Author: TSA Press

If you’re a lawyer, I bet there’s been more than a time or two you’ve elicited eye rolls from nonlegal friends and family by dropping legal Latin into everyday conversation. We use it enough at work, it’s going to eventually slip into our social lives, right?

But how many of us can also recall a time where, without realizing quite what we were doing, we managed to turn a polite chat with a friend or spouse into a full-blown cross-examination and closing argument? How many of us have used the Socratic method to ruthlessly disassemble an acquaintance’s ill-considered opinion? How many of us have, without even trying, escalated a minor dispute into a world-shattering contest of wills?

Being a lawyer changes who you are in many ways –- for better and worse. When you do something 40-plus hours a week for a number of years, you’re going to probably keep doing it outside those 40-plus hours. As Carl Jung said, “We are what we do.” But because the practice of law is so inherently adversarial, it begs another adage, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”

The Jerk Store Called

Most attorneys spend their days engaged in one form of conflict or another. Transactional attorneys have to negotiate constantly, both with the other sides of deals and even within their clients’ own corporate structures, jockeying for resources or priority. Litigators literally dispute things for a living, all day every day, on paper and in front of judges and juries. We lawyers spend thousands of hours a year in advocate mode, pushing and prodding others to try to achieve our clients’ goals.

We build up tough shells and learn not to take arguments personally, because even when opposing counsel is accusing you of fraud, malpractice, and bad fashion sense, lawyers know it’s just business. We have to be able to take it as well as we plan to dish it out.

In short, the practice of law teaches us to be jerks. It conditions us to spend our days dealing with others in a sharp, rough-and-tumble, arm’s-length manner. By the time most of us had finished our fifth years as attorneys, we had over 10,000 hours of practice at being professional pains in the rear. If you believe Malcolm Gladwell, that was the point where we functionally mastered the art of being insufferable and argumentative. For those of us at the 20,000, 30,000, or 40,000 hour mark, it can be increasingly difficult to keep those instincts compartmentalized to the work day.

The problem is that, to a certain degree, being a jerk can be good for business. I’ve had countless potential clients tell me over the years that they want to hire a bulldog, a ruthlessly aggressive attorney who’s not afraid to step on toes if it gets them a good result. Attorneys who are willing to go scorched-earth in the name of pleasing their clients seem to earn a huge degree of loyalty from their clients (at least until the client gets the bill for all the unnecessary fights their attorney picked). And in fairness, it’s hard to be an effective lawyer without being willing to strategically take stances and actions that you know will anger your opponents. We can’t control how others react, so why not do what’s most effective for our side and not worry about feelings across the aisle?

Maybe this state of affairs is an expected byproduct of an adversarial legal system. Maybe it’s just how the legal culture has evolved in the competitive early twenty-first century landscape. But no matter how you slice it, the norms of the legal world are not normal, pro-social human behavior. The way lawyers interact with one another is not generally healthy for people that want to have warm social interactions. And it’s hard to spend your days arguing with and cajoling others without those instincts spilling over into other areas of life; areas where strident advocacy and sharp elbows are far less welcome.

Taking Off Your Advocate Hat

I’m not naïve enough to think the practice of law will change with an appeal to be nicer to one another. The world is trending ever more away from professional camaraderie and toward arm’s-length, one-off dealing. And sadly, being a jerk to opposing counsel is an effective enough client-management strategy that there will always be incentives pushing some in the profession in that direction.

What I do think we can focus on, though, is openly acknowledging that our work lives and social lives need to be subject to different rules and expectations. Being an effective lawyer may mean taking tough stances in the office, but we need to train ourselves and the oncoming generations that even if you have to sharpen your elbows at the office, you better soften them when you get home. Telling the attorney on the other side of a negotiation to take the deal or pound sand may be poor form; telling your spouse or family to do the same is interpersonal malpractice.

The Warren Buffett Approach

The practice of law doesn’t have to suck our souls out. It can and should make its practitioners better people, just like it did for us back in law school. The legal mindset is a tool, one that can be used for good or for ill. We can choose to use it well. It’s just that sometimes that means not using it at all. Keeping our lawyerly habits at the office for the sake of our loved ones should be part of our basic professional training.

One can measure success in dollars or trial victories, but perhaps we should consider the Warren Buffett approach to assessing success: How many people do you want to have love you, and how many of those actually love you? If you’re still in the market for a new year’s resolution, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better goal to work toward.

---

James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

There’s nothing wrong with ranking the 10 Best Cat GIFs On The Internet, but once someone starts ranking something as serious as the quality of law schools, there’s a moral obligation not to recklessly steer grads wrong. People are depending on these rankings to make a massive professional and financial decision.

So you can’t go out and write something like:

A number of excellent law schools consistently graduating classes with high bar passage rates as well as significant employment outcomes exist outside the T14.

And then list schools with 50 percent employment scores. Spoiler: Someone wrote that and then listed schools with 50 percent employment scores.

We’re the first to cast a side eye upon U.S. News & World Report for throwing dubiously useful rankings at earnest undergrads trying to cut through the hype and figure out where to go to law school, but at least there’s a methodology to USNWR’s madness. We may not agree with counting library books to determine the best law school in the land, but at least the unnecessary rankings they introduce are backed by something.

After pointing out that New England Law Boston’s dean will be leaving with a retirement package of over $5.3 million despite guiding the school to absolutely nowhere in the rankings, a tipster pointed me to a publication, the College Gazette, promising readers that New England Law is “on the rise.” Since I’ve already seen Star Wars, I know how disappointing a “Rise” can be, but that didn’t prepare me for the ramshackle mess of this article.

“10 Prominent Law Schools On the Rise” is a mess from the headline because if a law school is already prominent… where is it rising to? But it boldly leaps from there to a misleading point about how you don’t need to go to a T14 to be successful — which is true — without noting that when it lists New York Law School that institution is not, in fact, Vanderbilt.

What qualifies as a law school on the rise?

One, the school has to have demonstrated significant achievement as well as excellent student outcomes over the past decade.

Secondly, the school cannot yet be ranked in the top 50 of the US News best law schools list.

They’ve got the last part covered. The first seems to be a mere suggestion.

Of New England Law Boston, the number 4 school on the rise, the College Gazette writes:

Impressively, their class of 2018 featured 83% of their graduates finding gainful employment within 9 months of graduation, with another 4% pursuing an additional degree.

That… is not actually impressive, but it’s also not tracking any numbers we can find. The USNWR entry lists a solid “N/A” for employment stats and Law School Transparency finds a mere 75.4 percent of 2018 grads employed and only 47.5 percent of those grads were in law jobs — the sort that require actually passing the bar exam.

From the good folks at Law School Transparency… does this look like “excellent student outcomes over the past decade”?

Because that’s the trend line for New England’s bar passage rate.

The list of rising law schools also includes University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall where the bar passage rate has gone from 87.9 percent in 2008 to 62.3 percent in 2018 though at least the employment score is up over the last 10 years. It’s only up to 51.6 percent, but astoundingly that’s a major improvement. New York Law School (or the NYU Tribeca campus) also makes the cut having gone from a 91.3 percent bar passage to 62.7 percent since 2008. Quite the rise!

Where are they getting the sense that these schools are on the rise? The New England blurb reads like they just cribbed the school’s promotional materials. “Historically, this prominent institution has had some of the most important faculty of any law school in the country; in fact, eight US Supreme Court Justices have lectured or taught at New England Law.” Cool story. And if you want to see them, but never be them, you too can go to New England.

By the time the reader clicks on the final page, you half expect to find Charlotte School of Law lauded for its immersive practical education in bankruptcy.

The list isn’t all bad. Rutgers took a bar passage dip in 2018, but has generally posted good numbers and has steadily boosted employment figures to a solid 79.4 percent with only a 10.3 percent underemployment score. Albany, the University of Denver and the University of Houston are all on the list and are models of consistency over the past decade. Maybe not “rising” but they would fulfill the promise to the reader of schools where one can find success outside the T14.

College Gazette also has a top 10 law school post that, mercifully, includes only legitimately elite schools, though it’s not without its shortcomings. About NYU they write:

According to Above the Law, a leading law school publication on the internet, NYU is ranked as having the best overall faculty in the country.

Nice to know we’re “a leading law school publication on the internet” but a quick glance past the headline would reveal that we didn’t make this claim, we merely reported on the academic study that did.

Who is writing this stuff? College Gazette was founded in the Fall of 2019 and almost exclusively publishes articles that find “10” of something though in December the folks over there let their hair down and listed “15” colleges. Again, pretentious journos get huffy about these sorts of posts, but there’s really nothing wrong with them — lists are psychologically appealing and readers appreciate some fluff to argue about. But these lists need to stay in their lane and not try to coax students into bad law school decisions.

Naming the 10 best college towns is a perfectly subjective frame to help kids explore some of the reasons that Austin, Texas really is empirically nicer than other college towns. On that note, the College Gazette article on this subject does not include Austin, Texas, which should have been the first clue that something was wrong.

10 Prominent Law Schools On the Rise [College Gazette]

Earlier: Dean Builds 146th Best Law School And Retires With $5.3 Million Package
‘Slap A Number On It, Who Cares?’: The US News Law School Ranking Story

---

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.

Government

All those nights at bar review finally pay off.

By Joe Patrice

at 11:36 AM

—ADVERTISEMENT—

As a newly minted attorney, I recently experienced my first end-of-year push to complete as much as possible before the holidays. According to my peers and colleagues, such a year-end scramble — whether it be for filings, client requests, or anything in between  — is neither uncommon nor unanticipated. And I suppose I may have anticipated this ramping-up of workflow toward the end of the year, especially having happily joined a boutique litigation firm that takes on not-so-boutique cases. What I did not anticipate was the flurry of documents and legal pads and note flags that would trail in its wake, rendering my office a bit of a snow globe. Before I could sort all of that into anything pleasingly intelligible, I was rushing to catch a flight cross-country to spend a few days with family.

If you missed the chance to impose order on your workspace before the holidays, the dawn of a new year is the perfect time to consider the life-changing magic (as Marie Kondo would say) of tidying up your office. Ample research exists with data demonstrating the psychological (and even physical) benefits of living and working in tidy spaces. However, I offer my personal impressions gleaned from years of work at various levels in practices of varying size and specialty.

First impressions first. Though I don’t subscribe to the wear-a-suit-to-take-exams school of thought, I do believe visual impressions are critical on many levels. I want to feel good when I walk into my office, and I want others who enter my space, whether they be colleagues or clients, to feel the same. A tidy office, for me, inspires that positivity. When my office is well-ordered and clean, I feel at ease and confident — confident that whatever I need will be easy to find, that nothing will slip through the cracks, and that I simply have it together at a foundational level. From another’s perspective, the aesthetic of an untamed office risks concerns analogous to one’s attorney or colleague beside them showing up to court with a crumpled suit and documents falling out of their briefcase — not a great look.

Clutter, while perhaps indicative of an active workflow, is not only distracting but also tends to beget more clutter. I have found that the longer an unruly workspace remains untamed, the harder it is to ultimately address — mentally and physically. The physical task of decluttering is often a pain but always gratifying. The mental burden is, I find, the harder one to surmount. It is easy to shove papers left and right and stack them like skyscrapers to carve out desk space. But once one’s office looks like the view from my window in the Financial District, the mere idea (not to mention the job) of addressing that skyline becomes a burdensome (and, let’s not forget, unbillable) task on the never ending to-do list that is the practice of law. It’s much harder to strategize the tearing-down of a skyscraper than, say, a small shed.

That said, tidiness tends to beget more tidiness. When I returned to my office from the holidays, I was invigorated by that new-year-fresh-start feeling. I was inspired to finally get rid of stacks of hard copy marked-up cases that I had no reason to keep in my space. And, through that sifting and sorting process, I was prompted to think about — and indeed learned — what actually is useful for me to have on hand. Documents I could recall picking up countless times while researching and drafting for ongoing matters got their own folders and were housed in files (organized by case and subfiled by document type) which now sit tidily on my shelves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any hard copies I preserved ‘sparked joy,’ as Marie Kondo would urge, but I was at least prompted to consider the utility of physical files in this day and age.

Since I undertook to tidy up and impose order upon my workspace, I feel that the task of staying organized will be much easier. In fact, as I glance around my office, despite having a busy week, not a single piece of paper in view is without a home to which it will return at the end of the day. That does spark joy.

---

John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

Well, that didn’t take long. On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against him based on a claim that New York courts lack personal jurisdiction over their client. Inviting the court to “take judicial notice that the President of the United States has resided in the White House for the past three years,” they requested her to make this whole unpleasant case disappear before the discovery phase. Because faced with the prospect of putting President P-Grabber under oath to talk about sexual assault, Trump’s lawyers were willing to try just about anything.

Yesterday, they got their answer. Surprising exactly no one, Justice Doris Ling-Cohan declined the offer to “take judicial notice” of Mister Trump’s residency, saying, “Although defendant Trump, through his counsel, claims lack of personal jurisdiction, notably, there is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support of his motion.”

Shaaaaaaaade.

Seems like Her Honor noticed that, while the defendant was happy to have his attorneys to make conclusory attestations on his behalf, he was unwilling to swear out an affidavit himself claiming that he was not actually a resident of the state where he maintains a residence, is registered to vote, owns a business, and presumably filed his taxes.

The Court notes that that not only was no affidavit from defendant Trump supplied in support of this application, but even the defendant’s attorney’s application does not assert a basis (evidentiary or otherwise) for dismissal; rather, the affirmation acts as a mere conduit to provide documents relating to the procedural posture of the case.

Then Justice Ling-Cohan delivered a mini-lesson on New York civil procedure and standards for filing an Order to Show Cause in Manhattan Supreme Court. It was ice cold.

“We are pleased, and unsurprised, that the Court refused to tolerate Donald Trump’s latest attempt to avoid discovery in our client’s case,” said Carroll’s counsel Roberta Kaplan, a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink. “We look forward to moving ahead in this case and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client and had not even met her.”

Trump’s motion to stay discovery was also denied.

“WE MOVE AHEAD!!” tweeted a jubilant Carroll.

---

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Last week we announced our latest Gaming Like It’s 1924: Public Domain Game Jam, and among the newly public domain works first released in 1924 is George Gershwin’s classic Rhapsody in Blue, which you might better know as the United Airlines theme song.

This is extremely noteworthy, because during the debate over the Mickey Mouse Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act fight in 1998, the Gershwin Estate was among the most vocal supporters and lobbyists in seeking an extension for the copyright. Indeed, the head of the Gershwin Estate, George’s nephew Marc was particularly worried about losing artistic control over his uncle’s work. Indeed, he seemed particularly worried that someone might make rap music out of his uncle’s work:

Marc G. Gershwin, a nephew of George and Ira Gershwin and a co-trustee of the Gershwin Family Trust, said: ”The monetary part is important, but if works of art are in the public domain, you can take them and do whatever you want with them. For instance, we’ve always licensed ‘Porgy and Bess’ for stage performance only with a black cast and chorus. That could be debased. Or someone could turn ‘Porgy and Bess’ into rap music.”

Oh, the horror. That same article noted that Gershwin seemed to be ramping up the licensing fees for his uncle’s work in the meantime:

Fifteen years ago, the license fee for using a Gershwin song in a television commercial for one year could be $45,000 to $75,000. The same song might now go for $200,000 to $250,000.

But, sure, it’s not about the money (though I’ll note that Marc recently sold his $5.4 million apartment in Manhattan). Of course, this is even more ridiculous when you realize that Gershwin frequently drew on influences of various other artists, including for Rhapsody in Blue (as for Porgy & Bess, we still have a few more years until that hits the public domain). George Gershwin himself admitted that Rhapsody in Blue was inspired by a variety of other music:

I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.

As the good folks over at the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain note, Rhapsody in Blue did draw on a variety of other types of music and now you can too, no matter what Marc Gershwin and the Gershwin Estate think:

Indeed, Rhapsody is a musical melting pot: it draws on everything from African American blues, jazz, and ragtime styles, to French impressionists and European art music, to Jewish musical traditions, to Tin Pan Alley. Now that it is in the public domain, this wonderful composition can be part of your kaleidoscope, where you can draw upon it to create something new, just as Gershwin drew upon his influences.

Of course, it does seem notable that the Gershwin publishing catalog was sold off a few months ago to Downton Music Publishing, who, it seems likely, will try to squeeze the last bit of cash out of it before it drip, drip, drips into the public domain for everyone to use.

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue Is In The Public Domain And Gerswhin’s Nephew Is Worried Someone Might Turn It Into Hip Hop

Data From Smartwatch Help Investigators Solve The Case Of The Stabbing That Never Happened
Appeals Court Makes The Right Call Regarding Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licenses
Ajit Pai Hits CES… To Make Up Some Shit About Net Neutrality

* Troutman Sanders and Pepper Hamilton have merged to form Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders. Congrats to all involved, but they could work on their name… [The American Lawyer]

* A Florida government lawyer has been fired after his arrest on child porn charges. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* The jury is out about whether Harvey Weinstein’s female lead defense lawyer might help him beat criminal charges. [Reuters]

* The lawyer for Covington Catholic families is also suing a former CNN host. Guess everyone’s getting in on the action. [Washington Examiner]

* A bizarre lawsuit alleges that Derek Jeter ruined the career of a minor league Yankees prospect. [NJ.com]

* Rudy Giuliani has suggested that the Supreme Court should step in and declare Trump’s impeachment unconstitutional. That’s not how the process works. [Fox News]

---

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

About half the country’s population, 7.7 million people, will need food assistance in 2020 as the country grapples with a severe drought and economic melt-down.

A report issued by WFP Thursday said Sub-Saharan Africa dominated its analysis of countries in need of emergency relief, with Zimbabwe, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel region (Mali, Burkina Faso and western Niger) needing immediate attention.

The report said while a new decade may have dawned, there was little cause for fresh optimism in countries and regions where conflict, political instability and climate disasters were threatening the food security of millions of people.

“The UN World Food Program (WFP) has identified 15 critical and complex emergencies at risk of descending further into crisis without a rapid response and greater investment. While WFP continues to provide extensive assistance to high-profile emergencies such as Yemen and Syria, Global Hotspots 2020 highlights the fastest-deteriorating emergencies requiring the world’s urgent attentionm,” the report said.

The situation in Zimbabwe has been described as “overheating” as the country experiences its worst drought in years with temperatures hitting more than 40 degrees Celsius.

“Food production has been severely affected. Driven by climate change, the drought is exacerbating Zimbabwe’s severe economic crisis and causing a humanitarian emergency characterized by hyper-inflation and rising food insecurity,” WFP said.

It said food insecurity levels were the highest in a decade with the 2019 cereal harvest falling more than 50 percent short of the needs for the 2019-20 lean season.

The world body pledged to nearly double its assistance to reach up to 4.1 million of the hardest hit Zimbabweans and said it would switch to distributing food in rural areas from January, due to concerns over hyper-inflation and reduced availability of commodities in rural markets.

It added that it was also supporting efforts to boost community resilience to crisis, including construction of small dams to conserve water and establishing vegetable gardens.

Overall, the prevailing drought will affect 45 million people across Southern Africa, WFP said.

Other countries needing emergency assistance are Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Libya, Nigeria, Bolivia and Ethiopia.

Post published in: Featured

In an exclusive interview with VOA Zimbabwe Service, Mubaiwa’s lawyer, Taona Nyamakura, confirmed the development saying Marry Mubaiwa, who is out on bail and was ordered by the court to live at the matrimonial Borrowdale Brooke mansion in Harare, has been denied entry.

“We are actually considering court action against General Chiwenga.”

Chiwenga’s wife was arrested late last year on allegations of attempting to murder her husband and for contravening the country’s exchange control laws by transferring more than a million United States Dollars abroad.

She was denied bail by the lower court before it was granted by the High Court. State prosecutors had opposed bail arguing that she was a flight risk as she is facing at least 25 years in prison if found guilty of attempted murder.

Human Rights lawyer, Dewa Mavhinga called the acting president’s actions unconstitutional and “abuse of state institutions and the army.”

VOA Studio 7 did not get comment from Chiwenga as his lawyer Wilson Manase was not responding to calls on his mobile phone.

This is not the first time Retired General Chiwenga has been accused of abusing the army in his domestic issues. In 2014, when he was divorcing another wife, Jocelyn Mauchaza, she accused him of using soldiers to deny her entry to their farm located 1,5 kilometers off the Shamva Road. The army stepped in only hours after the court had issued a divorce decree ordering her eviction.

Chiwenga masterminded the coup that led to the ouster of the late former President Robert Mugabe in 2017.

The office of the President and Cabinet announced recently that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is on leave until end of month.

“During this period, Honourable Vice Presidents, General (Rtd) Dr C. G. D. N Chiwenga and Colonel (Rtd) Cde KCD Mohadi will take turns to act in his place, starting with the Honorable Vice President Chiwenga,” read the statement from Acting Chief secretary of Cabinet George Charamba.