For many, dairy farms will bring to mind pleasant imagery of placid cows nibbling grass and farmworkers ambling in the pre-dawn hours with stool and milking bucket in hand. In reality, the job of a dairy farmworker involves handling sometimes dangerous fully grown cows, machinery that can lead to injury or death, and long hours in a risky environment.
These are some of the reasons why dairy farmworkers fought and won the right to overtime pay after the landmark Washington Supreme Court decision Martinez-Cuevas v. DeRuyter Bros. In the newest issue of Washington State Bar News, Marc Lampson breaks down the court’s decision and provides a detailed history of dairy farming to explain how this battle for overtime pay and worker safety on dairy farms came about.
From one historical journey to another, when WSBA President Kyle Sciuchetti found himself reading through past issues of Bar News he discovered that the phrase “‘everything old is new again’ is just as true today as it ever was. Returning to WSBA’s downtown Seattle offices a year after the Board of Governors stopped in-person meetings, WSBA President Kyle Sciuchetti and Past President Rajeev Majumdar were able to test COVID-19 protocols for future meetings that will be a mix of in-person and virtual. In his latest column, Sciuchetti floats the idea for WSBA to have a “home of our own” and perhaps moving out of Seattle.
As part of the WSBA’s commitment to wellness, Dan Crystal of the WSBA Member Wellness Program highlights the resources and campaigns dedicated to attorney mental health, such as Well-Being Week in Law. Learn about the law firm pledge and seven-point checklist about well-being.
Hanging it up for lawyers approaching retirement can come with complications, but there are three aspects of risk management to consider when it comes to closing a firm. Ethics columnist Mark Fucile explains the rules guiding file retention, closing the firm’s trust account, and “tail” insurance coverage.
Also in this issue, learn how to frame an issue to draw in your audience and help them understand the point quickly, what happens when a lawyer steps out of “the dark suit” and why it’s not a sign of weakness or dwindling passion for the job, and how lawyers can learn to use storytelling skills to capture their audience’s attention and be more memorable.
