Multinational corporations (MNCs) have great power but little responsibility. MNCs are 69 of the 100 largest economic entities in the world, which makes them more economically powerful than some countries. These powerful corporations work in poorly regulated zones to get the cheapest prices for labor, breeding potential for massive violations of human rights. Often, the US or UK parent company will incorporate a foreign subsidiary in the country of operations. This creates a legal shield between the subsidiary’s actions and the parent company’s liability. However, if the subsidiary violates human rights, this corporate structure makes it very difficult for victims to sue the parent company in the US or UK.

Recent decisions in the US and UK Supreme Courts highlight a developing split in approaches. The UK is beginning to hold UK parent companies accountable for human rights violations committed by their foreign subsidiaries, whereas the US is still maintaining a strong shield against US parent company liability.

Why do victims want to sue in the United States or United Kingdom rather than their home country? The three main reasons are speed, money, and access to justice. First, although claims can take many years in US or UK courts, a claim in foreign courts can take decades. Second, normally, the parent company will have more financial resources than a subsidiary to pay damages to the victims. Finally, it can be impossible to get a judgement against a powerful multinational company in domestic courts. As King Emere Okpabi (tribal king of the Ogale community in the Niger Delta, claimants in Okpabi v. Royal Dutch Shell) stated, “[y]ou can never, never defeat Shell in a Nigerian Court … Shell is Nigeria and Nigeria is Shell.”

The first hurdle that plaintiffs must overcome when bringing a parent liability case is forum non conveniens. Under this doctrine, courts can dismiss a case if there is another court that is better suited to hear the case. This is difficult for foreign plaintiffs to overcome because they have to show that the UK or US courts are better suited to hear the case than their home country where the violations took place. If plaintiffs cannot overcome this hurdle, they lose their US or UK case.

Foreign plaintiffs can bring litigation in the United States for extraterritorial human rights violations under the Alien Torts Statute (ATS). The statute gives federal district courts jurisdiction to hear civil claims brought by “an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations.” The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Filártiga v. Peña-Iralainterpreted the “law of nations” to include human rights, thereby giving the U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction over all human rights claims. This case, and subsequent jurisprudence, led to viable ATS litigation against corporations. However, the US Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. narrowed the scope and held that plaintiffs could only use the ATS in cases where there was a “sufficient[ly] force[ful]” nexus to the United States.

This July’s US Supreme Court decision in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe makes it clear that it is very difficult for plaintiffs to prove this nexus and sue under the ATS. In that case, the plaintiffs were West African children enslaved by cocoa plantations. They sued US corporations Nestlé and Cargill, which were large buyers of the cocoa beans. The plaintiffs alleged that Nestlé was liable under the ATS because it controlled the supply chain and provided financial incentives and training programs to the plantation owners. Eight justices found that general corporate oversight was not a tight enough nexus to the US and so did not meet Kiobel’s high bar. Additionally, in a split 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court found that the ATS does not create a cause of action to sue corporations. Therefore, the case was dismissed.

In the United Kingdom, Vedanta Resources PLC and another v. Lungowe and others holds that plaintiffs can bring a case if the U.K. parent company had “control, direction, [and] intervention” over the foreign subsidiary’s actions. Examples of sufficient control includes evidence of management control, group wide policies, group wide compliance, and parental supervision and control over the subsidiary’s actions.

This February’s UK Supreme Court decision in Okpabi and others v. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and another shows that this is a lower bar than the US standard. There, the claimants were 42,500 residents of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. They sought to hold the English parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, responsible for its Nigerian subsidiary’s oil spills. According to a UN Environment Program report, these oil spills have polluted the Niger Delta so the water is contaminated with the carcinogen benzene over 900 times above the WHO guidelines. Moreover, an Amnesty reportfound that, because there has been no meaningful clean-up, the water and land is unusable. Applying Vedanta, the Supreme Court found the case could not be summarily dismissed because the English company exercised a high degree of control and direction over the subsidiary’s activities. In particular, U.K. executive trips to Nigeria, global health, safety and environmental policies and standards, monitoring of those policies, and monthly reporting from the subsidiary to the parent all showed the UK company controlled the Nigerian subsidiary. Therefore, this case is now proceeding to the substantive question.

Parent-subsidiary human rights cases require a fact-specific analysis to show that the parent company exercised enough control over the subsidiary. In Okpabi, the UK Court found that general corporate policies were sufficient to overcome the forum non conveniens question. In contrast, Nestlé held that general corporate policies show an insufficient nexus to the US. As human rights cases continue to be brought, it will be interesting to see how parent company liability jurisprudence in the US and the UK develops.

As the fight against the Coronavirus continues, infection and death rates are still rising at alarming rates. These rates are particularly high in states like Texas and Florida, where governments are not only doing little to fight the coronavirus, but are actively making it more difficult for private businesses to do so.

Texas Governor Greg Abbot recently announced a new executive order on private businesses prohibiting vaccine mandates. This order is only the newest in a series of orders dedicated to curtail the communities’ tools to fight the pandemic. The Governor has also banned mask mandates in public schools as well as vaccine mandates in public entities. Private businesses; however, are resisting.

In response, Southwest Airlines has released a statement that they will instead continue to comply with federal regulations mandating vaccines for employment. According to one spokesperson, it is their position that federal law supersedes any state order.

However, the coronavirus is not the only way in which private entities are resisting the state, with varying degrees of success. Financial institutions who hoped to do business in Texas are finding it increasingly difficult to advance their own Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) initiatives.

On the environmental front, the state has passed laws prohibiting state agencies from contracting with any institution that boycotts oil and gas industries. As these financial institutions have aimed to advance the fight for clean and renewable energy, the state has pushed back in its goal of saving the interests of oil and gas.

In terms of social policy, Texas has passed a similar law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with banks that cut ties with the firearms industry. In addition, these banks are required to submit written declarations proving they are in compliance with the law.

This is worrisome for financial institutions and businesses who are reluctant to continue supporting for the firearms industry, but this is also worrisome for business concerned with the presence of firearms within their premises. Texas law now permits constitutional open carry in public places for individuals without a license.

These new political developments have driven socially conscious financial investors out of the south. Even as some remain, this reduced availability limits competition for debt sales and harms lending relationship, not to mention the flight of capital outside of the state.

While it is true that financial institutions are still moving toward the state, and the state’s financial power is growing, the government is doing itself no favors. As Jen Stark of the Tara Health Foundation argues, a state’s financial incentives can be complicated when personnel do not want to be there. What most observers overlook is that financial decision makers have their own beliefs about what society and policy ought to be, and that often affects their decisions. This does not necessarily mean that financial decision makers tend to become publicly political without reservations, nor does this mean that politics are often a greater factor than profits. It does mean that financial institutions are late to recognize that effecting political in change in Texas is different than on the national stage and on Wall Street.

Whereas New York is used to political decisions following the money, Texas has a very different system. The political structure of Texas distributes power among 254 counties, each of them difficult to influence through sheer money alone. Corporations will ultimately need to make a choice. Will they attempt to push through ESG initiatives and risk losing access to resistant markets? Or will they allow the bottom line to outweigh their conscience?  Corporate America has been loud about “corporate purpose” and “mission” in recent years; it remains to be seen how they handle these difficult choices.

In late September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finished an administrative trial in which it sought to force genomics-sequencing company, Illumina, to reverse its recent $8 billion acquisition of Grail. An initial decision from the trial is not expected until 2022.

Grail, a startup that makes blood tests to detect early-stage cancers, was founded by Illumina in 2016. Grail develops a test that analyzes fragments of DNA in the bloodstream to identify cancerous cells at early stages. llumina spun off Grail to raise more money for studies and ultimately raised $1.9 billion in capital from investors while Illumina maintained a 12% stake. In September 2020, Grail was exploring an initial public offering when Illumina swooped in with a $8 billion offer.

Grail’s mission to innovate cancer screening is revolutionary because it delivers a single blood test capable of detecting the presence of multiple cancers early, including cancers with no recommended screening tests. Currently, recommended screenings exist for only five cancers (breast, colon, prostate, cervical, and lung in high-risk smokers), and they often produce false positives. For example, cancer is absent in 70% of patients with elevated prostate-specific antigen and 7% to 12% of those with suspicious mammograms. In contrast, Grail’s test can detect 12 deadly cancers, including esophageal, gastric, liver, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers, with a less than 1% false-positive rate. Grail estimated that adding its blood test to existing screenings could reduce late-stage cancer diagnoses by more than half among patients aged 50 to 79, which would translate into a 26% overall reduction in five-year cancer mortality.

The proposed merger would accelerate patient access to the test by speeding up commercialization and making the test more affordable. Undoubtedly, this has the potential to save many lives. In the United States, many Americans currently face financial obstacles to accessing Grail’s test because it is not covered by insurance. Instead, it costs a whopping $950 out of pocket. This situation exacerbates the disparities in healthcare accessibility, specifically for African Americans and other minority racial and ethnic groups. Because cancer patients from these groups are more likely to be uninsured than others, they are less likely to seek care (including screenings) until their symptoms have progressed, and therefore more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a later stage, when survival rates are lower. Illumina could address this problem with its experience in negotiating reimbursements with governments and insurers for DNA tests.

Illumina’s dominance in the DNA testing space, however, attracted regulatory scrutiny. In March 2021, the FTC suedIllumina and Grail in federal court to block the acquisition, arguing that the merger would “lessen competition in the U.S. multi-cancer early detection test market by diminishing innovation and potentially increasing prices.” The FTC allegedthat Illumina might thwart Grail’s potential future competitors by charging them more or denying them technical assistance.”

The FTC’s arguments are uncompelling. First, vertical mergers, combinations of noncompeting businesses operating within the same supply chain (in this case, Grail using Illumina’s device), tend to unlock significant pro-consumer efficiencies. There has only been one litigated challenge to a vertical merger in the past four decades: the Justice Department’s 2017 case against AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, which the government lost. Second, while traditional merger challenges focused primarily on harm to price competition, the FTC’s allegation here focuses on how the transaction will harm innovation competition. Trying to address this concern, Illumina extended its long-term supply agreements to current and future clinical oncology customers to allow full access to its DNA sequencing platform. Third, the FTC is concerned that the transaction could harm competition in the emerging cancer testing market, even though there is no guarantee that Grail will actually obtain FDA approval to launch a test commercially and generate revenues. The FTC’s concern is unjustified because Grail’s test is highly differentiated, thus any other screening tests being developed are more likely to be complements rather than substitutes. Lastly, it is interesting how the FTC is treating this proposed acquisition without regard to the history that Illumina founded Grail.

To make the situation more complicated, in April 2021, the European Commission (EC) announced that it would reviewthe transaction. Traditionally, a foreign country should only review a merger if the deal materially impacts consumers in its domestic market. Despite Grail’s lack of business activity in Europe, the EC decided to utilize Article 22 to exercise jurisdiction over the transaction. The FTC then moved ahead with its lengthy administrative proceeding to challenge the deal.

The Illumina-Grail deal must be complete by December 20, 2021 under the agreed terms, yet the FTC and EU actions threaten to run out the clock. Worried the transaction would not get approved before that deadline, the companies made a bold move of closing the transaction ahead of any regulatory decision. Illumina announced it would hold Grail as a separate company during the EC’s ongoing review and plans to appeal an adverse FTC ruling in federal court. It likely will prevail considering the U.S. government has not successfully challenged a vertical merger in court since 1972. Even so, Illumina and Grail face risk that the deal could be blocked for years.

Scientists have long been on a quest for a blood test that can diagnose cancer early and the aptly named Grail might offer a solution. Today, it promises a diagnostic test to catch cancer early, but the regulatory rabbit hole is slowing it down.

On both sides of the Pacific, regulators are keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency developments. Earlier this month, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman said that “the White House is considering a wide ranging oversight of the cryptocurrency market to combat the growing threat of ransomware and other cybercrime.”  In China, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced that all crypto-related transactions were illegal which greatly influenced cryptocurrency’s price. While both countries are scrutinizing cryptocurrencies to suit their policy goals, they adopt different approaches for balancing financial innovation and risk prevention within their existing financial regulatory regimes.

Blockchain-based crypto assets are technology-driven financial innovations that include digital currencies and digital tokens in the payment and financing areas. Financial regulators face the problem of how to supervise risks involved in the issuance and trading of crypto assets.  Although financial regulation goals are quite similar worldwide, (i.e. market efficiency and integrity, consumer and investor protections, capital formation or access to credit, taxpayer protection, illicit activity prevention, and financial stability) regulators take divergent approaches to counter the various financial risks.

Both United States and China have a fragmented financial regulatory system. In each country, multiple regulators supervise the cryptocurrency market based on their jurisdictions to target specific risks. For instance, in U.S., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates cryptocurrencies as commodities, including cryptocurrencies derivatives markets. The Securities and Exchange Commission treats some cryptocurrencies as securities if they satisfy the Investment Contract Test and aims to protect investors. The Internal Revenue Service treats cryptocurrencies as property to fight against taxation evasion through cryptocurrencies transactions. Finally, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) treats cryptocurrencies as “currencies” and imposes anti-money laundering obligations to virtual currency exchanges.

Similarly, China also has multiple authorities in charge of different aspects of the financial markets, institutions, and related risks. For instance, PBOC, China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) are responsible for supervising macroprudential risks, micro-prudential risks in banking, securities and the insurance industry, respectively. In addition, private virtual currency is a subsection of Fintech where its technological characteristics subject it to the domain of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (CMIIT), Central Cyberspace Administration (CCA). Private virtual currencytransactions fall within the scope of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) and, if crimes are involved, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Therefore, it is not abnormal to see several authorities jointly release regulations on private virtual currency.

Since 2013, the regulations jointly released by the former mentioned regulators include:

These regulations stem from China’s view that Initial Coin Offerings are considered illegal activity, and the government is seeking to “annihilate and destroy” blockchain-based pyramid schemes. As a result, financial institutions and third-party payment providers are banned from accepting, using, or selling virtual currencies. The recent PBOC’s announcement that all crypto-related transactions were illegal is consistent with the Chinese long-lasting policies upon cryptocurrencies.

The institutional structure of crypto regulation is not the only difference between the United States and China—the underlying regulatory perspective on cryptocurrencies is different too. The United States treats all kinds of cryptocurrencies, whether they are used as payment instruments or belong to financing products, as financial innovations with potential risks, and utilizes the existing regulatory mechanisms to deal with risks based on financial regulators’ jurisdictions. In other words, when cryptocurrencies are utilized by people as payment instruments, banking regulators would be involved, and when cryptocurrencies are treated as investment tools, securities regulatory authorities would have authority. By contrast, Chinese cryptocurrency regulation policies are dichotomous. Regulations on cryptocurrencies in the financing area (also called “private virtual currency”) are very strict —nearly a complete prohibition, as former mentioned. Nonetheless, policies for the public digital currency are quite lenient and supportive. For instance, PBOC launched central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2020. China’s approach reflects Beijing’s desire to encourage Blockchain innovation and revolutionize the existing payment system within government’s control and supervision. This in turn will improve transaction efficiency, transparency and save costs, and could also prevent potential financial risks. However, due to the current Chinese securities regulation regime’s limitations, Beijing is unwilling to allow cryptocurrency investment without a proficient risk prevention mechanism.

In summary, the United States and China have multiple financial regulators to supervise cryptocurrencies based on the financial risks within their jurisdictions. In the United States, the determinants for who regulates which potential cryptocurrency risks are closely related to their usages and functions. By contrast, China’s financial regulation policies for cryptocurrencies are split between private and public cryptocurrency. The former is totally prohibited, while the latter is encouraged and even supported by the government. The different approaches between two countries mirror their own perspectives on how to balance financial innovation protection and risk prevention effectively.

Mark Twain famously claimed that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Whether or not Evergrande—the second largest property developer in China— emerges as a ‘Lehman moment’ is yet to be determined. The world in the wake of a global pandemic and after decades of expansionary monetary policy, awash with debt. News headlines in the United States are questioning if Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen should mint a $1 trillion coin to prevent a debt default; the debt to GDP ratio in the EU sits at 92.5%; finally, Evergrande is highlighting a potential debt crisis in China. Time will tell which of these three major economies will give birth to what would be difficult to call a black swan event, as the signs of a debt epidemic have been there for some time. China’s economy is currently facing the potential repercussions of using leverage to build the strongest economy in the world, but the adverse effects could be troubling for many.

China is perhaps on the fastest trajectory to industrialize in history. Deng Xiaoping designated a small fishing village called Shenzhen as China’s first special economic zone in the 1980s; now, Shenzhen is home to 18 million people, the world’s 4th busiest container port and a direct competitor to Silicon Valley. Shenzhen, the site of the second most skyscrapers in the world, is also connected with other cities in China, such as Shanghai which holds the fifth most skyscrapers in the world, by high-speed rail or a quick visit to the airport. As such, it’s clear that China’s economic growth is both realized and personified by infrastructure.

Without companies like Evergrande, which offer both home ownership and housing to millions this miracle industrialization may not have been possible. However, this growth was predicated on cheap borrowing and massive spending. The timeline of borrowing to construction was so fast that many housing units in China are unoccupied, up to 20% according to Bloomberg. This is problematic to the cash flow and books of property developers, such as Evergrande. Moreover, a major caveat is that growth in the Chinese context is complicated as the state is heavily interwoven with the private sector to the extent that both could be argued to be synonymous. This has led growth to be coordinated but uneven, and potentially painful for both the public and private sector going forward.

Some  financial pundits have argued that Evergrande is not a Lehman moment but a localized problem confined within the borders of China. However, this is a rather naïve approach. The world economy is more interconnected than ever, even in the wake of protectionist policies. Moreover, China’s response will serve as a signal to the rest of the world as to whether to follow a similar path to solve financial issues – this could have a profound effect on global spheres of influence.

How will the Chinese government act? Evergrande can be both a catalyst of impending crisis and indicative of a slowing overleveraged economy. China’s manufacturing indexes are all down on the year. Further, as previously mentioned, the supply of housing has outpaced demand. The Chinese government is fully aware and trying to ‘deleverage’ the economy to equalize supply, demand, and growth. However, historical rapid expansion has created a monster that may be impossible to contain without incurring collateral damage. The New York Times claimed that “China’s growth is slowing, and the government may have to work harder to rekindle it.”

Due to the strong relationship between big business and the state, Evergrande could be “too big to fail.” If the Chinese government lets Evergrande fail, it could cause ripple effects felt within both Chinese and foreign markets. If Evergrande defaults, and goes bankrupt, then other companies in a similar position are likely to do the same, and insurance companies, other financial firms, and eventually the whole Chinese economy could come crashing down as well.

If Evergrande is bailed out, it will be hypocritical to China’s goals of deleveraging. However, most importantly, China’s response will reveal their political economy model. The Chinese government has already restricted their tech industry to align more with the values of the communist party, rather than free capitalist markets. The Chinese government will need to make a choice whether to avert economic disaster through socializing the failure of Evergrande or will the government take the ultimate capitalist approach and let it fail.

China’s approach will set the tone for the coming decades. Evergrande has the potential to grind China’s economic miracle to a halt and stop growth going forward. China has too many overleveraged companies in key industries, and the fact that the government recognizes this highlights the potential scale of the problem. As western governments argue how much more debt to take on, with no contradictory argument hitting the headlines or policy debates, China is aware of a deep problem that can unravel their markets. The jury is out on whether Evergrande will be China’s black swan event. For now, it is most certainly an ugly duckling.

Remember Laszlo Hanyecz? The guy who bought two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins (BTC), which at the time was only worth $30? Today, those same Bitcoins are worth around $550 million. You can probably see the problem with this. A currency should act as a medium of monetary exchange and a mode of storing monetary value, which ideally, should remain relatively stable. But because of instability in their value, cryptocurrencies such as BTC and Ethereum (ETH) for instance, suffer serious price fluctuations that make them hard to adopt. Would you adopt a cryptocurrency if you knew that tomorrow you could end up like the pizza guy? Certainly not, which is why there is another type of ‘cryptocurrency’ called stablecoins.

Stablecoins are digital coins that promise to maintain their worth by attaching their value to the U.S. Dollar or any other asset. Basically, they mimic the U.S. Dollar digitally through blockchain technology, and hence serves as a safe and stable coin. The largest stablecoins: Tether, USDC, and Binance USD all try toback against fiat currency (USD). However, other types of stablecoins are backed by gold, oil, cryptocurrencies, or through algorithms (by controlling the supply and demand). These stablecoins do hold advantages to consumers, such as instant transactions as opposed to banks. Since it maintains its value against the U.S. Dollar, people can use it to transact with each other 24/7 without a bank acting as an intermediary.

The current market cap of stablecoins is exponentially increasing, it currently rests around $130 billion, where they are backed by assets such as the U.S. Dollar, US Treasuries certificates of deposit, short-term debt, corporate bonds, and more. Given such size and potential impact to the financial system, stablecoins continue to come under scrutiny by regulators. Regulators fear that Stablecoins are vulnerable to a ‘bank run’, where large number of investors rush to redeem them, forcing sponsors to sell the assets at fire sale prices and consequentially stressing the financial system, similar to what happened to money market mutual funds during the 2008 financial crises. Therefore, regulators are rushing to put into place robust legal and economic frameworks to protect the financial market as well as consumers.

Stablecoin regulation should include essential components to protect the financial system such as creating types of reserve assets, ensuring issuers honor direct redemption claims, and establishing limits on risk maturity transformation activities. In addition, reserve segregation and coin holder claims in bankruptcy or insolvency should be honored. But questions remain on how we should regulate Stablecoins, and indeed, who should even regulate them– questions that have proven especially challenging in consideration of the need to balance the interests of different stakeholders and the financial system itself.

For Stablecoins to be regulated, they need to be classified into a certain category. However, creating a new category for crypto assets altogether may be more ideal. Because Stablecoins are not treated as deposits, the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency have limited oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also has limited authority unless the Stablecoins are classified as securities. If they are, they will be subject to bigger disclosure requirements. But paradoxically, such classification might not be of importance due to the Fed’s willingness in issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or more simply a digital dollar, which might be introduced to a separate category of regulation. The CBDC would make money directly available to the public, hence, increasing outreach to people with no access to the financial system. The CBDC’s innovations however, can coexist with the current Stablecoin market, as the Fed can issue coins, while the private sector can build rails and applications. But the magnitude of dealing with millions and maybe billions of users is increasingly over the Feds power and capabilities. Therefore, this might also indicate a radical change to commercial banking soon if they do not adjust accordingly.

The US needs to catch up as China has already cleared over $5.3 billion in transactions through its digital renminbi. While it may be tempting to preserve the status quo, blockchain technology can reshape market structure and improve competition if regulated properly. Adopting digital currencies, such as Stablecoins, provides ease in transactions, convenience for unrepresented minorities in the financial system, and acts as a direct bridge between central banks and people. Maintaining the status quo within the era of rapid technological innovation, hampers competition and innovation, forcing individuals to shift to the new unregulated financial system. The question for central banks and regulators is which approach can improve competition, lower cost, and increase access to the financial system. Afterall, regulatory frameworks will define if and when the technology can deliver on its potential.

For many working professionals, the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing challenges to their mental health and well-being, and attorneys were no exception. In efforts to counter the additional stress, most firms expanded mental health resources, experimented with flexible working arrangements, and many provided parents and caregivers with additional support. Research shows that lawyers are most motivated, engaged, and less likely to leave if their firm successfully fosters a collaborative culture that in which employees feel supported and respected. Studies indicate that, at its core, creating a workplace in which employees thrive revolves in great part around prioritization of employee well-being, as well as encouraging and modeling work-life balance. However, many attorneys struggling with mental health cite arduous billable hour requirements and impossible deadlines and expectations—what many would consider hallmarks of the profession—as irreconcilable with the very aims of these mental health initiatives. Are pandemic-era wellness initiatives here to stay, or are they simply incompatible with the nature of such a demanding profession?

A change of this magnitude would require that firms look beyond offering employees a free mental health app subscription, but rather, a commitment to redefining long-established approaches to advancement and reward. Slowly but surely, it appears that some firms have begun taking significant steps to dismantle the tension between attorney wellness and one of the pillars of the legal profession: the billable hour. For example, McDermott Will & Emery has begun to compensate attorneys for prioritizing wellness by offering billable-hours credits for mindfulness sessions, lawyer-led meditation, and other wellness activities. During the pandemic, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe made headlines for allowing attorneys who are caretakers for their family to work at 80% of their pre-pandemic capacity at full compensation.

Transformation of an institution’s established culture and values also requires clear signals from firm leadership. Some firms have begun to implement formal boundaries that encourage employees carve out personal time. To ease added strains that come from the blurring of home and work, Orrick instituted a formal expectation and policy that all attorneys and counsel are to make use of 40 hours of bonus-eligible time to “unplug.” To reduce the burdens of weekend work, Orrick also formally discouraged the scheduling of non-time sensitive meetings on Friday afternoons. Dentons promotes a similar idea with its “no meetings week”, in which the firm encourages attorneys to cancel meetings to allow attorneys to step away from work without the fear of falling behind.

The strain between attorney wellness and the profession’s established work practices is likely to be a focus even after the pandemic fades into the background given that the industry’s intensifying war for talent. The fierce competition is likely to compel firms to look past unsustainable salary raises to attract and retain associates. Further, as the industry adapts to rising client demand for diverse teams, firms will also have to take a closer at how to ease the additional mental health challenges that women and people of color face in the workplace.

While it is true that criticism of the profession’s foundational practices continues to grow,  the pillars of the legal profession will not be easy to topple. It is clear, however, that rumblings of deep cultural change can already be heard. Could it be that an institutional transformation of the profession is on the horizon?

With less than six months on the job as the chairman of SEC, Mr. Gary Gensler has introduced a sweeping agenda that aims to squeeze Wall Street’s profit margins, crack down on crypto, and address new issues in retail investment. While some doubt how effective the SEC will be at enforcing Gensler’s agenda of roughly fifty new rule-making items at once, the opposition hasn’t stopped Gensler’s campaign of reform.

Many of Gensler’s policies aim to protect investors from big finance, and Gensler’s resume demonstrates he has a history of advocating for ordinary investors and their rights, despite ties to the financial industry. Before going into public service, Gensler was a partner in Goldman Sachs’ Mergers & Acquisitions group. However, he left in 1997 to join President Clinton’s Treasury Department and, after leaving Treasury, he co-wrote a book that stringently criticized the mutual fund industry. More recently, he led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Obama and developed a reputation as a “hard-charging” regulator. During his tenure, he wrote dozens of rules to govern the vast swaps market which had previously been mostly unregulated and contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

However, this much isn’t new for the SEC — protecting Main Street from the rampages of Wall Street is part of the agency’s mission. What distinguishes Gensler and his regulatory changes from the past chairs is his goal of protecting investors through new policies addressing concerns about high-speed trading and online brokerages.

Gensler’s primary target to address these concerns is “payment for order flow.” Payment for order flow, the practice of transferring some of the trading profits from market making to the brokers that route customer orders to specialists for execution, allows Robinhood Markets Inc. and other online brokerages to make commission-free trading available to retail investors. To do this, Robinhood sends its clients’ orders to high-speed trading firms such as Citadel Securities instead of a stock exchange. (High speed trading is a trading strategy that involves buying and selling financial securities at a very high-speed using algorithms.) The trading firms pay Robinhood for sending them the orders, and then profit from the difference between the buying and selling price of the shares being transacted.

The critics of payment for order flow, including Gensler, argue that this process poses a conflict of interest for brokers and reduces transparency in the market by channeling data away from exchanges. SEC has also expressed its concern that payment for order flow and internalization contribute to an environment in which quote competition, instances of specialists trading through a better quote on another exchange, is not always rewarded.

However, Citadel Securities and Virtu, two of the market makers that dominate this business, say they often execute trades at a slightly better price than exchanges and save money for investors. “Concerns about concentration and conflicts are theoretical,” said Douglas Cifu, the chief executive of Virtu. “The actual results are overwhelmingly beneficial to individual investors.”

In August 2021, Gensler stated that he was open to banning payment for order flow altogether, which is a practice that accounts for the majority of online brokerages’ revenue.

Gensler has also criticized the new generation of brokerages for using data analytics to study how clients behave instead of appointing human brokers to take orders from clients and recommend investments directly. “While these developments…can increase access, increase choice, and lower costs, they also raise new questions about potential conflicts, biases in the data, and yes, even systemic risk,” Gensler told the Senate Banking Committee in September.

While many brokerage companies argue that heightened regulations of payment for order flow would result in increased compliance costs and materially decrease their transaction-based revenue, some, including their clients, believe otherwise. For instance, Kenneth Griffin, the founder of Citadel Securities, said that he would be “quite fine” if payment for order flow was banned.

Ultimately, while it may be lucrative for retail brokers to use this practice of providing zero commission stock and options trading to their clients, this process is now heavily scrutinized by regulators and some changes are inevitable. Opponents of this practice argue that it passes hidden costs to investors and generates volumes of data that firms can use to track the market. Rather than banning payment for order flow outright, Gensler’s regulatory agenda could be achieved by implementing disclosure requirements which require brokers to be more transparent and publicly disclose to retail investors how they profit from the arrangement. Though a disclosure-based approach may take longer to achieve Gensler’s agenda than some investor advocates had hoped, it would allow for more fine-tuning than a complete ban.

Additional disclosure requirements would require brokers to adjust their practices and business models. In the long run, this approach would cut costs for the market, help ordinary investors save money by making them more conscious in their choices, and could also benefit financial institutions as additional disclosures and transparency would lead to reduced scrutiny by the regulators moving forward. Furthermore, a changeable disclosure regime to address payment for order flow would free up Gensler and the SEC to focus on bigger and more important issues including climate change and promoting social benefits through securities regulation.

For those fearful of needles, the biotech company Theranos seemed to provide the cure. Theranos, valued at $9 billion in 2015, promised to revolutionize blood testing by using small amounts of blood through a finger prick to scan a bank of 240 diseases and help diagnose a patient. Apart from being a saving grace for people fearing needles, Theranos promised to make healthcare more efficient by increasing the speed and portability of blood testing. However, the excitement for this new technology came crashing down once news broke that the founder and chief executive of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, was indicted for fraud. She allegedly misled investors and provided falsified blood test data to customers and investors. Now, she could ultimately face up to 20 years in prison and lose millions of dollars.

Recently, a New York Times guest article by the former reddit CEO Ellen Pao asserted that due to sexism, Holmes is being held accountable more harshly than her male counterparts. To support her opinion, Pao draws the comparison between this case and the unethical actions taken by companies such as Juul and Facebook. The e-cigarette company Juul, led by CEO Kevin Burns, was under investigation for marketing the technology to children, which contributed to the rise in youth nicotine addiction. Facebook, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was under investigation for failing to limit hate speech on their platform, which arguably played a substantial role in the Myanmar genocide. Pao argues that since the CEOs of these companies only faced financial consequences for their misdoings, they were not held publicly accountable in the same way as Holmes.

However, Pao overlooks a significant distinction between Holmes’ case and these two cases that explains the accountability inconsistency. Our legal system distinguishes between immorality and illegality — Holmes acted illegally and unethically, whereas Juul and Facebook acted unethically but not illegally. Although Juul and Facebook’s actions resulted in consequences arguably worthy of punishment, their actions were not illegal.

For the most part, executives in similar situations to Holmes are being held legally accountable irrespective of their gender. For example, the founder of electric vehicle startup Nikola, Trevor Milton, is currently in court for misleading investors and could also face a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Similarly, the CFO of energy giant Enron, Andrew Fastow, committed fraud by hiding the company’s losses and faced a sentence of 6 years in prison in 2004.

Nonetheless, Pao is right that there is a blatant aspect of sexism in Holmes’ case. But this has much more to do with how the media is covering her rather than her legal accountability. The media, for no good reason, has focused on Holmes’ fashion style at trial and the depth of her voice at work. In a technological world dominated by men, women are scrutinized for their personal attributes while men evade similar scrutiny.

When a woman like Holmes breaks the glass ceiling, both the acclaim and criticism are more pronounced. There is great pomp and circumstance for the accomplishments of women, but when they commit an illegal and unethical act comparable to those of their male counterparts, the stigma is more severe. While male leaders have a chance to recover after their punishment, the media’s coverage of Holmes will create a reputational stain much harder to remove.

Sexist scrutiny means that, unfortunately, the stakes are much higher for women leaders: the basic rules of the game may be the same, but the audience is much harsher when it comes to foul play by women.

New Zealand is set to become the first country in the world to mandate that financial firms report on the environmental impact and exposure of their investments. From 2023, companies must report on how their lending and investments effect ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions. They must also divulge the extent to which their investments are exposed to climate-related risks and opportunities. According to James Shaw, New Zealand’s Minister of Climate Change and Co-leader of the Green Party, “This law will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making.”

The legislation, which will affect around 200 domestic and foreign firms with assets totaling over $703 million U.S. dollars, is part of New Zealand’s broader effort to set ambitious environmental targets for its public and private sectors. The country recently overhauled its Resource Management Act, one of the world’s first laws focused on sustainable management. In its place will be three separate pieces of legislation, one of which exclusively focuses on New Zealand’s response to climate change. Proposed plans include switching to environmentally friendly farming practices, reducing livestock numbers, taxing farmers for emissions, and planting more permanent, native forests. The country aims to be carbon neutral by 2050.

New Zealand is tiny and comprises only 0.17% of global emissions. However, on the issue of climate change, the country sees itself as a role model for the rest of the world. Indeed, regulators in Europe have also start to turn their attention towards banks and asset managers that are too exposed to climate-related risks. Last November, the European Central Bank announced that it will start assessing how banks should account for real estate holdings vulnerable to climate related risks like flooding, and storms.

In general, governments and corporations seem more willing than ever to consider new legislation and taxation to tackle climate change. Earlier this week French lawmakers voted to ban short haul flights where the same journey could be taken by train in less than 2.5 hours. Similarly, after receiving government bailout with provisions to cut its carbon footprint, Austrian Airlines replaced one of their shorter routes with increased train services. In the U.S. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have launched plans to reduce investments in the fossil fuel industries, and better align their financial activities with the Paris Climate accord. Also this week, more than 300 corporations, including Target, Verizon, and Google, asked President Biden to double the emissions targets set by the Obama administration. According to Anne Kelly, vice president for government affairs at sustainability nonprofit Ceres, “this signals a major shift in the corporate community’s understanding of the urgency of climate change as a systemic financial risk.”

Back in New Zealand, the one-of-a-kind bill is expected to receive its first reading in parliament this week. And it’s likely that still more ambitious legislation is on the way. Shaw, chief architect of the country’s plans to fight climate change doubts that global heating can be restrained, but, he says, “that’s all the more reason to try.”