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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

DIVERSITY DATA DEEP DIVE - Coca-Cola GC Bradley Gayton made waves in late January in unveiling a new set of diversity standards for outside firms working with the company. According to the new guidelines, law firms must provide Coca-Cola with self-identified diversity data for a quarterly analysis of the diversity of teams working on the company's matters. But, as Law.com's Zach Warren writes in this week's Law.com Barometer newsletter, Coke is just the beginning, as more and more clients are going to begin demanding that their outside counsel maintain measurable diversity metrics. That means law firms need to get started on learning what to track and how to track it ASAP. "Expect to see initiatives like these truly take root within the next year, as diversity data collection becomes more of an operational need within legal," Warren writes. "As the drive for legal diversity becomes an imperative, so too does figuring out the nuts and bolts of how to collect and examine this data." To receive the Law.com Barometer directly to your inbox each week, click here.

OHIO IS FOR LAWYERS - Ohio's state motto is "With God, all things are possible." Maybe that's why so many plaintiffs and defense lawyers are currently looking toward the state with hope that they might receive some guidance, once and for all, on the direction of COVID-19 business interruption insurance litigation nationwide. Or it could be, as Steve Hallo of Law.com's Insurance Coverage Law Center writes, that the Ohio Supreme Court has been asked by a federal judge to decide whether having the coronavirus on a business's property would constitute a compensable "physical loss." In this week's Law.com Litigation Trendspotter column, we assess the landscape of business interruption jurisprudence around the country and look at why a state high court weighing in on the issue could be a big deal nationwide.

CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF  - The SPAC attack continues. Archer Aviation, an electric short-flight aircraft developer, is going public via SPAC merger with Atlas Crest Investment Corp. The pro forma equity value of the combined company is roughly $3.8 billion. The transaction, announced February 10, is expected to close in the first half of 2021. Atlas Crest was advised by Kirkland & Ellis. Archer, which is based in Palo Alto, California, was represented by a Cooley team including partners Alfred Browne and David Peinsipp. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar.

EDITOR'S PICKS

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

LOCKSTEP AND GONE - The shock departure of Slaughter and May private equity partner Murray Cox to Weil Gotshal & Manges last week raised eyebrows at private equity teams across the U.K., Law.com International's Meganne Tillay reports. Not only was this the firm's third loss to a rival in the last year—an unthinkable number of exits from the partnership in years gone by—but Cox specializes in a central practice area, is relatively young, and is highly regarded by colleagues and rivals alike. For other observers, however, the issue is less about Cox in particular and more about whether the firm is able to hold onto and even attract the best partners in private equity over the longer term if it continues on with its pure lockstep compensation model.

WHAT YOU SAID

"I always hoped that [former President Donald Trump] would turn out to be an anomaly, and in the public at large, not just the Republican Party, that there would be a broad consensus that he was unfit in every way. Over time, it became clear that there wasn't a broad consensus."