Earlier today, the former top brass at the prosecutor’s office for Arizona’s largest county felt the long arms of the law pick them up, shake them hard, and toss them out the building.
The former Maricopa County attorney and one of his deputies were disbarred for a strikingly long list of ethical violations (a second deputy’s law license was suspended as well). What did they allegedly do? And did they show any remorse to their alleged victims?
Without further ado, let’s learn the scandalous story behind our ex-lawyers of the day….
Some people, once they have been defeated, simply give up and fade into the cold, dark night. But others refuse to lie down and be devoured by wolves. Like Liam Neeson, they tape broken bottles to their fingers and strap their hunting knives to their frostbitten hands and fight until there’s nothing left.
A now ex-lawyer from Maryland seems to fall under that second category. She seems to have tried every trick in the book (and several not in the book) to fight getting disbarred.
It didn’t work. And now she’s on the receiving end of an absolutely vicious benchslap.
Was our ex-lawyer of the day unethical? Perhaps. Unprofessional? Maybe. But you can’t say she didn’t try…
We continue our occasional series on Ex-Lawyers of the Day, with this interesting email from a Biglaw tipster:
In the interest of lawyers turned novelists turned vigilantes — this is for all of us who have received several calls an hour from headhunters — the email below deserves a mention in your blog.
Rudy Delson is a former Simpson attorney who left law firm life for fairer pastures in Brooklyn to write a novel. His book is being published today. There are lawyers in the book. I understand it may even be literature.
Here’s an explanatory email, from Delson to our tipster:
So, check this out. When I worked at Simpson, I saved the email address of every headhunter who ever contacted me. And then this morning, I was able to send them this…
Rudy Delson’s blast email / spam to the headhunters, after the jump.
As Clarence Darrow once said, “Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.” Indeed, many lawyers harbor frustrated creative ambitions. Sure, they went to law school, and now they’re out practicing. But they could have been novelists, or painters, or pastry chefs.
Or successful jazz musicians. From NJ.com:
Joshua Redman is quite the brainy guy, who very easily could have been some hot-shot attorney — or judge, perhaps?– living lavishly in New York City.
But the music bug took a big bite out of the summa cum laude Harvard grad, who scored a perfect 180 on his Law School Admissions Test to earn entrance into Yale Law School.
“I had moved to New York City and was on my way to law school,” Redman says. “But during that year I had this incredible opportunity to play with some great musicians. The encouragement and support I got from them motivated me to continue. So, I decided not to go to law school.”
And he’s never looked back:
Almost 16 years later, it isn’t a decision the acclaimed saxophonist has regretted.
“I probably wouldn’t have been such a good lawyer,” he jokes. “At the time, I essentially went to law school because, like others, I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
We can relate — and we’re guessing that many of you can, too. Law school was once described to us by Tony Kronman, then the Dean of Yale Law School, as “the great American default option.” He added that law school is a popular path for smart and motivated young people “who can’t stand the sight of blood.”
So why did you go to law school? Are the reasons that you articulated for going — in, say, your law school application essays — ones that continue to motivate you today? Are you happy with your decision? He’s smart enough to skip law, and choose music [Hudson County Now via NJ.com] Do You Believe in Life After Law? [New York Observer]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Earlier today, the former top brass at the prosecutor’s office for Arizona’s largest county felt the long arms of the law pick them up, shake them hard, and toss them out the building.
