October 2010

Musical Chairs: Is Ted Freedman Out at Kirkland?
Plus a request for updates on ex-DPW and S&C partners.

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Theodore Freedman is — or was — a prominent bankruptcy and restructuring partner at Kirkland & Ellis, based out of the firm’s New York office. Freedman has been practicing law for almost 40 years; he graduated from Northwestern Law in 1972 and is admitted to the bars of D.C. (1973), Illinois (1976), and New York (1992).

Word on the street, however, is that Ted Freedman has left, or is in the process of leaving, K&E. He’s no longer on the Kirkland website. Check out the list of K&E lawyers whose last names start with F; he’s not there.

Then try running a Google search for theodore freedman kirkland ellis — even the Google cache version is gone. Nice work, Kirkland IT people.

So what happened to Ted Freedman?

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Plus a request for updates on ex-DPW and S&C partners.“

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Yes, We’ve Seen the Slate Article on Law Schools

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So you want to go to law school....

It’s a very thorough compilation, for a general-interest audience, of developments that we’ve already covered in these pages. The subtitle sums up the piece quite well: “Law schools are manufacturing more lawyers than America needs, and law students aren’t happy about it.”

We’re not sure what else to say about it, since we’ve opined at length on many of these depressing realities: the cratering legal job market, the oversupply of lawyers, the rise in law school tuition, the crushing educational debt (generally not dischargeable in bankruptcy), the misleading data used by law schools to lure in students, and the American Bar Association’s inability (or refusal) to stop new law schools from sprouting like weeds….

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.27.10

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* GlaxoSmithKline will pay $750 million — yup, that’s right, three-quarters of a billion — to settle charges of adulterated drugs. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Sure, Citizens United lets corporations get more active in politics — but it lets unions in, too. [ChamberPost]

* Reading between the lines: an annotated law firm departure memo. [Last Day at the Office Emails]

* Federal jurisdiction is a useful class — especially if you’re looking for the perfect crime scene. [Now I Know and SSRN (Brian Kalt)]

* Back in my ancestral homeland, the Philippine Supreme Court is responding to one scandal by creating another. [Opinio Juris]

* Vote for the top business law blog of 2010. [LexisNexis (via FCPA Professor)]

* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on aging: “I turned 80, I don’t even like to say the word.” [Stanford University News]

* Some highlights from my talk yesterday in Philadelphia to the Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group, courtesy of Laura Powers. [The PR Lawyer]

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13% Tuition Increase + 1% Faculty Salary Cut = 100% Screwing of Minnesota Law Students

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CORRECTION: This post has been revised since it was first published to reflect the fact that the 13.5% tuition hike for in-state students occurred this summer and applies to the current academic year (2010-2011).

Last year, the University of Minnesota contemplated imposing a significant tuition hike on its law students, while trying to keep college tuition low. This year, Minnesota did in fact push through the tuition increase, while protecting the high salaries of its law school faculty.

Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog pointed us to a number of reports about how Minnesota hiked law school tuition by 13.5% for this academic year, while planning to cut faculty salaries by only 1.15% in the 2011 fiscal year. So Minnesota law students, if you were hoping for a dollop of Astroglide along with your next tuition bill, you have my sympathy. The administration at Minnesota Law doesn’t even have the common courtesy to give you a reach-around.

Law school administrators don’t care about you, current and prospective law students. They don’t even have to pretend to care about your problems anymore…

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Legal Citation of the Day: Pointy Ears Under a Ten-Gallon Hat?

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Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan21), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency.

21 See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book’s opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock’s famous line from his moment of sacrifice: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” to which Kirk replies, “the needs of the few.”

– Texas Supreme Court Justice Don R. Willett, concurring, in Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal.

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Thanks to This Week’s Advertisers

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Thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law:

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Joe Miller: Now an Admitted Liar

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When we included Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller in our gallery of most disgraceful Yale Law School graduates, we admitted that his scandals were trivial in comparison to some other people on the list.

But now maybe Miller will be a worthy contender. Newly released documents contain an email where Miller admits to lying about some of his actions while working as a borough attorney in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I have no idea how the Tea Party will spin this into a positive, but for Democrats and regular Republicans, their problem with Miller won’t be the offense, it’ll be with the cover-up. ‘Twas always thus…

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Musical Chairs: Cate Edwards Follows in Her Father’s Footsteps

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The comely Cate has her father's smile.

No, she didn’t cheat on a cancer-stricken spouse through an affair with a trashy “videographer”; Cate Edwards, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Edwards, isn’t married. Rather, the 28-year-old Harvard Law graduate has become a plaintiffs’ lawyer, like her father before her.

As reported today in the Washington Post’s Reliable Source column, Edwards recently became an associate with Sanford Wittels & Heisler, a boutique class-action litigation firm with offices in New York, D.C., and San Francisco. Her bio on the firm website, which lists her as Catharine E. Edwards, mentions that she’s a member of the Virginia bar, with an application to the D.C. bar pending.

It also reveals that she previously served as a law clerk to a federal judge. For whom did Cate Edwards clerk?

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Lawyers Who Follow the Texas Rangers Are Crazy

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We’ve seen lawyers request continuances because of major sporting events before. There was a great continuance motion last year, when the Alabama Crimson Tide played in the BCS Championship game. Obviously, the entire state of Louisiana lost its collective mind during the New Orleans Saints Super Bowl Run.

Notice how we’re talking about football? Football is “America’s Passion,” while baseball is “America’s Pastime” — which is a nice way of saying, “Baseball is something cool to have on the television while you take an afternoon nap.” (Full Disclosure: I’m a Mets fan, so baseball has been dead to me for many months.)

But we’re seeing unusual passion from Texas Rangers fans. Maybe it’s because the team had never won a playoff series until this postseason. Maybe it’s because Cliff Lee really is a witch.

Lawyers who are Texas Rangers fans appear to have gone all the way around the bend…

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Constance McMillen Will At Least Get Attorney Fees

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Constance McMillen

Constance McMillen, the gay teen who was barred from taking her girlfriend to prom and then invited to a sham prom, will get her attorney fees.

It’s not a huge amount of money, but maybe the message is more important? U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson ordered McMillen’s Mississippi school district to pay about $81,000. Even though the school district canceled the prom, McMillen was still entitled to attorney fees because she was the prevailing plaintiff in a civil rights case.

Let’s hope $81,000 gets the attention of school districts in Mississippi and elsewhere. At the very least, that’s got to be more than they usually spend on prom. Maybe they’ll figure out it’s cheaper to let their gay students party with whomever they want.

Judge awards legal fees in Miss. lesbian prom case [Associated Press via ABA Journal]

Earlier: You Can Dance If You Want To (Unless You’re a Lesbian)

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