In a hypothetical situation in our March 2016 article “Improving Morale: Five Rules for Making Associate Assignments,”1 we introduced Eric Smith, a partner in the Labor and Employment group at the prominent law firm of Smith & Jones. Mr. Smith recently discovered that a competitor of his largest client, Apex Technologies, was attempting to solicit and hire many of Apex’s key employees, and to misappropriate Apex’s confidential business information and trade secrets. To prepare for possible litigation, Mr. Smith summoned Sarah Simmons, a second-year litigation associate, and assigned her the task of preparing a legal memorandum concerning possible causes of action for Apex to assert. In their conference, Mr. Smith informed Sarah that he needed the memorandum “in about a week or so.”
One week has passed since Mr. Jones made the assignment to Sarah but, unfortunately, she still has not delivered a memorandum to Mr. Smith. Therefore, assume the following occurs.
