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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

WHAT'S MY YEAR AGAIN?  - As the legal industry adjusts to an employer-driven market for talent, several legal recruiters in California and New York told Law.com's Jessie Yount they've seen an abnormal number of associates being asked to take a class year reduction or being informed they won't advance with the rest of their class in recent months. One recruiter, who asked to speak anonymously, recalled that candidates had an enormous amount of bargaining power during the pandemic and many avoided taking a class year reduction. Now, however, "people in that type of situation have been impacted by reductions or are being put on a performance plan and potentially being papered for a future reduction," the recruiter said. The trend reflects a bigger problem, as firms struggle to rightsize their talent pools and appropriately assess skill levels.

CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE -  Relationships between legal technology providers and law firms have often been put to the test due to rising prices, oversold capabilities or integration headaches. And more recently, there's been an influx of announcements from legal tech vendors integrating generative AI into the latest version of their tools, or coming out with new generative AI-powered offerings. So how do firms shut off the hype machine when shopping for machine learning capabilities? "We treat it very much akin to any other emerging technology and we apply a great dose of what I call innovation discipline," Katherine Lowry, chief information officer at BakerHostetler, told Law.com's Cassandre Coyer. "That's really kind of bringing structure to the process so that we are evaluating technology, both the benefits and the risks."

ON THE RADAR - Lawyers at Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders on Wednesday removed a civil RICO lawsuit against fintech company Braviant's subsidiary SunUp Financial, Total Loan Services and Capital Community Bank to Florida Middle District Court. The suit accuses the defendants of engaging in a 'rent-a-bank' scheme whereby loan originator CCB would assign loans to SunUp in Utah in order to bypass Florida's usury statutes. According to the complaint, Braviant's CEO Matt Martorello engaged in a similar 'rent-a-tribe' scheme involving Big Picture Loans, resulting in an $8.7 million class action settlement. The complaint was filed by Seraph Legal on behalf of Rupert Perry. The case is 3:23-cv-00485, Perry v. SunUp Financial LLC et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar.

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