ATTORNEY OF THE MONTH Alysia ZensThe Fund for Legal Aid and the Hennepin County Bar Association invite you to the 2020 Virtual Law Day Celebration: Coming Together to Advance Equal Justice Thursday, September 17, 2020 6:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. We’re going this year! VIR TUAL HONOREE Andrea Kaufman Retired Director and Chair, The Fund for Legal Aid Retired Development Director, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid Silent Auction “Lunch with a General Counsel” Bid on unique opportunities to have lunch with a General Counsel from prominent local companies. Thank you to our participating General Counsels: James Chosy, U.S. Bank Lucy Clark Dougherty, Polaris Industries Brad Lerman, Medtronic Scott Lynch, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota UNDERWRITERS To register or for more information, contact us at: https://mylegalaid.org/support-our-work/law-day-dinner.Hello again Minnesota legal community, With politics head- ing into the home stretch; COV- ID-19 still wreaking havoc and limiting interaction; natural disasters across the nation raging; and plenty of social unrest about, we none- the-less welcome you to the latest issue of Attorney at Law Magazine. Featured in this issue is Alysia Zens, who serves as a resource to Dorsey attorneys on non-profit matters. Dors- ey’s unique approach to pro bono work is to allow attorneys to find and follow their individual passion projects. Providing support to pro bono attorneys is one of Zens’ key responsibilities. Also presented in this issue: ON YOUR OWN exposes what tools a firm might seek in future hires and partners. Trademark in- fringement considerations are addressed in comparative advertis- ing. How and why time-strapped professionals really don’t need to strength train often to receive “saw-sharpening” benefits. An update on the challenging times for Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid as intakes are almost triple the usual volume. We hope you are all well and still thriving and that Attorney at Law Magazine can play a role in providing a break and helping you to grow in this chaotic environment. We’re making a last call for nominations for our annual Women in Law special issue. If you’d like more information regarding the issue, please give me a call or email me directly. Best, David Seawell PUBLISHER 763-742-2805 DSEAWELL@ATTORNEYATLAWMAGAZINE.COM FROM THE Publisher Attorney at Law Magazine is published by: Target Market Media Publications Inc. David Seawell PRESIDENT & CEO INSIGHT MEDIA, INC. EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE Howard LaGraffe VICE PRESIDENT Caitlin Keniston EDITOR Susan Cushing Veronica Jauregui ASSISTANT EDITORS Jaqueline Dávila GRAPHIC DESIGN Z. Peter Sawicki James L. Young CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Luke Carlson Ken W. Good Leykn Schmatz Jeff Storms Rhonda M. Ware CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Eclipse Productions PHOTOGRAPHY Copyright ©2020, Target Market Media all rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited. Advertising rates on request. Bulk third class (standard) mail. Although every precaution is taken to ensure accuracy of published materials, Attorney at Law Magazine & Target Market Media cannot be held responsible for opinions expressed or facts supplied by authors. Corporate Office : 5828 North 7th Street, Suite 200 Phoenix, AZ 85014 Phone (480) 219-9716 www.tmmpublications.com • info@tmmpublications.com TARGET MARKET MEDIA TARGETMARKETMEDIA Northern Alabama | Atlanta | Chicago | Dallas | Ft. Lauderdale Jacksonville | Los Angeles | Miami | Minnesota North Carolina Triangle | Ohio | Philadelphia | Phoenix | San Antonio Salt Lake City | Middle Tennessee | Washington D.C. ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · MINNESOTA · V OL. 9 NO. 8 4TABLE OF Contents 12 7 Challenging Times By Leykn Schmatz 8 Criminal Justice Reform – Do Advocates for Change Even Care About Results? By Ken W. Good 10 Playing Fair By Z. Peter Sawicki and James L. Young 12 Alysia Zens Attorney of the Month 17 On Your Own: Lookin’ for a Mind at Work By Jeff Storms 18 7 Steps to Create Your Own Path to Business Development in 2020 By Rhonda M. Ware 20 Challenging the Why and How of Strength Training for the Time- Strapped Attorney By Luke Carlson SPECIAL SECTIONS 21 Talk of the Town AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 5DAVID SEAWELL PUBLISHER 763-742-2805 | DSEAWELL@ATTORNEYATLAWMAGAZINE.COMIn April of 2020, Mid-Minne- sota Legal Aid received 8,847 calls and logged over 900 in- takes – almost triple the usual volume for a month. In February, well before the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Minnesota, Executive Director Drew Schaffer and his team began to care- fully monitor not only the virus, but also the economic impact. As the public health emergency evolved and public guidance lagged behind the growth of the pandemic, they real- ized the particular vulnerability of the communities Legal Aid serves. The board and management took decisive action to protect staff, clients, and community partners. Legal Aid closed its physical offices the week of March 16. Within a week, all functions moved to a virtual en- vironment. Legal Aid’s information technology team worked with opera- tions to move intake, support, and all client services to remote operations. At the same time, attorneys in all units began preparing for the legal complications to come. The first wave of cases focused on access to stable housing and healthcare. Minneso- ta’s March 2020 school closures and stay-at-home order brought a spike in family law and domestic violence questions, along with concerns about equal access to education and public information. The Minnesota Disabil- ity Law Center (MDLC) turned atten- tion to the rights of vulnerable adults in facilities around the state. Rapid changes to public policy and benefits brought a surge in calls about CARES stimulus checks and unem- ployment insurance. Legal Aid’s Low- Income Tax Clinic is the only agency in the state that is helping people nav- igate the IRS website to apply for their stimulus checks. The benefits unit has shifted to helping workers apply for unemployment benefits. “Our biggest challenge is to stay positive,” says Intake Coordinator Luci Russell. “The pandemic is mag- nifying problems we were seeing be- fore, and the need is overwhelming. We’re honored to work for an organi- zation that responds so quickly, and we appreciate being able to provide help in this uncertain time. But the need is so much bigger than we can possibly meet.” On the informational front, Le- gal Aid’s State Support team added a COVID-19 resource page to www. lawhelpmn.org. on March 13. In just a few weeks, in cooperation with legal experts around the state, State Sup- port created 18 new fact sheets to ad- dress clients’ most urgent questions, translated them into multiple lan- guages, and put the word out on social media channels. The work is ongoing, with high traffic on the website and ever-rising requests for information. Then on May 25, George Floyd was killed by police officers in south Minneapolis, and everything changed again. The city responded explosively. In the aftermath, new food and phar- macy deserts, damaged housing, and closed businesses weigh most heavily on client communities. Meanwhile, the pandemic continues. The commu- nities Legal Aid serves will be looking at the economic impact for years to come. With a continued minimal pres- ence in physical offices, Legal Aid continues to field a high volume of calls, disseminate public information, and advocate for client communities at local and state levels. “It is Legal Aid’s desire, privilege, and duty to continue our fierce ad- vocacy and stand with the communi- ties that have suffered so much loss,” says Schaffer. “Pro bono support and financial contributions from the pri- vate bar – both local and out-of-state – has been especially heartening over the past weeks. We’re trying to keep a jump ahead of ever-changing circum- stances, and we appreciate the sup- port of the legal community.” MID-MINNESOTA LEGAL AID PROVIDES FREE CIVIL LEGAL ADVICE AND REPRESEN- TATION TO MINNESOTANS WHO CANNOT AFFORD AN ATTORNEY. LEGAL AID SERVES PEOPLE WITH LOW INCOMES IN 20 COUN- TIES AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES STATEWIDE. Challenging Times BY LEYKN SCHMATZ Our biggest challenge is to stay positive, the pandemic is magnifying problems we were seeing before, and the need is overwhelming.” AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 7CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM America is precariously perched at a tipping point in history in which strong-arm efforts to reform our criminal justice system seem to be rooted in change for its own sake — and damn the lamentable consequences. In our country’s early colonies, the concept of right and wrong was rooted in “common law,” based upon the history of previous decisions made by judges. Over time, criminal laws became formally adopted by the various states, as well as the federal government. Do Advocates for Change Even Care About Results? BY KEN W. GOOD ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · MINNESOTA · V OL. 9 NO. 8 8Over the past couple of years, the pitfalls of the arguments for change are becoming in- creasingly apparent, but overzealous reformers have been seemingly tone deaf to criticism or any attempt to measure results. As this ill-fated ship steams ahead toward certain disaster, we are approaching the point at which we must ask whether the advocates for change even care about the results? Statesman and activist Frederick Douglass is quoted as saying “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” He had the foresight to understand that vision and principle were intertwined in our nation’s quest for a better society. In recent times we have witnessed many examples of failed bail reform throughout the country. In 2018, Alaska’s state legislature adopted many of the reforms suggested by ad- vocates, but within six months, prob- lems arose. A year after its passage, state lawmakers asked supporters of the changes to explain the dubious results. Backpedaling furiously, the advocates argued that Alaska’s mea- sure of success needed to be changed and that more time was needed. The state responded by rolling back many of the pie-in-the-sky reforms. More broadly, reformers developed a risk assessment tool which they touted would predict the probability of an individual to reoffend and to not appear for their court dates. They spent millions of dollars to support usage of the tool, providing grants to cities, counties and states in an effort for them to give it a try. However, the tool did not deliver as promised and the results of early research raised questions about its use. Still, reform- ers held tough. The bottom fell out in the last year or so. Some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Google, IBM, Apple and Amazon, is- sued a joint statement saying that risk assessments should not be a part of any criminal justice reform. The statement declared that the tools had been rushed and not prop- erly studied before being put into use. It added that they were good at pre- dicting what a group would do, but failed at predicting the behavior of an individual. Also, in predicting group behavior, risk assessment tools look at a groups’ demographic and socio- economic history. Multiple studies confirmed that these racial elements formed an integral component of risk assessment tools, concluding that they should not be any part of crimi- nal justice reform. As recently as the beginning of this year, the Vera Insti- tute supported the use of risk assess- ments until pulling their support in February. While all this was going on, New York state’s new bail laws took effect on January 1, adopting many reforms which required certain offenders to be released without bond. Not surpris- ingly, the effects of the changes were felt immediately with a sharp spike in crime across the state. The repercussions were so bad that even with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, the New York legislature rolled back many of the reforms. Again, the response from reformers was to ask for patience, claiming that the prom- ised positive results simply required more time. In Harris County, Texas, reforms have been in place for over a year and have caused such delays that the numbers of pending cases in misde- meanor courts have doubled during that time. In June, a reform group reported to the commissioners court that the state’s criminal justice system was close to collapse. To prevent this occurrence, its advice was to simply dismiss between 12,000 and 18,000 criminal cases. Program Director Thomas Eberly of The Justice Man- agement Institute stated, “I know it’s uncomfortable, but you’ve got to cut your losses.” Eberly argued that doing this would allow the county to deal with the backlog of cases. The standout element to these di- sastrous developments is a failure on the part of reformers to perform any kind of critical analysis to determine what works and what has caused the poor results of their reform initiatives. The most common problem arises from a lack of accountability. The reforms promoted by advocates for change tie the hands of authorities within the system and removes ac- countability in the process. A defen- dant who fails to appear for court can- not be punished even though this is a new crime. An individual who has received a PR bond and is arrested on new alleged crimes is released on another PR bond. If one violates de- ferred probation, no motion to re- voke is filed. Similarly, cases are still dismissed even after a failure to at- tend mandated classes. Each of these actions sends a clear message to the people going through the system that they will not be held to account. Ca- reer criminals have taken this as a green light to commit more crime. Throughout the country, signs of this are evident wherever bail reforms have been attempted. Bail reformers seem committed to criminal justice reform for its own sake without any apparent thought as to the ultimate consequences of their actions. If, as a society, we are truly committed to making improvements to our system of government, then we must do it together. As Frederick Douglass would have admonished, all parties must unite if we are to find ef- fective ways to improve our criminal justice system. Removing account- ability and setting up the criminal justice system for collapse are not im- provements. Do reformers even care? IN 1989, KEN W. GOOD RECEIVED HIS LAW DEGREE FROM TEXAS TECH SCHOOL OF LAW, WHERE HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE TEXAS TECH LAW REVIEW. MR. GOOD HAS ARGUED CASES BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS AND THE TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, ALONG WITH NU- MEROUS COURTS OF APPEALS, INCLUD- ING THE UNITED STATES COURT OF AP- PEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT. MR. GOOD IS MARRIED AND HAS TWO DAUGHTERS. AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com 9Next >