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

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

UNHAPPY HOURS - For most working in the legal industry, the concept of this ever being a mere "9-to-5″ job was always laughable. But now? For many lawyers, especially working parents, it's more like a "5-to-8-(break to make your kids breakfast/help them with remote school/make lunch/clean up glitter)-4-to-6-(break for dinner/dishes/bath time/bedtime/clean up more glitter)-9-to-2 a.m.-(rinse and repeat)" kind of job. Meanwhile, even those attorneys who don't have to corral young kids are at the mercy of clients and colleagues across various time zones who have grown more comfortable with communicating at all hours of the day. As Law.com's Dylan Jackson reports in part 1 of a series about how the pandemic has changed lawyers' work schedules and billable hours, attorneys are working erratic hours as lines between home and work have evaporated and an unprecedented boom in work pushes firm attorneys to their limits. Law firms in turn are trying everything: job sharing, extra vacation and huge bonuses to accommodate as burnout and retention issues loom. But will any of it be enough?

IN-N-OUT - In addition to the traditional workday becoming the work-morning-noon-and-night, many lawyers also have more to do than ever before during the many periods they're plugged in. For most legal department leaders, of course, that growing workload has not come with additional resources or bigger budgets. Theoretically, however, insourcing processes such as e-discovery should be an effective way to increase productivity while cutting spend. But, as Law.com's Frank Ready reports, the growth in the volume of work continues to outpace in-house hiring. And more automated processes likely won't be able to prevent a reversal of the move towards corporate legal insourcing that began with the 2007 financial crisis. It now seems inevitable that more work is going to spill back over to ALSPs and law firms. "We think the trend is already broken," Cornelius Grossmann, co-leader of EY Global Law, told Ready.

ALLIANZ ALLIES - A fleet of attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell and Ropes & Gray are defending Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC in a pending lawsuit that accuses the investment firm of mismanaging funds amid the market turmoil caused by COVID-19. The action was filed Feb. 25 in California Southern District Court by McKool Smith on behalf of Board of Trustees of the San Diego County Construction Laborers' Pension Trust Fund. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz, is 3:21-cv-00345, Board of Trustees of the San Diego County Construction Laborers' Pension Trust Fund v. Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar.

EDITOR'S PICKS