We continue our lateblogging of the Federalist Society’s 2009 National Lawyers Convention. The conversations at the conference are always interesting. As far as we’re concerned, this has to be one of the most painless ways to rack up CLE credits.

Here’s the next panel discussion that we attended:

Regulation of Financial Institutions

That’s the most shocking revelation in an interesting New York Times profile of H. Rodgin Cohen, the nation’s top banking M&A lawyer and chairman of the venerable Sullivan & Cromwell. From the NYT:

After [Cohen and his wife Barbara] had paid their [restaurant] check, they went to fetch the car, and Mr. Cohen, a Boston fan since his days at Harvard Law, glanced down at his BlackBerry to check on the Red Sox. He drives a Subaru, a humble ride for a man who earned millions last year arranging shotgun weddings for the busted firms of Wall Street, and standing next to Barbara in the darkness, Rodge Cohen, a titan of the banking bar, struggled with his automated key, initially unable to — woop woop woop — release the lock.

Unlocking car doors by remote control — where’s a good associate when you need one?

Now, in re Subarus, we have nothing against them; they are fine cars. Some of our best friends drive Subarus. One of our co-clerks — a member of the Elect, no less — drives a Subaru Forester. The judge for whom we clerked — Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain (9th Cir.), a top feeder judge — used to drive a purple Subaru (affectionately nicknamed “Grimace” by his clerks).

But as we know from the judicial pay controversy, federal judges don’t get compensated like partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. And Cohen is no ordinary S&C partner — he’s the chairman of the firm and its top rainmaker, generating tens of millions in business every year. A Subaru is shockingly downmarket for him. We realize that true wealth doesn’t have to advertise itself, and six-figure cars are for the nouveau riche, but this still seems a tad extreme.

More to the point, why is Rodge Cohen even driving himself? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for him to have a chauffeur-driven Maybach — john quinn, holla — so he can spend every waking minute on the phone, negotiating billion-dollar bank mergers? Isn’t it a waste of the brilliant Cohen’s brain cells to have him paying attention to yield signs when he could instead be thinking about yield curves?

More tidbits from the Rodge Cohen profile, along with commentary, after the jump.

The general public really doesn’t understand what top-flight counsel does for their corporate clients. If they did, the pitchforks and torches crowd would be as angry at Wall Street lawyers as they are at Wall Street bankers.

Friday’s “revelation” about the advice given to Bank of America by Wachtell Lipton illustrates the point. Am Law Daily reports:

Amid the piles and piles of formerly privileged documents related to the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, there are a few notes and e-mails from mid-December 2008 showing that BofA’s lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz were saying very different things to their client and to federal regulators.

What dastardly double talk did Wachtell Lipton allegedly engage in? Corporate Counsel reports:

The e-mails show that early on the morning of December 19 [Wachtell litigation partner Eric Roth] advised the bank’s chief executive, Ken Lewis, and its interim general counsel, Brian Moynihan, on how difficult and financially risky it would be to try to invoke a so-called MAC — or material adverse change — clause, which would allow the bank to get out of the merger with Merrill.

But another e-mail from associate general counsel Teresa Brenner to Moynihan, sent several hours later and on the same day as Roth’s e-mail, says, “Eric made a very strong case as to why there was a MAC” during a conference call with some officials from the Federal Reserve.

J’accuse!

Pitchforks on parade after the jump.

Could the nomination of Judge Denny Chin (S.D.N.Y.) to the Second Circuit be derailed by his ruling in Chiscolm v. Bank of America?

Click on the link below to read about this lawsuit filed by an irate customer (or purported customer) of the banking giant.

Area Man Has One Month To Prove Why Bank Of America Owes Him 1,784 Billion, Trillion Dollars [Dealbreaker]

It’s legal, so it’s within our jurisdiction. But our sister sites have written it up already, so we’ll simply refer you to their coverage.

UBS is Naming Names (Finally) [Going Concern]
UBS Eagerly Pays Extortion Money [Dealbreaker]

* Obama made the order to close Guantanamo within a year and former U.S. attorney David Iglesias has been hired to prosecute suspected terrorists held at the prison. [The Associated Press]

* Caroline Kennedy withdrew her Senate bid, so all that press was much ado about nothing. [The New York Times]

* The Chinese court sentenced two to death and one to a life prison sentence for their role in the tainted milk scandal. [The International Herald Tribune]

* SCOTUS refused to reconsider COPA Wednesday, and agreed that a Massachusetts family could sue the school district for sex discrimination.[The Associated Press]

* A Bank of America shareholder is accusing the bank of withholding information about Merrill Lynch’s $15.3 billion in losses before the shareholders voted on its acquisition. [Bloomberg]

* Are you in DC and looking for something cool to do later tonight? Attend the talk and book signing for Professor Daniel Solove’s latest work, The Future of Reputation (previously discussed here). [Concurring Opinions]

* Are lawyers really a**holes? Or are they just doing their jobs? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Some thoughts on possibly increased bank regulation, from our colleague, John Carney: “Resistance to a new wave of banking regulation requiring bank breakups and dividing Wall Street according to regulatory fiats rather than market demand is likely to be weak in an era when many think the financial supermarket model has failed…. No one expends much time, money or energy defending a right to do something they don’t want to do anyway.” [DealBreaker]

* Don’t forget to vote for ATL! Even if you did so before, you can do so again — once every 24 hours, ending November 8th. [2007 Weblog Awards]

* The National Bank Act preempts state regulation of mortgage lenders, even those that are operating subsidiaries of banks and not banks themselves. [U.S. Supreme Court (PDF)]

* Payphone operators can sue for compensation from long-distance carriers. [U.S. Supreme Court (PDF)]

* Department of Education can use number of pupils rather than number of school districts in determining which districts to ignore as statistical outliers for the purposes of the Federal Impact Aid Program. [U.S. Supreme Court (PDF)]

* Let’s see whether this any impact on pork whatsoever. [Jurist]

* The loner gunman. [New York Times]

* Can an IP expert explain how it is legal for Blockbuster to use Netflix’s name in this promotion?
(And the promotion continues until December 24.) [PRNewswire - FirstCall via Yahoo! Finance]

* Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend’s dad — putting a face to those Nigerian e-mail scams. [ABC News]

* I would feel safer opening up one of those “Cash Your Check Without ID” storefronts between an adult video store and a pawnshop than cashing someone else’s check. [Consumer Law and Policy]

* I, for one, would rather have the monkeys than the rats. But, and I quote the Delhi High Court: “If you can’t control the monkeys, what can you do?” [Red Orbit]

* It’s just law school, not re-education camp. But I feel kind of inspired — f**k corporate law, I’m reclaiming my dream of banishing styrofoam from the earth once and for all. [Concurring Opinions]

The AEI panel discussion on Watters v. Wachovia Bank that we were liveblogging earlier has ended. Our quick thoughts on the question-and-answer session, after the jump.

The televised event that we put in a plug for earlier today is now underway, on C-Span. And it’s actually not just a conversation with Ted Frank (at right), much as we’d enjoy that. It’s a full-blown panel discussion, sponsored by AEI, on Watters v. Wachovia Bank, to be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow.

The topic — preemption of state banking regulation by federal banking law — is technical, complicated, and perhaps dry-seeming to some. But we’re tuned in, and finding it interesting. (Caveat: We may not be the typical viewer. We’re geekily fasincated by preemption, just as we are by ERISA, a statute that frequently raises preemption questions.)

We’re also enjoying the occasional camera shots of the audience. E.g., the woman in Kermit-the-Frog green, who was vigorously scratching her nose (and whose facial expression suggested she was oddly intrigued by the nasal itchiness).

When television cameras are in the room, you really must be on your best behavior.

More observations, after the jump.