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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

2022 DIVERSITY SCORECARD -  The legal industry made significant gains on this year's Diversity Scorecard, bumping the overall percentage of minority attorneys across Big Law from 18.5% to 20.2%, the biggest year-over-year shift on record. The American Lawyer's Diversity Scorecard was revamped this year to highlight diversity of all kinds across an organization's entire complement of attorneys, with an emphasis on diversity in leadership positions. It was updated to reflect the need for firms to be truly diverse rather than concentrate their DEI efforts on any one ethnic group. Firms are ranked by Diversity Score, with lowest being the best. To determine this score, firms are ranked in a series of metrics assessing their racial and ethnic diversity across three distinct categories: Firm Leadership, Equity Partners and Other Attorneys. Diversity Score is determined by combining the three scores created by these rankings and dividing the total by the number of metrics applicable for each firm. To see which firms made the list, check out a full analysis of the results by Law.com's Jessie Yount.

CLAUSE AND EFFECT -  Of the many strains of litigation spawned during the pandemic, two were the most viral, given their reliance on widely-used contractual language: business interruption insurance coverage fights and force majeure breach-of-contract disputes. Both types of litigation were spurred largely by government shutdown orders designed to try to contain COVID-19. As you might recall, those orders resulted in widespread event cancellations, which often led to contract cancellations under force majeure clauses. In other instances, parties attempted to use government shutdown orders as the basis to call off pending transactions or escape payment obligations. But, as we explore in the latest Law.com Litigation Trendspotter column, appeals courts' receptiveness to these arguments appears to vary based largely on whether there exists a clear cause and effect.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Emirates Telecommunications Group Co. PJSC has acquired a minority share in telecommunications company Vodafone Group for $4.4 billion. Abu Dhabi, UAE-based Emirates Telecommunications was advised by a Sullivan & Cromwell team that included partners Vanessa Blackmore, John Horsfield-Bradbury, Craig Jones, Ben Perry and Juan Rodriguez. Counsel information for Vodafone, which is based in Berkshire, United Kingdom, was not immediately available.  >> Read more on Law.com Radar  and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.

ARE YOU STILL WATCHING? - Netflix and its top executives were hit with a securities class action Tuesday in California Northern District Court. The suit, filed by Grant & Eisenhofer, accuses the defendants of failing to disclose a slowdown in its growth and of downplaying challenges in acquiring and retaining customers. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 3:22-cv-03164, Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund v. Netflix, Inc. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar. 

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