Category: News Feeds

It started out as a routine judicial ethics complaint that the behavior of Judge ShawnDya L. Simpson of Kings County, New York, “had become erratic and at times intemperate,” and that she’d arrive to court late, or leave early or was a no-show when scheduled to preside. But as reported by the New York Times, it turned into a sad situation that’s cut short a prominent Black woman’s career.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct opened an investigation into Judge Simpson’s behavior in mid-2019. In August of that year she took medical leave, and this week, it was announced Judge Simpson, who is only 54 years old, was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and would retire from the bench on October 31st.

Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission administrator, made the following statement on the situation:

“This is as sad a situation as I have encountered in over 40 years of judicial ethics enforcement. The commission sought to balance its responsibility to ensure public confidence in a capable judiciary with compassion for Judge Simpson and her family over her heartbreaking Alzheimer’s diagnosis. We wish her well in retirement and hope her example makes people more aware of how to recognize and cope with this insidious disease.”

Tembeckjian and Simpson’s lawyers made a joint statement as well, hoping Judge Simpson’s forthrightness will hopefully to destigmatize the disease:

“Both the Administrator and the attorneys for Respondent appreciate the enormous emotional impact a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease can have on an individual, a family, and a community of personal friends and professional colleagues, especially where, as here, the disease has already reached an advanced stage in the life of a relatively young and highly accomplished individual. The signatories hope that Respondent and her family will share years of enjoyment in her retirement, that further progression of the disease will be slowed by application of the best available science, and that her legacy will be burnished by her fortitude in revealing her condition and the degree to which this action might de-stigmatize Alzheimer’s Disease and inspire others to learn more about how to recognize and cope with it.”

Judge Simpson also made a poignant statement:

“I came from a ZIP code that doesn’t often spawn the kind of life, family and career I have been blessed to enjoy,” she said. “My life has been a little Black girl’s American dream.”

Best of luck to Judge Simpson on this next phase of her career.

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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).

Earlier this week, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced that he’d chosen Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for the 2020 election. This is a historic choice for quite a few reasons. Harris is the first African American and South Asian American woman to be nominated for vice president by a major political party. If Biden wins the election, then Harris will be the first woman to ever assume the role of vice president.

But that’s not the only potentially historic thing about Harris being on the Democratic ticket. Her husband, DLA Piper partner Doug Emhoff, would become America’s first ever second gentleman.

Emhoff, 55, is an entertainment lawyer at the elite firm, which raked in more then $3 billion in gross revenue last year, landing it in third place on the annual Am Law 100 ranking. He isn’t hurting for cash, either, with equity partners at the firm taking in $1.951 million in profits in 2019.

Emhoff, a graduate of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, has stood by his wife’s side as she became a political superstar. The two met on a blind date. NBC News has the details on the start of their romance:

“I was just a dude, a lawyer, and then I met Kamala on a blind date, set up by legendary filmmaker Reginald Hudlin, who did ‘House Party,’” and his wife, Emhoff said.

Emhoff recalled that, at a business meeting with Hudlin and his wife Chrisette, a close friend of Harris, Chrisette said she wanted to set him up with her pal. Emhoff said that as soon as Hudlin mentioned Harris’ name, he remembered she was the attorney general and responded, “Oh my god, she’s hot.”

Emhoff texted Harris and called her, a rarity in the dating world that led the prospective Veep to call the move “endearing” in her 2019 memoir. He’s endeared himself to the public as well, supporting his wife through thick and thin on social media through tweets and retweets, like this one, a retweet from Biden:

Take note, everyone: this litigator goes by “Dougey” at home. So cute!

We look forward to seeing Emhoff on the campaign trail. Here’s to making history.

The first ‘second gentleman’? Meet Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff [NBC News]

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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.

Yesterday, we pointed out that Florida purports to be having a bar exam on Wednesday despite not once being able to mount a successful test of the online platform. That seemed like a problem! We suggested that if they couldn’t get their act together by today — giving them the weekend to implement final touches — they need to delay or cancel the exam.

Florida decided to go the other direction and both not have a working product by Friday and greenlight the test for Wednesday. Yeehaw, let’s do this!

Earlier today, the Florida Board of Bar Examiners announced on its website that it has scheduled a live trial for Monday, August 17, at 11:00 a.m. and expects to make a new release of ILG’s software available for download no later than Saturday, August 15. The board will notify you about the new release as soon as it is available and encourages you to participate in the live trial.

Tipsters inform us that the software still wasn’t available for download as of this morning which isn’t a good sign. Indeed the Florida Bar Exam website still reads, “As soon as the investigation into the possible security concerns is complete, applicants will be directly advised… when the updated software is available for download.” I don’t know about you, but that reads to me that they aren’t even finished looking into what’s broken and committing to a Monday test anyway. Part of the justification for the lack of time pressure in dealing with the security investigation relates to the Florida Exam’s claim that only nine of the over 1,100 registrants lodged security concerns. That sounds suspect based on a perusal of just the tips we’ve received at Above the Law. Perhaps these can all be cured over the weekend… but they’re going to have a hard time patching everything up between noon on Monday and 8 a.m. Wednesday.

One observer on Twitter opined that this announcement was really just a cleverly veiled Character and Fitness question to see who sends nasty emails to the examiners and frankly that’s a more reasonable explanation than anything coming from official channels.

As purely the province of the state judiciary, Florida legislators don’t even have the authority to fix this but that’s not stopping them from stepping up and telling the state supreme court that they have constituents getting jerked around by this.

There was one bit of good news from the announcement:

Mental Health Counseling Offered by The Florida Bar

To assist with added stresses caused by the pandemic, all registrants for the August 2020 Florida Bar Examination may now use the Florida Lawyers Helpline, a free confidential 24/7 service providing professional mental health counseling.

By calling 1-833-FL1-WELL (1-833-351-9355), exam registrants will speak with counselors who can also make referrals for up to three free sessions a year with a licensed mental-health professional via phone or virtual service.

Not to diminish the importance of mental health services, but maybe the bar examiners could consider “not causing the added stress in the first place”?

Just a thought.

Earlier: Florida STILL Doesn’t Have A Working Bar Exam Platform. Test Is Next Week, By The Way.

As we’ve noted a few times, the Trump administration’s repeal of net neutrality did a lot more than just kill net neutrality rules. It effectively neutered the FCC’s ability to hold giant broadband providers accountable for much of anything, from attempting to charge customers a rental fee for hardware they own, to the litany of bogus fees ISPs use to falsely inflate their advertised rates. So when a select group of folks try to claim that “killing net neutrality must not have mattered because the internet still works,” they’re advertising their ignorance.

Another problematic aspect of the FCC’s net neutrality repeal was that it also attempted to ban states from protecting consumers. The goal of the telecom sector, if you haven’t noticed, is a complete and total oversight vacuum of one of the least competitive, and most disliked, business sectors in America. And it’s fairly shocking how far along they’ve gotten in their quest without more people generally pointing out it’s kind of a bad idea to let the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world run amok sans regulator oversight or meaningful competition.

Unfortunately for the telecom sector, its quest to block states from filling the consumer protection void hasn’t gone that well. The courts so far have generally ruled that the FCC can’t abdicate its authority over consumer protection, then turn around and try to dictate what states can or can’t do. That’s not stopping the Trump administration or telecom giants, which have continued their lawsuits against states like California on a state by state basis. Last week, the DOJ and ISPs filed amended complaints in California in a bid to scuttle that state’s net neutrality rules:

“California will likely point to other portions of the DC Circuit order, which found that the FCC’s power to preempt is limited because the commission abandoned its Title II regulatory authority over broadband. “[I]n any area where the Commission lacks the authority to regulate, it equally lacks the power to preempt state law,” judges wrote in that case. The FCC’s “affirmative” sources of regulatory authority come from Title II, III, and VI of the Communications Act, judges wrote. But Pai’s FCC chose to apply Title I to broadband, which contains no such authority.”

ISPs (and the various policy wonks under their employ) like to whine that states pursuing their own consumer protections (be they privacy, net neutrality, or anything else) creates a “fractured landscape of discordant state laws.” But that ignores the fact that this is a problem created by the telecom sector. It in effect wants to have its cake and eat it too, all the while ignoring the broad consensus of the public and experts that the agency’s previous net neutrality rules were little more than a modest effort to keep telecom monopolies from abusing their monopoly power in the streaming video era.

Some FCC Commissioners, like Jessica Rosenworcel, weren’t particularly impressed:

There remains a delusion among a certain subset of tech and telecom policy folks who believe that if you neuter regulatory oversight of an uncompetitive sector like broadband, magic and ponies somehow sprout from the sidewalk. But as U.S. telecom history has made pretty clear by now, when a company like AT&T or Comcast sees neither competition nor meaningful regulatory oversight, they simply double down on the same bad behavior. That means higher prices, worse customer service, patchy availability, and bad privacy and net neutrality practices (you know, like AT&T only excluding its own video services from usage caps).

In Comcast and AT&T’s ideal world, nobody, anywhere would be able to do a damn thing as they protect their geographic monopolies from competition and accountability. And shockingly, there’s still a small subset of folks (including the Trump administration) who seem to think that’s a good idea.

Trump, Big Telecom Continue Quest To Ban States From Protecting Broadband Consumers

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NCBE President and CEO Judith Gundersen sat down for an interview with Karen Sloan from Law.com and opened up about COVID, diploma privilege, and where we go from here. And let me tell you, folks, it was a mess! But for everyone watching as online exams have been fraught with disaster so far, here’s Gundersen’s take on the NCBE’s plan for the October administration where multiple jurisdictions are trying to simultaneously deploy a system that immediately crashed when one mid-sized state tried it:

What’s the alternative if the online Oct. 5 and 6 exam is a disaster? Where do we go from there?

That’s a good question. I would be very surprised if that happened, given all the good and thoughtful professionals who are working on this. Why don’t you interview me Oct. 6.

Ahem.

“The plan is no plan at all” should be engraved upon the NCBE seal. These are obviously tough times and everyone’s struggling. For all the faults with the plan, an online bar exam was a noble attempt to make the test safer — and one that Gundersen and the NCBE immediately shit all over before realizing they were losing that public relations battle — but at this point the possibility of a complete failure in October has to be taken seriously. One of the nation’s leading testing software providers has already weighed in that it’s completely infeasible. And yet there’s no contingency plan for October other than hope and good wishes?!?

It just underscores the overarching problem with the NCBE. Later in the interview, Gundersen has occasion to say, “Our interest—as it always has been—is to consistently and professionally serve courts and boards of admission,” and that’s the whole problem because it absolutely isn’t. There’s a fundamental disconnect between how the NCBE markets itself to states as some kind of attorney licensing process thinktank when in reality the NCBE is a testing company whose only interest is in selling more tests. The sooner all parties to the licensing question recognize this the better.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the NCBE’s role in attempting to squelch emergency diploma privilege efforts across the country. Sloan asked about this head on:

There has been a lot of criticism directed at the NCBE and you personally for how things are playing out this cycle—particularly that the NCBE is opposing the adoption of diploma privileges. Do you think that criticism is fair?

There has been a lot criticism leveled at NCBE and me, and it probably is part of the territory working at the organization that produces the bar exam. I think some of the anger and criticism about diploma privilege is misguided at NCBE. NCBE isn’t making the decisions in any of these states, as far as whether to proceed with the bar exam, when to do it, and whether to do it at all. That’s a state-by-state decision.

It’s bizarre that Gundersen expects this level of naïveté from an audience of attorneys and soon-to-be attorneys. Yes, it’s a state-by-state decision… informed by a multimillion-dollar lobbying group that provides all the half-baked data that informs those decisions. The NCBE sits on over $111 million in net assets and turns an additional $5-8 million in profit every year and works very hard to assure states that the only defense against anarchy is keeping that gravy train going. Online exams themselves were a well-meaning effort and when first proposed, the NCBE swiftly told states that they were doing a disservice to young attorneys for questioning in-person exams in a pandemic arguing that there would be no portable licenses without the NCBE’s blessing. Thankfully some states have dusted off some old books and realized that, in the before time… the long long ago, states used to be capable of negotiating their own reciprocity deals.

Does the NCBE have a conflict of interest on the diploma privilege issue given that the whole purpose of the organization is to create and perpetuate the bar exam? Should you stay out of the discussion?

We’re certainly not in the discussion right now.

Wait for it…

We put the white paper out to provide important background information and context.

The “white paper” described here was eight pages of diploma privilege advocates eat babies rhetoric that the NCBE threw together and stuck under the noses of state bar examiners and supreme courts in the interest of setting the narrative early on as COVID started to manifest across the country. To the extent Gundersen says she’s “not in the discussion right now,” she’s leaning heavily into “right now” as in “not while I’m speaking this specific sentence.”

This whole thing is a slow-motion trainwreck. There aren’t any flashy gotcha moments, just straightforward questions followed by nakedly debunked buzzspeak. Some people on social media are dragging Karen Sloan for this being a softball interview but I think she knows her audience is reading these answers with enough savvy to not take these answers at surface-level.

Some diploma privilege advocates are concerned that the character and fitness review process is being used by states to try to silence them. They heard the comment you made last week on that online symposium as a threat. What did you mean?

NCBE has no role in character and fitness.

But…

We do provide the investigations for some states, but we make no decisions, we just provide information, like school transcripts. Those decisions are all made by courts, boards of bar admission, or by character and fitness boards in some states. I had just come off a conference call where [jurisdiction] administrators were noting the change in the kinds of back-and-forth communications they’ve had with examinees forever, and how different it was this year. Whether and what these staff members for these boards will do with that—it’s not up to me.

We report, state officials decide. There’s certainly no reason someone might construe the agency that provides investigative reports to Character & Fitness of being able to influence the outcome of that inquiry based on the report… nope, no siree!

I went back and rewatched that symposium panel. It really does sound like you were saying not that NCBE would take actions against people, but that you were hearing states tell you that they would bring those examinee communications into their character and fitness reviews.

The conversation that I was listening to was just a recognition that this has been more of an issue. What they are going to do with it probably varies among states. More than anything, it was how the conversation has really shifted from prior years. It’s the volume and the tenor that has been different.

Alright, let’s talk about this. You can listen for yourself at the 3:50:10 mark of this video. This characterization is technically accurate in the same way Trump’s fondness for “some people are saying” is accurate. Maybe this is a reflection, uninfluenced by anything she said on this call, of how some state bar examiner felt. But it was Gundersen hyping it to a broader audience and weaponizing it as “all y’all better watch your mouths.” Cautioning that “criticism” will be rebranded as “a lack of civility” is an effort to silence that criticism. We will never know what the bar examiners on that call really said, but that’s not really the point — as I put it at the time:

Did the president of the NCBE really threaten to keep bar exam critics from getting licenses? Well, it depends. If you’re the sort of person who thinks a mobster saying “nice little shop you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it” is just expressing well wishes on your business endeavors, then no. But if you’re one of the people residing in a reality-based society, then she absolutely did.

The whole interview is amazing and reads like an embattled Prime Minister explaining how reports of the coup are overblown and it’s jaw-dropping. Try reading the whole thing in the Mr. Burns voice. Just take “Remember a shiny new donkey to whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya” and replace “Colonel Montoya” with “whoever runs @BarExamTracker.”

‘I Understand the Anxiety and the Anger,’ Says Top Bar Exam Official [Law.com]

Earlier: NCBE Prez Issues Threat To Tie Up Licenses Of Bar Exam Critics
NCBE Trashes Diploma Privilege, Sprinkles In Some Racist And Sexist Conclusions
With NCBE Quibbling Over Online Bar Exams, Massachusetts Says They’ll Just Write Their Own
Bar Exams In The Time Of COVID: Crashes, Hacks, And (A Few) Masks

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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.

If you’re a litigation associate in Biglaw, I commend to you this excellent essay by Joshua Libling of Validity Finance, Up or Out: Why Litigation Associates Need to Make a Decision by Their Fourth Year.

You should read the whole piece, but here’s the core of Libling’s argument:

The litigation associate track at Big Law firms is badly structured to the detriment of associates…. The key structural problem is the combination of two facts: (1) You will find out if you are going to make partner somewhere in your seventh to 10th year out of law school; and (2) you are at your most marketable somewhere around your fourth or fifth year out of law school.

The problems those two facts create should leap off the page, but here are two big ones. First, you need to make the decision about whether you want to try to make partner before you have a good sense of what that even means or how likely you are to get it. Second, every year beyond the fourth or fifth that you are committing to try to make partner at your firm is a year you are decreasing the ease with which you can transition to another job if you do not make partner. Put differently, as your job security decreases because you get closer to an up-or-out decision, your flexibility in replacing that job also decreases.

This is why, when I recently wrote about what elite litigation boutiques are looking for, I mentioned “[b]etween two and four years of experience at a top Biglaw firm” — i.e., not less than two and not more than four years of experience.

Fifth-year litigation associates are still somewhat marketable, but for litigation associates at large firms, your best window of opportunity for a lateral move is as a third- or fourth-year associate. There are relatively few opportunities for litigators who are more senior than fifth-years (unless they happen to be litigation partners with seven-figure books of business).

But if you happen to be a senior litigation associate (or counsel) with superb credentials, here at Lateral Link we have an opportunity that might be of interest. It’s an unposted opportunity — not on the law firm’s website, not on LinkedIn or any other job site, not on Leopard Solutions — at a firm with whom we have an excellent and longstanding relationship.

This Am Law 200 and NLJ 500 firm seeks a litigator with at least seven years of experience, for a position in its New York office as a senior associate, counsel, or (non-equity) partner, with compensation and title to be determined based on the qualifications and experience of the candidate. It’s a superb firm where litigation is the largest practice group and core to the firm’s success and profitability, i.e., not playing second fiddle to the transactional practices. This means that litigators at the firm have a real chance at partnership — which is unfortunately not the case at many of the top Wall Street firms, where litigators often make up 20 percent or less of new partners.

There’s no shortage of senior litigation associates in New York who are looking for exit options. So a competitive candidate for this rare opportunity will have credentials like the ones sought by elite litigation boutiques:

• A very good academic record from a top 14 law school, or an excellent academic record from a non-T14 law school (e.g., Latin honors, Order of the Coif, Law Review).
• One or more clerkships with federal district or circuit judges — the more prominent the court or the judge, the better (e.g., S.D.N.Y. or E.D.N.Y. or D.D.C. for district judges, SCOTUS feeders for appellate judges).
• Seven or more years of experience at a top Biglaw firm (e.g., a Vault 10 firm).

If you have all of these credentials and would like to learn more about this position, please email me at dlat@laterallink.com.

And if you’re a junior to midlevel litigation associate, read Joshua Libling’s Law.com piece if you haven’t done so already. You have an important choice to make — so choose wisely.

Up or Out: Why Litigation Associates Need to Make a Decision by Their Fourth Year [Law.com]

Earlier: New Opportunities For New York Litigators (Including Outside NYC)

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by David Lat, a Managing Director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners, and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

Remember the judge in Pennsylvania that allegedly called a juror Aunt Jemima? It made news way back in February, which seems a lot more than a few months ago, back before even the multimillion-dollar brand of Aunt Jemima syrup came to the realization that the term was racist AF. Given the increased awareness of the history of the term, it’s probably no surprise that the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board is seeking a suspension of Judge Mark Tranquilli.

The headline grabbing incident is when he allegedly asked as assistant district attorney why he’d selected a Black woman for the jury, saying, “You weren’t out of strikes when you decided to put Aunt Jemima on the jury.” But, as tends to be the way in cases like this, Tranquilli is alleged to have said a slew of problematic things. According to the ethics charges, available in full below, Tranquilli also allegedly said during a custody hearing that he didn’t care about the couple’s children and he would “split [the couple’s] baby in half like Solomon and sleep like a baby that night.” He allegedly went on to describe what he expected in terms of communication thusly, “When I say communication, I don’t mean ‘and den da bitch done dis, and den da bitch done dat.’”

But, wait! There’s more! During a sentencing hearing he allegedly said:

“Are you familiar with the phrase, if you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas? … So now you have laid down twice with dogs, but you have woken up with two lovely children, probably two lovely children I’m betting you were probably not planning on. And for the cost of three shiny quarters in any bathroom in any rest stop in Pennsylvania, you probably could have gone a different direction.”

At that same hearing he also allegedly went off about his lack of compassion:

“I was a [prosecutor] for 20 years, and for the last 13 years, all I did was dead body cases, dead body, dead body, dead body. For the last eight years, I ran the homicide unit. If I had a nickel for every picture of a dead person I looked at on my desk while I was eating a turkey sandwich, I could retire right now and be a rich man. As a result of these experiences, there is no milk of human kindness left in these veins. It is just too much death. So what that means for you is, the take away is this: If I ever see you again in my courtroom for a probation violation, the story ends with you in a red jumpsuit.”

And at a different sentencing hearing, Tranquilli allegedly told a defendant, “So if you don’t show up in 30 days, you have violated my probation, and I’m going to cast you down against the Sodomites, all right, in state prison.”

Not too surprising then that the ethics complaint says the judge failed to promote public confidence in the judiciary; manifested bias or prejudice in the performance of his duties; and failed to conduct himself in a patient, dignified, and courteous manner. Tranquilli was previously placed on administrative duties after the complaints about his behavior first came to light.

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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 I come close to rounding out my first year in the legal profession after law school, I find myself reflecting on all I’ve learned from my colleagues at Balestriere Fariello. Three of those things, which seem intuitive now but certainly were not to me a year ago, come to mind often.

Zealous Advocacy Includes Saying Nothing

In law school, we were taught to pursue all leads and fight to the death for our hypothetical clients — that “zealous advocacy” is what’s required. But nobody really defined that phrase. In classes, we were taught to list all applicable rules and facts and show our work on top of that. We were rewarded, most often, for saying more rather than less. In practice, I’ve learned that saying less can be just as effective — if not more effective — than laying out the litany of reasons why your client’s motion or brief should prevail. When preparing cases for clients, I found myself growing attached to the theory of a case and wanting to chase it down actively at all (academic) costs. But I’ve learned that this, occasionally if not often, is unwise.

My colleagues are tenacious litigators who I’ve seen and heard argue the merits of cases up one side and down the other. I was surprised the first time I saw one of them put down the sword, as it were. Eager to learn about litigation strategy, I asked why they chose to let a certain point rest. One thing became clear: it is prudent to say nothing when saying something would not advance your cause. Whether this decision is made to avoid needless repetition or to do a kindness to (i.e., avoid annoying) the court, I have come to see the value in saying nothing as a tactical decision, even when you want to and could say everything.

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel

The time constraints of the working world, especially at my busy office, are a strong reminder that the law is a legacy. As a newly minted practitioner, it’s easy to find myself swimming in the details of the work. But my colleagues have been kind to remind me not to reinvent the wheel. Almost any type of document I could draft for almost any case has been drafted, in whole or in part, by someone before me — and probably even by someone I work with. This is not only timesaving, but also grounding. Walking in the footsteps of those who have already succeeded is encouraging and totally practical.

Details Are Everything, Always

I mentioned my colleagues are tenacious litigators. They apply this tenacity to every aspect of their practice, whether it be early-stage mock trials or meticulous drafting from the first draft. They have taught me that details are everything, always. They set the bar high, and for good reason. While balancing deadlines, it can be tempting to let little things slide to save the big picture, but this is almost always an error. Any number of metaphors apply, but the most resonant to me is a landslide — one loose stone could result in an entire hillside collapsing. Details are everything, always, especially because litigation teams at my firm are highly collaborative. The work I do, even if a quick internal memo, could turn into the basis for a complaint and a great result for a client. If the details of my work aren’t impeccable, I could be setting up my colleagues or my future self for trouble — or, just as bad, major inconvenience and wasted time.

These three insights are certainly not all I’ve gleaned from the past year in the law, but even if they were, I’d say I was in good shape. Learning to walk in the footsteps of success is an invaluable skill, and one I shall keep learning as I go.

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Megan E. McKenzie, a recent graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, works at Balestriere Fariello while her admission to the bar is pending. She works with her colleagues on all aspects of domestic and international complex litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach her by email at megan.e.mckenzie@balestrierefariello.com

For all his huffing and puffing about them and their nefarious loopholes, President Trump and his “hedge fund guy”-stocked administration have never done much to punish those paper pushers in the pocket, except inadvertently by punishing people who don’t vote for him. And just as often, it inadvertently hands those hedge fund guys a major tax windfall through carelessness and sloppiness before (probably ineffectually) trying to roll it back.

Speaking of slapdash policymaking and unintended consequences, Trump is considering adding to his collection of ineffective economic stimulus executive orders with another, indexing capital gains for inflation. While this would almost certainly not “create a lot more jobs” as Trump promises, it would be kind of a pain in the ass for hedge funds.