Author: TSA Press

When I arrived, I noticed the cafeteria did not serve pizza. I thought, “What an outrage.” My legacy is secure. It’s fine by me if I’m ever known as the pizza justice.

— Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joking about adding pizza to the Supreme Court’s cafeteria menu as part of his newly assigned work on the high court’s cafeteria committee. Kavanaugh made this lighthearted commentary during a speech given before the Federalist Society that was sponsored by Facebook.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Robert Mueller got him, you guys.

Oh, not President Trump, who Mueller let off the hook by refusing to indict or call for the indictment of a president he found to commit multiple acts of obstruction of justice. Not Donald Trump Jr., who Mueller shamefully refused to question or prosecute. No, the last gasp of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election ended today with the conviction of Roger Stone, a Trump aide and longtime professional troll. Stone was convicted on seven counts of witness tampering and lying to Congress. Good job, Bobby Mulls, you prosecuted the sizzle, but not the steak. I hope you’re happy with yourself.

To do a quick, non-comprehensive recap of Russia-probe criminality: Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, Paul Manafort, has been convicted of financial crimes; Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen has been convicted of lying to Congress to cover up campaign finance violations; Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators; Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has pleaded guilty of lying to investigators; Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos was convicted of lying to investigators; and now Trump confidant and fluffer, Roger Stone, has been convicted of lying to investigators and tampering with witnesses.

The common thread here seems to be that they all lied to investigators ON BEHALF OF DONALD TRUMP. And yet, somehow, Donald Trump has not been charged for his conduct. Legally speaking, Mueller and the Republicans would apparently have us believe that all these people independently decided to lie, FOR NO REASON, about conduct done at the behest of Donald Trump. If you believe that all these men are guilty but Trump is somehow innocent, I have a bridge to sell you that is due for some traffic problems.

Trump, for his part, isn’t even defending Stone’s conduct. He’s just making the useless and false argument that other people ALSO LIE to Congress and are not in jail:

“But, what about [X]” IS NOT A DEFENSE. And it’s weird that Trump isn’t even trying to challenge the ruling that Stone lied to Mueller, because if Stone lied to investigators it ALSO PROVES Trump lied to investigators. Stone’s conviction should be the start of a new round of inquiry into the president’s perjury and obstruction of justice, not the end of that inquiry.

But I guess Trump is just going to get away with it. Roger Stone will now join Cohen and Manafort in jail while their benefactor, Donald Trump, remains free.

Stone’s convictions carries with them a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison. But Stone, a 67-year-old non-violent offender, is unlikely to get anything close to that. He will be released until his sentencing in February, and I wouldn’t expect him to get more than 10 years, at the absolute top-end, and I’d put the over/under at 7.5.

A “light” sentence for Stone will piss a lot of people off, and I appreciate that. Stone is a bad guy who lied about a serious investigation and jauntily flaunted authorities while doing it. His activities played a key role in bringing about the election of a bigoted misogynist and, seeing as that president is unlikely to be held accountable, the impulse will be to make sure Stone spends every last day of his natural life in lock-up. For sure, if Stone does end up dying in jail, I will not cry about it.

But, I caution people to remember the justice equities involved in this case. As Vito Corleone might say: “Stone is a pimp. He never could have outfought the entire criminal justice system. It was Trump all along.” The problem is Trump. The criminal is Trump. The threat to American democracy is Trump. Stone is a henchman. He should be punished, but no amount of punishment now will do anything about Donald Trump.

And a particularly harsh sentence will not further deter current Trump henchmen from lying to protect Trump, more than they already are. I subscribe to the belief that “jail” is bad, but there are diminishing marginal returns for “more jail” when it comes to deterrence. U.S. Envoy to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, surely noted Stone’s conviction today. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney noticed too. These men are on notice that if you lie for Trump, somebody will eventually come for you, even if your boss remains free. Sondland and Mulvaney should now be on notice that they must choose their words carefully if they want to avoid jail.

If Stone gets 20 years, instead of 10, it’s not like Sondland and Mulvaney will be “more” worried. I just do not think that they’re sitting at home thinking “Yo, I’m totally willing to do 10 years for Trump, but 20, come on, that’s just crazy talk.” Trump’s henchmen who are currently free should be scared straight by Trump’s henchmen who are currently incarcerated. If they’re not already intimidated by the threat of incarceration, the threat of additional incarceration is unlikely to change their behavior.

Again, if Stone has to ask permission to take a piss for the rest of his life, that would also be okay. But Stone was never the point. We can’t forget that, as Mueller apparently did.

Roger Stone guilty on all counts in federal trial of lying to Congress, witness tampering [Washington Post]

(Upon changing the school’s name to the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School after a $125 million donation from the W.P. Carey Foundation, the Twitter account @PennLaw was abandoned, and disgruntled students quickly stepped in and began tweeting. The account was then suspended, and @PennLawSchool was created, and continues to tweet out amusing parody content.)

(Thousands of students and alumni have signed a petition asking that the school maintain its Penn Law branding. Click here if you’d like to add your name.)

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

I recently got together for lunch with a longtime friend. He is a senior partner at a very respected, mid-size firm in Dallas of about 60 lawyers. In the course of catching up, we discussed my work/advocacy with regards to wellness in the legal profession.  I asked him if he or his firm had taken notice of the push for more awareness.  Here is what he had to say:

1. He cares that his colleagues and friends are doing well as individuals. If they are struggling with addiction or problem drinking issues, he hopes they would come to him.  However, he does not care about lawyer wellness as a profession-wide initiative.
2. To the best of his knowledge, his firm as a whole, does not care. He is not aware of anyone at any level, ever broaching the topic.
3. He has had not heard of the ABA/Hazelden Betty Ford study on the subject.
4. He had no idea what the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP) does.
5. He cares intensely about the following: a) his family, b) servicing firm clients, and 3) maintaining his lifestyle.
6. If a client project requires a 90-hour week, so be it. This is the nature of the profession we chose.

As he ticked through his viewpoints, I could feel the tips of my fingers begin to tingle. The temperature at our tiny table, in a small, crowded restaurant, seemed to rise 10 degrees. Sweat formed behind my ear lobes. I was angry.

I had no reason to be angry.  He was being honest. Did I expect him to lie about the realities of the profession beyond my bubble of confirmation bias? The echo chamber of fellow warriors of wellness?  He articulated the elephant in the room when we talk about such things. Other real-life priorities of diverse individuals. Mary Meditation, Millie Mindfulness, and Joe Yoga are great, but they don’t bill.

Whether this seems shortsighted in the face of the mental-health crisis the study lays out, many don’t know, or don’t care regardless. This seems to be especially the case outside of Biglaw. Friends and client service don’t leave much time for Mary, Millie, or Joe. Time is a prime asset that cannot be recovered. Within the billable and client responsive realm of our profession, it must be rationed to maintain the prime directives of day-to-day life. For my friends, family, clients, and lifestyle. Mortgage, rent, car payments, massive school debt, a sliver of social life. All threatened by any hint of not being a team player.

It becomes more complicated when we drop below Biglaw. A lawyer may not have an EAP.  He/she/they/them may know about their lawyer’s assistance program but assume it’s only for “alcoholics and addicts.” I know many who don’t trust their LAP despite messaging that it is confidential.

The lawyer may not have health insurance or have such a high deductible that for anything major, they are de facto uninsured. All of this can add up to the fear, insecurity, and drive to put money in the bank that makes the high-hour work week an accepted reality for the majority of the profession.  We get the resulting vacuum in which the practice of law is pretty much what it was 10 years ago in terms of priorities and views on wellness. I asked my friend to expand on our irritating lunch discussion. He graciously agreed.

When I first started practicing law in 1985, no lawyer I knew had a computer.  

I worked for a large downtown law firm, which had a Word Processing division — but secretaries were obligated to type any document shorter than eight pages long (which meant retyping for any significant changes that could not be corrected with Wite Out).

Longer documents were put in your secretary’s outbox to be picked up by the intraoffice mail person, who would take it to the Word Processing room.  A document that went in intraoffice mail at, say, 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon would be delivered back to your secretary’s inbox at around 10:00 a.m. the next morning.  You would hand mark your changes — and then put it back in intraoffice mail.

As a result, trading documents with attorneys for the other side in litigation or a corporate transaction was slow, and delays were expected.  In other words, the turnaround cycle for legal work matched the rhythms of life, and you could leave the office for dinner and socialization at a decent hour.  A large corporate transaction might take five or six months.

Now, with ubiquitous computers and tablets, with editable Word documents that can quickly be duped and revised, cut and pasted by the attorneys themselves, documents have doubled and tripled in length, and the complexity has increased correspondingly.  With email and texts, documents can be zipped around the world in different time zones with the click of a Send key, so the turnaround time for large corporate deals has shrunken to sometimes 60 days or fewer.

And now with ubiquitous WIFI and cellular hotspots, you can work anywhere: On a plane, in your car, on a dock by the bay — so clients, with compressed deal times, expect you to.  

Frequently, you’ll see a client’s name pop up on your office phone.  When you don’t answer, your cellphone will ring.  When you don’t answer that, they text you.  The expectation is that you’re always available.  If you’re on vacation, great — but that just means that they expect you to get the document out before your wife and kids get up for breakfast.  And if you’re not willing to be always accessible, you’ll lose the client to another lawyer who will.  We’re all in a race to the bottom to ruin our lives.

And by the way, partners expect associates to be always on, too, so if a client needs something at 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday night, the partner expects the associate to hop right on it.  We don’t care where the associate is.  We’re feeling heat from the client, so we need always-on responsiveness from the junior attorney.

So, we drink to calm down at the end of a day.  For some of us, every day.  For senior attorneys who are in the later stages of our careers and are making a bunch of money, we can look at our brokerage statements and gut it out for the five or six years to retirement — as we grind the junior attorneys who work for us.

For the junior attorneys who work for us, life is miserable — and they’re looking at a long career of misery in front of them, so I can understand why they are likely depressed or have substance abuse problems.

But we don’t give much thought to that (and, at mid-sized or smaller firms, are not trained to look out for or give any thought to it).  As noted above, clients are bombarding me with demands 24/7/365.  I need my associates to be responsive in the same timeframe.  If they are slow in responding, or are slow in turning work around, or turn in inadequate work, I don’t have time to counsel them.  I move on to another associate.  Too much emphasis on billing and collecting to add counseling services to the mix.  It’s very Darwinian.  

There you have it. It’s anecdotal, but don’t kid yourself. It’s not an outlier. Those who advocate are doing great in getting the message those in the rarified air of Biglaw. We have a lot of work to do below that where the majority of the profession resides.

Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

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Biglaw bonus season is the most exciting time of the year. After 365 days of billing madness comes the recognition from the firm that all those hours actually had a positive impact. And what better start to a Friday than hearing exactly how big those bonuses will be?

Today Simpson Thacher announced their year-end bonuses. Surprising exactly no one, the elite firm matched the bonus scale Milbank set last week. That bonus schedule — which looks familiar to those following along with bonus season — is as follows:

Class of 2019 – $15,000 (pro-rated)
Class of 2018 – $15,000
Class of 2017 – $25,000
Class of 2016 – $50,000
Class of 2015 – $65,000
Class of 2014 – $80,000
Class of 2013 – $90,000
Class of 2012 – $100,000
Class of 2011 – $100,000

Bonuses will be paid by the firm on December 30th. (Full memo on the next page.)

Remember, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

As the Harare Wetlands Trust (HWT), we are committed to the provision of clean, safe water for Harare through the preservation of healthy wetlands.

It is common knowledge that wetlands serve as primary water sources for Harare hence the need for concerted efforts to protect then from plunder.

Of late, Harare wetlands have been under serious threat due to construction projects and urban agriculture.

Moved by this, HWT has made concerted efforts to save Harare’s wetlands from further destruction and we were elated by the declaration by the Minister of State for Harare Province, Honorable Oliver Chidawu to the effect that government needs to move a gear up in protecting the water sources.

HWT notes pronouncements by the Minister of Finance, Honorable Mthuli Ncube, in his 2020 national budget presentation; to the effect that government was committed to restoring basic water and sanitation services through maintenance, rehabilitation and upgrading of infrastructure.

Honourable Ncube also highlighted that harnessing of water and construction of dams, weirs, borehole rehabilitation and drilling will form part of efforts to ensure water supply.

In the case of Harare, we would, however, like to highlight that preserving wetlands in their natural state should also be at the core of efforts to ensure water provision in Harare.

Wetlands serve as primary sources of water for Harare and their continued destruction will worsen the already dire situation in the capital. According to the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) the continued destruction of wetlands in Harare has led to the water table drastically falling down.

There is, therefore, need for a concerted and coordinated approach in saving wetlands from further destruction. Moreover, preserving wetlands in their natural state will cut costs in terms of water purification as the wetlands serve as natural purifiers of water.

Corruption and abuse of power have been some of the major factors leading to wetlands destruction hence the need for government to act and put in place stern measures against perpetrators.

Siltation of the Lake Chivero, which is Harare’s main water supply, has also come as a result of wetlands destruction and government needs to act urgently in saving our wetlands.

As HWT we are advocating for the preservation of wetlands in their natural state as a way of ensuring the availability of clean water in Harare. We, therefore, call for an all stakeholder approach (government included) in preserving wetlands.

HWT appreciates Minister Ncube’s efforts in availing funds for the construction of Kunzvi Dam, which is expected to improve the water situation in Harare but more importantly, we would like to highlight that WETLANDS MUST BE PRESERVED IN THEIR NATURAL STATE AS THEY ARE IMPORTANT WATER SOURCES FOR HARARE.

In this regard, we call for the following;

• That a wetland mapping exercise is critical and should be at the core of efforts to preserve our water sources. Government must, therefore, accelerate the re-gazetting of Harare’s wetland map
• Government must ensure that relevant authorities are able to enforce all legislation pertaining to wetlands protection
• Finance Ministry must ensure that government agencies such as the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) are adequately funded and capacitated to execute their mandates

#NoWetlandsNoWater

Post published in: Featured

So concludes a vicious benchslapping from the Seventh Circuit aimed at Jordan Hoffman, an attorney brought on at the appellate stage to represent a pro se litigant claiming she was discriminated against in various ways by her former employer. The plaintiff lost at the trial level having mostly whiffed on her summary judgment response. On appeal, Hoffman signed off on a brief that… well, had some issues.

For example:

GAMESMANSHIP

Defendants have been “gaming” the system.

That is the entire section of the brief. It’s followed by a section called “The Estoppels” which is totally going to be the name of my next band, but it’s also an incoherent Black’s Law Dictionary dump where plaintiff says “Res Judicata, Collateral and Judicial Estoppel” without much sense of what those terms mean or how they would relate to the matter at hand.

Here’s another actual sentence from the brief:

McCurry experiences a change in fringe benefits; harsher scrutiny; failure to be promoted; lack of opportunities; lack of professional standing; economic sanctions; hostile work environment that led to an employee being shot on the premise, various verbal and physical assaults of African Americans by Caucasian employees of use of gun violence, vehicular assault, amongst other forms of violence, the ever looming threat that a racially motivated altercation or riot may ensue and physical damage to McCurry’s auto amongst actions/activities/conduct.

That is some Charlie Kelly bird law stuff right there.

The kicker might well be this footnote from the opinion:

He signed the brief on behalf of “plaintiff-appellant Mary Madison,” who is not a party in this case. This is yet another way in which the brief is “out of the ordinary.”

Wow.

For its part, the court determined that it had no alternative but to ask Hoffman to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned. Hoffman offered this… curious defense of his brief:

Because we have a duty to “maintain public confidence in the legal profession” and “protect[] the integrity of the judicial proceeding,” Doe v. Nielsen, 883 F.3d 716, 718 (7th Cir. 2018) (quotation marks omitted), we confronted Hoffman about his brief at oral argument. He replied that he is a “solo practitioner” who tries “to get the help of … clients and whoever can provide help to [him]” and then “merge[s] that information.” Whatever that means, it in no way excuses this unprofessional conduct.

Attorneys filing gibberish should be penalized to protect the profession, but the shocking deficiencies of the appeal shouldn’t distract from the fact that the rest of this opinion is exactly why Judge Posner left the Seventh Circuit. The discrimination claims brought by the pro se plaintiff could have gotten tossed a million different ways, but the opinion treats us off the top to an explanation of how someone with no legal training failed to use the appropriate subheadings in her summary judgment response.

No kidding.

This is the sort of unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle designed to lock pro se litigants out of the legal process. Judge Posner’s complaint is that the courts are openly hostile to pro se litigants and try to frustrate them at every turn with mindless technicalities — a burgeoning crisis as fewer and fewer litigants can afford counsel these days.

At least give this litigant the dignity of giving her an unclouded, straight answer for why she’s losing. Don’t let the legalese gum up the works with “Local Rule 7.1(D)(1)(a)–(c)” citations. Just write like a human being, not a lawyer. The audience here is a pro se litigant (and potentially future pro se litigants), so drop the technical stuff and say, “You didn’t make direct answers to all these facts and that meant we took them as true and if those facts are true, then there is no way to win in court,” or something equally straightforward. Writing is only as good as its fit for the audience.

At the end of the day, the appellate brief may be gibberish, but the judges might want to — for very different reasons — take a hard look at their work product too.

(The full opinion is on the next page.)

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

— Former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was testifying WHILE Trump tweeted this, likely making “witness intimidation” a charge that will be included in his impeachment.