Pros
1. You always know where your client is. Comes in especially handy on the day of trial.
2. No office drop ins.
3. You can see your client, sober (him not you) whenever you want.
Cons:
4. Most local jails are sieves. (I had 3-clients escape in a single month. It was getting embarrassing.
5. Corrections/Sherrif staff are often not exactly bubbling with charm.
Oh, you thought I actually cared about the clients?
So Lat launched a new podcast called "Original Jurisdiction" where he'll spend 40 minutes each week sucking up to a new lawyer or judge.
He launched this guaranteed bomb with an interview with Quinn Emanuel litigator Alex Spiro, which--in spite of Lat's drooling--wasn't that bad. Mr. Spiro is repping Elon in the Twitter thing.
Meanwhile back at ATL, Renwei did a boring interview with the lady who wrote the Netflix show "Partner Track" and dazzled by her success, has threatened to write his own Netflix series about his "life."
Finally the CA State Bar was shamed into investigating my arch-nemesis, celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos re how the money was spent from a multimillion-dollar insurance settlement related to the Armenian Genocide.
An investigation by the Los Angeles Times in March alleged that much of it went to luxury travel and “pet charities” of Geragos as well as his alma mater, Loyola Law School, where he wanted a hall named after his parents.
If Brittney Griner has established anything (apart from her athletic prowess and criminality), it is that she has no loyalty to anything, and is willing to go anywhere for money. These qualities are actually in demand in certain circles within the de facto Russian justice system, and might in fact be the key to BG's immediate release and proximate return to the razor's edge, high-dollar world of WNBA basketball.
Wagner Group is recruiting convicted criminals, openly and notoriously so, and BG is like their lost soul sister from another mother. Her personal qualities establish her as the recruiters' spiritual clone. With the slightest effort at communication, she should easily be able to make the draft and be out this very day, and on her way to combat in Ukraine. Six months, right? And that's the worst case, assuming she doesn't stab the mercenaries in the back too, and renegotiate with the Ukrainians for an early surrender at the moment her fellow mercenaries are counting on her for critical fire support. Then (six months or earlier betrayal) she is out of court and back on the court. I don't know who she hired to represent her, but the play is so obvious even a senile old lawyer from Delaware could see it. Probably. Possibly, anyhow, and in any event, it is the quick and certain way to accomplish her goals without all this diplomacy or having to count on the United States stuff.
But it may be time-limited. If Putin has one of those accidents like so many of his friends and supporters, the shot could be gone and the deal could be off the table. BG better jump on it while she can.
We all know that Joe Pa is eminently qualified to dispense advice to associates in big-law on how to advance their career. Which is what he does in his excellent article "It's Fine to Represent Oil Companies as an Associate"
His thesis is that, as a first year, you really are just following orders. Which is totally cool and absolves you of all guilt, if the premise is that the work of more senior folks is evil.
Moreover, he would like you to remember that "everyone deserves a lawyer" is just something guilty people say.
https://abovethelaw.com/2022/09/its-fine-to-represent-oil-companies-as-an-associate/
For the NCNC Crowd:
It's Fine To Represent Oil Companies As An Associate
Ethical questions rest on a sliding scale and this example seems very tilted to acceptable.
By JOE PATRICE
onSeptember 12, 2022 at 4:16 PM
Not that there aren’t situations where the justice system demands that litigants have competent, zealous representation — criminal defendants being the most obvious example — it’s that lawyers rarely deploy this as a spirited defense of Gideon, but as a vapid ethical shield to make their work drawing up commodities contracts for Vladimir Putin of a moral kind with exonerating innocent death row inmates.
It’s not.
Because even if everyone did deserve a lawyer for every legal issue under the sun, they certainly don’t deserve you to be their lawyer. You can take on whatever case you want, but everyone else is free to judge you for it and — most importantly — other clients are free to decide if they want to get mixed up with you for it.
The Ethicist feature in the New York Times Magazine just tackled this issue in the article “Is It OK to Take a Law-Firm Job Defending Climate Villains?” The piece concludes that it’s perfectly fine for the indebted law school graduate to take this Biglaw job.
And that’s right… but not necessarily for the reasons in the article.
Here’s the story:
While I entered law school hoping to work in the public interest, I now face the reality of paying back my loans. I took an internship at a big law firm where I am paid very well, and I’ve been invited to work for them once I graduate. The salary would be enough for me to pay off my loans, help my family and establish a basic standard of living for myself — plus maybe own a house or even save for retirement, which would be impossible for me on a public-interest or government salary.
Surprisingly, the ethics expert never points the finger at law schools in the response, though that’s definitely where I’m starting. Social media critics of this article blithely suggest that this working-class student facing $150K in debt could just go work for a public interest cause. Oh! It’s just that easy, huh?
Here in reality, law schools are outrageously too expensive. Complain that the schools are structurally designed to funnel students into corporate jobs in tacit cooperation with the major firms if you want, but that’s where we are. More loan forgiveness programs would be great, but my public interest friends struggled even with that help… it’s just not going to comfortably get over the hump created by the law school industrial complex. And not for nothing but public interest jobs are actually competitive! More competitive than catching on at a firm at some schools.
Frankly, the underlying article’s diversions into moral accounting and Peter Singer could be cut entirely in favor of a GIF of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting repeating “it’s not your fault” while handing Matt Damon a tuition bill.
This person has an offer in hand, doesn’t seem to have other options at the moment, and needs the money. That doesn’t excuse everything in this world, but it reduces a lot of the ethical weight in this equation.
Anyway, there’s an additional catch:
But the firm’s work entails defending large corporations that I’m ethically opposed to, including many polluters and companies that I feel are making the apocalyptic climate situation even worse. Even if I only stay at the firm for a short time to pay off my loans, I would be helping in these efforts for some time.
There’s a sliding scale when it comes to these questions and it depends on seniority, role, and the issue involved.
Normally when we talk about a lawyer’s responsibility for the client, we’re talking about partners. Agency matters. Partners can choose to turn down work, but associates can’t. Hanging out at a big firm for three or four years as the very definition of a cog in the wheel is not in the same complicity ballpark as winning the “poison death clouds are awesome” business.
Obviously juniors bear some measure of complicity, but they’re on the very lowest rung of the sliding scale. Which brings us to the next factor…
What is the attorney’s role? Litigators going to court to argue that people should just toughen up when their tap water catches fire are more compromised than someone drafting forward contracts so energy companies can play hot potato with ownership of future natural gas deliveries. In a vague way, all this work is “helping” the oil company, but it matters what brand of aid and comfort the associate offers. Critics seem to assume this graduate will be the villains from Erin Brockovich, when they could be writing up stock options clauses in executive agreements. There’s a LOT more of the latter work out there than the former.
Finally, the issue involved matters. Joining a voter suppression firm — ahem — where the firm’s courtroom antics directly deprive people of their rights is different than working with an energy company because — with a few exceptions like joining some SCOTUS bound assault on the Clean Air Act — the courts aren’t where most of this damage is done. The article kind of hints at this…
Even if what your clients are doing is legal, you may still feel uncomfortable supplying guidance and representation, because the activities shouldn’t be legal. We ought to have laws and regulations that treat the climate crisis with full seriousness, and we don’t.
Unfortunately, the author takes this in a “it’s not like the firm isn’t going to keep doing this work without you” direction. But the better takeaway is that outside of lobbying firms, the work being done for energy companies isn’t where the battle for climate justice is won or lost. Statutory and regulatory change is where it’s at.
This doesn’t alleviate the firm and its partners from bearing the full weight of judgment for doing this work, but a first-year associate, possibly doing generic corporate work, for a sector that will only be corralled by new laws not new lawsuits? Nah.
So, yes, it’s fine to spend a few years working for a firm representing climate villains. After that… consider your lateraling options.
Is It OK to Take a Law-Firm Job Defending Climate Villains? [New York Times Magazine]
As you may recall, Judge Kozinski was a really big fan of movies--so much that he insisted his female clerks watch along with him!-- so it's only fitting that his return to private practice involved a copyright infringement case about a flick; specifically Top Gun Maverick.
I heard about the case and downloaded the complaint. The name of the Plaintiff's second lawyer immediately caught my eye:
Alex Kozinski (S.B. # 66473) Huh! I wonder if Lat will write about this in his newsletter!
Here's the background of the lawsuit:
In 1983, a dude named Ehud Yonay wrote an article for California magazine called "Top Guns," a character-driven tale of two ambitious Navy fighter pilots. Paramount Pictures bought up the film rights, and three years later, in 1986, "Top Gun" came out. The rights to the article reverted back to the Yonays in January 2020.
Now Yonay's family say they own the copyright to the story and that Paramount is infringing on it.
In a shameless attempt to regain Twitter followers, Lat deviously had his gall bladder (whatever that is) removed today in a local hospital. He is fine and back home so we dont have to pray for him.
Meanwhile, I've been monitoring Elie's tweets regarding student loan forgiveness but he has been strangely silent. Hmmm. He sure wasn't silent in 2018:
"Some people might say it’s immoral to skip out on your debt obligations. I say it’s lunacy to wake up every day and go to a job you hate because of a bad financial decision you made in your early 20s or late-teens!
Your life as a “deadbeat” will not be easy… but at least it’ll be YOUR life, not the bank’s. I’m Haitian, and in my saddest moments I liked to think: “My ancestors didn’t stab their way out of bondage just so I can pay Citibank their vig.”
Finally, I'm watching "Partner Track on Netflix and its a total chick flick but manageable. i.e. everyone is super hot. Though a bit misleading: Apparently at firms that specialize in M&A, you can bill for time spent organizing the firm talent show!
For several days, the story of the horrific "Ku Klux Klan Plaque" at West Point's engineering building has been told and retold by the propagandists of our national media outlets. The linked example is ABC's effort, and may or may not undergo corrections as they begin to review reader comments.
The writer has included with the article an extreme enlargement of a small cameo, which, if presented in context would appear as a figure a few inches in size, on the lower left border of the central panel of three (3) large, eleven-by-five-foot bronze panels making up the overall bronze work under attack. Generally, the three panels depict many historical figures and scenes of the period known as the Reconstruction era, following the American Civil War.
Of course, the writer does not present the image in context, and does not disclose its minor scale and peripheral location in the overall work, but suggests it is the major subject of the work, and expressly refers to the overall work as a "KKK plaque" and "a plaque dedicated to the Ku Klux Klan." This is essentially a misrepresentation, as intentional as it is extensive, and borders upon complete fabrication.
The reason the media and its legion of unicorn riders find themselves unable to discredit blatant lies promulgated by political figures is that they do exactly this same sort of thing themselves, having no concept of accuracy, honesty, standards or ethics. This is one of the more recent examples, and would, at one time, have resulted in things like corrections, retractions and the separation from staff of unethical writers and editors. But, no more. They are what they are, and woe to any member of the public who counts on these weasels to "inform" him.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/panel-calls-removal-kkk-plaque-west-point-military/story?id=89162994
