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Obituaries

Plane crash victims include 2 Wilkinson Stekloff associates, civil rights attorney set to join law faculty

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 3, 2025, 10:53 am CST

Victims of the Washington, D.C., plane crash Jan. 29 include two Wilkinson Stekloff associates and a civil rights lawyer planning to join the faculty of the Howard University School of Law this fall.

The associates were Sarah Lee Best and Elizabeth Keys, according to the Wilkinson Stekloff website. They were both 33 years old; Keys died on her birthday. The civil rights attorney was 30-year-old Kiah Duggins, according to her employer, the Civil Rights Corps, and an obituary by her alma mater, Harvard Law School.

Among publications with coverage are Law360, Original Jurisdiction, Law.com (here and here), People and the Wall Street Journal.

While at Harvard Law School, Duggins helped protect families from COVID-19 pandemic evictions as president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. According to John Goldberg, the dean of Harvard Law School, Duggins was known for optimism, kindness and empathy.

“As a student and lawyer, Kiah was known for her boundless enthusiasm for advancing justice for the most vulnerable, and for building community,” Goldberg wrote.

Before joining the Civil Rights Corp, Duggins worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the law firm Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin. At the Civil Rights Corps, Duggins challenged unconstitutional policing and money bail practices.

She was also a former Miss Kansas contestant and a graduate of Wichita State University. During her undergrad years, she was a White House intern working for former first lady Michelle Obama, according to Law.com.

Best and Keys were returning to Washington, D.C., from a deposition when their American Airlines plane crashed with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, according to Original Jurisdiction.

Keys, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, clerked for U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia before joining Wilkinson Stekloff in December 2021. During law school, she was the managing editor of the Georgetown Food and Drug Law Journal.

While an undergraduate at Tufts University, Keys was part of the sailing team, her partner, David Seidman, told Law.com.

David A. Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told Law360 that Keys was “an extraordinary law student and an even better person.” Keys “was everything a great lawyer should be: meticulous but creative, focused but flexible, professional but kind,” Super said.

Best worked for Teach for America before attending the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She graduated in 2021. She clerked for U.S. District Judge John Cronan of the Southern District of New York, U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Judge Eugene E. Siler Jr. of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Cincinnati.

Best began work at Wilkinson Stekloff in November.

Cronan told Law360 that Best would spend hours mentoring law student interns to help them with research and writing.

“She was so caring and thoughtful and generous and had a wonderful sense of humor,” Cronan said.

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California Democrats and Gov. Gavin Newsom have agreed to set aside $50 million to help boost the state’s litigation fund and support local nonprofits, as well as immigration centers, as they brace for legal attacks and mass deportations from President-elect Donald Trump.

“This funding agreement cements California’s readiness to serve as a bulwark against Trump’s extremist agenda,” said Senate Budget Chair Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, in a statement to Politico. “Senate Democrats are particularly proud to provide funding for providers of legal aid services, which know our communities’ needs best and are best positioned to defend at scale the millions of individuals and families that will be impacted by the incoming Administration’s extreme agenda.”

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Law Firms

BigLaw firms set earnings expectations for partners, create ‘super tiers’ to reward top performers

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 31, 2024, 11:56 am CDT

As BigLaw firms focus more on metrics, many are setting earnings expectations for partners, according to legal recruiters who spoke with Law.com.

The amounts vary, but some examples are equity-partner expectations of at least $5 million to $7 million in business per year, Mike Parrillo, a recruiter in New York and founder of the Parrillo Search Group, told Law.com.

“Law firms are getting more serious about setting clear expectations on business and even specific benchmarks for certain partners,” Parrillo said. “This comes as firms are thinking more critically about how profitability should be shared.”

Kristin Stark, a firm consultant and a principal at Fairfax Associates, said some firms are using “super points” or creating “super tiers” to reward the highest performers.

“By virtue of a super tier existing, it is raising the bar for everyone,” Stark told Law.com.

Firms are getting strict about expectations in a quest to increase profits per equity partner, said Susan Mendelsohn, a Chicago-based legal recruiter, in an interview with Law.com.

“They want to be Am Law 10 or 15 or 20, so perhaps being more strict in increasing or enforcing those levels,” she said.

The federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden is set for June 3.

A federal judge in Delaware set aside the weeks of June 3 and June 10 for a jury trial, the court docket said.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Justice Thomas hires clerk accused of sending racist text; was she set up by rogue employee?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 26, 2024, 9:51 am CST

A graduate of the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School will be clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, despite a prior allegation that she sent a racist text while working at a conservative group.

Crystal Clanton, class of 2022, will clerk for Thomas for the 2024-2025 term, according to a press release (via How Appealing), the New York Times and an opinion column by the Washington Post.

The New Yorker had reported in 2017 that Clanton allegedly sent the text to a colleague in 2015 while working at the conservative student group Turning Point USA.

“I hate Black people,” the text said. “Like f- – – them all … I hate Blacks. End of story.”

Clanton told the New Yorker that she had no recollection of the messages, and they “do not reflect what I believe or who I am.” The executive director of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, told the New Yorker that “Turning Point assessed the situation and took decisive action within 72 hours of being made aware of the issue.”

Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, was on Turning Point USA’s advisory council. After Clanton left Turning Point USA, she lived with the Thomases for close to a year. Justice Thomas has said he encouraged Clanton to go to law school.

After her graduation, Clanton clerked for U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze of Alabama and Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta.

The federal judiciary investigated the situation after Pryor hired Clanton at the request of seven Democratic members of Congress. Pryor told the judiciary in a letter that he learned that the racist email was actually written by a rogue employee fired for creating fake text messages to discredit co-workers. A lawyer for Clanton told Pryor that she did not dispute the allegation because of a nondisclosure agreement.

Thomas recommended Clanton to Pryor, and he thinks that the allegations were false, according to a letter that he submitted for the judiciary investigation.

“I know Crystal Clanton, and I know bigotry,” Thomas wrote. “Bigotry is antithetical to her nature.”

The judiciary investigation ended with a determination that Maze and Pryor knew about the allegations against Clanton but found them to be false.

Federal prosecutors are set for a sealed hearing on Wednesday in former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Special counsel Jack Smith will appear before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Wednesday morning. Cannon said in a paperless order filed in federal court on Jan. 11 that the hearing will be held to evaluate classified filings by Smith being sought by Trump and his co-defendants.

A Florida judge set aside the wrongful conviction of a man who served nearly 45 years in prison for an armed robbery based on shaky evidence that prosecutors failed to disclose — their star witness identified him as the shooter after having had his memory “hypnotically refreshed” by a police lieutenant self-taught in hypnotism.

In a hearing on Wednesday, Fourth Judicial Circuit Judge Lindsay Tygart vacated Willie L. Williams Jr.’s 1976 convictions for attempted murder and robbery. The move came after the Fourth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Review (CIR) examined the case and uncovered the exculpatory evidence, his lawyers said in a news release.