Author: Brian Sanchez

Rob Wonderling. Image via Twitter.

The Chamber of Commerce has finally opened up about the “broad coalition” of business community members who say they’d suffer if Philadelphia’s new wage equity law takes effect.

In a revised lawsuit submitted this week, the Chamber reestablished its case, which was thrown out by a court on May 31. Common Pleas Court Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg dismissed the Chamber’s complaint on the grounds that the organization lacks standing, mainly because it failed to name a single member business that’d be harmed.

The Court gave the Chamber 14 days to respond with a revised complaint—counsel for the Chamber responded just in time on Tuesday.

The revised lawsuit still argues that the law violates employers’ First Amendment rights, and would make it harder for companies to do business because salary history is integral to the hiring process. The complaint also posits that Philadelphia will become less competitive as businesses will overlook the city as a place to settle down.

And to strengthen its case for standing, the complaint also names just thirteen out of over a thousand of the Chamber’s member companies, including Philly behemoths like Drexel, CHOP and Comcast.

“The Ordinance faces opposition from abroad cross-section of businesses in the city—including prominent women-owned companies, rapidly growing small businesses, and established large firms, who collectively have created tens of thousands of jobs across all sectors,” the lawsuit states.

The complaint organizes the companies according to how they’d be harmed by the law: 

• Businesses that already have strong track records on diversity and inclusion like Bittenbender Construction and Diversified Search will have a hard time finding candidates since they rely on wage history to hire applicants.
• Employers like Day & Zimmerman and Liberty Property Trust won’t be able to reward talented employees with higher compensation because they won’t be able to inquire about salary history.
• Small businesses trying to grow rapidly like DocuVaultDelaware Valley LLC, FS Investments, Jacobson Strategic Communications will especially be affected by the law’s excessively punitive nature.
• Businesses like CHOP and ESM Productions will face increased hurdles to bringing in specialized jobs to the city.
• Sandemeyer Steel Company, Comcast, and Drexel University say the ordinance will make it harder for them to compete nationally and internationally.

Each of the aforementioned companies, save FS Investments and Sandemeyer Steel Company, has an executive with a seat on the Chamber’s board of directors. Drexel President John Fry is the Chamber’s board chairman.

The Chamber also named itself in the lawsuit as one of the businesses that would have its First Amendment rights stripped away. Asking about wage history saves time and resources during the application process, it claims, and is important for assessing an applicant’s aptitude.

In a statement, city spokesman Mike Dunn said, “We remain confident that the law will withstand this challenge.” Dunn says the city will also continue to adhere to its agreement to not enforce the order until the Chamber’s motion for preliminary injunction is resolved. The law was originally supposed effect on May 23.

Mayor Kenney approved the ordinance back in January after City Council voted to unanimously pass it, with the intent to check wage discrimination in hiring practices. The law bars employers from asking applicants what they’ve earned in the past. Violators are subject to civil and criminal penalties, including up to $2,000 per violation and an additional $2,000 and 90 days in jail for a repeat offense.

Some experts have argued that the wage law would present unintended consequences, and others like the Chamber believe there’s no evidence that the “roundabout approach will alleviate discriminatory wage disparities,” according to the lawsuit. New York City and Massachusetts recently passed similar laws that have yet to take effect.

The Chamber’s lawsuit also outlines some alternatives to the law that it says the city ignored: Prohibit employers from relying on wage history as the sole basis for making wage distinctions among employees of different sexes, or encourage employers to conduct voluntary self-evaluations to ensure that all of their employees earn fair market wages.

The Chamber also suggests that the city reduce the civil and criminal penalties associated with the law so that small businesses won’t be forced to close if found in violation of the prohibition.

Follow @fabiolacineas on Twitter.

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PETALUMA, Calif., June 15, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Procurement Data System indicates the Small Business Administration falsified the federal government’s compliance with the 23% small business contracting goal for fiscal year 2016.


        In a May 18

[th,]

press release the SBA claimed small businesses had received $99.96 billion in federal contracts and 24.34 percent of all federal contracts awarded in fiscal year 2016. 

The Small Business Act mandates small businesses receive a minimum of 23% of all federal contracts. The Congressional Budget Office reports the total federal acquisition budget for 2016 was $1.2 trillion.

23 percent of the $1.2 trillion the federal government actually awarded in contracts for fiscal year 2016 would be approximately $276 billion. The SBA excluded $790 billion in federal contracts from their calculations to claim small businesses received 24.34 percent of all contracts.


        Data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) indicates the SBA included contracts to over 100 Fortune 500 firms and over 5,000 large businesses in the $99.96 billion they claimed went to small businesses.

Every year since 2005 the SBA Office of Inspector General has named the diversion of federal small business contracts to large businesses as the number one management problem at the SBA. As early as 2003 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found over 5,300 large businesses were the actual recipients of federal small business contracts.

In 2008, President Obama released the statement, “It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.”
Some of the firms that have received federal small business contracts in recent years include, Apple, Walmart, Microsoft, Home Depot, Bechtel, SAIC, Raytheon, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Honda Motors, British Aerospace and Engineering and Rolls Royce.

Professor Charles Tiefer, one of the nation’s leading authorities on federal procurement law and a contributor to Forbes released an article on June 5, 2017 challenging the accuracy of the SBA’s statistics.

In 2014, Public Citizen released an investigative report titled “Sleighted,” that found the SBA had fabricated compliance with federal small business contracting goals. In 2016, Mother Jones released their investigative report titled, “Giant Corporations Are Reaping Billions From Federal Small Business Contracts.”

        ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News and RTTV  have all release investigative reports that found the SBA included billions in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms.

The American Small Business League (ASBL) has filed for a federal injunction to stop the SBA from falsifying federal small business data. The case is currently in the 9

		[th]

	 Circuit Court of Appeals.

American Express Open Forum named ASBL President Lloyd Chapman as one of the 4 strongest voices for small businesses in Washington for his efforts to end fraud in federal small business programs. In July, the ASBL will releasing their documentary entitled ‘Cheated’ on their campaign to end fraud in federal small business programs.





Contact:      


Kyle Hilmoe






khilmoe@asbl.com






707-789-9575




To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/government-small-business-data-includes-billions-to-fortune-500-firms-asbl-reports-300474429.html
SOURCE  American Small Business League

Copyright (C) 2017 PR Newswire. All rights reserved



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At least two major Indian manufacturers of cigarettes, the Indian Tobacco Company and Godfrey Phillips, engage in CSR activities revolving around education, health, welfare programmes for women and sanitation. (Representational Image)

Close on the heels of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, the Maharashtra government may soon disassociate itself from any sponsorships, donations or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives offered by tobacco companies. Once the decision is finalised, the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) would instruct all state department heads to reject such offers or partnerships.

The move is aimed at curtailing direct and indirect promotion of tobacco brands by the state government.

“All heads of departments in Maharashtra state are requested/instructed not to participate in any tobacco industry activities, and not to indulge in direct/indirect/ in kind sponsorship or funding from any corporate or individual engaged in tobacco trade or commerce in order to implement the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003, in the state of Maharashtra,” the DHS-approved draft of the circular states. The draft is currently awaiting the final nod from the government.

Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra’s Additional Chief Secretary (Health), said, “We have instructions from the CMO to actively work against tobacco. Once this proposal is approved, the law and judiciary department’s opinion will be sought.”

The BJP-led government will thus join other states taking a stand against tobacco giants. According to officials, Mizoram, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have aggressively implemented this circular while a few other states are now in the process of taking it up.

At least two major Indian manufacturers of cigarettes, the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) and Godfrey Phillips, engage in CSR activities revolving around education, health, welfare programmes for women and sanitation. ITC’s CSR policy shows it has provided infrastructure support to 1,400 primary government schools, entered into public private partnership with several state governments for watershed projects, and worked with government sanitation schemes.

Godfrey Phillips’ CSR section shows it has equipped primary health centers and contributed to infrastructural improvements in anganwadis and primary schools apart from distributing school bags in Andhra Pradesh. The company’s CSR initiatives also work in HIV/AIDS prevention work.

“The association of the government with tobacco companies is a direct propaganda of the company’s products,” said Dr PC Gupta, director of Healis Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, adding that several states lag behind in implementation of World Health Organisation (WHO) treaty that outlines a similar policy. “Stopping all sort of grants from tobacco companies is necessary for tobacco control in India,” he added.

The file that instructs departments to curtail its association with tobacco companies is currently under process of obtaining approval from Additional Chief Secretary of Health, Vijay Satbir Singh, following which it will be put up for consideration in the Mantralaya.

India is signatory to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) whose article 5.3 states “in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.”

“In Punjab, this circular was issued to curb tobacco industry interference in governance,” said Rakesh Gupta, deputy director of non-communicable diseases, Punjab. He added that a particular tobacco firm would hold school competitions. “The brand and logo remains in the minds of students. They assume that this is a good brand when they finally pick up smoking,” Gupta added.

In Maharashtra, a tobacco firm approached the DHS to print posters of COTPA for raising awareness on tobacco and cigarette consumption. “We refused to accept their funds which they said they will use under CSR,” an official from the state health department said.

In an e-mail response, Syed Mahmood Ahmad, director of Tobacco Institute of India, a representative of all tobacco manufacturers in India, said the FCTC is not a binding document. “As per law, companies are mandated to undertake CSR spends. FCTC is often wrongly cited by vested groups to further their anti-tobacco agenda.” The response added that there is no treaty signed which restricts Indian companies engaged in tobacco industry to implement CSR in collaboration with government.

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There is a traditional view of lawyers as the enemies of entrepreneurs.

The famously risk-averse attitude of lawyers often frustrates business leaders who complain of over-lawyering and objection-raising when receiving advice from their counsel.

There are a number of reasons for this lack of entrepreneurial sensitivity among lawyers. The U.S legal system rests on guidance from previous case law, and focuses heavily on precedent and risk-spotting — instead of breaking stuff and disruption associated with fast-growth companies.

It may even be in the legal genes. One study found that lawyers are in the 90th percentile for skepticism and have the lowest resilience (bouncing back or dealing with a setback) of any profession. These traits may be good for pouring over documents, but are less useful when powering fast-growth businesses.

Related: Why Entrepreneurship Takes Real Bravery

However, very recently a curious phenomenon has swept through this traditional profession. Lawyers are leaving the safe and well-paying world of law to build their own fast-growing, tech-first companies. The driver: the need to fix problems and deep inefficiencies encountered in their first career of law. These lawyer-entrepreneurs are helping create what have been called “legaltech” companies, using major advances in technology, including artificial Intelligence, to solve archaic practices in the daily practice of law, which have remained unchanged for decades. This boom has helped create a slew of new companies disrupting the way legal services is delivered and a  $16 billion legaltech market in the U.S alone.

In the research of my book, The In-House Counsel’s LegalTech Buyers Guide, carried out over several months analyzing more than 100 essential legal technology products, I have seen the rise of this “lawtrepreneur.” These unique lawyers are among those building companies revolutionizing the daily tasks of law, including contract review, intellectual property, due diligence, research and expertise automation.

Here are 10 lawyers who have made the (not-so well-trodden) path from lawyer to tech business leader, and their advice to others making the jump.

1. Haley Altman, CEO and founder, Doxly  

Altman says her idea for an automated document and transaction management platform was born at 1 a.m. when, as partner at a law firm, she sat surrounded by hundreds of manila folders. Altman and her team were hunting through thousands of documents for one missing signature page holding up a multimillion dollar closing. Founded in 2016, Doxly has since raised $2.75 million in equity funding. Altman told Stanford Law’s Codex blog, “Do not dwell too much on things you cannot change. You have to constantly move forward. Every setback is an opportunity to learn and grow.”

Related: If Elon Musk Can Admit His Mistakes, Then So Can You

2. Noory Bechor, CEO and co-founder, LawGeex

My boss Noory Bechor was a lawyer at a top Israeli law firm when he experienced firsthand the pain of creating and reviewing everyday contracts manually. Convinced the process could be automated, he founded AI contract review platform LawGeex in 2014. LawGeex has raised $9.5 million in funding and has won clients including leading U.S names in retail, finance and insurance. Bechor told me about a shift in mindset for a lawyer: “To take two examples, for lawyers every risk must be mitigated, for an entrepreneur taking risks is second nature. Secondly, for lawyers, everything is confidential, but as an entrepreneur the more you share, the more advice you get, the better you become.”

3. Ned Gannon, co-founder, eBrevia

Ned Gannon graduated from Harvard Law and worked in a law firm, before founding eBrevia, based on technology developed in partnership with Columbia University. EBrevia provides contract due and lease abstraction. Founded in 2014, the company received $1.98 million in funding and reports a 30 percent to 90 percent increase in speed compared to old-style manual review. “Allocating time is one of the biggest challenges,” he told Whiteboard. “There are a lot of things to do on many different fronts which is challenging, but this also makes the process fun and interesting.”

Related: What Tech Entrepreneurs Can Learn From the Startup That Beat Google

4. Michael Mills, co-founder and chief strategy officer, Neota Logic Inc

Michael attended the University of Chicago Law School, then served as law clerk to a United States district judge before becoming partner at global law firm, Mayer Brown. Mills created Neota Logic, an AI-driven, no-code platform for intelligent automation of expertise, documents and processes. Neota has picked up major clients, include Littler, the world’s largest employment and labor law practice. “Do what every startup must do — focus on product/market fit,” Mills told me. “Buyers win, visions don’t. Know that you will try, fail, pivot and try again. Stamina counts — legal tech serves the legal industry, which sometimes remembers too well its antecedents in the 11th century.”

5. Chrissie Lightfoot, CEO and founder, Robot Lawyer LISA

Former lawyer Chrissie Lightfoot is now a bestselling author, consultant, legal and business commentator. In 2016, she created Robot Lawyer LISA (Legal Intelligence Support Assistant), the “world’s first impartial AI lawyer.” “These are evolutionary, revolutionary and transformational times,” she says. “You need to be on the ‘digital AI robot’ wave or you risk being left in the wake water or at the wake funeral of your business.”

6. Nehal Madhani, CEO and founder, Alt Legal

Nehal Madani, founder of Alt Legal, graduated from University of Pennsylvania Law School and landed a job at the prestigious law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Inspired to make legal practice more efficient, he left his high-paying salary, taught himself to code, and started Alt Legal, a cloud-based software using technology to manage global IP filings. He told Early Growth Financial Services, “As the founder, it’s hard not to want all of our plans immediately executed, but I’ve learned (painfully) that strict focus on getting just a few details right is a much more effective path.”

Related: 3 Steps (Nearly) Every Tech Startup Makes — and How to Avoid Them

7. Joseph R. Tiano, CEO and Founder, Legal Decoder

After practicing law for nearly 20 years as partner at two American Law 50 law firms, Tiano founded Legal Decoder seeing that clients lacked analytic tools and data to manage costs of outside counsel. He told High Performance Counsel to lean on the experience of investors. “About six of my investors in Legal Decoder truly inspire me. They have started businesses themselves and understand very well the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship, providing invaluable support, guidance and encouragement.”

8. Michael Sander, founder, Docket Alarm

As a lawyer, Michael Sander found the legal research tools used at his New York law firm too expensive and inefficient. (He told Wired.com, “Twice a day, we had a paralegal go to the court’s website, enter a case number, see if there was anything new, and repeat that nine times.”)  In 2012, he created Docket Alarm, providing legal search, analytics and litigations alerts for the United States court system. “Lawyers are detailed oriented, use that to your advantage,” he says. “The process of leaving your job to found a company may seem daunting, but if you break down your ultimate goal into tiny steps, the endeavor becomes far more manageable.”

Related: This Is the Year of the Machine Learning Revolution

9. Andrew Arruda, CEO and co-founder, Ross Intelligence

As a lawyer, Andrew Arruda too often saw the scales of justice tip in favor of the wealthy. He partnered with a computer scientist to create an AI legal assistant and research tool, ROSS, leveraging IBM Watson. In a recent interview, Arruda said, “If you’re interested in doing it, start doing something with that interest. Our legal background does provide us with a fantastic base when it comes to working hard, applying ourselves and you can really use this to your advantage.”

10. Noah Waisberg, founder and CEO, Kira Systems

Prior to founding Kira Systems, Noah practiced at New York law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Kira Systems helps enterprises identify, extract and analyze business information from unstructured contracts. He says, “Don’t be afraid to leave without another job lined up. You won’t really know what to do next until you have time away from work to think about it with a clear head. I quit with no job in hand. If I hadn’t taken my break, I might well have been working as hard, as long, on a less interesting problem with less opportunity for impact.”

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Wall Street execs fear
that a new law in New York City could lead to lower pay for
men.
Nick
Starichenko/Shutterstock

Don’t tell Wall Street executives how to pay their people.

At least that’s what the two chairmen of the Partnership for New
York City, a nonprofit membership organization made up of top
business leaders in New York City, told the mayor’s
representatives,
The New York Times reports.

The two men — Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of the
Blackstone Group, and Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup — are
among a growing chorus of Wall Street executives complaining to
Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor who oversees housing and economic
development, about a new law that will change the way Wall Street
firms negotiate compensation packages.

Their biggest concern?

That the recently passed New York City law,
which bars public and private employers from asking job
candidates about their current or previous salary, will make
recruiting and paying top talent more challenging,
according to The Times.

Letitia James, New York’s public advocate, who
introduced the legislation, begs to differ. She argues that
discussing previous salary information increases wage
discrimination.

“Being underpaid once should not condemn one to a lifetime of
inequity,” James said
in a press release when the bill was passed in April. “We
will never close the wage gap unless we continue to enact
proactive policies that promote economic justice and equity.”

The stakes are high for Wall Street firms — in 2016, employee
compensation contributed nearly $24 billion to New York’s
economy, according to
The Times.

One argument
The Times mentioned opposing the new law contended that the
law may actually decrease pay for men and fail to increase pay
for women, which would negatively affect New York City’s tax
revenue.

But Glen says she expects the law to have a positive impact. She
told
The Times:

“We have to break the cycle of pay discrimination. Every firm is
grappling with how to retain and promote more women into their
senior leadership — this is part of the solution. Having spent
more than a decade on Wall Street, I fundamentally believe this
industry will be stronger when women up and down the ladder are
compensated fairly.”

Read the full article on The New York Times »

Copyright © 2017 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved

The above news release has been provided by the above company via the OTC Disclosure and News Service. Issuers of news releases and not OTC Markets Group Inc. are solely responsible for the accuracy of such news releases.

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By Andrew Cohen

Berkeley Law Professor and former dean Herma Hill Kay, an iconic pioneer among women in the law, died in her sleep on Saturday, June 10. She was 82.

Kay, who taught at Berkeley Law for 57 years, wrote seminal works on sex-based discrimination, family law, conflict of laws, and diversity in legal education. A powerful advocate for equality in legal education and for women’s rights under the law, she also published numerous articles and book chapters on subjects including divorce, adoption, and reproductive rights. 

In 1960, Kay became just the second woman to join the Berkeley Law faculty—hired when the first, Barbara Armstrong, announced plans to retire. During Kay’s tenure, the number of women students increased from a small handful to more than 50 percent of the class, and the number of women faculty grew exponentially.

She became the school’s first woman dean in 1992, serving for eight years. Despite facing severe budget restrictions and the 1996 passage of a California law barring public institutions from recruitment based on affirmative action, Berkeley Law thrived during her tenure with significant expansions to its curriculum, faculty, and clinical program.

“It’s almost inconceivable to think of our law school without Herma,” Professor Robert Merges said. “She filled every role we aspire to—mentor, teacher, scholar, leader—and did so not just well, but to the utmost. And in almost every role she was the first woman to dare to do it … and she did it all with grace, humor, tact, and a steady, quiet strength.”

Over more than five decades, Kay became a popular and nationally renowned professor of Family Law, Conflicts of Law, Sex-Based Discrimination, and California Marital Property Law. She also mentored numerous faculty members while promoting women’s advancement in legal education and the legal system as a whole.

Professor Emerita Eleanor Swift noted that Kay’s mentoring of women law students and junior faculty “opened the door to legal careers that simply did not exist before she and other women of her generation began to imagine them. The women law professors whom she mentored throughout her career constitute her enduring legacy to the law and to legal education.”

In a 2000 tribute article to Kay’s deanship, Georgetown Law Professor Emerita Wendy Webster Williams ’70 recalled how Kay invited all of Berkeley Law’s women law students to a meeting in the spring of 1969.

View a gallery of Herma Hill Kay photos here.

Watch a video clip of Herma describing what it was like to throw out the first pitch at an Oakland A’s baseball game here.

“There weren’t very many of us back then, so we fit into a small room that passed as the women’s lounge at the time,” Williams recounted. “She gently but firmly suggested that we should look to our interests (since men were unlikely to) and do something for ourselves as professional women. In a single stroke, she brought feminism home to us.

“As we worked with her suggestion over the summer and into the fall, establishing the Boalt Hall Women’s Association, developing a strategy for opening firms and clerkships previously closed to women, asserting our right to be where we were … I heard my calling. Herma provoked, inspired, encouraged, and brought into their own a whole generation of women law students.”

A new state of the (marital) union

A co-author of the California Family Law Act of 1969, Kay also served as a co-reporter on the state commission that drafted the nation’s first no-fault divorce statute. She later co-authored the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, which has become the standard for no-fault divorce nationwide.

“It was never undertaken to achieve equality between men and women,” Kay said during a 2008 interview. “It was undertaken to try to get the blackmail out of divorce and I think it has accomplished that…. Marriage is no longer the only career open to women.”

In 1974 she co-authored the seminal Sex-based Discrimination casebook, now in its seventh edition, with Professor Kenneth Davidson and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In 2015, Kay received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)—from Ginsburg herself.

Reflecting on their first meeting in 1972 at a conference, Ginsburg told the AALS Annual Meeting News, “I liked her enormously … she’s a grand human in all respects.”

In a video tribute for Kay’s 2015 AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Law, Ginsburg hailed “her persistent effort for well over a half century … to make what was once momentous no longer out of the ordinary—law faculties and student generations that reflect the full capacity, diversity, and talent of all of our nation’s people. Berkeley Law, legal education, and the legal world are beneficiaries of her selfless efforts.”

Kay’s other numerous honors include UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the first Boalt Hall Alumni Association Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award, and the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award to Women Lawyers of Distinction.

At a 2016 California Law Review symposium dedicated to Kay’s work, Interim Dean and fellow Family Law Professor Melissa Murray observed, “In the late 1960s and 1970s, as a revolution in substantive sex equality was sweeping California, Herma was at its center. She literally transformed the legal landscape of American family life.”

A determined path

Kay grew up in South Carolina, the only child of a minister father and a schoolteacher mother. In sixth grade, her civics teacher was so impressed by her sparkling performance in a classroom debate on the Civil War that she told her, “If you were my daughter, I’d send you to law school.” Kay’s mother, however, met that ebullient announcement with a withering reply: “No, you won’t go to law school. Girls can’t make a living as lawyers.”

Determined to disprove that notion, Kay enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School after receiving her undergraduate degree from Southern Methodist University in 1956. She earned her law degree in 1959 after serving as an editor on the law review and working as a research assistant for Brainerd Currie, with whom she co-authored two leading articles.

Kay served as a law clerk to California Supreme Court Justice Roger Traynor ’27, who hired her on Currie’s recommendation, then came to Berkeley to continue her meteoric rise.

“It is unusual to be a top scholar in two different fields,” said Berkeley Law Professor and fellow Family Law scholar Stephen Sugarman. “Herma was that rare academic who was a leading figure in at least three—family law, conflict of laws, and sex-based discrimination.”

In 1998, during her stint as dean, the National Law Journal named Kay one of the 50 most influential female lawyers in the country and one of the eight most influential lawyers in Northern California. Sugarman said “she brought us into the modern era” in several ways, “providing the key support needed to launch our clinical program” and shepherding vital improvements to the law school facility.

Working closely on the project with Swift, Kay launched the Center for Clinical Education, making Berkeley Law one of the first top law schools to provide students with valuable opportunities to gain hands-on training with clients.

“Now our clinical programs generally rank as being among the best in the country,” Kay said recently. “I’m very proud of that.”

Extending her reach

Kay held a wide range of leadership roles during her career. She was the president of AALS, a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and the chair of UC Berkeley’s Academic Senate—among other positions.

She later served as an advisor for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law (Third) Conflict of Laws project. At the time of her death, Kay was nearing completion of a book about U.S. female law professors in the 20th century—focusing on the 14 who began teaching before she did in 1960.

“From coast to coast, the legal academy and the profession are filled with young women and men who Herma has mentored, befriended, and guided over the years,” Murray said. “Some of these scholars were former students who, inspired by Herma’s example, went on to become first-rate legal scholars in their own right. Others are simply fellow travelers with whom Herma found common cause. In either case, her influence cannot be overstated.”

In her spare time, Kay was a pilot, avid swimmer, and accomplished gardener. Her husband, Dr. Carroll Brodsky, died in 2014. She is survived by his three sons and by four grandchildren.

Information about a memorial service is forthcoming.

“It is very difficult to think about our law school without Herma in it,” Swift said. “Her teaching and mentoring influenced generations of lawyers to set high goals for themselves, to work very hard, and to love the law. Herma was a model for these values. She will be greatly missed.”

Those wishing to make a gift in Herma’s honor or to one of the existing funds established in her name are welcome to contact alumni@law.berkeley.edu for instructions, or do so online here.”

Established funds include:

Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professorship
Herma Hill Kay Distinguished Professorship Program Fund
Herma Hill Kay Summer Fellowship Fund

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Over half of skilled EU workers employed by FTSE 250 companies are likely to leave the UK before Brexit, a new survey has shown, underscoring fears that the country is at risk of a severe brain drain following its departure from the bloc.

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