Talking Law with Hogan Lovells Cadwalader

In the 21st episode of the A Perspective Podcast, Andrew turns to Charlie Robertson. Charlie is Global Chief Economist and Head of Macro Strategy at Renaissance Capital. Focused on emerging, Frontier, and Africa markets, Charlie is often rated number 1 for Emerging Europe or Frontier/Africa commentary. 

Join them as they discuss a wide range of captivating topics including; why the 21st century is going to be better for Africa, what the continent needs to address to achieve industrialization, and the notion of supply chains and added value in Africa post COVID-19 and AfCFTA. Charlie also shares his views on which country has it right on the continent, vaccine diplomacy, why Education underpins all progress on the continent, and rounds off this illuminating conversation by giving us a reason to be cheerful.

In today's episode, we'll visit with Hogan Lovells partners Maria Durant and Mike Theis and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our Boston and Denver offices, as they discuss several areas where close scrutiny of False Claims Act litigation is warranted in 2021.

In this week’s A Perspective, Andrew Skipper continues to discuss key topics with some of Africa's most influential leaders, both on and off the continent. In this episode, Andrew talks to the Executive Head of Non-Banking Financial Institutions and Global Markets at Standard Bank Group, Lindeka Dzedze. She is also the project lead for the Standard Bank Group and MiDA Advisors collaboration to connect US investors to impactful capital deployment opportunities on the African continent. In addition, she is the chairperson of the African Women Impact Fund Executive Committee, an initiative of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and its partners.

Join them as they discuss the importance of women’s initiatives and championing gender in the African context. They delve into the work of the African Women Impact Fund, its focus on female fund managers, and what exactly sets this particular impact fund apart from others. Lindeka also shares her thoughts on the importance of partnerships between the public and private sector and how COVID-19 has impacted the activities of such initiatives on the continent.   

In today’s episode, we'll visit with Hogan Lovells partner Stephanie Yonekura, senior associate Jennifer Brechbill and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Boston offices, as they discuss Financial Services.

In today's episode, we'll visit with Hogan Lovells partner Mike Theis, senior associate Stacy Hadeka and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our Denver, Washington, D.C. and Boston offices, as they discuss Government motions to dismiss.

The A Perspective podcast is back for a fourth season. Andrew Skipper continues to discuss key topics with some of Africa's most influential leaders, both on and off the continent. In our first episode for the year, Andrew talks to Agility’s CEO for Africa, Geoffrey White. Geoffrey has been at the helm since 2014 and is focused on developing integrated logistics infrastructure solutions across the continent.

Join them as they discuss the strategy and reasoning behind Agility’s investments into Africa, how companies in Africa can navigate infrastructure challenges through simple logistical solutions and the positive impact this is having on future growth and development. Geoffrey goes on to share his thoughts on how the AfCFTA could make a substantial difference in terms of intra-African trade and value addition and also shares his views on the main barriers to success within his business and the potential opportunities and challenges brought about by Covid-19 in the short and long term. To find out more about the future of logistics in Africa, visit Agility’s Emerging Markets page here.  

In today’s episode, we’ll visit with Hogan Lovells partner Maria Durant, counsel Julia McLetchie and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our Boston office, as they discuss Medical Necessity and Supreme Court Developments.

In today’s episode, we’ll visit with Hogan Lovells counsel Matthew Sullivan, associate Claudia Pare and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our New York, Washington D.C. and Boston offices, as they discuss Materiality & Escobar.

On April 1, 1993, 21 Secret Service agents were responsible for protecting the president during his visit to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. On their breakfast break, they visited a Denny's restaurant. And while every single officer was willing to put their lives on the line for their country and their commander-in-chief, only the white officers were served that day.
 
In Episode 10: Discrimination, Pro Bono Senior Counsel Jonathan Abram speaks with Walter Smith, Executive Director of DC Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, about the disturbing pattern of racial bias at this major American restaurant chain.
 
Walter also describes our work in defending the LGBTQ+ community in 1992 following an anti-gay voter referendum in Colorado.

In today's episode, we'll visit with Hogan Lovells senior associate Marta Thompson, associate Ray Li and senior associate David Bastian (moderator), from our Washington, D.C. and Boston offices, as they discuss the CARES act.

Secret Service agents are willing to take a bullet to protect the lives of government officials and their families. But despite their dedicated service, Black agents have faced a long history of discrimination within the agency, getting passed over again and again in the promotion process while watching their less qualified white colleagues advance.

In Episode 9: Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied, Des Hogan, Global Head of Litigation, Arbitration, and Employment, discusses with Erica Knievel Songer, Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel - Office of the White House Counsel, our lengthy legal battle to force change within the Secret Service. In 2017, the highly publicized case ended in a $24 million settlement.

Second graders should be spending their time practicing subtraction and building baking soda volcanos. But our 8-year-old client – we’ll call him James – instead learned how to bathe in a communal sink and take two bus lines to get from a makeshift homeless shelter to school.
 
In Episode 8: Four Walls and a Door, Partner Allison Holt Ryan and Senior Associate Lance Murashige describe the conditions where James, his grandmother, and other homeless families stayed during the “polar vortex” that swept through D.C. in 2014. On top of the already traumatic impact of homelessness on the child, James was sleeping on a gymnasium floor next to strangers, using a shared bathroom with men he didn’t know, with no alternative but a laundromat or a bench in Union Station. With our help, James and other homeless children were provided with the safety and stability of private rooms on freezing nights.
 
Also in this episode, Senior Counsel Stan Brown and Chava Brandriss, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, discuss the 13-year legal battle to eliminate an exclusionary zoning ordinance on Long Island that intentionally and unlawfully discriminated against people of color.

Despite a host of landmark court rulings and legislation aimed at dismantling institutional racism, "de facto" segregation persists across many neighborhoods, schools, and communities.

In Episode 7: Desegregation, we take a look at two major civil rights wins from the late 20th century. Pro Bono Senior Counsel Joe Hassett and Jack Keeney, General Counsel at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, describe their success on behalf of the residents of Woodland Village. The federal housing community was built during World War II for Black Navy workers and their families on the banks of the Potomac River in blue-collar southern Maryland. Woodland Village remained segregated from the surrounding, all-white town of Indian Head and, until we intervened, for decades was denied access to water, sewer, and cable.

The pair discuss a second discrimination case during that time – this one much closer to the nation's capital. The firm represented the NAACP in seeking a remedy for the failure of Prince George’s County schools to truly desegregate, as it had been ordered to do in 1972.

In the United States, the gap between rich and poor is the largest it’s been in decades. Systemic issues within our institutions and legal systems serve to exacerbate conditions that make it nearly impossible to bridge that gap. In Episode 6: Economic Justice, we take a look at three early cases from our Community Services Department.

The Honorable David Tatel and Allen Snyder, special counsel at the Children’s Law Center, join us to discuss a business boycott in Mississippi, which prompted an antitrust lawsuit that threatened the very existence of our client, the NAACP.
 
In the second segment of the episode, Mr. Snyder and The Honorable John Ferren recall the critical role we played in preserving the federal Community Action Program – a centerpiece of President Johnson’s War on Poverty to empower local residents to address pressing needs in their own communities.
 
Finally, Judges Ferren and Tatel remember undertaking the formidable task of getting the Legal Services Corporation up and running from scratch in just 90 days. Decades later, LSC remains a vital source of funding for nonprofit legal aid programs across the country.

In our last episode for the year, Andrew talks to Nigerian media entrepreneur, journalist, political activist and motivational speaker, Adebola Williams. He is the Group CEO of Red for Africa, Africa's largest portfolio of youth-focused media brands which include Red Media Africa, Statecraft Inc, The Future Awards Africa and YNaija.com to name but a few.

Listen as they discuss Adebola’s involvement in African elections, the power of social media – both positive and negative – as well as and the importance of promoting the right messages to propel ‘Brand Africa’ forward. He also paints a picture of his role in inspiring youth advocacy as a GenU Global Champion and why mobilizing Africa's youth can help shape a more progressive future. He goes on to share his views about the opportunities presented by COVID-19 for the continent, and the message he believes can inspire younger audiences to create the “ new paradigm” demanded by the Africa Union.

All of our pro bono cases can have a significant and lasting impact on the lives of our clients. But when we represent someone who has been sentenced to death, the stakes couldn’t be higher. In Episode 5: Facing Execution, Senior Counsel Pat Brannan and Senior Associate Liz Lockwood discuss their experiences in representing two death row prisoners: John Ferguson and TaiChin Preyor.

Mr. Ferguson, who was executed in 2013, suffered from severe mental illness. His last words from the death chamber were, "I am the Prince of God and I will rise again." He had no rational understanding that his execution would end his life.

Despite inadequate legal representation prior to our involvement, Mr. Preyor was executed in 2017. Among other shortcomings, his lawyers had failed to present mitigating evidence of a traumatic childhood marked by physical and sexual abuse, and had used Wikipedia to conduct "legal research."

In 1997, a young Navy wife was raped and murdered in Norfolk, Virginia, and four sailors were pinned for the crime. The "Norfolk Four," as they were later known, were arrested and subjected to hours of aggressive, threatening, and coercive interrogation at the hands of Detective Robert Glenn Ford.

In Episode 4: A False Confession, Derek Tice speaks with his pro bono lawyer, now Magistrate Judge Deborah Boardman, about the fallout from those interrogations. Tice and his fellow seamen each confessed to the crime, despite the fact that all four were innocent. We began representing Mr. Tice after he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Today, Mr. Tice is once again a free man.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the assistance of counsel. Those who can’t afford to hire a lawyer are assigned one – usually, a public defender.

In Episode 3: Criminal Justice, Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez and Hogan Lovells Partner Al Lindsay discuss their successful challenge to a criminal justice system that, due to crushing caseloads, made it impossible for the Public Defender’s office to fairly represent the accused.

Our lawyers continue to seek justice beyond a criminal defendant’s day in court. We advocate for the fair and humane treatment of the incarcerated. Hogan Lovells Senior Associates Katie Ali and David Maxwell describe the abhorrent conditions for death-sentenced prisoners in the Commonwealth of Virginia prior to our intervention and talk about the use of automatic and permanent solitary confinement within the context of the Eighth Amendment.

On a single day in 1999, nearly 10 percent of the Black population in Tulia, Texas, was arrested in a drug sweep. The raids were based on the word of a single white undercover officer with a checkered past.

In Episode 2: Tulia, Cate Stetson explores what happened that day and the fallout that ensued over many years. Two lawyers on the frontlines of that battle, Des Hogan (Head of our Litigation, Arbitration, and Employment practice) and Mitch Zamoff (Litigation Program Director and professor at University of Minnesota Law School) retell their first-hand experience bringing justice to those wrongfully imprisoned.

In this episode, Andrew talks to Founding Director of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, and one of Juene Afrique magazine’s 2019 50 most powerful women in Africa; Touria El Glaoui. 1-54 spans three continents and is the leading international art fair dedicated to showcasing and promoting contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.

Listen as they discuss the importance of creating a global platform for African art, what art can teach us about contemporary issues, as well as the history of Touria’s passion for African art and how this informed the 1-54 business model. They also delve into the impact of the pandemic on artists and galleries, and how this drove the decision to host one of the only in-person fairs to take place in 2020. Touria shares her takeaways from the fair held earlier this year in London, and how the experience of confinement and prevailing socio-political issues can be seen as underlying influences in a lot of the art coming out of the continent.  

Who really won the US election and what does it mean for Africa? In this episode Andrew talks to leading Hogan Lovells commentators from both sides of the DC aisle; Senator and Senior Counsel, Norm Coleman and Ivan Zapien, Partner and former House and Senate chief of staff.

Join them as they discuss a wide range of issues. What does the outcome of the election mean for US global policy and what can we expect for business? What will be the impact of a Biden administration on trade relations with China? And how will this shape US aspirations in Africa, especially through the development institutions? Are diasporans investing in Africa and has the Black Lives Matter movement stimulated a renewed interest? Andrew, Norm, and Ivan cover these and a lot more, in full and frank detail - no holds barred.

In this episode, Andrew talks to Heine Melkevik, VP and Managing Director of Equinor Nigeria. Heine is a  business leader with extensive experience in the oil and gas business across Africa.

Join them as they discuss the highly anticipated Nigerian Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) that has just been passed after 20 years in the making. Heine shares his views about the business opportunities the PIB presents, the possible challenges that could arise, the scope of Nigeria’s potential in the Oil & Gas sector as well as the growth in partnerships between local and global businesses operating in the sector. He also shares his experience of the continent and the industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased importance of balancing industry goals against the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.