Author: TSA Press

With election season prematurely upon us, lawyers across the country will gear up to run for office, and their opponents will gear up to bash them for the clientele they’ve served. Should lawyers ever be criticized for zealously defending clients? Is the justice system undermined if attorneys feel some clients are too toxic to represent?

One of the most surprising bits of news from a lawsuit that the owner of Portland, Oregon, bar Cider Riot filed in May against the far-right organization Patriot Prayer is that video footage submitted as evidence seems to have led to a fall from grace for Andy Ngo, a writer who had been a rising star in conservative media.

However, a bigger question than why Ngo left his editorial position at online right-wing magazine Quillette is how he managed to rise to the heights he did in the first place. It’s an uncomfortable question for journalism, but still necessary to ask because the truth is, Andy Ngo is journalism’s problem.

Ngo raised eyebrows on Aug. 26, when he quietly removed Quillette’s name from his Twitter profile, and the magazine removed him from its masthead. Earlier that day, the Portland Mercury published an article about a pseudonymous left-wing activist who had infiltrated Patriot Prayer and filmed the group allegedly plotting a violent May 1 attack on Cider Riot, a popular leftist hangout. The video appears to show Ngo standing well within earshot of the conversation — the activist claims he overheard everything — but he didn’t include it in subsequent reports. That confirmed in the minds of his critics a longstanding suspicion that he was simply a far-right propagandist posing as a journalist.

Ngo has denied that he had knowledge of the alleged plot. Quillette editor Claire Lehmann tweeted that he had actually left the magazine already and had been off since July due to a brain hemorrhage sustained in a now infamous incident when several Antifas beat him in late June. Both have explicitly denied that Ngo’s leaving the publication was related to the video.

Still, given the timing of Ngo’s exit and the awkward way it became public, as well as his history of credibility issues, I can’t help feeling a tad skeptical. But regardless of the circumstances of his exit from the magazine, I don’t think Ngo could have gotten as far as he did were it not for a confluence of factors in politics and media in the past few years.

Those factors should be familiar. A hyperpartisan political climate. Public cynicism toward legacy news media and a perceived porousness in the relationship between reporting, analysis and opinion. The growing role of social media and crowdfunding in the dissemination of content, often with no editorial oversight. The internet’s erosion of journalism’s traditional structural barriers to entry.

Combine those elements, and you have the perfect primordial soup to give birth to a new kind of perfidious pseudo-journalist. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could be considered a prototype, but Ngo is a more refined version, born of the social media age. There will undoubtedly be more like him, and it’s imperative for those of us who value journalism’s critical role in democracy to be on guard.

Miscreants and pretenders exist in every profession. Law has its pettifoggers, medicine its quacks. But Ngo is something distinct from journalism’s occasional plagiarists and fabricators. Strictly speaking, he’s a propagandist who selectively presents facts to push political narratives, but he puts on the airs of a disinterested, objective reporter.

Of course, it’s not as though Ngo’s propagandist role or credibility issues were secrets. In 2017, the student newspaper he worked for, Portland State University’s The Vanguard, fired him over a tweet that paraphrased remarks by a Muslim student in a panel discussion in a way that the newspaper said took them out of context and put the student in danger. Instead of the soul searching any responsible journalist would do, Ngo took his story to the National Review, claiming he was “fired for reporting the truth” — a claim the newspaper challenged, but that helped make him famous. In August 2018, The Wall Street Journal had to issue a correction on his op-ed about Muslim neighborhoods in London when he suggested a sign reading “alcohol-restricted zone” was due to sharia law rather than being about public drinking — something any reporter could have discovered simply by asking someone on the street. And critics have long complained that he presents videos of brawling between far-left and far-right groups in a selective way that plays up violence by the former and downplays violence by the latter – most recently when he described the clash that took place in Portland on Aug. 17. Left-wing anger at Ngo boiled over in the aforementioned June attack on Ngo, which earned him support and sympathy from figures in news media and politicians.

I should state that I deplore political violence without reservation, including the attack on Ngo. That said, it’s apparent he’s been using his injury as a ploy for attention and to position himself as a go-to expert on left-wing lawlessness. And I’m not the first person to observe that he has carved out a media career that drapes a veneer of journalism over a mix of propaganda and professional victimhood. But one of the rules of journalism is that you’re not supposed to make yourself part of the story. So any self-styled independent journalist who goes out of their way to do so should arouse suspicion and is likely in this business for the wrong reasons. Ngo’s obvious desire for attention and problems with credibility should have been red flags from the start. And to be fair, many journalists weren’t fooled.

Unfortunately, however, many other journalists were, most importantly those in positions of power and influence. They helped elevate someone who should have been unceremoniously told to find another line of work a long time ago. That happened because he told stories that fit popular narratives of an intolerant, violent left and Islam’s existential threat to the West— and all from the beguilingly compelling perspective of the openly gay son of Vietnamese refugees. I’m sure his perpetual sad puppy demeanor, dispassionate vocal delivery, and phony English accent helped too.

In the days when journalism was limited to paper and airwaves, the need to go through established outlets served a function akin to the licensure that people must obtain to practice in professions like medicine and law. As the internet, social media and crowdfunding have removed those barriers to entry, for many people a “journalist” is now almost anyone who claims to be one — a view summed up in a July 2 defense of Ngo by New York-based YouTuber Alec Bostwick. While such a democratization of the profession may seem like a good thing, it also opens the door to a lot of unscrupulous types.

Journalism’s lack of a formal system of licensure is a feature rather than a bug and certainly not a bad thing it itself, as licensing journalists is generally something one finds in authoritarian states. While that’s great from a civil liberties standpoint, the downside is that it makes it a lot harder to protect journalism from those who misuse and abuse it.

What we can — and indeed must — do as a profession is keep our eyes out for bad-faith actors and not extend them professional respectability they don’t deserve. In other words, while the First Amendment’s freedom of the press applies to all, being accepted as a journalist should be a privilege rather than a right.

Alaric DeArment is a New York-based reporter at a sister publication of Above The Law. The opinions herein are entirely his own.

[T]his audience can see that I am alive. I am on my way to being very well.

I love my job. It’s the best and the hardest job I ever had. It has kept me going through four cancer bouts. Instead of concentrating on my aches and pains I just know that I have to read this set of briefs, go over the draft opinion, so I have to surmount whatever is going on in my body and concentrate on the court’s work.

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in remarks given during an appearance at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., where she commented not just on her recent recovery from radiation for pancreatic cancer, but her preparedness for the upcoming Supreme Court term.

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.

There is back to school fervor in my house with my two kids expressing enormously vacillating emotions about the new year. Panic, happiness, sadness, nervousness, confidence — it is definitely a whirlwind of feelings as we plan outfits and practice our social media first day poses with the same seriousness that we contemplate our snack choices. I often reminisce of my own first days of schools, including the happiest of first days — my final ones, in law school.

I have recently found myself encouraging my kids to expand their interests and join extracurricular activities. Given my background, I push debate and theatre over hockey and pottery, the emphasis, of course, being on public speaking, analytical thinking, and growing confidence. How blessed are these children that they need not feel pressure to choose clubs that will get them a job or expose them to a career opportunity?

For those of us who are solo practitioners, or who work for small law firms, the start of the school year is the start of opportunity. Extra curriculars for the law student seeking a solo or small firm career are especially important. Contacts and relationships must be made early in a law school career to ensure that a job, someday, may become a possibility. Internships, clerkships, and mentorships make careers and influence choices, often more than any class.

Typically the law student’s presence  in a small or solo law firm is abundantly appreciated by the law professionals. At times, the student’s presence means that the work force has doubled by 100 percent. For clients, a benefit of a small law firm is not only lower prices, but interaction and facetime with a specific attorney. The result is that often matters can take longer to complete. With an intern, specifically one in the summer,  the speed of the firm changes. The momentum can be exhilarating, a change from the rest of the year.

Interning for a small firm gives the student experiences that one may not have in a larger setting. Court appearances, client meetings, closings — these are just a few of the opportunities that a foray into the small law world can provide someone who is even just starting law school. Small firms cannot provide the same payment and perks as big firms, but they make up for it in meaningful work and participation in active cases.

In the trusts and estates sector, an intern for a small firm may get to assist in the probate of an estate, filing papers with the local surrogate’s court, legal research, observing settlement conferences, constructing genealogical charts, tracking down long lost relatives, or even something as macabre as the supervision of the cleaning out of a decedent’s house. In the realm of estate litigation, the role of the legal intern or summer associate, observing depositions or assisting with discovery,  can be very thrilling.  To that end, something as mundane as witnessing a last will and testament can leave an indelible mark on a student yearning to learn the trade.

As we start the new year, all students should look to enlarge their learning with hands-on training. For the law student, especially one who seeks to work in a small environment, the summer is not the only time to learn the field. As September unfolds, and the court’s activity increases from the summer months, all students should take advantage of the opportunities that small and solo firms provide. Doubly, solo and small firms should not fear the start of the school year, and pursue relationships with students year round.

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com.