firm is looking to save nickels and dimes on coffee, it shouldn’t be surprising that it has found a way to save some money on more important employee benefits.

A tipster reports that the top line changes to MWE’s benefit structure include an increase in some premiums and deductibles, as well as a reduction in the percentage of pharmaceutical costs that are covered by the firm’s health plan. Suddenly, the nationwide health care debate expected to take place in Congress this summer just became much more important to employees at McDermott.

In fairness, MWE isn’t the first firm to go down this path. Last month, Kirkland & Ellis made similar changes to its health care coverage for associates.

Read the full memo after the jump.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee with the $15,000 in unpaid dental bills, doesn’t just have problems with her teeth. From the AP:

The White House says Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has broken her ankle after an airport stumble in New York City.

Sotomayor fractured her right ankle Monday morning at New York’s LaGuardia Airport before boarding a shuttle to Washington for an afternoon of meetings with senators.

She’ll keep her six appointments on Capitol Hill Monday despite the injury, which has her walking with crutches, the White House said.

A female Hispanic judge. Who made it all the way from the projects of the Bronx to Princeton and Yale Law. On crutches.

Vote against her now, Republicans. To quote Tom Goldstein: “It’s over.”

Over at Gawker, our former co-blogger Alex Pareene writes: “Now she is on crutches, so she will probably say that crippled Latinas are way wiser than dumb white men, any day now.”

Sonia Sotomayor fractures ankle at airport [Associated Press]

Remember to wash your hands, New York attorneys. There’s been a swine flu outbreak in the Bronx. Here’s the memo from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office:

Yesterday I was informed that there were three who have contracted the H1N1 virus also known as “swine flu”. Each is home and being treated by their physicians. All of them work in the Criminal Court Bureau. I have been in communication with the Mayor’s Office and the Health Department. I have also informed Administrative Judge Efrain Alvarado. Attached you will find Health Department guidelines dealing with the virus and preventing its spread. In light of these diagnoses our Office will conduct a cleaning in the Criminal Court Bureau to help curtail the virus’ spread.

Please read the attached guidelines. While this is a potentially serious illness, each of the individuals who contracted the virus took the appropriate steps by not coming to work and seeking medical attention. Unless there is an underlying medical condition this virus has been relatively mild. We will continue to monitor our staff and report any additional cases to the appropriate authorities. I want to assure everyone that we as an Office wish to address the concerns of staff as they relate to this issue. We will continue to communicate with you and provide you with information. Further, we will continue follow the recommendations of the health authorities. If there are any questions please feel free to call me.

When this happens at a school, they close the school and bring in a lot of soap. But when it happens at a place of business (as we’ve seen already with the outbreak at Mayer Brown), it seems like the onus is on individual employees to protect themselves.

Still, I’m not too concerned. I’ve got chicken soup, Robitussin, and Sprite, so I should be golden.

Earlier: Breaking: Swine Flu at Mayer Brown (Chicago)

The dreaded swine flu, aka the H1N1 virus, made it to Mayer Brown last week. Will it now work its way up the Am Law 100?

This afternoon, via Fashionista (last paragraph), we learned that swine flu has hit the hallowed halls of Vogue. And we all know who shares a fancy building with Vogue and Conde Nast: Skadden Arps.

In the past, Skadden employees have expressed disappointment over not sharing elevators with Vogue’s glamorous hotties. Perhaps now the Skaddenites are thanking their lucky stars — or wishing they had taken Sidebar.

At least one summer associate in the Chicago office of Mayer Brown appears to have contracted swine flu (aka the H1N1 virus), according to a firm memo that was circulated within the past hour. In addition, a second associate has been showing symptoms.

Quipped one of the many tipsters who sent this our way: “As though summer associates didn’t have it bad enough already this year:” Said a second source: “Rumor is that a lot of people are not feeling well.”

The Windy City has been hard hit by swine flu. As Tim Hadac, a spokesman for the Department of Public Health, told the Chicago Tribune, “This virus is spreading everywhere in the city right now.” On Sunday, a 22-year-old man — roughly the age of an average summer associate, maybe a bit younger — died of swine flu.

A spokesperson for Mayer Brown confirmed the news but did not offer much in the way of additional detail. One of the summer associates had a nasal swab test come back positive for swine flu, but this test is not definitive. According to the spokesperson, doctors have not performed a blood test — which would be definitive — because such tests are being reserved for the elderly and the young.

The affected summers and their officemates, who started at the firm just last week, won’t be coming into work for the rest of this week. From the memo:

Mayer Brown has been notified that a summer associate in the Chicago Office may have contracted the H1N1 virus. Another summer associate is also showing symptoms of this virus These summer associates are under medical care and will be staying at home. As a precaution, we have instructed the summer associates who share an office with the affected summer associates to remain at home for the balance of the week.

Read the full memo, after the jump.

Law firms are dealing with the Great Recession in many different ways. As we’ve chronicled in these pages, layoffs and salary cuts are commonplace, practically clichéd.

Some firms are cutting costs more creatively. From a source at Kirkland & Ellis:

We just got a memo from K&E about a massive increase in our health care premiums. I’m not happy at all…. By my rough math, my deductible tripled, but the cost increased $100/month. So they’re screwing us two ways. Again, if my math is right.

From a second tipster:

This change effectively reduces associate salaries by approximately $1,000-$2,000 per year, although made under the guise of a change in the health care plan (perhaps in attempt to avoid blog coverage of salary cuts?).

K&E’s health care coverage was already pretty poor compared to other biglaw firms. This change makes their health care for associates (and other employees earning more than $90K) even worse. Also disturbing is that part of the justification for the change is to “bring the amount paid for health care coverage for associates closer to the amount paid by partners of the Firm…..”

My (albeit limited) understanding of health care coverage for partners in partnerships is that by its nature it is always different from the partnerships’ actual employees (i.e., associates)…. Additionally, we all know K&E partners make a ton of money (as evidenced by their high ppp, which have not been reduced). While associates at Kirkland are definitely well compensated, they work brutal hours for that money, and enacting a salary cut in the guise of bringing partners health care cost “in line” with associates seems greedy and ill-advised.

Full memo, in all of its hyper-technical glory, after the jump.

There is little chance that the American experiment would have survived a serious outbreak of the bubonic plague. The Athenians fought a war while stricken with the plague. Granted, it didn’t go so well, but that’s not the point. But a couple of kids get a new strain of spring flu (which is at least as accurate of a name for it as “swine flu”) and people start losing it.

Of course, law students are nothing if not susceptible to mass hysteria. Take this message that students at Loyola - Los Angeles received:

Dear Students,

Please be advised that students will be permitted to wear breathing masks during an examination. If a student chooses to do so, he/she will be permitted to bring and use the mask at his/her seat in the examination room. This policy will remain in effect through the end of the 2009 Spring examination period. Thank you.

Office of the Registrar Loyola Law School

On the one hand, are people really wasting precious exam cramming time worrying about swine flu? Really?

Yesterday, we asked you to take a poll about your happiness with the decision to become an attorney. Of the over 4000 poll takers (as of the time of this posting), approximately 60% said they were satisfied with the decision, but about 17% responded with “I hate my life.” On that note, did you know that lawyers lapse into serious psychic distress at a rate about double that of the general population?

The Cleveland Bar Association mentions this fact (among others) in its campaign to raise awareness about lots of disturbing trends among lawyers: depression, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual neuroses… (Okay, not that last one, but based on ATL comments, it may be a problem for some of our readers.)

Some of the ways in which you are all f***ed up, from the Cleveland Plain Dealer: