Category: News Feeds

What a long strange trip it’s been since the book I co-authored with Carolyn Elefant, Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, was published in 2010. Back then, trying to convince lawyers to use social media for any reason was a tough sell. Very few lawyers used social media and most wanted nothing to do with it.

How times have changed! These days, according to the results of the latest American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey Report, the vast majority of lawyers and law firms use social media. As shared in the survey results, 80% of lawyers report that their firms maintain a presence on social media, and 80% also personally maintain a social media presence for professional purposes.

Not surprisingly, the results showed that LinkedIn is a popular social media site with lawyers; after all, it’s a “professional” social network. According to the report, the majority of lawyers — 57% — indicated that their law firms maintained a LinkedIn presence, and 73% reported that they personally maintained a LinkedIn profile for professional purposes. 31% even shared that they used LinkedIn for reasons unrelated to professional goals.

Usage varied depending on firm size. Larger firms were most likely to have a presence on LinkedIn, with 82% of firms of 100 or more attorneys having a presence in LinkedIn. Next up were 47% of solos, 45% of midsize firms with 10 to 49 lawyers, and 45% of smaller firms with two to nine lawyers.

When it comes to maintaining personal LinkedIn pages for professional purposes, large-firm lawyers led the way, with 87% of lawyers from firms with 500 or more lawyers using LinkedIn, 88% of lawyers from firms with 100 to 499 lawyers, 82% of lawyers from firms with 50 to 99 lawyers, and 79% of lawyers from firms with 10 to 49 lawyers.

So it’s clear that lawyers and their firms are using LinkedIn. Are you one of them? If so, are you using it as effectively as you could be? Probably not. That’s where the recently published book, Make LinkedIn Work for You: A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Other Legal Professionals, comes in.

In this book, co-authored by Dennis Kennedy and Allison Shields, you’ll learn everything you need to know about using LinkedIn as a legal professional. There’s something for everyone in this book, regardless of whether you’ve been on Linkedin for years or whether it’s a new endeavor.

Trust me on this. As someone whose been on LinkedIn for more than a decade now and who has over 221,000 followers, I like to think I’ve got a pretty good handle on using LinkedIn. Even so, I learned about quite a few new features that I had been previously unaware of.

At  the outset, the authors offer the following very important advice: if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish on Linkedin, you’ll have no idea whether the time you spend on LinkedIn is worth it. That’s why, as they explain, it’s so important to determine your goals in order to get the most out of LinkedIn:

“What are you hiring LinkedIn to do?”…For example, if you are “hiring” LinkedIn to help you find a job, you will use it differently than if you are hiring LinkedIn to help you fill an open position. If you want to hire LinkedIn to find new local clients for your law practice, you will do something different than if you want to hire it to help you find speaking opportunities. Our sense is that LinkedIn will work best for most lawyers and other legal professionals if they hire it to help them create, manage, and care for their network of referrers and potential referrers of business.

The book is divided into six sections. The first section covers the basics and helps you understand how to create (or re-create) an effective profile. It also offers an overview of the platform (both the online and mobile versions), the different account settings, and the benefits of both regular and premium accounts.

Sections 2 through 4 offer a deeper dive into the essentials of LinkedIn profiles, the ins and outs of connecting with others on LinkedIn, and how to effectively participate on LinkedIn in order to achieve your stated goals. Section 5 delves into strategical considerations in greater detail, and Section 6 covers a host of different topics including how to: 1) conduct job searches, 2) used LinkedIn business tools, 3) navigate legal ethics issues, and 4) locate relevant resources.

One great tip that comes in really handy at professional networking events is how to enable and use LinkedIn’s “Find Nearby” feature. I recently used this feature at a conference I attended over the summer and it made it super easy to connect with other conference attendees. In Chapter 13 the authors explain how it works:

If you are at a conference or meeting where people are willing to try the feature, you can ask everyone with the app to turn it on. Everyone will see who else on LinkedIn with feature turned on is present. It then is a simple matter of clicking on people and immediately connecting with them.

Speaking of connecting with others, you can find me on Linkedin here. Then, buy the book, learns the ins and outs of LinkedIn, and put some of your newfound knowledge to work!

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Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

Cybercriminals have a decided advantage when it comes to tricking the public. The human tendency to gloss over small, yet important, details like a misplaced period or an inverted set of adjacent letters can yield immeasurable value to these so-called typosquatters. Whether prompting speed-readers to head over to an unsafe website, or directing corporate insiders via email to transfer funds, doppelgänger domains continue to vex lawyers and security experts alike.

Although the increased reliance on web-searching (where a search term is run through a search engine) in lieu of typing in a specific web domain into an address bar has resulted in a diminished need for defensive domain name acquisition as far as web presence and accessibility, typosquatting (also called URL jacking), remains a vulnerability for phishing attacks against companies, according to Lesley McCall Grossberg, Counsel at BakerHostetler, who focuses her practice on IP litigation.

Grossberg believes that phishing attacks, by which an email is sent to company employees directing them to take action -– typically, wiring funds or providing credentials to accounts, predominantly impacts financial services firms and educational institutions most, as unsuspecting email recipients may be more likely to hand over personal or sensitive information if they believe it is being requested of them from their bank or university.

To best understand the impact of these exploits, it’s critical to understand the actors’ motivations. Typosquatting as an exploit is typically designed to compel any of the following objectives:

• Sale of the domain back to the brand owner at a premium price
• Creation of ad revenue from the site where traffic lands
• Redirection of business to a competitor’s website
• Commissions earned by redirecting typo-traffic back to the brand itself through an affiliate link
• Passwords intercepts when visitors visit fake websites
• Malware or adware revenue for illicit installs on visitors’ devices
• Harvesting of e-mail messages mistakenly sent to the typo domain for valuable information
• Dissemination of disinformation

Researchers at Godai Group who studied this issue profiled Fortune 500 companies and found that 30 percent were vulnerable to doppelgänger domain activity, detailing in their investigation that specialty retailers were the most susceptible to these exploits, followed closely by commercial banks and telecommunications companies.

The Legal Landscape

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, enacted in 1999, first established a cause of action in the U.S. for intentionally registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, a trademark or personal name. While the GDPR-induced recent policy changes of redacting private information from the ‘WhoIs’ domain registry has made identifying the registrant of a domain more difficult, an action for transfer of the doppelgänger domain name can be brought under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Even if the registered domain name does not itself resolve to an active website, “using the disputed domain name as an email address to pass the registrant off as the complainant in a phishing scheme is evidence of bad faith registration and use, as required by under UDRP,” Grossberg said.

UDRP allows trademark holders to file a case at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for international violations. The complainant has to show that the registered domain name is identical or ‘confusingly similar’ to their trademark, that the registrant has no legitimate interest in the domain name, and that the domain name is being used in bad faith.

Organizations like the Commission Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), a nonprofit organization formed in 2007 to combat online infringement of brands and trademarks online across all top-level domains, represent the interests of companies in advocating for protections against these abuses.

Getting Ahead Of The Twinning Problem

Security and legal experts alike recommend several steps for mitigating doppelgänger danger. Be proactive and beat miscreants to the punch by purchasing and registering every conceivable doppelgänger domain before they do. Another approach that security experts recommend is configuring Domain Name System (DNS) servers to not resolve any doppelgänger domains to protect internal-only e-mail from being accidentally sent to a doppelgänger.

But just as important as the defensive measures, identifying whether bad actors are already using doppelgänger domains against your company interests is an important element of determining the right way to redress any future harms. Once identified, IP specialists and in-house attorneys are becoming adept at working aggressively to take down copycat domains filing under UDRP.

Gaining an understanding of whether attackers are abusing a company’s doppelgänger can be accomplished in a variety of ways. First, a company might learn first-hand of the use via its employees, customers, or a security company who investigates such security vulnerabilities in connection with a cybersecurity assessment. Second, there are companies that provide reporting around the existence of doppelgängers, such as KnowBe4.

For the protection of foreign domains, the Madrid System through WIPO, is an important element, allowing for a convenient and cost-effective solution for registering and managing trademark protection in up to 122 countries, with a single application and filing fee. It’s important to have that foreign trademark registration in place when trying to take down a domain associated with foreign domains.

Grossberg recommends that once a malicious use of a domain doppelgänger is identified in the U.S., a complaint should be made to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Another approach she finds effective is to follow up that complaint with a letter to the phisher, when possible, letting them know that a complaint has been submitted. The registration of international trademark rights has the added legal advantage of demonstrating additional evidentiary credibility when working through disputes at the IC3 level.

Finally, in yet another instance where the adage “see something, say something” pays valuable dividends, Grossberg believes, and cybersecurity firms like Nisos concur, that another critical component to solve this complex and vexing issue is to educate company insiders on identifying phishing attacks so that suspicious emails with doppelgänger attributes are immediately identified and forwarded to internal security teams for review, remediation, and referral to the legal department.

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Jennifer DeTrani is General Counsel and EVP of Nisos, a technology-enabled cybersecurity firm.  She co-founded a secure messaging platform, Wickr, where she served as General Counsel for five years.  You can connect with Jennifer on Wickr (dtrain), LinkedIn or by email at dtrain@nisos.com.

The impeachment trial — if we’re calling it that — of Donald Trump continues its depressing move forward. As all of us who know there will never be 67 votes to remove the president from office are aware, this proceeding is more about making the case of Trump’s corruption for history. But we’re going through it, as we must, in the hope that a handful of suburban housewives in Pennsylvania will be convinced not to vote for Trump.

Anyway, in an if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry segment on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee the host focuses her laser wit on the impeachment legal defense team the president has assembled. The, ahem, legal acumen of Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz and Rep. Jim Jordan has long been a source of merriment at Above the Law, Bee takes it to another level

Bee describes the triumvirate of  Starr,  Dershowitz and Jordan as “a virtual dream team of rape culture” and then she really lets them have it. I won’t spoil the jokes, but her takedown is on point.

Watch the clip below.

* Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer is trying to get a mistrial because the prosecution discussed the relationship between Weinstein and former president Bill Clinton. [Variety]

* A New Jersey woman posed as a lawyer to scam immigrants seeking legal help. [NJ.com]

* A new lawsuit filed by the DC Attorney General claims that Trump’s DC hotel was unlawfully enriched by President Trump’s inaugural committee. [CNBC]

* A man accused of stabbing another allegedly tried to eat an incriminating shirt to destroy evidence. Maybe it was an edible shirt? [Syracuse.com]

* The band Aerosmith is embroiled in litigation over whether the drummer should be allowed to play at the upcoming Grammy Awards. Even if the drummer wins, that performance is going to be super awkward. [Fox News]

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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.

Ray Dalio is in Davos (obviously), where the founder of the World Economic Conference is still insisting that it’s all about bringing people together in spite of not only having Donald Trump as his guest, but having Donald Trump use his platform to distract attention from his pro-forma impeachment trial, to take further shots at the Federal Reserve and explicitly call for non-unity, while having the assembled globalists eat it up. As for Dalio, he’s gone to (the other) Burning Man for plutocrats to deliver a message so pithy and precise that it might as well be a brand-new Principle.

Water being pumped to millions of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital city came from reservoirs contaminated by dangerous toxins, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

A study conducted by South African company Nanotech Water Solutions concluded that the health of 3 million Harare residents may be endangered by the provision of water containing toxins that can cause liver and central nervous system diseases.

The study, conducted last year, has been seen by the Guardian but has not been made public.

“The primary objective of the trial was to demonstrate the oxidative capacity of chlorine dioxide on the plant’s incoming and inherent algae … and its associated toxins, pathogenic (disease-causing) micro-organisms and other micro-contaminants,” said the report.

Oxidation is a chemical treatment process designed to remove organic and inorganic materials in water. The removal of algae and associated toxins, especially hepatotoxins (toxins that affect the liver) and neurotoxins (toxins that affect the central nervous system), is crucial to the production of safe drinking water.

The toxins, said the report, are found in the algae at Harare’s major water reservoirs, including the Chivero and Manyame lakes. The foul smell and brownish colour of water in Harare are associated with a plethora of algal species, the researchers added.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, harmful algae produce dangerous toxins in fresh or marine water. The agency warns people to keep away from water that is green, scummy or smells bad.

News of the report has enraged local people, said Precious Shumba, founder and coordinator of the Harare Residents’ Trust.

“Residents have complained numerous times about the strong stench coming out of the water that the city of Harare is delivering to ratepayers,” she said.

“The water has visible impurities, which creates doubts and insecurities among consumers.”

Shumba said residents were living in fear of contracting diseases as a result of the dirty water, and no longer trusted the city’s supply.

“There is fear of falling sick with cholera, typhoid and other deadly diseases which might be caused by these dirty particles in the city water. The city has always defended the quality of their water, claiming that the particles are harmless, but no one really takes them seriously on this,” Shumba said.

Harare’s mayor, Herbert Gomba, has defended the city’s water quality, insisting it remains safe to drink.

“It’s safe, according to reports from our quality team,” he said.

“I am sure you are aware we are facing forex challenges and that the infrastructure is old and was never meant for the huge population we now serve. Again, we are owed a lot by our people, money which can be used to do more work if we are paid by all who consumed our water. We are working hard to pump more water through refurbishment of the infrastructure.”

Harare city council spends $3m (£2.3m) every month on chemicals intended to purify the water.

Poorer residents like Joyce Mutseyami, 40, who lives in the sleepy Harare suburb of Kambuzuma, are particularly affected by the crisis as they cannot afford to buy still water. Gone are the days when she felt she could drink straight from the tap.

This week, residents had no water for three days. Mutseyami was among many dashing out to their shared backyard taps, waiting in line to collect a bucketload of the muddy liquid that gives off a foul smell and a brownish froth. It was a typical scene in a city that is often without running water for long periods.

“I don’t have a choice [other] than to drink this water. I boil it before consumption because my children may contract diseases,” Mutseyami said.

“One day we will all wake up sick because you are never assured, even if you boil the water, that it is safe. We have petitioned the council before and even took samples of the water, but nothing has been done. It’s getting worse.”

With a baby strapped on her back, Talent Mupemhi, 30, waits impatiently for her turn to fetch water from a local borehole. She has no trust in the local tap water. Yet it was the use of unsafe boreholes and wells that probably led to Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak in 2018.

Water brawls often erupt when people who dare to skip the line are caught by angry residents. Some even take advantage of the residents’ desperation to charge for borehole water.

Mupemhi has waited for two hours. She does this every day.

“I endure long queues every day to fetch water because I have no choice, tap water is unsafe. I only use it for washing,” said Muphemhi.

“I was once hospitalised after drinking tap water, it is dirty and has a foul smell. Surely people are dying slowly because they do not know what this water contains. There is sewage flowing around, slipping into drinking water. Do you think we are safe?”

The future of the Affordable Care Act remains in limbo after the Supreme Court denied a motion to expedite its consideration of the health law’s future. The decision, announced on Tuesday, makes it unlikely that the court will hear the case before November’s elections.

In December, an appeals court ruled that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, partially affirming a Texas judge’s ruling that the entire ACA was unconstitutional. The appeals court did not decide what that means for the rest of the health law, sending the case back to the district court to determine if other portions of the ACA are unconstitutional. The case, Texas et al v U.S. et al, was originally filed in 2018 by 20 Republican-led states.

On January 5, California, Washington D.C. and 19 other Democratic-led states filed a petition for the Supreme Court to consider the case on an expedited basis. Normally, the Supreme Court wouldn’t consider hearing the case until March of 2020 at the earliest. With the expedited briefing, Democrats hoped the court would hear the case in the next term, preparing insurers for next year’s enrollment and bringing the topic to the forefront as Election Day approaches.

The states wrote that without a decision, individuals, businesses and states will face “crippling uncertainty” going into 2021.

Insurance trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and 33 hospital associations also filed comment with the Supreme Court on the case. Their concern was not so much with the striking down of the individual mandate, as it was the uncertainty of the entire ACA’s future after the appeals court decided to remand the case back to the district court.

For example, AHIP wrote, it could affect hundreds of other measures that have nothing to do with the individual mandate, including requirements to provide preventive care at no out-of-pocket cost, guaranteed coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions, and funding for expanded Medicaid programs in 37 states.

“Invalidation of the ACA would wreak havoc on the health care system,” AHIP wrote. “The ACA is not a tapestry that unravels by pulling upon a single thread (i.e., the individual mandate). Rather, the ACA’s multitude of wide-ranging reforms … affect every health insurance market (not just the individual market) and every American with coverage (not just those who purchased coverage on the exchanges).”

Hospital associations added that the uncertainty may lead to slower adoption of new healthcare models, such as accountable care organizations, and will lead to bond rating downgrades that could affect hospitals’ ability to raise capital.

The Supreme Court will return for its next term in October.

Photo credit: Mykola Velychko, Getty Images

Managing the obligations enshrined in contracts is central to controlling risk in an organization. Obligations are legally binding commitments made by one party to another, and missing these commitments can lead to adverse financial and regulatory consequences, revenue leakage and damaged business relationships.

Legal departments must take the lead in ensuring that their companies are being proactive in fulfilling their contractual commitments to avoid these risks. 

Capabilities to discover, track and manage contractual obligations are necessary for companies to manage and reduce risk and get the most out of their contractual relationships. Yet like all things in business, such capabilities may be nonexistent or basic in some companies and very mature in others.

Here, we will discuss a model by which we can think about the maturity of obligation management. We summarize this obligation maturity model by its four steps: Ad-Hoc, Enabled, Regulated, and Optimized–or simply “AERO.”

With this model, legal departments can begin to think about how they can mature as an organization, and thus drive down risk and improve contract performance and relationships.

Why Adopt a Maturity Model like AERO

A business can improve only if it’s aware of where it stands and where it wishes to get to. A maturity model provides a framework for internal discussion and brainstorming. It also provides an opportunity to leverage the experience and expertise within the organization, and an impetus to prioritize change over the status quo. It helps the organization build toward its long-term goals.

Maturity models can at times be found wanting if they aren’t based on adequate evidence and weak analysis. So to come up with the AERO Obligation Maturity Model, we looked to harness our experience with millions of contracts and customers across every vertical to see how the best organizations evolve and enhance their obligations management capability. We have tried to distill that learning into a simple four-level maturity model that we hope will help organizations better manage their obligations, risks and opportunities.

Maturity Level 1: AD- HOC

The most basic level of obligation management is ad-hoc. At this maturity level companies are generally aware of their obligations but do not have an automated or comprehensive way to manage them.

Each contract requires special attention by highly skilled subject matter experts, making obligation management extremely expensive and inefficient. At the same time, there is no way for managers to gain a global view on how the organization as a whole is doing at managing obligations.

Indeed, we call this maturity level “ad hoc” because managers are left to reinvent their obligation management system with each new contract, with no shared best practices or procedures across the organization. The results are costly mistakes, damaged business relationships and poor use of time.

Maturity Level 2: Enabled

Companies that have matured to an Enabled level of obligation management have basic systems in place to identify and track contract obligations. For example, contract managers may pull obligations out of a contract and place them in a worksheet that helps them understand the milestones they have to meet to stay in compliance.

While this is a major improvement over the Ad-hoc stage, we still see many of the same problems. Extracting and tracking obligations is done on a contract-by-contract basis, which is extremely costly and time-intensive. While systems are in place to limit missed obligations, there is still no way for companies to gain a global view of outstanding obligations and model how well they are doing with fulfillment (cycle times, fulfillment rates, etc.) across the entire body of contracts.

 Maturity Level 3: Regulated

At the Regulated stage of obligation management, we start to see companies taking advantage of automated processes to enforce consistency in how they handle contracts and thereby maximize value and drive down risk. Best practices and procedures are “built-in” to the process so that contract managers aren’t reinventing the wheel with each new contract.

We also see manual workloads decrease while compliance and visibility increase. With the help of contract management software, companies at this maturity can identify obligations and have a comprehensive view of their outstanding commitments and fulfilled obligations. Anomalies and at-risk obligations are flagged for review so companies can proactively intervene before damage is done.

The result is less risk and better outcomes, achieved with less manual contract management, enabling contract managers to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Maturity Level 4: Optimized

At the pinnacle of the AERO model is a state in which companies are extending their Regulated contract management process into other systems and are running advanced analytics over the data for deeper insights into obligation fulfillment and the transactions that affect them. Management of the obligation’s entire lifecycle is automated and fully visible.

These companies typically take advantage of software that connects obligations to transactional systems like the ERP, SCM or HR systems to track obligation fulfillment in real time. They also put an emphasis on dashboards that model workflows so managers can understand how obligations are being fulfilled and identify areas for improvement. Complex dependencies become visualized and thus manageable. And as the full lifecycle of the obligations are captured, improvements can be made to future contract language.

Organization with Optimized obligation management use AI/Machine Learning models trained on terabytes of contract data that can help discover obligations and their relationships, and managing them to fulfillment, ensuring that transactions off the contracts adhere to these obligations.

On the ground this leads to optimized relationships with customers, suppliers and partners, bringing various parts of the business together; at an executive level, we see contract data become a barometer of enterprise risk and performance monitored by the c-suite and the board.

The Promise of Optimized Obligation Management

When we step back and consider what the progression up the AERO framework from Ad-Hoc to Optimized means, it can be summed up as: In an Ad-hoc stage, the contract is a static document that you have to constantly go back to in order for any value to be derived from it; in reality we know that contracts are often entirely forgotten until problems arise. With Optimized obligation management, the contract becomes the nerve center of the enterprise, a living document that acts as a single source of truth for a company’s commitments, risks, opportunities and performance.

While contracts are nearly as old as civilization itself, the ability to extract and manage obligations as discreet entities that enable transactions within other systems is a fairly recent phenomenon enabled by AI and computer science. We are only beginning to see the full potential of what a contract can do for a company if managed and optimized on a digital platform.

To discuss where your company falls in the AERO framework, please contact an Icertis contract management platform specialists today.

Is Chief Justice Roberts new in town? Has he been asleep for the past thirty years since House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich rebranded the opposition the “Democrat Party” and instructed his fellow Republicans to refer to them with terms like sick, pathetic, lie, anti-flag, traitors, radical, corrupt? Washington, D.C. is not a nice place on the best of days. And this is certainly not the best of days.

At the conclusion of 12 hours of senate impeachment hearings last night, the Chief Justice tut-tutted, “I think it is appropriate for me to admonish both the House managers and the President’s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

“One reason it has earned that title is because its members avoid speaking in a manner and using language that is not conducive to civil discourse.”

“In the 1905 Swayne trial, a senator objected when one of the managers used the word ‘pettifogg,’ and the presiding officer said the word ought not to have been used,” Roberts continued. “I don’t think we need to aspire to that high a standard, but I do think those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.”

As if he wasn’t addressing the body which refused to even hold a vote on Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, only to entirely discard the judicial filibuster and senatorial blue slips to block home-state judges.

Justice Roberts’ admonition came after a particularly vituperative exchange between the House managers and Trump’s defense team. Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, accused Senate Republicans of “voting for a coverup” by preliminarily blocking former NSA John Bolton’s testimony, calling it, “A vote against an honest consideration of the evidence against the President. A vote against an honest trial. A vote against the United States.”

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone accused Nadler of self-aggrandizement, saying, “It’s about time we bring this power trip in for a landing,”  and later adding, “The only one who should be embarrassed, Mr. Nadler, is you. For the way you addressed this body. This is the United States Senate. You’re not in charge here.”

“The Senate is not on trial,” howled the president’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, because defending a constitutional vote is presumably easier than explaining away the illegal withholding of congressionally allocated defense aid until a foreign government agrees to slime your political rival. “The Constitution doesn’t allow what just took place.”

Historians may debate whether the rampant false statements of fact by the president’s lawyers or the outraged response by the House prosecutors was most inappropriate. But in the immediate aftermath, it’s the GOP who has seized on Roberts’ statement to pronounce themselves grievously injured by the rough-tongued rapscallions from the Democrat party.

“It was clear what the impetus for that was,” said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a former Roberts clerk. “It was Nadler getting up and calling the president’s counsel a bunch of liars — repeatedly calling them liars. Which is a terrible breach of courtroom decorum.”

“It was so insulting and outrageous it was a shock to all of us,” huffed Texas’s John Cornyn, who once described Trump’s call for four congresswomen of color to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came” an “unforced error.”

“I’m not covering up anything, I’m exposing your hatred!” screeched Lindsey Graham, in a flop that would make Manu Ginobili blush.

And the pettifoggery continues apace today, with another day of marathon impeachment hearings. What ancient lingo will the Chief Justice resurrect for today’s admonition of those irreverent scallawags? Tune in after midnight for an edge-of-the-seat mild rebuke from Hizzoner!

Chief Justice Roberts admonishes impeachment lawyers, telling them to ‘remember where they are’ [WaPo]
John Roberts scolds legal teams after tense exchange: ‘Those addressing the Senate should remember where they are’ [CNN]