If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. From our sister site, Going Concern:
[A] judge in Seattle has allowed a revised lawsuit to proceed that lists “Washington Mutual officers and directors, underwriters, and the auditing firm Deloitte & Touche” as defendants.
The revised lawsuit was trimmed down to a “concise” 267 pages from the original 388 that the judge described as “verbose” and “disorganized”.
“Verbose” and “disorganized” would also describe many lawyers we know. On the defense side, though, it’s an all-star cast. From Am Law Litigation Daily:
The lineup for the defendants includes Simpson Thacher & Bartlett attorneys Barry Ostrager and Rob Pfister for former WaMu officers; Ronald Berenstain of Perkins Coie for former WaMu outside directors; Barry Kaplan of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati for former WaMu CEO Kerry Killinger; Peter Wald of Latham & Watkins for Deloitte; and Jonathan Dickey of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher for the underwriters.
Last month, Simpson Thacher announced a new public service fellowship program. The move was widely praised as a creative, public-spirited way of dealing with the downturn.
Some commenters wondered whether it reflected work slowness at Simpson. If STB is willing to let 15 junior associates go off and do public interest work for a year, could it mean that there isn’t enough work to go around?
In the corporate department, maybe; but apparently not in litigation. Check out this email from litigation department head Barry Ostrager (he of the poor bathroom etiquette):
In this slow economy, billing over eight hours a day might seem… harsh. Is it fair for STB litigators to stay at work until 10, while the private-equity folks leave by 6?
If you’re a Simpson associate, however, you should refrain from complaint. Instead, after getting staffed on doc review for some stupid reinsurance case, email Barry O. and say: “Thank you sir, may I have another?”
* Barry Ostrager of Simpson Thacher bills out at $1,000 an hour? Well, just keep him away from your bathroom. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Eager to soak the rich (hedge fund kings)? Good luck with that. [DealBreaker]
* Remember the wacky Stephen Dunne, who blames the gays for his bar failure? Not being admitted may be the least of his problems. [Keeping Up With Jonas]
* A funny parody? Or a disturbingly accurate account of how the law review submission process works? [Concurring Opinions]
* Truth in advertising? This was probably well-intentioned, but ultimately unwise. [copyranter]
* Voting irregularities: not limited to “coolest law school” contests. [Machinist]
* Last Tuesday, a civil action captioned Aaron Brett Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP was filed in New York Supreme Court — and the world of Biglaw has never been the same ever since. Click here to access the complete archives of our Aaron Charney coverage.
* Of course, Sullivan & Cromwell partners aren’t the only bosses who are jerks challenging (allegedly).
* Don’t forget the Divine Miss C, Shanetta Cutlar, whose delicious reign continues over at the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section.
Compared to Aaron Charney and Shanetta Cutlar, other topics pale by comparison. But here are other highlights from the past week in legal news:
* Charles “Cully” Stimson apologizes for ranking on Gitmo lawyers.
* In New Orleans, trials get rescheduledfor football.
* Barry Ostrager of Simpson Thacher, the renowned business litigator, has poor bathroom manners (or aim).
* The justices of the Michigan Supreme Court just can’t stop squabbling.
* Now we know the real reason — or rather, the 25 million reasons — that the Dewey Ballantine / Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe merger was scuttled.
* Third Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell, who also serves as the First Lady of Pennsylvania, sings a duet with Jon Bon Jovi. We don’t know whether to be delighted or frightened.
From the “it can happen to anyone” file, the Second Circuit dismisses a cross-appeal by Travelers Insurance Company because its law firm filed the notice of appeal one day late. After the losing party in the district court filed a notice of appeal, Travelers had 14 days to file its notice of cross-appeal. However, the firm calculated the 14 days from the date it received the notice, not from the date the notice was actually filed. The district court denied Traveler’s motion to extend the deadline by one day, explaining that this was a case of “garden variety attorney inattention” and not excusable neglect. The Second Circuit affirms (PDF).
The law firm that made this rookie mistake was one of the whitest of the white shoes, the venerable Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. The partners on the brief have stunning resumes, and the fifth-year associate has done plenty of litigating, given that he is admitted to practice in three jurisdictions and thirteen courts. So, yes, it can happen to anyone. (And in case you’re wondering, no, STB did not reject me.)
Decision of the Day is too nice to name the STB lawyers on the brief, but we have no such qualms. These are matters of public record. The attorneys who screwed up here are partner Barry R. Ostrager, partner Andrew T. Frankel, and associate Robert J. Pfister.
Barry Ostrager, by the way, is routinely named as one of the country’s top business litigators and trial lawyers. See, e.g., here, here, and here. He’s not particularly nice; as one litigator diplomatically observed, Ostrager “doesn’t suffer from the need to be loved.” But he has been very successful for his clients.
Given Ostrager’s stellar reputation, this latest defeat is particularly embarrassing. It’s one thing when you litigate a case as best you can, then lose because the law just isn’t on your side. It’s another thing when a federal trial judge finds you guilty of “garden variety attorney inattention,” and then an appeals court affirms, holding that your “attorney inadvertence” — a charitable phrasing — does not constitute “excusable neglect.” Great litigators, after all, are supposed to be careful, attentive, and detail-oriented.
But this is not Barry Ostrager’s only lapse. His failure to pay attention to detail extends to the men’s room — as we have had the misfortune of observing, firsthand.
Read all about it, if you dare — don’t say we didn’t warn you — after the jump.
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. From our sister site, Going Concern:
