(We hate to state the completely obvious, but it’s unlikely that any “legal scholar” would use such language to describe what happened during the calls in question.)
Dershowitz Seeks To Bring Unknown Sketchy Dude Into Defamation Case
(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images for Hulu)
If you didn’t think the ongoing defamation suit between Harvard Law’s Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, and Giuffre’s now-disqualified former attorney David Boies couldn’t get any more dramatic, there’s now a computer guy who’s maybe a hacker and almost certainly a con man that no one can identify smack in the middle of it all.
For some reason, Dershowitz wants to make this guy’s role a tentpole of his case.
At a hearing yesterday, Alan Dershowitz’s attorney Howard Cooper told Judge Preska that they intend to use discovery to explore the relationship between Boies, a different Giuffre attorney named Stanley Pottinger, and this unknown, now disappeared, computer guy.
While not making any hard-and-fast decisions on the issue, Judge Preska seemed less enthusiastic about an open-ended expedition:
“We are not doing all this stuff. This is not going to be a book for my dear friends the reporters to write on this whole matter. We need to narrow it down and get to the issues quickly,” Preska said.
This whole computer affair came to light over the weekend, when the New York Times told the story of a guy calling himself Patrick Kessler. Kessler — which is what we’ll call him even though the Times was unable to confirm his identity — apparently presented himself as having gained access to Jeffrey Epstein’s video records when he was hired to encrypt them. He claimed that he had secured photographic evidence of prominent men taking part in Epstein’s underaged sex-trafficking operation and tried to present his supposed evidence to Boies and Pottinger, who hoped to use the evidence to support legal claims brought by victims they represented.
According to the Times article, after being unveiled as a possible source in the case, Kessler told reporters privately that he’d grown disillusioned with the Giuffre team, believing that it wouldn’t use the evidence to expose the perpetrators publicly — supposedly Kessler’s paramount interest as a means of preventing future abuse — and that he wanted to work with the media instead. The article asserts that Pottinger had made a series of sketchy statements to Kessler that led Kessler to believe the attorney wasn’t on the level, including statements about securing settlements to pay Kessler out of legal fees and agreements to become attorneys for the alleged abusers.
Of course, the NY Times source on this was… Kessler. That means the guy the paper ultimately suggests was a con man was also their source? That doesn’t raise any red flags?
Non-lawyers jump to conclusions about how lawyers are paid all the time, imagining every agreement to be some sort of corrupt bargain instead of just how the industry works. And representing the other side after a settlement — something the Boies firm attests in a statement was never considered — isn’t unheard of as a settlement condition. If a non-lawyer heard that and didn’t know any better they could easily assume it’s a shady double-cross of the victim instead of functionally a retainer not to sue the defendant again post-recovery. Maybe Pottinger did say and mean some crazy stuff, but years of reading non-lawyers report on the legal industry makes me skeptical, especially when they’re just reporting based on the tale of someone they openly doubt throughout the rest of the piece.
It’s almost as though the Times tried to connect dots that weren’t there, trying to draw parallels with the infamous Trump Tower meeting, suggesting that trying to secure evidence in a civil lawsuit is the same as entertaining kompromat from a foreign power in an election. They are, you know, different.
For its part, BSF released a statement addressing the Times narrative that Boies or any of his partners were trying to keep Kessler’s revelations secret:
By way of example, the NYT knew all of the following: David Boies only attended two meetings with the NYT’s source (on September 9 and September 14, the latter of which was also attended by the NYT reporters), nothing was said at either meeting that supports the NYT’s narrative, no one from BSF had any other communications of any kind at any time with the NYT’s source, and no one from BSF participated in, or was contemporaneously aware of, the text messages exchanged between other parties that the NYT references. The NYT also selectively elided or omitted from its reporting key facts, documents, and interviews inconsistent with its chosen narrative. The fact that the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office were informed of these contacts belies the NYT’s assertions of wrongdoing.
Informing the authorities would make for a really difficult blackmail operation, which after all, is Dershowitz’s claim. And obviously the lawyers brought in the FBI and prosecutors because if this Kessler person was telling the truth, he had access to images of child exploitation which the government would absolutely need to know about.
But the craziest part of the Times article is when it explains that Kessler then went to Dershowitz and told him, in a recorded conversation that the reporters suggest may have been rehearsed, that none of Kessler’s supposed evidence showed Dershowitz. It’s not particularly clear why someone trying to publicly expose people would ever go to another guy accused of this stuff. Even if he had no evidence showing Dershowitz involved, this Kessler guy would have no reason to think that was dispositive. He couldn’t have believed he had the entire universe of every Epstein encounter ever, so under the most generous theory, Kessler’s basically telling Dershowitz, “I can’t prove you definitely did anything, so I’m assuming that my not having a photo of it is more believable than a woman’s testimony.”
That’s… not particularly compelling.
What is the point of dragging Kessler into this case? Does Kessler’s statement supposedly exonerate Dershowitz? Because that would involve believing Kessler was the genuine article. Or did Boies taking a meeting with Kessler support the claim that people are trying to blackmail Dershowitz with false claims? Because that would involve believing Kessler was a con man. If Kessler was a fraud then the lawyers got duped but that also means everyone’s back at square one. If Pottinger crossed the line in the stuff he told Kessler — which we can only really back up with Kessler’s story to reporters — it may be unethical but also not end up having much bearing on the truth of the claims at hand.
The only thing more astounding than the fact that a random mystery man has managed to troll a high-profile litigation is the altogether depressing idea that we may still be talking about him for months on end.
Jeffrey Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz hopes to use N.Y. Times mystery man to help his case [Miami Herald]
Jeffrey Epstein, Blackmail and a Lucrative ‘Hot List’
Earlier: David Boies Sues Alan Dershowitz, Becomes A Pro Se Litigant
Dershowitz Wanted To Get Boies Disqualified… So Now He Has To Deal With Another Famous SCOTUS Litigator
Judge Mocks That Bonkers Republication Argument Dershowitz Made
Alan Dershowitz Says He Has A ‘Perfect Sex Life,’ Answering The Question Literally No One Asked
Who’s Up For A Fun Night Out Watching Alan Dershowitz Talk About Sex Trafficking?
Dershowitz’s Motion To Disqualify Boies Schiller Immediately Dumped For Hilarious Reason
Harvard Law School’s Dershowitz Moves To Disqualify Boies Schiller In Sex Trafficking Case
Dershowitz Wanted A Trial Over Sex Trafficking Accusations — He’s Getting One
Some (Tentative) Good News For Alan Dershowitz… And Some More Bad News
I Just Had To Think About Alan Dershowitz’s Underwear And Now So Do You
Alan Dershowitz Says He Thinks He Should’ve Gotten Epstein A BETTER Deal In Wild Doubling-Down Interview
After Publicly Demanding His Accusers Sue Him, Dershowitz Is Arguing That His Accusers Have No Basis To Sue Him
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.
How Matter Management Can Create Business Process Improvements
Today’s legal industry is a highly demanding one, with in-house counsel facing mounting pressures to increase efficiencies while reducing both costs and potential risk. Delivering improved business processes while also providing high-quality legal services in a quick and efficient manner can often seem like competing objectives. Successfully bridging that gap requires a modern matter management solution capable of creating business process improvements that result in the quick delivery of services while maintaining quality and bringing business value to the company.
The Case for Matter Management
In most corporations, internal IT staff are overburdened, with little time to focus on matters of legal operations management. In the absence of such IT support, in-house counsel need to find additional tools to help with matter management, even though, through no fault of their own, they are often unfamiliar with the best solutions for efficiency, cost savings, and service delivery. As a result, many in-house legal departments have historically relied on an unintegrated, cobbled-together collection of disparate systems, each responsible for a discrete aspect of matter management.
Successful matter management that leads to concrete business process improvements, however, requires a comprehensive, holistic approach. Only by having an integrated view of any given matter through a centralized matter management platform can you view and manage every aspect of a matter, from start to finish. Switching between systems and platforms opens the door to errors and inefficiencies that create significant risk for the company and its clients.
Comprehensive matter management tools streamline and expedite matter intake, allowing in-house counsel to more quickly assign the right teams before moving on to delegate roles and tasks, manage those tasks, make adjustments to strategy and staffing as needed, and institute best practices — typically all with the assistance of automation. The same cannot be said when using a collection of disparate systems. By streamlining matter management from intake to completion, legal departments free up valuable time for attorneys to focus on high-value legal work, business process improvements, and legal innovation.
Cloud-based matter management tools open the door to even more business process improvements through increased agility and greater capacity for innovation. Employing cloud-based matter management allows for greater security for data and systems, because cloud vendors have already invested billions of dollars in security. Cloud-based matter management platforms seamless integrate with best-in-class, third-party applications and come with automatic upgrades so you never have to worry that your technology is obsolete. Centralized cloud-based matter management tools also allow in-house counsel to have access to important business matters anytime, anywhere, which means better service for clients.
Better Focus on Business Matters
With a comprehensive matter management solution, corporate legal departments are in the best possible position to eliminate inefficient manual processes, gain increased visibility into workloads, and access the kind of reporting and analytics that management wants to see. General counsels are under constant pressure to run corporate legal departments like businesses, and matter management allows them to do just that. Proper matter management empowers you to align your department’s goals and strategy with that of your overall organization, allowing you to show the clear value that you bring to the business.
Jonathan Reed is the CEO and co-founder of AdvoLogix. He currently leads AdvoLogix growth in the SaaS marketplace. He also serves as the chief security officer for the company and advises Fortune 50 clients on cloud-security compliance and ongoing governance for enterprise SaaS applications. He can be reached at jreed@advologix.com.
Hundreds Of Women Lawyers Who Have Had Abortions Come Forward To Ask Supreme Court To Protect Abortion Rights
(Photo by ANNA GASSOT/AFP/Getty Images)
Amici are 368 individuals but they speak for many more of the past, present, and future members of the legal profession who have, like one in four American women, terminated a pregnancy in their lifetimes. As members of a profession that, in its shining moments, has allowed those with legal training to stand up for those who cannot advocate for themselves, amici feel uniquely empowered, equipped, and, indeed, compelled to come forward with their names and stories on behalf of those who still cannot do so.
Amici submit this brief, some at immeasurable personal and professional cost, for the countless others who may not have the tools to navigate the legal system to secure all that the Constitution and the Court have rightfully promised them.
— Paul Weiss litigation partner Claudia Hammerman, counsel of record, in an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs in June Medical Services v. Gee, who are challenging a Louisiana statute that would make it more difficult for doctors to perform abortions. Signatories to the brief include all manner of attorneys, such as “equity partners of the largest firms in the country, counsel to Fortune 100 companies, appointed and career officials in state government, and employees of all three branches of the federal government.”
(Lawyers from the following firms have signed the brief: Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Debevoise & Plimpton; Kirkland & Ellis; Davis Wright Tremaine; BakerHostetler; Paul Weiss; White & Case; Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer; Dechert; Fox Rothschild; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Dentons; and Morrison & Foerster. Professors from the following law schools have signed the brief: George Washington University Law School; American University Washington College of Law; New York University School of Law; and Emory University School of Law.)
(Flip to the next page to read the brief in full.)
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.
Jay Clayton Paints His Masterpiece
Some of President Trump’s financial regulators aim to take an ax to the whole idea of financial regulation. Some aim to slowly erode them from within. Since taking the helm at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton has forged his own Trumpian path, that of being seen to do things without really doing anything at all. Sometimes, this works wonders, as with his efforts to discourage whistleblowers from turning tout. Sometimes, it works less well, like when his efforts to save Bill Ackman from himself make Carl Icahn very angry. And sometimes, other people—fingers crossed for the Supreme Court—just go ahead and take things off his plate for him.
So while Clayton & co. wait to find if they have to continue seeking easy disgorgements, they’re hard at work crafting a new definition of “accredited investor.” That designation is the one that allows a person to invest in hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, private placements and the like, and it’s one that the SEC and Congress have noodled around with since coming up with the term, most recently to allow registered brokers and investment advisers to invest no matter how little money they’ve got. Because for most people, it is a matter of money: If you make at least $200,000 a year, or have $1 million in assets not including your home, you’re accredited.
Clayton wants to be seen to be deregulating like all his buddies, so his new definition will include blanket accreditations like those for RIAs and brokers—have the right job in finance, and you’ve got the right to give your money to Steve Cohen, if you want to. But seeing as how $200,000 a year doesn’t mean as much as it did when that number was settled upon in the 1980s, and seeing as how people making that much money who then lose a chunk of it on a hedge fund are inclined to seek redress from the SEC—the very thing Clayton wants least—the SEC seems ready to update that part of the picture as well. And so, in the end, it’ll all come out in the wash.
U.S. rules that determine who can invest in hedge funds and private equity are poised to get their most sweeping overhaul in years, though it’s unclear how much the changes will expand the pool of potential clients…
In the SEC’s proposed changes, people could be deemed savvy enough to invest in hedge funds if they hold certain licenses or work in finance, the people said. For instance, employment at a hedge fund could be enough to qualify for certain investments regardless of how much money a potential investor earns, one of the people said.
The plan, which could still change before SEC commissioners vote to propose it, would also index to inflation income and net worth thresholds, the people said. The current requirements that individuals earn $200,000 a year, couples make $300,000, or that investors have a net worth of $1 million haven’t been updated since the 1980s.
Hedge Fund Rules That Keep Out Not-So-Rich Poised for SEC Revamp [Bloomberg]
Can the S.E.C. Force Repayment of Ill-Gotten Gains? [DealBook]
Meet the Man Loosening Bank Regulation, One Detail at a Time [NYT]
A Holiday Bonus That Came In Just Before The Clock Struck For Thanksgiving
As associates wound up their work before Thanksgiving, another firm sent around a bonus announcement that didn’t reach the Above the Law offices until just now. This is a good time to remind everyone that we rely on our army of tipsters to keep us in the loop. Thankfully, one firm tipster noticed that we hadn’t reported on this bonus yet and sent it in. But don’t wait until a few days go by — we’d prefer to hear about the bonus 20 times than miss it for a day.
Stroock & Stroock & Lavan just joined the bonus game and followed suit as one would expect. From a tipster:
Stroock gave thanks to its associates last week by matching the Cravath scale in 2019 for bonuses in NY and DC (Class of 2019 – $15,000 (prorated), 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 and senior – $100,000), while associates in LA and MI will receive market bonuses. As in prior years, associates with very high billable hours will also be eligible for an additional “super” bonuses that exceed the Cravath scale.
Congratulations to the Stroockies out there.
And if you are looking to help us out with bonus tips, as soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). 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, 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.
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.
Biglaw Firms Learn The Hard Way: If You Don’t Want Controversy Don’t Pay For A Brett Kavanaugh Event
Ad campaign sample via Demand Justice
Decisions have consequences. That’s a concept lawyers should be well familiar with. So when Consovoy McCarthy, Gibson Dunn, Kasowitz Benson & Torres, Kirkland & Ellis, Sullivan & Cromwell, and WilmerHale decided to be Gold Circle sponsors of a Federalist Society dinner where Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the keynote speaker, they probably should have expected some people would be pissed. Maybe they didn’t expect a full-out ad campaign, but that’s what they got.
On Monday, the advocacy group Demand Justice announced an ad campaign targeting employees at those firms for the firm’s support of the Kavanaugh event. Demand Justice is holding the line on the normalization of Kavanaugh following the credible accusations of attempted rape made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during his confirmation hearing. As Katie O’Connor, senior counsel at Demand Justice, said:
“The Federalist Society is trying to rehabilitate Brett Kavanaugh – who was credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women – so he can get to work enriching corporations at the expense of women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and other vulnerable communities. And, they’re using the veneer of legitimacy granted to them by sponsors to do it. The firms supporting the Federalist Society are choosing profits over survivors. It’s time for people at these firms who really care about ending sexual violence to speak up.”
I know a lot of lawyers on both sides of the political spectrum are eager for a return to the legal norms of a pre-Trump world. When it was fine to support an event featuring Supreme Court justice of any political stripe. But that’s not the world we live in. They can’t undo the erosion of those norms brought on by destruction of blue slips, the appointment of unqualified federal judges, and everything surrounding Merrick Garland’s nomination for the Supreme Court.
The reality is the painful truth that Republicans in the Senate did not care about credible accusations of sexual assault during the Kavanaugh confirmation. But that doesn’t mean everyone can — or should — forget what happened and get back to business as usual.
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).
Webinar: Findings From The 12th Annual Law Department Operations Survey
Are concerns about the Big 4 overblown? According to the new 12th Annual Blickstein Group Law Department Operations Survey, published in collaboration with Morae Global, law departments surveyed are four times more likely to use a traditional ALSP compared to a Big 4 firm.
The 2019 LDO Survey reveals how law departments are leveraging legal operations, including insights on:
- Artificial Intelligence;
- Technology;
- Effectiveness;
- Legal Project Management;
- And more.
Join us on December 11th at 1 p.m. ET to learn more!
It’s Relatively Academic: Relativity Academic Partner Program Improves Tech Competence
Anyone who even marginally works in e-discovery or legal technology has heard of Relativity, the e-discovery software platform that permeates the legal market. Consult any survey or report in the past ten years and chances are you’ll find Relativity atop the list of software companies developing tools that make the management of electronically stored information more efficient for lawyers, paralegals, and litigation support professionals.
But not everyone knows that there’s a good deal more to Relativity than its market-leading software. Take, for instance, the Relativity Academic Partner program. That little gem has been quietly building training programs in higher education for several years.
What is the Relativity Academic Partner program? I talked recently with Janice Hollman, who leads the program for Relativity, to find out.
“The mission and vision of the Relativity Academic Partner program is to get Relativity in the classroom and get students and professors hands-on experience,” Hollman says. “But the program goes beyond just using the software. The goal is really to prepare the next generation of lawyers and paralegals to be technologically literate,” she says.
Hollman’s team is training professors and teaching students. Users of Relativity on a law school, university, or college campus are logging in to a live database that has been loaded with electronic documents from the public Enron data set. Students go through an 85-page workbook and perform exercises focused on not just learning the functionality of the software, but also the terminology and the processes involved in e-discovery.
Students are graduating with Relativity Certified User credentials, and a few have achieved Relativity Certified Administrator status. “These are critical skill sets that graduates need today,” Hollman says, adding that law students are the focus because “even if they as attorneys never log in to a database, everyone is constantly reminded that the model rules require attorneys to at least understand technology, and this program helps there as well.”
The Relativity Academic Partner program, currently in over 90 schools, is starting to go international—they just launched a program at the National College of Ireland, which selected Relativity as their e-discovery platform. They have also conducted pilots in China and the UK.
And the great thing about the program is that there are no cost barriers to gain access; it is 100% free.
I’m a huge advocate for increased technology in education, particularly in law schools, and what Relativity is doing with the Academic Partner program strikes me as really smart. I’m old enough to remember when Westlaw and Lexis were launched and later introduced in schools. The result has been at least a few generations of lawyers who grew up conducting legal research and Shepardizing cases using a computer instead of rummaging through stacks of books in a law library.
Time will tell whether Relativity will have the same impact. But, clearly, Hollman and her team are off to a great start.
To learn more or obtain additional information, reach out to academic@relativity.com.
Mike Quartararo
Mike Quartararo is the President of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), a professional member association providing training and certification in e-discovery. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery and a consultant providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@aceds.org. Follow him on Twitter @mikequartararo.
Trial Of The, Uh, Week To Determine Whether Billionaire Visionary Understands English
History has shown that the things Elon Musk says do not always have a perfect congruence with reality. The ridiculous ‘80s-movie-child’s-dream-car he unveils one day is likely to bear little if any resemblance to the Cybertruck that may one day in the distant future actually be manufactured (and whose unbreakable windows prove really quite easily and embarrassingly breakable). His insistence that Tesla will one day make money and as many cars as it promises have yet to prove true. Sometimes, he says things about taking Tesla private with money already raised that also seem to feature a distinct difference from reality. And he occasionally appears to accuse people of being incorrigible sex criminals who, in fact, do not appear to be incorrigible sex criminals.
It is the latter matter that, in spite of his lawyers’ best efforts, Elon Musk will attempt to explain to a court this week. You can expect him to offer his semantic history of the term “pedo guy,” which he claims is an epithet thrown around among South African schoolchildren which has nothing at all to do with, you know, pedophilia, regardless of what your own eyes and ears and powers of discernment say, a bit like arguing that the kids who dreamed of the Cybertruck 35 years ago didn’t know what “fag” or “gay” meant while being used as all-purpose insults. Unfortunately for Musk, that latter argument is also untrue, and a judge has given the OK to Thai cave rescuer Vernon Unsworth to share with the jury this e-mail sent in the wake of the “pedo guy” tweet at the heart of Unsworth’s defamation case.
Days later, in an email Musk sent to Ryan Mac, the reporter behind the BuzzFeed News story, he renewed his original claims against Unsworth. He wrote, “stop defending child rapists,” in reference to Unsworth and also accused him of moving to Thailand for a child bride.… The judge ruled on Wednesday the emails can be used as evidence of “establishing Musk’s state of mind at the time of the alleged defamation.”
Certainly sounds like Musk may have had at least an inkling of what “pedo” might mean, but that’s now for a jury to decide. The judge is making things harder on Musk in other ways, too.
Musk and Unsworth are both expected to testify, their respective lawyers told CNN Business. In October, US District Judge Stephen Wilson rejected Musk’s attempts to dismiss the lawsuit. Wilson also ruled against classifying Unsworth as a public figure, which now makes defamation easier to prove.
But as anyone following Tesla has learned by now, Elon Musk always has an answer to everything, and that answer is to blame someone else.
Musk defended his decision to double down on the claim, sharing how he hired a private investigator to probe Unsworth and blamed the PI for allegedly giving him bad information.
Elon Musk heads to court for defamation trial over ‘pedo guy’ tweet [CNN]