Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
The legal sector is a natural fit for aspiring politicians. Lawyers must know how to persuade an audience, interact with people from all walks of life and, of course, understand legislation. Public speaking and critical analysis skills developed by training in law are just as important for a successful public servant.
Below are just a few of the influential world leaders whose careers stemmed from a legal background.
After majoring in political science in 1983, Barack Obama moved to Chicago and accepted a job as a community leader, which led to his lobbying for better conditions in the Altgeld Gardens housing project and subsequent clashes with the bureaucracy of city hall. “I just can't get things done here without a law degree,” he later recalled thinking at the time. The drive to make a difference pushed him to enrol at Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude, thereafter beginning his career as a civil rights attorney. Obama’s career trajectory also saw him become a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was highly regarded by his students.
Obama is far from the first lawyer to become POTUS, however. A full 25 other presidents were previously lawyers – the profession is in fact the second most likely professional experience for a president to receive prior to taking office, beaten only by military service. Bill Clinton is licenced to practice law in Arkansas; Franklin D Roosevelt worked in admiralty law before acting on his political ambitions. Even Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer who appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court on at least 300 separate occasions.
“I just can't get things done here without a law degree.”
Putin’s ex-KGB status is well known, but less widely talked about is his background in law. Though he did not go on to join the legal profession, he graduated from Saint Petersburg State University with a degree in international law and wrote his thesis on “The Most Favoured Nation Trading Principle in International Law”.
Putin also completed a course on economic law, but these accomplishments are now widely overshadowed by his career in the KGB, which he joined upon graduating in 1975, and his subsequent political rise – though he was often called to apply his legal knowledge in both roles. Today, he will still occasionally raise his legal qualifications. “I could, in principle, work as a lawyer or attorney,” he remarked during a 2018 interview on Chinese state television.
Before he became an internationally recognised advocate of nonviolent resistance, Gandhi spent almost 25 years as a lawyer. Then known as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he risked the scorn of his elders by dropping out of Bombay’s Bhavnagar College – the cheapest college he could find – and choosing to study in London. Over the course of his career he would become a barrister in England, an advocate in India and finally an attorney in South Africa, all while developing a taste for social justice that would become his legacy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gandhi was highly principled in his legal work. “The duty of a lawyer is always to place before the judges, and to help them to arrive at, the truth, never to prove the guilty as innocent,” he once said. The profession also developed Gandhi as a person. When he first attempted to set up a practice in Bombay in 1891, he was forced to give it up after realising he was too shy to cross-examine witnesses in court. By the time he gave up the practice of law and devoted himself to public service, however, his rhetorical skill had grown to the point where he was able to deliver public speeches that lasted for several hours.
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Much of Castro’s political ideology was formed during his early adulthood while studying law at the University of Havana. He took to student activism shortly after his admission in 1945 and made headlines in several newspapers for a speech condemning the corruption of the then-president of Cuba, Ramón Grau. His prominence in anti-government movements grew throughout his university career and persisted until his certification as a Doctor of Law in 1950.
Upon graduating, Castro co-founded a legal partnership primarily concerned with providing aid to poor Cubans. The venture was not profitable, however, and Castro subsequently joined the Cuban People’s Party and began a foray into politics. In 1953 he began a guerrilla war against the Batista regime, and by 1959 had become the effective head of state in Cuba.
After studying Arts at the University of Fort Hare and University of South Africa, Nelson Mandela went on to study law at the University of Witwatersrand in 1943, where he was the only native African student. Though he worked as a clerk in several law firms during his studies at Witwatersrand, he would later describe himself as a poor student; he failed his final year exam three times before finally leaving the university without a degree.
Mandela eventually qualified as a lawyer in 1952 by obtaining an Attorney’s Diploma. That year, he and his friend Oliver Tambo founded South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela & Tambo. The two focused on providing legal representation to black Africans who would otherwise have been charged exorbitantly by blue-chip firms. The legal advice Mandela and Tambo offered was affordable, and often free, and their firm became highly sought after as a means for black Africans to access justice.
Though his eventual election as President of South Africa in 1994 would eclipse his work as a lawyer, Mandela’s incisive mind served him well as a statesman, allowing him to build upon the political and legal ideas he formed as a leader of the African National Congress in crafting a post-apartheid nation.
US jeweller Tiffany & Co. has filed a lawsuit against luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton for abandoning its planned $16 billion takeover deal.
The companies, two of the biggest luxury goods groups in the world, were slated to merge later this year before LVMH issued a statement claiming that “a succession of events” left the group unable to acquire Tiffany.
“The board learned of a letter from the French European and foreign affairs minister which, in reaction to the threat of taxes on French products by the US, directed the group to defer the acquisition of Tiffany until after 6 January 2021,” LVMH said in the statement, adding that Tiffany had also pushed for the completion date to be delayed until 31 December.
LVMH claimed that the requested delays prevented the deal from being fulfilled due to a previous agreement stating that the acquisition must be completed no later than 24 November.
Tiffany rejected LVMH’s claim, accusing the group of deliberately stalling to avoid completing the deal. “The simple facts are that there is no basis under French law for the foreign affairs minister to order a company to breach a valid and binding agreement,” said Tiffany chair Roger Farah.
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Tiffany filed suit against LVMH in Delaware, the state where the group is registered, to force it to complete the deal outlined in 2019.
“LVMH was surprised by the lawsuit filed by Tiffany against the group,” the company said in a Thursday statement, describing the suit as “unfounded”. “LVMH will defend itself vigorously.”
The group said that it would also lodge its claim in Delaware, and that the suit would challenge the way in which Tiffany managed its business during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in its payout of dividends. It will also file its requests to European competition authorities in the coming days.
Seventeen major law firms have signed the Race Fairness Commitment (RFC), a mutual pledge to strive for racial equity within legal organisations.
Firms that sign the RFC commit to removing race-based obstacles faced by ethnics from BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) backgrounds, making an effort to recruit and retain BAME talent. These firms pledge to ensure that race is discussed in every induction and exit interview, and that qualified ethnic minority applicants are just as likely to receive an interview as their white counterparts.
Further standards set by the RFC include a commitment to ending racial pay disparity, ending “othering”, and ensuring that lawyers of all races are equally likely to receive promotions.
The RFC’s newest signatories are Baker McKenzie, Bird & Bird, Burges Salmon, Bates Wells & Braithwaite, Clyde & Co, Dechert, Fieldfisher, Gowling, Mishcon De Reya, Stephenson Harwood, Taylor Wessing, and Withers.
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“When it comes to ethnic diversity, law firms have a lot to do; we have a lot to do,” said Stephenson Harwood CEO Eifion Morris in a statement. “But we are committed to change. Cross-sector collaboration, and commitments like this, challenge and support us to take meaningful action that will make a lasting difference. I’m really pleased to sign us up.”
The pledge was launched in July and quickly received signatures from 17 major law firms including Linklaters, Allen & Overy and Slaughter & May.
TikTok announced in a press release on Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order banning US companies for making transactions with its Chinese parent company ByteDance from mid-September.
"The president's actions clearly reflect a political decision to campaign on an anti-China platform,” TikTok claimed in its lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California.
The executive order banning transactions with ByteDance stems from concerns voiced by administration officials that the company could use the app to pass users’ data to the Chinese government, a charge which ByteDance denies.
President Trump has stipulated that TikTok can continue to operate provided that ByteDance sells it to a US firm. He has also demanded that the US Treasury receive a “substantial amount of money” as part of the deal.
"The president's demands for payments have no relationship to any conceivable national security concern and serve only to underscore that defendants failed to provide plaintiffs with the due process required by law," TikTok wrote in its suit.
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The company’s press release elaborated further. “We do not take suing the government lightly,” it wrote, “however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees.”
One of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, TikTok has been downloaded moroe than a billion times worldwide and has over 90 million US users. Since the Trump administration’s executive order was issued, various tech companies including Microsoft, Oracle and Twitter have begun negotiations to potentially take over TikTok’s US operations.
Martin Bryant, founder of tech and media consultancy firm Big Revolution, is leading the class action suit on behalf of English- and Welsh-domiciled guests after the personal details of roughly 393 million Marriott customers were compromised by a data breach between 2014 and 2018.
“I hope this case will raise awareness of the value of our personal data, result in fair compensation for those of us who have fallen foul of Marriott’s vast and long-lasting data breach, and also serve notice to other data owners that they must hold our data responsibly,” he said in a statement.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for the loss of personal data, which potentially includes passport and credit card information. The suit automatically includes people who made a reservation at a former Starwood brand hotel before 10 September 2018, including Sheraton Hotels & Resorts and St. Regis hotels.
Marriott announced in 2018 that it had notified the FBI following a data breach which saw hackers gain access to the reservation database of Starwood hotels, which it had bought in 2016.
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This latest legal action follows a £99 million fine levied against Marriott by the UK data watchdog last year over the breach. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said that roughly 7 million UK guests were affected by the breach.
In a statement, the ICO said Marriott “failed to undertake sufficient due diligence when it bought Starwood and should also have done more to secure its systems”.
Bryant will be represented by law firm Hausfeld, and the case funded by Harbour Litigation.
A ruling by the US District court for the district of Delaware, dated 10 August and unsealed on Monday, upheld the validity of a patent for Novartis’s MS drug Gilenya and rejected a lawsuit from HEC and backed by other generic drugmakers claiming that the patent was no longer valid.
In the ruling, the court stated that HEC had written an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking the body’s approval to create a generic copy of Gilenya before the expiration of Novartis’s patent.
A decade after its approval by the FDA, Gilenya is Novartis’s second-largest revenue generator, having brought in sales revenue of over $3.2 billion during 2019. Novartis’s highest earner, its immunosuppressant drug Cosentyx, accrued $3.5 billion during the same year.
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Novartis had entered into settlement agreements with other organisations to produce generic copies of the Gilenya drug before the expiration of its patent, though the terms of these agreements – including when the generics would be allowed – were not explored in the court ruling.
In December, the FDA approved three generic copies of the Gilenya drug.
Daniel Bonner, Director of Client Solutions at Level 2 Legal, explains how legal teams navigate the complexities of international antitrust reviews.
While the global pandemic appears to have provoked a downturn in M&A transactions after a decade-long bull run, Goldman Sachs analysts expect the current cycle to be short-lived. EY’s Brian Salsberg is already anticipating “there will be a relatively short M&A window that opens as the COVID-19 crisis ends, during which bargains will be had by those with the liquidity and the risk tolerance to move quickly.”
When M&A activity picks up again, transactions that raise anti-competitive concerns may be subject to investigatory antitrust requests from the EC and their home countries. Companies that also operate outside the EU may be subject to similar requests from regulatory bodies in other jurisdictions. Responses to antitrust reviews—known as “second requests” in the US—are typically high-volume, document-intensive, high-stakes discovery projects with aggressive, non-negotiable deadlines. When antitrust scrutiny expands to include multiple international jurisdictions, the stakes become even higher, and project scope and complexity can quickly spin out of control. How do corporations, their counsel, and legal services providers successfully respond to antitrust reviews that span multiple countries?
International antitrust reviews are altogether different from high-volume eDiscovery projects for litigation, where a top priority may be controlling costs. Here, speed and efficiency are crucial, as most M&A contracts tie funding and final sales price to specific timelines. Dealmakers include robust compliance budgets in the transaction price to ensure all necessary resources are online when regulatory approval hangs in the balance. Also, regulators structure their requests in a way that requires massive volumes of work to be completed at warp speed, and deadlines are firm. Very broad requests—for example, a request for production of every document related to market and competition impact in 4 to 6 weeks—are not uncommon.
Here, speed and efficiency are crucial, as most M&A contracts tie funding and final sales price to specific timelines.
While technology typically plays a leading role in litigation-based eDiscovery projects, the complexity of multi-jurisdictional international antitrust reviews prioritises process and workflow considerations. Corporate counsel, law firm attorneys and the firm’s preferred alternative legal services provider (ALSP) must work together towards precise production candidacy guidelines that account for potential overlap between compliance requirements, as well as jurisdictional-specific strategy where requests vary. And as the narrative unfolds in real time, teams must be ready to pivot quickly while maximizing every second of billable time.
Technology assisted review (TAR) should be used to streamline responsiveness workflows, but attorneys must perform the nuanced analysis required to preserve privilege and ensure compliance with all applicable privacy laws. As production decisions are finalised, careful consideration must be given to GDPR and US privacy law, factoring in the source of the data and the complex privacy frameworks that come with international data transfer and production. While TAR models do not lend themselves to this type of analysis, predictive coding and active learning classifiers—trained with input from attorney subject matter experts (SMEs)—often play a key role in providing answers to early questions and setting strategy. Initial results must be sampled, validated and cross-checked. These technologies, which are now embraced by regulators in the US and are quickly gaining traction in Europe, are also crucial in culling the data set for review and production.
Assembling a qualified review team is one of the most important tasks when responding to regulatory requests, and COVID-19 also adds another layer of complexity. Because reviewers are dispersed geographically and working from home, they must be thoroughly comfortable with remote working technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams and Citrix-based VPN access, and they must be able to adhere to strict project cybersecurity protocols. In my own organization (an ALSP), reviewers undergo initial screening tests for competence. Then they are trained extensively on relevance and other project details, which in the case study example below included the legal nuances that distinguish differences between UK and US privilege laws and privacy regulations. Prospective reviewers are tested again, after which the individuals who don’t meet project standards are off-boarded. There simply isn’t time for mistakes.
Assembling a qualified review team is one of the most important tasks when responding to regulatory requests
To get a better sense of the scale and complexity of international antitrust review projects and see these principles in action, let’s take a brief look at a recent project my organisation managed for an AmLaw and Global 100 firm. The transaction in question was proposed by a company based in the UK that does significant business in US markets. Once the transaction was announced, a second request was issued by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), followed shortly by a Request for Information (RFI) from the European Commission (EC).
Between the two requests, over 12 million documents from more than 100 custodians were at issue. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) trained a Technology Assisted Review (TAR) model to identify potential production sets for the DOJ, while search terms provided by the EC were used to identify the potential production sets for the EC.
We then ran filters for privilege and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) against each universe. Client privilege in the UK is significantly different from privilege laws in the US, which meant documents in queue for production to both regulators were reviewed separately for potential privilege issues in each jurisdiction and logged and redacted as necessary. Similarly, a large subset of documents required separate review to ensure compliance with US and GDPR privacy law during production.
Along the way, we recommended meaning dataset reduction strategies and were able to defensibly address and exclude more than 25% of the review population. A team of attorneys that was initially 20-strong during Early Case Assessment (ECA), TAR training, and project kickoff ramped up to more than 100 within a few days, then reviewed the screened documents for privilege and PII for each regulatory body in about a month’s time. In order to complete the project on time, the review team was active about 20 hours per day.
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Successful completion of international antitrust review projects like this one requires close attention to the following best practices:
Litigators who are accustomed to complex, high-volume eDiscovery challenges are often amazed at the demands imposed by multi-jurisdiction international antitrust reviews. These are high-pressure, ultra-heavyweight projects requiring precise planning, deep process and workflow expertise, advanced technology and the brute force labor of a crack review team. They aren’t for the faint of heart.
Sylvie Gallage-Alwis and Gaëtan de Robillard, respective Partner and Associate at Signature Litigation, break down the CJEU's 2019 Annual Report and what it means for manufacturers and distributors in Europe.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)'s case law is a crucial guide for all Member States' Courts which are supposed to follow its guidance on how to interpret European regulations. Its role is hence summarised on the Court's website as follows: "ensuring EU law is interpreted and applied the same in every EU country; ensuring countries and EU institutions abide by EU law".
In 2019, the CJEU rendered landmark case law to enforce EU rules against a number of Member States, whereby their liability was triggered, and they were imposed record fines. The 2019 Annual Report is, in this respect, a must-read since it allows businesses operating within the European Union (EU) to identify the areas and trends that will be debated at national level and the new responsibilities they will need to adapt to quickly, in order to avoid being the target of State-level litigation. Indeed, the condemnation of a State at EU level is often the starting point of challenging proceedings against companies at State level (class actions, individual claims, both civil and criminal proceedings, etc.). This can be observed in all the areas addressed by the CJEU in 2019 such as consumer protection, data protection or climate change litigation.
In its introduction to the Annual Report, Mr Lenaerts, President of the CJEU, highlights the increasing role of the institution with the following summary: "2019 was an exceptional year in many respects. The number of cases decided by the Court of Justice and the General Court combined, 1,739 in all, was just shy of the record reached in 2018, while the Court of Justice exceeded its own individual record (865 in 2019, compared to 760 in 2018). The number of new cases brought, 1,905 in total, was in fact greater than ever. Among these, the record number of references for a preliminary ruling, 641, is a testament to the increasing confidence of national courts in the EU judicial system".
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)'s case law is a crucial guide for all Member States' Courts which are supposed to follow its guidance on how to interpret European regulations.
When it comes to the areas ruled upon by the CJEU, there are a significant number which may directly impact manufacturers and distributors. Apart from the issues linked to data privacy, state aid or intellectual property rights which are of interest to all businesses in the EU, we can name consumer protection rights and climate/environment issues. As for the former, the CJEU notably refers to cases such as the one against Amazon whereby the Court "obliged [it] to provide consumers with a means of communication allowing them to contact it quickly and to communicate with it efficiently". Other cases notably relate to the scope of the right to withdrawal and the right to compensation of consumers when dissatisfied.
As for climate change litigation, it is mentioned from the outset of the report, and the President even states, that it is one of the topics that will have a "direct impact on cases brought before the Court of Justice and the General Court". This can already be observed through the increasing number of claims filed by NGOs and individuals before domestic courts against both States and companies. Interestingly, statistically, environment-related cases are however not ranked amongst the most frequent cases brought before the Court of Justice (60 cases out of 1,102 pending cases) or the General Court (12 cases out of 1,398 pending cases). But one should not be blinded by this. Indeed, in parallel, numerous claims were brought by NGOs, local authorities and individuals before domestic courts throughout the EU (as well as outside the EU).
The CJEU's sentencing of Member States, on the ground that the protection of the environment has become one of the most important goals at EU level, will undoubtedly impact State Courts faced with such litigation whereby plaintiffs seek compensation for damage to the environment such as air pollution, soil pollution or water pollution. The Annual Report mentions cases where states or regions were condemned because they failed to comply with the limit values set out by the Paris Agreement and did not take adequate measures to ensure that the exceedance period was as short as possible (judgment of 24 October 2019, Commission v France, C-636/18; judgment of 26 June 2019, Craeynest and Others, C-723/17).
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Going down this path, the French Administrative Supreme Court imposed on the French State a record interim fine of €10,000,000 for failure to implement measures to reduce Nitrogen and Particulate Matter emissions below the limit values.
Another vigilance point for manufacturers and distributors operating in the EU is the CJEU's way to deal with certain chemical substances such as Bisphenol A or Glyphosate. As a matter of fact, the CJEU has had the opportunity to address, in a general way, the risks associated with potentially hazardous substances.
In the PlasticsEurope v ECHA cases, the CJEU confirmed the inclusion of Bisphenol A in the list of substances of very high concern in REACH. This inclusion triggered obligations for suppliers of products containing Bisphenol A in terms of information to stakeholders in the supply chain and to consumers (judgments of 11 July 2019 and 20 September 2019, PlasticsEurope v ECHA, T-185/17 and T-636/17).
The Annual Report also refers to the Tweedale case in which the CJEU sets aside the decision of the Food Safety Authority refusing access to glyphosate's toxicity and carcinogenicity studies. According to the Court, "the public must have access to information enabling it to ascertain whether the emissions were correctly assessed and must be given the opportunity reasonably to understand how the environment could be affected by those emissions" (judgment of 7 March 2019, Tweedale v EFSA, T-716/14 and T-329/17).
If further evidence of the CJEU's wish to have environment-related issues become a priority is needed, one will notice that, for the first time, the Annual Report contains a chapter on the CJEU's own steps to protect it, trying to apply to itself the saying that "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones".
Monday July 20, 2020
Decades of comprehensive economy pressures and restrictions is a way of life for people in Iran. The recent rise in cost of living, with expensive housing prices, and the prevalence of COVID-19 are examples of this. The pandemic resulted in a higher risk of recession. Nevertheless, the majority of people have full ownership of their living quarters and some are enjoying the current high rate of returns in the stock market and good share evaluations. Due to the recent US sanctions, oil revenues declined, and the recent oil price collapse has put the government’s budget under stress. Government subsidies in food, health and energy and low-cost housing projects have helped the population sustain the rise in cost of living. Recently, actions have been undertaken to fight financial corruption by few privileged people and institutes, and this served well to gain the trust of the population. People demand transparency, economic development, new jobs and fair distribution of wealth.
To improve the state of the economy and substitute for the decreased oil revenues, limited options are left on the table. Among them is investment in the highly profitable oil and gas industry, petrochemicals, power generation, distribution sectors and in the labour-intensive housing market. The stock exchange office can contribute vastly and effectively in harbouring safe investment platforms for the general public.
The Iran stock market has been dissociated from the international stock markets and is therefore immune to the recent COVID-19 international stock market crashes. The stock market in Iran has had a steady growth for a decade. Indeed, the Iranian stock market index grew twofold in the past twelve months. A staggering gain in stock values attracted investors and large funds, and common people trust their stock market with their savings.
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Iran is a society with an average age of thirty years, it is full of youthful vigour and hope. The country has more than twenty million well educated young men and women, with post-diploma to doctorate degrees specialised in different fields. In fact, this is the highest level of literacy and knowledge known in the history of Iran.
The population, over twenty one million households, live in urban areas that are equivalent to 2% of the land, and almost all enjoy connected electricity and gas, and safe drinking water. Houses are mostly owned by citizens with no bank loans. Two million or more low cost homes have been delivered or under construction to be finished in the near future. Therefore, rising housing prices due to the current inflation may also mean increasing wealth of the population.
There are more than two and a half million commercial outlets and shops and firms owned by private businesses. In addition, the country enjoys a reasonable set of infrastructures which is necessary to support an efficient economy.
In recent months, the judiciary system took swift actions to block some corrupt individuals and financial institutes. Involved individuals have been prosecuted, and cases of stagnant financial corruption are being addressed with priority. The provincial judges took serious measures to protect the local industries. These measures may bring social order, development and can help create new jobs.
Iran has the resources to develop and prosper, and this prosperity will contribute to regional peace and development.
Regards,
Mr. Manuchehr Ahmadvand
Attorney at Law and Author
Iran Bar Association
Member of International Bar Association
Manuchehr has practiced law for more than 30 years and provided professional legal advice for venture investment projects. He works with the International Arbitration Office on financial litigation. Also, he published 'The Legal Obstacles of Privatization/Investment' in Iran.
Slack Technologies has filed an anti-competitive complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission in an escalation of its months-long battle with the tech giant’s Microsoft Teams workplace communications app.
Key to the complaint is Microsoft’s bundling of the Teams app within its Office 365 software, which Slack claims is a violation of market competition law.
“The complaint details Microsoft’s illegal and anti-competitive practice of abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law,” Slack wrote in a statement. “Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”
David Schellhase, general counsel at Slack, accused Microsoft of “reverting to past behaviour” in pushing Teams. “They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal, a carbon copy of their illegal behavior during the ‘browser wars,’” he said.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that the company is “looking forward” to providing information to the European Commission.
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“We created Teams to combine the ability to collaborate with the ability to connect via video, because that's what people want," they said. “With COVID-19, the market has embraced Teams in record numbers while Slack suffered from its absence of video-conferencing. We're committed to offering customers not only the best of new innovation, but a wide variety of choice in how they purchase and use the product.”
Both companies have seen a surge in user interest in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote working measures, with Microsoft Teams reaching 75 million users in April and Slack breaking its own concurrent user record in March.
