Oh no, he's back...

From the Daily News this morning:

Disbarred lawyer C. Vernon Mason - a civil rights leader at the heart of the Tawana Brawley case - is on the transition team for Manhattan District Attorney-elect Cy Vance.

Mason, who lost his law license for mistreating poor clients, is among 35 advisers who will help shape policy and prosecutions.

A grand jury later concluded Brawley fabricated the story. In 1998, Mason, Sharpton and activist Alton Maddox lost a defamation suit brought by prosecutor Stephen Pagones, whom they falsely accused in the Brawley case.

Mason was ordered to pay $185,000 in damages, a debt that has not been paid, said Pagones, 48, who runs a private investigation firm.

Oh, yeah, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that this gentleman should be influencing policy and prosecutions at the Manhattan DA’s office. 

Perhaps you’re a little fuzzy on the Brawley case? Check this out.  My favorite part of the decision:

For the reasons noted above, as well as many others reflected in the record, Mason and Maddox failed in a lengthy trial, with full opportunity to present evidence and to cross-examine witnesses, to establish the truth of Brawley’s allegations. Quite to the contrary, after a thorough review of the evidence, the jury determined that plaintiff had proved the falsity of Brawley’s allegations against him by clear and convincing evidence, an extremely heavy burden of proof.

One thing is certain, that Brawley did not foresee that Mrs. Joyce Lloray, a neighbor, would be observing her sneak around the corner of the building opposite the Lloray apartment, climb into the garbage bag and lie down. Mrs. Lloray was judged by this Court and obviously by the trial jury as well as the Grand Jury to be an extremely credible witness with no reason to testify to anything other than what she saw and observed. It was her call to the Dutchess County Sheriff, out of concern for Brawley’s welfare, which detailed her observations. These observations were entered in the Sheriff’s official records for anyone to see who took the time to request a copy of the Sheriff’s report, a public record. Mr. Lloray, her husband, testified that when he went to Brawley, she looked at him and then closed her eyes.

8am

Unemployment really more like 20%...

From a New York Times article today:

With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.

In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

As the article goes on to say, in places like California and Rhode Island that number does exceed 20%.

Wow.

Meanwhile, according to The American Lawyer, the legal services sector continued to lose jobs:

The legal sector wasn’t spared. When data is seasonally adjusted, the legal field shed another 5,800 jobs in October. When not seasonally adjusted, the legal industry actually gained 1,500 jobs, but that’s likely a result of summer associates being weaned from law firm payrolls. (Click here for the BLS report, The Employment Situation: October 2009.)

In September, seasonally adjusted BLS data showed the legal sector losing 2,000 jobs.

After flat-lining for a few months, law firm layoffs continued apace in October, with Cooley Godward Kronish getting things started by letting go of 58 staffers. That was followed by Foley & Lardner cutting 39 lawyers, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr shedding 57 staff members, and Drinker Biddle & Reath letting go of 22 associates and switching to a merit-based compensation system.

And, finally, Manny Ramirez exercised his $20M option for 2010 today.  (He’s a really, really good hitter.) 

11pm

Poor Ropes & Gray...

This tidbit from the New York Post today regarding the insider trading allegations pending against former Ropes & Gray attorney Arthur Cutillo:

Ropes & Gray was caught off-guard yesterday by the arrests.

Cutillo, who worked in the firm’s intellectual property group, is no longer with the firm, an insider said.

“We are deeply disappointed to learn about this situation, which suggests an extreme breach of this person’s duty of trust to our clients and to the firm,” the company said in a statement, adding that it was “cooperating fully with authorities.”

Legal experts say Ropes & Gray risks losing clients, given sky-high expectations for legal professionals to remain tight-lipped. Among the firms that allegedly had their deals leaked through Cutillo were private equity bigwigs Silver Lake, Bain Capital and TPG Capital.

“If you’re a private equity firm and doing business with Ropes & Gray, you’ve got to be thinking, ‘Were my deals compromised, too?’ ” said one private equity executive.

Still, two of the PE firms named yesterday told The Post they plan to stick with Ropes & Gray, attributing the problem to an errant employee.

By the way, here is what appears to be Cutillo’s former profile on the Ropes & Gray site, kindly cached by Yahoo! for your enjoyment.  Apparently he graduated with high honors from Rutgers before attending Villanova Law, and at some point worked at Merck & Co. where he supervised vaccine production.

Which is kind of scary.

Anyway, the moral of the story, I guess, for all of you white shoe hiring partners: hire Ivy, much safer that way.   

9pm

My father told me this a long time ago...

he was right.

merlin:

Top 1 Habits of Amazing Writers

1. They write.

Via kung fu grippe

8pm

I like this one…

jessicabigarel:

this feels right.

all my friends by broken social scene

Via Jessica Bigarel

8pm

Lawyers Gone Wild redux...

This is getting a little ridiculous now, isn’t it?  What is happening?

Ropes & Gray attorney charged with insider trading in Galleon case:

The broadest of the complaints names seven defendants, including Arthur J. Cutillo, a lawyer at the prestigious firm of Ropes & Gray, who is accused of offering tips on impending takeovers that the firm worked on. The tips were then passed among a group of lawyers and traders. Some members of the ring were paid off in cash, according to the complaint…

Lawyer pleads guilty in “pump and dump” case:

Robert Brown, a former partner at New York’s Reitler Brown & Rosenblatt (now Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt), agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for hiding what he knew about a “pump and dump” scheme involving an unnamed investment firm in Newport Beach, Calif. According to documents filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Brown also helped an executive from the firm, as well as the chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors of a Chinese company, fraudulently transfer more than $25 million through a series of shell companies into accounts they controlled.

Lawyer implicated in $50 million kickback scheme:

A banner week for lawyers behaving badly got even more interesting on Tuesday when Troutman Sanders real estate practice chair Leonard Grunstein was named in a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in Boston.

The complaint alleges that Grunstein, wealthy real estate investor Rubin Schron and investment banker Murray Forman participated in a scheme to accept $50 million in kickbacks from Covington, Ky.-based pharmaceutical vendor Omnicare in order to provide services to a nursing-home company called Mariner Health Care in which the three men are principals.

8pm

Bizarre study of the day...strike that, the year...

From the Daily News, one of the more unexpected and obscure concepts to turn into a study:

The study, led by economist Bentley Coffey of Clemson University in South Carolina, looked at the relationship between a person’s success in the legal profession, and their ultimately becoming a judge, and how masculine their name is.

The study found by hypothesizing and using a series of equations that a female “Cameron” is about three times more likely to become a judge than a “Sue,” while a female “Bruce” is five times more likely.

I suppose the study could be useful to someone, though - perhaps the two-lawyer couple out there who both just love their legal careers and desperately want their newborn daughter to pursue a legal career as well: they would be well advised to name their child “Bruce”.  A female “Bruce”…oy vey.

10am

When the cart pulls the horse...

I could write 5,000 words and not be able to draw a clearer picture for you than the one conveyed in a few sentences in this piece about Cravath bonuses:

Cravath, Swaine & Moore on Monday announced year-end associate bonuses that for the most junior lawyers were at best half of what they received last year…

The head of one major New York law firm, who requested anonymity, said he was “quite honestly surprised that a major New York firm was paying bonuses this year.”

The partner said he would expect a negative reaction from clients on “any bonuses being paid in the current economy.” He said he expected that a decision to pay bonuses “would have been deferred for some number of months.”

Think about that for a minute: clients are meddling in the amount of bonus money firms are paying their associates.  Wow, how in the world did we get here?  I mean, that’s almost like the government telling companies how much they can pay their employees…wait a minute…

10pm

Lawyers gone wild...

It has been a strange week for our brethren:

-Attorney charged with attempted murder:

Watching his father fight a gut-wrenching legal battle motivated Augustus Mendenhall to go to law school. But the decades-old property dispute still festered, resulting in a bizarre incident this past weekend that left the 38-year-old attorney jailed in an attempted murder case and a 66-year-old Indiana state lawmaker battered and bruised.

-Harvard Law grad sets fire to 9/11 chapel:

Schroeder turned himself in for the blaze at the Memorial Park chapel housing the remains of unidentified Sept. 11 victims on Saturday evening, according to the New York Post and the New York Times. The remains were unharmed, but mementos such as photos and flowers were either damaged or stolen.

Partner torpedoes his own firm:

A South Florida law firm is seeking dissolution after allegations surfaced this weekend about a failed investment venture by its high-profile founder, Scott Rothstein.

Fired associate torpedoes his former firm:

The site is the creation of Edward Harrington Heyburn, an associate at Levinson Axelrod from 1998 until he was let go in 2004. An audio clip dedicates it “to all the working class people that get stepped on by their rich bosses.”

Since his initial post on Sept. 30, which called senior partner Richard Levinson “The Hypocrite Behind the Curtain,” Heyburn has used the site to criticize and mock the firm and its partners and to showcase its in-court losses. He even provides a link to the Office of Attorney Ethics Web site for anyone who might want to file a grievance.

10pm

If this doesn't make you rethink dinner...

Brutal piece in The New Yorker today about what seems to be a powerful and important new book (Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals”), that begins by pointing out the wildly absurd dichotomy between what we keep and what we eat:

Americans love animals. Forty-six million families in the United States own at least one dog, and thirty-eight million keep cats. Thirteen million maintain freshwater aquariums in which swim a total of more than a hundred and seventy million fish. Collectively, these creatures cost Americans some forty billion dollars annually….

Americans also love to eat animals. This year, they will cook roughly twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, sliced from some thirty-five million cows. Additionally, they will consume roughly twenty-three billion pounds of pork, or the bodies of more than a hundred and fifteen million pigs, and thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, some nine billion birds. Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know—barbaric.

The barbaric details about the life and death of those creatures are what forms the meat, as it were, of the article - and what will likely give you pause about what you choose to eat for dinner tonight.

While many of us diligently recycle our cans and chat about reducing our carbon footprint and global warming and such, we maintain a collectively (and in many cases willfully) blithe ignorance about the global impact of our diet.

It is clear, at this point, that we do so at our collective peril.

8pm

This is why we're all probably doomed...

I visited Paris last year and was smitten: it sounds cliche, but it was love at first sight.  Of course I was duly impressed with all of the sights and sounds that you would expect, but for me it’s always the small things that stick: the espresso after lunch one day, the window boxes with flowers, the buzz of walking around a city that is totally unlike any I have ever experienced. 

And, I loved the bikes.

Velib is what they call it, the bike rental system that was created in 2007 to ease congestion in Paris: 20,000 or so bikes were placed around Paris for use by anyone in exchange for a small fee.   Today the New York Times ran a front page article detailing the disturbing fate of the program:

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The human condition seems to dictate that while there will always be some of us diligently pushing the rocks up hill, others will make it their business to resist every effort to get them there, or will be waiting at the top to hurl them back down. 

That’s not cynical, it’s just true. 

(Sigh)

10pm