Want to get this daily news briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL - Maybe the rusted carnival ride that is 2020 won't spin off its axis and into the lake after all—at least not for the legal industry. When polled earlier this year, a majority of law firm partners told Major, Lindsey & Africa they expected their 2020 compensation to take a hit. But, as Law.com's Dylan Jackson reports, a more recent, albeit smaller, survey by the consultancy found a decidedly sunnier outlook among respondents. After the release of its initial report, Major Lindsey conducted a flash survey in November to account for the fact that law firms were "faring far better than anyone expected." Two-thirds of the 134 respondents said they did not expect their compensation to be cut (more than 1,200 partners answered the first survey between July and September). About 43% of November respondents said their firm had fully reversed pay cuts, while 41% said their firm partially rolled back cuts.

RETURN TO SPACE - You might think legal tech companies would be uniquely well-equipped to thrive in a full-time remote working environment, but it turns out they're missing the comforting glide of office chair wheels on commercial grade carpeting as much as anyone. Those companies, like law firms, are mulling downsizing their space and ramping up their work-from-home policies, but, as Law.com's Frank Ready reports, many are still not prepared to wave goodbye to physical offices altogether. "I think there's a reason that we all like to collaborate in person. There's something that we miss when we are all remote. And whether that's truly a business requirement or just a quality of life type, I think that over the next couple of years that firms are going to retrench and then start coming back [to an office]," said Eli Nussbaum, managing director and director of business development at managed services provider Keno Kozie Associates.

IN DEFENSE OF DATA DEPLETION -  Cooley partner Whitty Somvichian and associates Max Bernstein and Kelsey R. Spector have stepped in to defend Google in a pending class action on behalf of Android users. The suit, filed November 12 in in California Northern District Court by Korein Tillery, Bartlit Beck and McManis Faulkner, contends that Google depletes its users' cellular data through near constant collection and transmission of user data. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. Demarchi, is 5:20-cv-07956, Taylor et al v. Google LLC. Stay up on the latest litigation with the new Law.com Radar.

EDITOR'S PICKS

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

STAYING POSITIVE - COVID-19 hasn't devastated the Middle East and Africa quite as it has much of the rest of the world, but it did heap yet another challenge on nations that had already faced major problems, including war, famine, sectarian tension, major political upheaval and economic malaise amid plummeting commodities and oil prices. However, beginning long before the pandemic struck, both regions enjoyed steady gains in business, infrastructure, and law, which is becoming ever progressive and globalized. And, as Law.com International's Jennigay Coetzer, Peter Shaw-Smith and Krishnan Nair report, law firms, though facing their own issues and staff cuts, rode a wave of unwavering hope and optimism this year.

WHAT YOU SAID

"If the goal here is increasing access to legal services, not being bold is basically the same thing as putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg."