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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

'SHADES OF MASS' - Attorneys of color have made some progress in landing leadership roles in multi-district litigation. But as the MDL leadership quota for nonwhite attorneys is still only at about 16%, Black plaintiffs attorneys are making another push to increase diversity in this arena, Law.com's Christine Schiffner reports. A group of six Black plaintiffs attorneys including Ben Crump—who made national headlines representing George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's families—and DiCello Levitt Gutzler managing partner Diandra "Fu" Debrosse Zimmermann recently co-founded "Shades of Mass" with the mission to increase MDL diversity. The goal is to help inform attorneys of color about evolving mass torts, how to get involved and to educate less experienced lawyers, who may so far have been on the periphery of the MDL world. Other board members of the group include former American Association for Justice president and Beasley Allen principal Navan Ward, Gregory Cade, LaRuby Z. May and Larry Taylor. "It's important that we value everyone on our soil and as lawyers—we have to carry the torch of justice for individual rights," said Debrosse Zimmermann, the first Black woman on the plaintiffs side to co-lead an MDL (In re: Abbott Laboratories, et al. Preterm Infant Nutrition Product Liability Litigation.)

CONNECTION LOST - Whoever said "familiarity breeds contempt" probably wasn't an in-house lawyer. Industry analysts told Law.com's Andrew Maloney that it's becoming less common for corporate clients to work with the same lawyers at a given firm from matter to matter, which in turn makes it easier for those relationships to diminish and for clients to ultimately move work around more. "Lawyers are constantly being shuffled around, and there's a lot of free agency and trading that happens within practice groups and law firms, so you're not working with a consistent matter team," said Bill Josten, strategic content manager for Thomson Reuters. "The teams are being mixed and matched, so that impacts firm-client relationships as well. That makes those relationships easier to move around as well." To counter this phenomenon, law firm partners and managers are striving to make client teams as consistent as they can. Steve Young, leader of the tax and benefits group at Holland & Hart, said his firm has a sabbatical program, in which every equity partner takes a few months away from their practice every five years or so because it helps cultivate a "team-centered approach" to managing client relationships. "Because I know I can't leave for three months unless that client knows other people at the firm," Young said. "So it has a real impact of creating this culture around here where no one views the client as 'Steve Young's client,' or that I have the sole ability to help them. It's more of a Holland & Hart client."

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Matthew Eisenstein, Robert J. Katerberg and Sharon D. Mayo of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer have stepped in as defense counsel to mattress manufacturer Zinus Inc. in a pending product liability class action. The complaint, filed July 7 in California Eastern District Court by Environmental Litigation Group and the Law Office of Christopher Cueto, claims that Zinus sells mattresses with defective fire-retardant sleeves which are prone to losing their protective capabilities and to dispersing broken fiberglass into the environment. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, is 2:22-cv-01172, Gutierrez et al v. Zinus, Inc. >> 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.