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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

PROFIT PROPHECY  – At the start of the pandemic, when toilet paper was still being hoarded like gasoline in "Mad Max" and the legal industry was staring into the abyss of an economic downturn, most law firms would have welcomed a prediction that they'd be able to maintain flat profitability even with a dip in revenue. Six months later, as Dan Packel reports, it looks like a number—perhaps even a majority—of firms will be able to finish out 2020 doing just that. "Most of the firms that I have had conversations with are seeing a decline in revenue, but they are indicating that that decline is almost matched, if not exceeded, by decreases in expenses," said Marcie Borgal Shunk, president and founder of The Tilt Institute. "That's not only from precautionary measures, like cuts to partner distributions and furloughs. It's even just reductions in expenses such as travel, event production costs, and health care, with elective surgeries down, for example. The profitability figures are, knock on wood, remarkably stable."

OWN IT  –  Utah and Arizona have already established themselves as trailblazers in allowing nonlawyers to own law firms and share fees with lawyers. But while they were the first states to take those steps, the title of "most influential" jurisdiction may still be up for grabs. As John Stewart, the immediate past president of the Florida Bar, told Dylan Jackson: the first big market to adopt new rules will likely set the standard for the industry. Stewart is leading the charge to make Florida, which boasts the third-largest state bar in the country, that market. "It's a much bigger difference when you have 110,000 lawyers and will change the marketplace on a national scale," he said. But the race is now on: Illinois recently closed public comment on its reform recommendations, while New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., are among the other states who are actively looking into the issue.

FISH POACHING – They're probably not all going to come out of the cutthroat world of seafood sales, but it seems likely we're going to see an uptick in litigation over noncompete agreements involving employees who were laid off because of COVID-19. Lawyers at Jackson Lewis on Tuesday removed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against seafood supplier Lund's Fisheries Inc., John Fee and Michael Wallace to Rhode Island District Court. The complaint, filed by Partridge Snow & Hahn on behalf of Lund's competitor NGC Inc., seeks to block two former NGC employees laid off due to the pandemic from accepting work with Lund's. Read the full complaint and stay up to date on major litigation nationwide with Law.com's Legal Radar.

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