Former senior partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis Theodore Freedman becomes yet another miscreant who should have, as a lawyer, known that federal prosecutors were gunning for him. Yet, he, like famous criminal defense attorney in Connecticut Mickey Sherman, played cute with the taxes.
The NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL reports that Freedman has entered a guilty plea to four counts of under-reporting about $2 million in taxable income between 2001 and 2004. Each count carries the possibility of three years in prison. Sherman, who had defended Kennedy relative Michael Skakel, had been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for not paying the full amount of tax due the federal government. Instead it seems he used those funds to finance the good life on the Gold Coast of CT.
One wonders what thinking processes go into lawyers' decisions to not pay up their taxes. Is it their perception of themselves as the smartest kids in the room who can fool the IRS? And or is it a sense of entitlement that they work very hard so they deserve to enjoy all their money and not share it with the U.S. government?
Tax violations are not the only reason lawyers wind up in prison. Anyone who follows the legal media has observed how many of them seem to get into trouble most of us ordinary people don't. A compelling journalism project would be to interview the convicted lawyers and probe what led up to running against the wind.
Comments