Law And More

Just how global are global U.S. law firms?

The last I heard of Jones Day's Mickey Pohl, he was globe-trotting to oversee the international product-liability practice of his law firm.  Seems his network includes Prince Charles. 

But we have to wonder how really global is the reach of U.S. law firms which position themselves as international?  Well, according to THE ECONOMIST, they have managed to pull that off pretty well.  Given the cunning of lawyers, they can penetrate and make themselves at home in many legal systems.  A useful read on that may be David B. Goldman's GLOBALISATION AND THE WESTERN LEGAL TRADITION. It captures what it calls "the recurring patterns of law and authority."

However, there have been fortresses which even the most clever attorneys haven't been able to get into. One, says THE ECONOMIST, is India.  That's no newsflash since we all know that those Indian lawyers have carved out a nice niche for themselves in outsourcing.  Actually, they have expanded that to process management, which is plenty more threatening.

Another relatively protected area is Canada.  That's a shame since right now the economy of Canada is the envy of the world.  Canada didn't sell off mortgages and have them cut up into bits and pieces.  So, it's thriving economically.

Meanwhile, U.S. attorneys who want to protect their business in places like New York don't have a prayer.  Anyone from anywhere who has a green card and a New York license to practice can do just that. 

Generations Y & X: Encountering Black Swan of Over-Education

Olufemi Nicol, whose saga Elie Mystal recounts in Abovethelaw.com, could be the clear sign of the Black Swan throwing Generations Y and X into upheaval.  In this situation, that Black Swan is extreme over-education.  As Nassim Taleb describes Black Swan in his best-seller by that title, it's an unexpected development which has unexpected profound impacts.

Nicol graduated from law school in 1994.  He later began to matriculate for his MBA.  Optimistic like most who travel the road of over-education, Nicol probably never anticipated he would bounce up against joblessness.  That he did when his law firm DLA Piper laid off 80 lawyers in February 2009.  Now, the Illinois Administrator has filed a complaint against him for failing to repay student loans for his MBA. 

Some say Nicol is the poster child for the debt from excessive higher education.  I disagree.  More to the point, he is the poster child for that excessive higher education per se.  The guy started out with a Bachelor's degree.  Then he went on to a law degree.  As if that wasn't enough, he then went for a graduate business degree.

That excessive higher education might start right at plans to obtain that entry-level undergraduate degree.  As the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports, by graduation, only one-fourth of the Class of 2010 had jobs.  There's more.  As if that wasn't a wake-up call about the marketability of higher education, 28% of that Class of 2010 are going straight to master's programs.  That's up form 23% from before the recent downturn.

The current solution to joblessness is more education.  And this isn't only in the U.S.   Globally in developed economies, graduates in most fields are having difficulty finding work.  Will Generations Y and X, at least the highly educated members of it, be the first totally unemployable ones around the world?

"Possible to care too much," David Dow in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION

It's obvious that David Dow is one of those death-row attorneys who he classifies as caring too much.  But, that kind of excess, while hard on his family, is exactly what the legal system and his clients need. In his 2010 book THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION, Dow captures the drama and heartbreak involved in the death penalty. 

Most of the cases he describes in the book, his team at the Texas Defender Service loses.  The most poignant, and unexpected, is that of a man he calls Henry Quaker.   His estranged wife and two children had been murdered.  Of course, he was the prime suspect.  Poor, his legal representation was dismal.  Even the guards in the prison are rooting for at least a stay of execution.  It's not to be.

How Dow, who is also a professor at the Houston Law Center, manages to continue his work at the Texas Defender Service is one of those great unknowns - except to those dedicated to a craft.  Writers like myself keep at despite all the rejection and the reality that we could be earning a lot of money doing something else.  Call it compulsion, the kind that keeps us whole, although off-center.

My hunch is that part of Dow's agenda in publishing this book is to provide a sophisticated and emotionally riveting entreaty against the death penalty.  As protesters outside the prison on an execution night contend, it makes no sense to kill a human being even if that person has killed.

For those contemplating criminal law, this is a must-read.

Using law as game-changer: Right on, Sherrod

So, it isn't all that different from the '60s.  Again, law is being used to, as we used to say, change the system.  And the system which will be surely changed is right-wing media.

Shirley Sherrod has announced, reports GAWKER's Jim Newell, she "will sue the conservative malice-blogger Andrew Breitbart ... for publishing a misleadingly edited clip of a speech she gave which made her, and the NAACP, look racist."

It was this trust in law to address wrongs that drove a generation of Baby Boomers to law school.  Eventually, at age 40, I caught up with them and high-tailed it to Harvard Law. There I quickly saw that law was essentially not a game-changer but a game whose rules could be continually reset by the most clever.  So, I high-tailed it out. 

My belief now?  It's the shrewd personal poise of the Alicias, as on "The Good Wife," that can change everything - personal, professional, national, global.  Persona is all.  Had Sherrod a more formidable mode of presentation of self, would they have gone after her? 

The Street: Can it wipe out street language?

On "Today," the teenager being interviewed uses the word "cunt."  On Abovethelaw.com, head writer Elie Mystal frequently uses phrase "blowing smoke up my ass." On Gawker.com, Max Read describes an irony with "I shit you not."  Will all that soon become an anachronism?  Could be, thanks to the power of The Street.

Goldman Sachs issued an internal edict.  Like Martin Luther nailing his manifesto to the church door and sweeping in the Protestant Revolution, this mandate could change rhetorical history. After hearing the term "shitty deal" from one of its emails being read over and over again on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the powers-that-be at Goldman Sachs got it.  That "it" was that it was likely a tone/attitude smoking gun to have street language in its emails.  Therefore, from hence forth, its employees cannot use profanity in email.

Welcome back the repressed expressions of the Victorian Age.  Instead of a "shitty deal," we will be discussing "a transaction that was deemed disappointing, from a number of perspectives."

Here my new book highlights the correlation - but maybe not cause and effect relationship - between language and professional success.  The book is OVER-50: HOW WE KEEP WORKING.  Available in paperback, it can be ordered online.  Although targeted at Baby Boomers, it's a usual read also for Gens Y and X.  You can download free its Preface, Introduction, and Table of Contents Download Over50prefaceintrotoc.

Gardner, MA News Opening: You might switch from corporate to criminal law

Now this is an adventure.  The ad for this opening on THE GARDNER NEWS reads:

"The Gardiner News, the daily hometown newspaper of North Central Massachusetts, is looking for a cops/courts reporter to fill an impending vacancy on our news staff.  The cops/court beat - which also entails covering the town of Winchendon - is one of the more active and visible at our paper."

Here are the details and how to apply.

China: Death Penalty for Bribing Officials

Corrupt folks in the U.S. should be thankful they don't reside in China.  There bribing an official carries the sentence of the death penalty. 

Since human beings, as Shakespeare pointed out in his history plays, tend to be "cankered in the grain" or venal, it's no surprise that China executes more people than all other countries combined. Reformers are looking into this but good luck. 

When plaintiff lawyer Bill Marler of Marler Clark was in China delivering a seminar during the melamine contamination crisis he noted how lucky we are to have the sophisticated, relatively fair legal system we do.  Irony or coincidence, Marler's focus was on  introducing Chinese businesspeople and government to U.S. product liability law.  Some of that melamine did get into food exported to the U.S.

Here is the latest survey from Amnesty International on the use of the death penalty around the world.

Lawyers getting $45/hr for doc reviews: That's classy compared to speechwriters offered UP TO $19/hr

Lawyers, you have no monopoly on denigration through low compensation for your special skills.  That $45 per hour for document reviews looks classy compared to the UP TO $19 PER HOUR for temporary work as a speechwriter in Washington DC.  Yes, Washington D.C., not a small city in Montana which has heard there are such entities called "speechwriters." 

Beacon Hill Staffing Group positions itself as setting "a new standard in search, career placement and flexible staffing."  It has posted an ad on Craigslist for a temporary hire who will "prepare speeches, remarks, bullet points, talking points, and press releases for Officers of the [trade association] and for the Vice President of Public Affairs."

The lucky professional who is hired, reads the ad, "will allow you to make money, use your skill sets, create relationships, take advantage of networking, and flexibility to continue a permanent job search!"  The exclamation point is theirs, honest.

That professional who is hired must have "2-3 years experience."

The last time there was a search for a speechwriter by a reputable headhunter firm in the New York Metro area the ballpark fee was about $90 an hour.  I usually bill that or $100 a minute for spoken text.

Incidentally, lawyers, Beacon Hill Staffing Group also has a branch: Beacon Hill Legal.  You can learn much more by visiting www.beaconhillsg.com. 

Petrocelli files request for Skilling to be out on bail

Conrad Black is out on bail, so why not Jeff Skilling.  Today, the former Enron executive's lawyer Daniel Petrocelli filed a request that his client be released on bail as the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans reconsiders his conviction.  As many remember, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed both the convictions of Black and Skilling.  In both cases they ruled the men had been convicted, reports BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK, "under an invalid legal theory that bars honest services fraud." Petrocelli notes that Skilling isn't a flight risk.

What some of us following the Enron meltdown and subsequent trials might remember most is the poignant story of Skilling's considering suicide.  That struck home with most of those in legal services where the suicide rate is significantly higher than in the general population.  When the U.S. Supreme Court made their ruling about Skilling on June 24 of this year, Skilling was probably relieved that he hadn't checked out. 

Black is an author and a book reviewer.  Skilling, if he decides he's not an author, might hire a ghostwriter to describe his bottom and why he decided to not commit suicide.  That could be useful to all of us who are plagued with suicidal ideation, come from families in which suicide is common, or have a law colleague who crossed that line between hope and despair - or madness.

Social Media: One of the issues it raises

We are just figuring out social media.  One of the issues it raises is the possible confusion about roles.  Say an employee of an organization also operates a blog as a private citizen.  The content of the blog has a relationship to the mission of the organization. 

That seems to be the ambiguity concerning the two identities of John E. West.  He is both an employee of the Department of Defense [DOD] and the Editor of InsideHPC, which focuses on supercomputing.  The DOD deals with supercomputers. 

I published an article about the question of a possible conflict of interest.  Here you can read it.  Mr. West contacted me by email, stating that the article allegedly involves defamation.  I don't agree.  I gave him the opportunity to present his point of view.  I sent him email questions. 

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Here are those questions and answers:

JG:  You say that there is a misunderstanding of your association with the publication versus your employment as a Department of Defense employee;

JW: The article alleges that InsideHPC is a direct activity of the Department of Defense, to whit: "That is the situation in the DOD publication of InsideHPC.com [Sic]."  This is just unsupportable by the facts. As indicated in the footer of every web page on the site, InsideHPC is produced by the privately held company indigoBit, LLC.  There is simply no evidence or credible explanation for that the DOD's interests would be in a) producing such a publication or b) obfuscating that fact from the public.

JG: Does it not confuse the public to have you in both roles, even though you might keep a firewall between them?

JW: This is a separate issue from the erroneous assertion that drives the article, namely that InsideHPC is an official activity of the DOD.

However to address your specific question, the facts of my various associations have been reviewed by the appropriate legal entities within the Department, and the Department has agreed to let me pursue this activity with appropriate firewalls in place.  As you can see by the comments left on your original article at Supercomputing Online, my various roles within the community are well understood, and as is well indicated by the fact that we are having this conversation.  I am both careful in my actions and very available to answer questions about the relationship.  If a perception of a conflict of interest arises that impairs my ability to perform my duties I will resolve it by reusing myself from one of the conflicting roles, in consultation with counsel.

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Many more of these kinds of questions about a possible conflict of interest will arise in the future.  Players can prevent them by not taking on roles which could be perceived as a possible conflict of interest.

I want to make clear here: InsideHPC is not an official publication of the DOD. 

I will post this interview on the comment section of the article.  I will send it to Mr. West.  After that, I request him not to contact me again, in any media.  To do so will constitute what I perceive as harassment.