Archive for June 2010

The ‘What’ List?

By Gabe Acevedo

“Hey, are you on the Posse List?”

“The what list?”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away — seven years ago in the Farragut North area of Washington, DC — the “what?” list was my response when I first heard of the Posse List from a fellow contract attorney on one of my first projects. At the time, I was a newly minted lawyer, who also happened to be broke and unemployed.

“The Posse List,” replied my colleague, handing me a piece of paper. “Here, write down your email.”

Soon after handing over my email address, messages started appearing a couple of times a week in my inbox from The_Posse_List@yahoo.com. The emails contained news about various projects in D.C. that were either about to start or status updates on current ones. It was sort of my own personal “heads up” as to what work was available.

I was lucky to be one of the first few hundred people added to the list. In 2003, very few contract attorneys knew what the Posse List was; by 2005, it was a household name. And today, in the world of e-discovery and legal technology, it is known around the world.

So how did the Posse List attain such a long reach from such humble beginnings?

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Another Reason You Should Never Blow

By Elie Mystal

Not that we’re in the business of giving free legal advice, but there are a few things every lawyer should know. Lawyers should know how to handle a traffic stop, for instance. They should know how to handle cops who shout slurs at you from across the street. And of course, lawyers should never snitch.

Some of these lessons come as a shock to laypeople, and even some lawyers who didn’t pay enough attention during Criminal Procedure. But high on the list of things that trained attorneys should never do is submit to a breathalyzer test. You don’t need to be a DUI defense attorney to know that you don’t blow.

The unwritten rule isn’t there to protect drunk drivers (okay, it kind of is there to protect drunks who operate high-speed killing machines); it’s also there to protect innocent people who don’t want to get caught up in the criminal justice system.

An article in today’s Washington Post underscores the point: the breathalyzer simply cannot be trusted, and juries can’t be trusted to know that…

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The Secret to ’100% Employed at Graduation’: Duke’s Bridge to Practice

By Kashmir Hill

When the U.S. News rankings came out this year, Duke Law School had fallen out of the top ten. But one thing that hadn’t fallen was its Graduates Employed At Graduation statistic. As Elie noted (with skepticism), Duke reported that 100% of its 2008 graduates were employed.

Elie wondered how that was possible given the economic climate in 2008. Though the climate in 2009 was even worse, Duke maintained its perfect score. However, we’re told that Duke will likely not have a 100% in this box for its class of 2010.

As Duke Law News reported, Duke worked hard to ensure its graduates had jobs. While it didn’t go the SMU route of paying employers to “test drive” its graduates, it does now provide stipends to some of its unemployed graduates to allow them to work for a couple months at no cost to employers. Using SMU’s car metaphor, the law school pays for the gas while Dukies and prospective employers take a little spin. Duke calls it “The Bridge to Practice” program.

It started in 2008 — employing the nine graduates who would have otherwise ruined that nice round 100%. The numbers of participants have increased since then, as the economy has worsened.

We interviewed a couple of them about the experience. The escalating numbers and Bridgers’ stories, including how much Duke pays, after the jump.

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Quote of the Day: A Puckish Request

By Kashmir Hill

We’ve lost every objection so far. Maybe we can win this one.

– Chicago defense attorney Marc Martin, after asking Judge Joan Lefkow to delay the next day’s trial start so that jurors could stay up late watching the Blackhawks (w)in the Stanley Cup game Wednesday night.

Morning Docket: 06.10.10

By Kashmir Hill

* Unhappy investors in Arizona go after the law firm that drafted papers for the company that allegedly swindled them. Greenberg Traurig is hit with a $52 million lawsuit for allegedly aiding a mortgage fund in a $1 billion fraud. [Courthouse News Service]

* Elena Kagan and Antonin Scalia’s secret love. [Washington Post]

* A one-year lapse in the estate law means $9 billion is being passed down to heirs in Texas sans taxes. [New York Times]

* Are lawyers happy about the oil spill in the Gulf? [CNN]

* New York Law School professor realizes he is dyslexic. [Huffington Post via ABA Journal]

* A Philadelphia man goes Rocky on his lawyer. Again. [NJ.com]

* David Souter wants America to grow up. [Slate]

* Blind law students sue law schools over their online applications. But not applying to these schools may be for the best. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Why Unemployed Lawyers Shouldn’t Go On Reality TV Shows — Exhibit A: Victoria, of MTV’s Downtown Girls

By Kashmir Hill

Victoria of MTV's Downtown Girls

With job prospects bleak and the allure of fleeting fame high, some lawyers have considered sending their résumés to reality TV show casting companies instead of legal recruiters. But competition is tough in the realm of trashy television, too.

One unemployed New York lawyer is living the reality TV star dream. Meet Victoria. She is one of the stars of Downtown Girls, a new MTV series about hot girls living in TriBeCa. Sounds like a winner!

Let’s take a look at her bio:

An aspiring attorney, Victoria is Shallon’s other roommate, whose eccentric ways provide a source of rattlebrained comic relief. Victoria recently graduated from law school and is currently awaiting the results of her second attempt at the bar exam. Like her roommates, Victoria is also single, and is infamously known as the “queen of the first date.”

Really? You’re going to include the fact that you failed the bar exam in your MTV website bio?

Can it get worse?

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.09.10

By Elie Mystal

* It’s shocking that the crime of adultery is still on the books in New York, but it’s not surprising that a woman is getting slammed with it. The Hester Prynnes in these situations always get it worse than the Arthur Dimmesdales. [Gothamist]

* Minnesota Congresswoman drafts legislation calling for Professor Erlinder’s immediate release. What’s the point of being a superpower if we can’t get our citizens out of jail when they are being held on ridiculous charges in a foreign country? [Betty McCollum]

* Look, I’m the one who wasn’t drooling over Debrahlee Lorenzana when her manufactured breasts first appeared on my computer screen. But I guess I can understand the reflexive need for women to defend another woman’s right to beg to be stared at then whirl around and complain when men stare. [True/Slant]

* Verily, Monty Python could have come to a more sensible decision than Kennedy did in Berghuis v. Tompkins. [Infamy or Praise]

* The things we chose to care about during a state-sanctioned murder. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Vinson & Elkins associate gets a two book deal. [Tex Parte Blog]

* Whoever is running John McCain’s Twitter feed needs to stop trying to look “hip.” [Josh Blackman's Blog]

A Trio of Misbehaving Lawyers: Some Updates

By David Lat

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Left to right: John Michael Farren, Scott Rothstein, Michael Margulies.


For some reason, today brings lots of news about lawyers and the criminal justice system. And we’re not talking about lawyers representing clients, but lawyers who are the clients: John Michael Farren, the former White House lawyer accused of attempting to murder his wife; Scott Rothstein, the Florida attorney who ran a massive Ponzi scheme; and Michael Margulies, the former Lindquist & Vennum partner who misappropriated millions in client money. We’ve decided to hit this rogues’ gallery in a single, omnibus post.

Let’s start with John Michael Farren, the former Bush Administration lawyer and Xerox general counsel charged with attempted murder and first-degree strangulation of his wife, Skadden counsel Mary Margaret Fadden. As reported by the ABA Journal, John Farren has posted $750,000 bail and been released to the “Institute of Living” — which sounds like a fancy spa where you eat seaweed and do yoga, but is actually a mental hospital in Hartford.

The news coverage also reveals that the wealthy couple’s divorce has been finalized. How were their millions distributed?

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Tulane: The Latest School to Adopt Grade Reform

By Elie Mystal

Tough curve ahead.

By this point, you know the drill with grade reform:

A) Law school experiences embarrassing employment outcomes.
B) Administration refuses to admit legal education is ridiculously overpriced given the soft job market.
C) Students demand immediate administrative action to help students find work.
D) Administration has precisely zero ideas on how to help students get jobs.
E) Administration blames its own “tough grading curve” that allegedly “disadvantages” its students.
F) Administration enacts “grade reform.”
G) Students feel momentarily appeased.
H) Employers ask for class ranking and go back to putting 90% of the transcripts they receive from the school in question into the shredder.

Next year, Tulane Law School will make grading easier. Getting a good job with a Tulane Law degree will remain just as difficult as ever…

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Quote of the Day: Don’t go in the entertainment law water…

By Kashmir Hill

In order to maximize their control over the creature, the “Jaws” filmmakers built three sharks for their 1975 movie. All created from the same mold, the sharks were dubbed “Bruce” after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer.

– ‘Jaws’ Shark Hunted Down

Lawyer of the Day: A Disappearing Act

By David Lat

One summer associate story from years past involved an SA who simply stopped showing up to work for several days. Given how big summer classes were back then (not like today), and how much misbehavior was tolerated in those halcyon days, it took a surprisingly long time for the perpetrator to get in trouble.

The fellow got no-offered. But some observers wondered whether his conduct really was that egregious, viewed against the standards of the time. Summer associates weren’t actually expected to, you know, work back then.

And summer associates don’t really have “clients.” Wisconsin lawyer Scott Fisher, who pulled a similar vanishing act, did….

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Debrahlee Lorenzana’s Breasts: An Attractive Nuisance

By Elie Mystal

It seems the world can’t get enough of Debrahlee Lorenzana, the former Citibank employee who alleges she was fired because she was “too hot.” She’s been making the rounds of the morning talk shows, and people have been absolutely gushing about her figure, which allegedly got her fired.

But could you call her body an attractive nuisance to the men and women who supposedly persecuted her for her beauty? Perhaps, since it now appears that Debrahlee’s boobs were not endowed, but acquired. Dealbreaker reports:

In this clip of her aforementioned knockers surgery, … she says she pumped them up to meet “a professional, well-educated man.”

Dealbreaker has a full clip of Debrahlee’s appearance on Plastic Surgery New York Style. Click here to watch it.

You could say that the video defines the word “busted”….

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Thanks to This Week’s Advertisers

By Above the Law

A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law:

If you’re interested in advertising on Above the Law or any other site in the Breaking Media network, download our media kits, or email advertising@breakingmedia.com. Thanks!

‘Getting It’: A Novel About a Diabolical Pursuit of Partnership
And an interview with the author, NYU Professor Daniel Shaviro.

By Kashmir Hill

If you’re the type who is convinced that the people you work with in Biglaw are evil, conniving, and ready to stab you in the back with a really sharp highlighter, you will love Getting It, a novel by Daniel Shaviro. In a post titled “james joyce meets the paper chase,” an Amazon reviewer says: “If Joyce or Kafka had worked at Arnold and Porter, this would be their book.”

I’ve read a lot of lawyer fiction, but never something quite like this. The satirical novel is populated with sadistic partners and scheming associates competing for partnership, including the caddish Bill Doberman, dopey Arnold Portner, and self-involved Lowell Stellworth. It’s an “American Psycho” take on Biglaw — funny and fast-paced, a great summer quick read. I devoured it on a plane to Chicago.

Shaviro’s books are usually more taxing — he’s the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law. Though he’s had many books published before — e.g., Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax and Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government’s March Toward Bankruptcy — this is his first novel. Even if you didn’t study with him at NYU, you may recognize him as the man with Elena Kagan in this photo, when they were both professors at the University of Chicago.

Before becoming an academic, Shaviro worked for Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C., and then went on to the Joint Committee on Taxation. He started working on the book during Congressional breaks in 1985 — his characters actually use the legal research library to Shephardize their memos — but only finished it last year. Coming back to the novel two decades later, he says that it felt at times like he was working on a collaboration with a different person — a younger version of himself.

“I’m in a different place; I could never come up with this now. It was a 20-something version of me that came up with it,” Shaviro told me. He had the inspiration of youth to start it, but had the discipline and wisdom now to finish it and cut the bad parts. “I mined the cut parts and discovered some really nice turns of phrase. I wish I could reach out to that [younger] guy and get some more material from him.”

Why is the book so fun? How did Shaviro finally finish it? And why was he in that photo with Elena Kagan?

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And an interview with the author, NYU Professor Daniel Shaviro.“

Sonnenschein Merger with Denton Wilde Is Official

By Elie Mystal

A few weeks ago, news broke that Sonnenschein would merge with the U.K.-based firm of Denton Wilde. Today the firms announced that partners on both sides of the Atlantic unanimously voted in favor of the merger. From the Sonnenschein press release:

The partnerships of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (SNR) and Denton Wilde Sapte LLP (Denton) today voted in favor of combining to form SNR Denton. Launching on September 30, 2010, SNR Denton will have more than 1,400 lawyers and professionals in 18 countries, forming a top 25 legal services provider worldwide by number of lawyers and professionals. SNR Chairman Elliott Portnoy and Denton CEO Howard Morris will serve as co-CEOs of SNR Denton.

The merger will become official on September 30th.

Congratulations to SNR-Denton partners, associates, and other employees. Let’s hope there are no redundancy layoffs on either side of the ocean.

Earlier: Law Firm Merger Mania: Sonnenschein to Merge with Denton Wilde

Open Thread: It’s Time For Another Round of Tuition Hikes

By Elie Mystal

Over the past year, we’ve devoted a great deal of coverage to the value proposition of going to law school. While reasonable people disagree on just how much law school should cost (Canadian professor Robert Martin starts the bidding at $12 a year), there is a growing consensus that the cost of legal education is already too high — and is continuing to go up, despite the faltering job market.

Law schools can’t be counted on to help their students get jobs in this economy — but that’s not about to make them stop raising tuition. And we are now in the season of tuition hikes. Over the summer, when students are off campus and thus generally unable to engage in violent protest, many administrations look to raise tuition.

We’d like to track these hikes on Above the Law, so send us your tips when your school raises (or, God forbid, doesn’t raise) tuition.

As a jumping off point, we have news that Brooklyn Law School is raising tuition. Because you know, anytime you can sport a sub-80% employed at graduation rate, a tuition hike makes a lot of sense….

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Outsourcing: It’s Not Just About the Money

By Elie Mystal

It’s been a while since we checked in with the coming junior associate apocalypse that is legal outsourcing. Rest assured, LPOs around the globe are working hard to make sure that the Biglaw junior associate becomes extinct — at least as we know it.

There’s a fascinating article on Law21 that discusses the evolution of legal process outsourcing — and what LPOs need to do next:

Still in its relative infancy, legal process outsourcing has already had a huge impact on the legal services marketplace: scoring major deals with the likes of Microsoft and Rio Tinto, garnering the attention of private-equity investors, and helping to expose the degree to which law firms have overcharged for the simplest legal work, among other accomplishments. But this impact has set off two important chains of events.

The first affects LPOs themselves: they now need to move their value proposition beyond cost savings in a market they helped to make more sophisticated. The second affects everyone: the legal profession’s response to LPO is having an unexpected effect on how legal work is distributed and how legal resources are allocated.

Some law firms still seem to be fighting the last war and are committed to fending off outsourcing until the bitter end. But other firms are preparing themselves for the next war: remaining the primary legal advisor to their clients in a world where the clients themselves can go to a number of providers to get the work done…

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Morning Docket: 06.09.10

By David Lat

Orly Taitz, Queen of the Birthers

* California businesswomen fared well in last night’s primaries. [Washington Post]

* But former lawyer of the Day Orly Taitz, aka “The Birther Queen,” lost in the Republican primary for California secretary of state. [Washington Wire]

* Meanwhile, a vote over in the Swiss parliament could derail the delicate deal reached between UBS and the Justice Department in part of an ongoing tax evasion investigation. [New York Times via WSJ Law Blog]

* Speaking of escaping taxation, Texas billionaire Dan Duncan may be able to pass his fortune to his heirs tax-free, thanks to the one-year lapse in the estate tax law — unless the tax can be reinstated and applied retroactively. [New York Times]

* Could we be witnessing the end of libel law? [New York Observer]

* Musical chairs: Ronald Cami leaves Cravath to become the general counsel for a private equity firm. [Am Law Daily]

A Memo for Summer Associates: Bizarro World

By The People's Therapist

Ed. note: This is a special post from Will Meyerhofer of The People’s Therapist. This article is also posted there.

I summered at Shearman & Sterling way back in 1996. Judging from my clients’ feedback, the summer associate “experience” at big law firms hasn’t changed much over the years. With the recession, it’s harder to get a summer associate position – but once you’re in, it’s pretty much the same old thing – or maybe the same old thing on lysergic acid diethylamide. It was a pretty weird experience to begin with.

As a summer associate, you’re entering Bizarro World, and nothing makes sense in Bizarro World. Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will.

Here’s how it works:

You show up, dressed in the new suit you probably bought with your mom. You’re a little nervous and eager to impress. The first day starts out pretty much as you’d expect, with human resources spiels – “trainings” – on stuff like how to use the library, how to turn on your computer, how to find the word-processing department, whatever.

You are presented with your desk – your own desk in a law firm! You chat excitedly with the other summers, sizing one another up, seeking allies – someone you can trust, who seems to be thinking the same things you are. There are no obvious candidates.

What now?

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.08.10

By Elie Mystal

The man in the yellow ... face?

* The State Department told an Asian man (pictured) that his passport photo was “too yellow.” We’re constantly vigilant for threats, foreign and domestic, to our national security — but we should feel safer knowing that our State Department civil servants are on the lookout for the yellow peril. [The Darkside]

* Jamie Dimon isn’t going to take the financial reform bill lying down. And now New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand knows it. [Dealbreaker]

* The six-month period after you graduate is the best time to find a job. You know, if you weren’t able to find one before you graduated. [The Lawyerist]

* Could Orly Taitz actually win an election — and ruin things for Republicans running statewide in California? [Politico]

* This should be a fun game: let’s play “Which Politicians Took Money from BP.” [Tax Prof Blog]

* Rule 12 of Client Service is something that anybody can follow — so long as you look the part. [What About Clients?]

* Cic sic by the bay. [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]