ATL Idol, Blogging, Contests, Lawyer of the Day

ATL Idol: The Head-to-Head Round (Part 2)

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Here’s the second half of the “head-to-head” round of ATL Idol. If you’re not up to speed on what’s going on, background information is available in this prior post (or just scroll down the front page).
You can check out the second half of the head-to-head round, featuring the blogging of FROLIC AND DETOUR, SOPHIST, and MARIN, after the jump.


Here are the takes of FROLIC AND DETOUR, SOPHIST, and MARIN, all on the same story. We gave them these two links:

http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1202423266600&hub=TopStories

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/07/28/former-fenty-lawyer-disbarred-now-working-at-color-me-mine/

And a length limit of 400 words. Here’s what they came up with (presentation order determined randomly; each entry marked with the contestant’s avatar near the top):
LAWYER OF THE DAY: GARRETT LEE
By FROLIC AND DETOUR

Is that Gannett House?

As an ATL Idol contestant, I can’t blame any lawyer for leaving practice to seek a creative outlet. But painting pottery?

Sponsored


Garrett Lee, the deputy general counsel to Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, was disbarred as a result of assorted misconduct including gross negligence and perjury. Apparently when Lee was in private practice as a divorce lawyer, he missed filings, ignored discovery requests, and skipped oral argument.
Most lawyers can sympathize with the temptation to watch Youtube when we ought to be responding to a motion for contempt. Even so, it’s usually not a good idea to send the client a redacted version of
the court’s opinion with its discussion of your errors removed. And if you do, don’t testify under oath in the inevitable malpractice suit that you never did such a thing. Because even if your close personal friend, the mayor, thinks that your work history qualifies you for a job in city government, he’s still going to have to fire you when you get disbarred.
Luckily, Lee’s membership in the exclusive

Sponsored

HYPS club can never be revoked.
In the end, Lee took a job at Color Me Mine, a paint-your-own-pottery store owned by his sister. Now he’ll have to listen to groups of bridesmaids bonding as they make babies’ footprints into tiny butterfly wings. Buddy, I’ve been there…it’s a lot more pleasant in court.

LAWYER OF THE DAY: GARRETT LEE
By SOPHIST
If you ever want to know how to break into the hyper-competitive field of pottery painting, call up Garrett Lee, the former interim deputy general counsel in the D.C. Mayor’s Office. Now that he has been officially disbarred, Lee might suggest you follow these seven easy steps.
Step 1: Go to GULC.
Lee received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1994.
Step 2: Find a firm that will always stand by you.
Lee was an associate at Feldesman Tucker Leifer and Fidel. Richard Shadyac, Jr., managing partner of the Feldesman’s Virginia office, remembered Lee as “a very bright attorney with an excellent future.” At Feldesman, Lee took on the Xavier Jordan case, which eventually led to Lee’s disbarment.
Step 3: Get your name on the letterhead.
Lee left Feldesman to join Bouquet McKinney and Lee.
Step 4: Run the firm into the ground.
Sadly, Bouquet McKinney and Lee is defunct.
Step 5: Have powerful friends with poor vetting operations.
Lee returned to Feldesman briefly, where he redacted court documents to hide his incompetence from Jordan. But Mayor Adrian Fenty soon rewarded Lee, his longtime buddy, with a government job.
Step 6: Just sit back, relax, and wait for your friends to turn on you.
Lee was exposed when a Feldesman employee (Shadyac declined to say who) found Lee’s falsified documents by rifling through Lee’s desk. Mayor Fenty is too busy trying to wash Lee’s blood off his hands with lye to spare a kind word for his troubled “friend.”
Step 7: Write a resume your sister loves.
Diedre Lee, Garrett Lee’s sister, owns a Color Me Mine franchise, a paint-your-own pottery shop, in Adams Morgan. President and COO of Color Me Mine Michael Mooslin, calls her “wonderful.” When told that Diedre hired the back-end of the Lee gene pool, Mooslin said “I have complete confidence in her.”
With Garrett Lee’s help, we can all learn how to trade in a promising legal career for vocational training in handicrafts.
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1202423266600&hub=TopStories
COLOR ME BAD: LAWYER OF THE DAY, GARRETT LEE
By MARIN
For those readers who fear missing court deadlines, getting fired and winding up homeless, cast your fears aside. Lawyer of the Day, Garrett Lee, who resigned in shame from D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s legal office, proves that there is life after malpractice, perjury and disbarment, though it may be in arts and crafts.

Lee’s story begins with his egregious mishandling of a divorce case from 1999 to 2004, when he worked at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell and Bouquet McKinney & Lee in D.C. Lee failed to respond to numerous motions or to file a brief with the D.C. Court of Appeals, all the while telling his client, Xavier Jordan, that things were going swimmingly. Foreshadowing a later career move, Lee decorated the Court’s decision by applying Wite-Out to the sentence “Appellee Jordan has not filed a brief on appeal,” and then sent it to Jordan. Unimpressed by the artistic license, Jordan filed a malpractice suit against Lee and Feldesman Tucker fired him.

Though unemployed and disgraced, Lee was apparently still qualified to work in government. He joined the D.C. Council’s office in 2006 and later became interim deputy general counsel after Fenty became mayor. The job was not an ideal fit; while it gave Lee sufficient time to perjure himself at his malpractice suit deposition, he failed to find time enough to respond to most of Jordan’s motions. The court slapped Lee with a $1 million judgment and bar counsel disbarred him last week.

But true to the adage “if at first you get disbarred, try, try again,” Garrett Lee has picked himself up, dusted himself off and landed a new job – this time with none of those pesky filing deadlines. Where? At Color Me Mine, a pottery studio owned by his sister in D.C. Said Lee:

I’m pursuing a family business venture with my sister…It’s a great opportunity.

No doubt his Wite-Out brushwork will come in handy.

In the Matter of Garrett L. Lee, D.C. Court of Appeals Board of Professional Responsibility [pdf]
Fenty Lawyer Resigns, Is Disbarred [LegalTimes]
Former Fenty Lawyer Disbarred, Now Working at Color Me Mine [Washington City Paper]

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