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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

HISTORICALLY UNDERFUNDED - There are six Historically Black Colleges and Universities law schools in the U.S., established because Black students were denied access to law school, and each is struggling due to underfunding. "We carry the weight of diversifying the profession," Howard University School of Law Dean Danielle Holley-Walker told Law.com's Christine Charnosky, adding, "In the last few years, there is a heightened look at diversity in this profession. HBCU deans are under a lot of focus and scrutiny because of who we're training." But because of the underfunding, there is the challenge of having enough people to do the work, Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law Dean Joan R.M. Bullock said. "HBCUs pride themselves on being able to do a lot with a little," Bullock said. "We pride ourselves on the fact that we outperform our predictors." But HBCUs tightened their belts years ago, she added. "Now it's almost like do we have a belt?" she said.

DIY - The scales continue to shift in favor of in-house spending at corporate legal departments, which are no longer setting aside the biggest chunks of their budgets to pay law firms and outside counsel, according to new findings from the Association of Corporate Counsel and Major, Lindsey & Africa. As Law.com's Phillip Bantz reports, the groups' latest legal benchmarking report released Tuesday revealed that 54% of legal department spending is staying in-house, up from 49% in last year's survey. The median total legal spend this year was $2.4 million, down from $3 million last year.  The numbers, which are based on online survey responses from 427 legal departments of all sizes spanning 24 industries and 26 countries, underscore a trend that's been gaining momentum for the past several years.  "When we started looking at these things probably over a decade ago, before we partnered with the ACC, the average split was 60% on outside counsel and 40% on inside spend," noted Gregory Richter, a New York-based partner at MLA who leads the legal executive search firm's in-house counsel recruiting and law firm management practice.  "Now it's crossed over that 50/50 mark, which is something I don't think I could have predicted 10 years ago," he said.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Christopher L. Lockwood of Wilmer & Lee; Brendan D. O'Toole of Williams Mullen; and Whitney Lott of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings have entered appearances for Threat Tec LLC and Patrick Rousey in a pending breach-of-contract lawsuit. The case was filed April 19 in Alabama Northern District Court by Maynard, Cooper & Gale on behalf of Yorktown Systems Group Inc. The complaint targets Rousey, a former high-level Yorktown employee, and Threat Tec, a recent contractor with Yorktown, for alleged misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of a "no-poaching" agreement. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Liles C. Burke, is 5:22-cv-00496, Yorktown Systems Group Inc. v. Threat Tec LLC et al. >> Read the filing 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.

ON THE RADAR - Talk about a sealed docket, am I right? Tupperware Brands and its top officers were hit with a securities class action Tuesday in New York Southern District Court. The suit, filed by Pomerantz LLP and Portnoy Law Firm, accuses the defendants of misleading investors regarding earnings and sales challenges and follows the company's May 2022 withdrawal of previously issued guidance citing inflationary pressures as well as the negative impacts of the Russia/ Ukraine conflict and strict COVID lockdowns in China. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 1:22-cv-04976, Edge v. Tupperware Brands Corporation et al.  Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar. 

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