October 8, 2023
October 3, 2023
September 28, 2023
New Trump criminal defense team
Donald Trump has added at least two veteran attorneys to help defend him in his multiple criminal cases.
Emil Bove, a former federal prosecutor who was co-chief of the national security unit at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, and Kendra Wharton, a seasoned white collar defense lawyer with Capitol Hill ties, have signed onto the legal team organized by Trump attorney Todd Blanche.
Via Politico
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/26/trump-criminal-defense-team-prosecutor-00118258
September 1, 2023
August 31, 2023
August 9, 2023
The Stork Visited Lat Again--via Colorado
It's pretty clear from the picture posted on Instagram (link below) that hubby Zach was responsible for this one.
Below is the official baby announcement; apparently the stork got some help from a married (!) lady in Wyoming who got hauled to Colorado to have the kid. Not sure why? This kid must have cost a fortune.
"Zach and I are delighted to announce the birth of Chase Baron Lat-Shemtob on Monday, July 17, at 10:46 p.m. (MDT). He weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces, and measured 19.5 inches in length. He is doing well, as are his Papa (me), Daddy (Zach), and big brother Harlan."
"We are grateful beyond words to our incredible surrogate, Holly, for her selflessness. We are also profoundly thankful to her husband Josh and their two boys for their support over the past year. Holly is at home in Wyoming and recovering well."
"Like his big brother Harlan, Chase was born in the great state of Colorado—specifically, the lovely and historic city of Fort Collins. We are grateful to all four of our parents, Chase and Harlan's grandparents, who flew out to the Centennial State for Chase's birth and to help us out during that challenging first week."
July 24, 2023
My Job is Safe from AI...For Now
So my firm has quietly cancelled sending out a Policy on Uses of Artificial Intelligence they had promised clients, hoping everyone will forget we ever mentioned it.
It's not happening for the obvious reason: we have no idea how we'll use AI, plus we cant afford it anyway
Besides, the only response we'd get from clients is "Does this mean your hourly rates will go down?" So we dont want to open that can of worms.
As a Luddite-Millennial, this is fine since I need a job and cant compete with A1 who is never hungover, try as I may to get ChatGTP drunk.
Mercifully, I dont see how mid size firms will be able to afford AI --and still keep all firm & client information on their servers.
Apparently uploading all the contracts on our network created in the last 5 (10?) years and letting LawGpt study them--will cost millions. Plus we'll need someone to weed out the crap.
Not gonna happen anytime soon
July 12, 2023
Redux: O Rare Partner Emeritus
If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. [Y]ou cannot avoid the essence of my character if you aspire to succeed... I or some form of my embodiment will exist to make your existence as uncomfortable and unpleasant as it can be. Welcome to the legal profession you self-entitled nimrods have created.--Partner Emeritus, Above The Law, 2009
‘O Rare Ben Jonson’
--Words on the gravesite slab of eccentric English dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637) in Westminster Abbey. Jonson also was buried upright.
Twenty-five years ago, before The Great Neutering, before attorney gene pools started to dilute, when service professionals were well-rounded, if not classically-educated Renaissance people, when it meant a great deal to be a lawyer, and indeed to be a man, we had practitioners like Partner Emeritus. That is the nom de plume of a retired Brahmin New York City lawyer with an impressive following on the internet and who many culturally illiterate people--i.e., most lawyers these days (sorry, but that is the perfect truth)--apparently simply do not get. He's intimidating and spine-tinglingly scary to the maggotry, a comedic genius and WASP Yoda to the urbane.
Whoever he is--I sense pretty much everything about the way he portrays himself is authentic save his real name--PE has been there and done that (his legal breadth intrigues me) in upper-tier corporate law. And, perhaps, in life. Like me, he is an accomplished and unapologetic philanderer. A cad. Color him, too, a bit picaresque. Well-read. Well-traveled. He acquired and trained two Afghan show hounds. He even played polo, for fuck's sake. And like me, he does love the law, and this profession, which he worries about. Partner Emeritus is also an accomplished satirist. A Lenny Bruce for those with Mayflower DNA. Governor-for-Life of Upper Caucasia. A Dean Swift for modern Manhattan.
PE entertains in two distinct, interchanging, modes. You commend his taste, and judgment, when he shifts gears from Satirist to Learned Critic. (You don't know when that is? That shifting? Your problem. Start getting a real education by attending the theatre, visiting art museums and reading Tom Jones, Candide, Huckleberry Finn. Devour Miller, Kubrick, Pope, Orwell. Behold Nabokov, Heller, Huxley, Mencken. View Pieter Bruegel. Listen to Gilbert & Sullivan. Will take years--but it's worth it.) Ninety-five percent of the time--no, I do not agree with his every assessment--he's right on the money about people, places and things. His writing is art. Class art. Informed art. Funny art. He disturbs, and brilliantly.
PE's best gift? It is his instinct for detecting two related (I think) qualities he detests: hypocrisy and mediocrity.
Watch him each week expose the growing cadre of bad actors--i.e., twinkies, teacups, imposters, poseurs, plagiarists, thieves--who regularly shill on ATL's eclectic pages, Partner Emeritus has an instinct for the jugular that is dead-on, lightning fast and funny. If you think--and not merely react--you will learn something. You may feel a bit uncomfortable about how you stack up in this universe. But you should learn something about yourself. Otherwise, try not to blow a tube, or pull a hamstring, laughing.
You can read him and howl along with me most weekdays to his comments to certain articles at Above the Law. For many people, PE is the best thing about David Lat's celebrated and storied website. Excerpts from one wistful ATL comment last week:
Prior to owning a 1981 DeLorean DMC 12, I owned a gorgeous 1979 BMW M1. One Saturday, while my wife was with her family at Martha's Vineyard, I took my car into the city and decided to visit the old Copacabana. There, I met a woman named "Sophia." We drank Dom Perignon and danced Salsa and some disco (I was a maven on the dance floor and could have given John Travolta a run for his money during his "Saturday Night Fever" phase). During that evening, Sophia slipped a drug into my drink. The next thing I know, I woke up with a throbbing headache and my lower body was in pain. Apparently, I had crashed my vehicle into a divider on the Long Island Expressway and Sophia was unconscious next to me. A police cruiser drove by and stopped. I explained to the officer that I had been drugged by the latina woman next to me and that she had robbed me (I made sure to place my wallet in her purse before she regained consciousness).
We were taken to the local police station where I filed a report against Sophia. My BMW M1 was totaled and impounded. After a few hours, Sophia and I were awkwardly outside the police station at 5AM. I was in excruciating pain but I had hungry eyes for her so I brokered a deal with Sophia. I offered to drop the charges against her if she agreed to get in a cab with me and go back to my estate and make love to me. She agreed. I will never forget that night. I should have gone to an emergency room (pro-tip: cocaine is more effective at numbing pain than morphine) but all I could think of was being with Sophia, who resembled a young Maria Conchita Alonso.
What I would do to be 37 again.
There are times when I think whether I regret that night. A vintage 1979 BMW M1 would fetch me a cool $750K today but then I would have no memory of Sophia. You could say Sophia was probably one of the most expensive hookers in the history of mankind (despite that my insurance carrier covered the NADA value of that beast of a vehicle at the time, it did not compensate me for the future vintage value of that car which I believe only 500 were made), well next to the women who divorce their wealthy husbands and take them to the cleaners.
Note: Original post July 6, 2015
June 29, 2023
On the Death Knell of Affirmative Action
As you've probably read (if not, you can do so here), the Supreme Court pretty much ended affirmative action in college admissions today by a 6-3 vote. Although not a plurality opinion, the long-ass majority opinion by Roberts, comparatively brief concurring opinion by Gorsuch (which I actually found helpful), rambling stream-of-consciousness concurring opinion by Thomas (which reads like what I'd imagine James Joyce would have written had he been in the Federalist Society and on cocaine), lengthy emotional dissent by Kagan, and a heavy-on-results light-on-the-law dissent from Jackson, there's a lot to unpack.
The result isn't a surprise. What did come as a surprise was the peek behind the curtain into Harvard's admissions. Applicants are initially scored 1-6 (with 1 being the highest) on 6 categories: academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal, and overall. The opinion doesn't say but I think it's safe to assume that the majority of the applicants are 17-18 years old. I guess when you're perceived as the "best" university every applicant who has any chance at admission is going to have near-perfect academic credentials but, JFC, what happened to letting kids enjoy their childhood? I guess this explains why (with one singular exception), everyone I've ever met who went to Harvard is fucking weird.
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