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“So, you’re a recovering lawyer, too? Congratulations on getting out!” I hear it all the time from well-meaning friends and strangers. It’s a familiar greeting for us former lawyers, whether in our past lives we were Biglaw associates, Fortune 500 lawyers, or a pre-IPO hot startup general counsel who now leads a business function at a blockchain startup.

Sometimes, I respond with a smile and say nothing. Other times I cheerfully assert, again with a friendly smile, “Once a lawyer, always a lawyer! And I’ve always been a happy one, in fact.” When I’m feeling particularly sassy, I might even say, “As a lawyer, I got to tell people what to do for a living. I got paid to be my control-enthusiastic self! What’s not to like?!”

But in all seriousness, why do we use the language of addiction and recovery to talk about working in law?

Some have pointed out that lawyers are known for saying “no” — or, on a good day, saying “yes, if,” which any good lawyer knows is a more diplomatic way of saying “no.” They say that the legal profession is a very prestigious, comfortable, well-paid trap, with high barriers to entry that make it grueling to leave.

I’m reminded that it’s the job of most lawyers to mitigate risk. Therefore, they say, lawyers are just overhead. When I point out in response that, in fact, lawyers play a huge role in asset creation and asset management, I’m usually met with a smirk. 

This puzzles me! Anyone who has incorporated a company, obtained a patent or a trademark, issued an option, created employee on-boarding papers, or papered an agreement has, in fact, created valuable assets for their company. Admittedly, our ability to fully optimize and intentionally manage these assets’ values and lifecycles are limited by our tools and our imaginations — but that’s another story.   

While I have a business title and can no longer claim privilege — the only real sacrifice I made when switching to the business side of things — almost everything else has stayed the same:

• On both the business and legal sides, I have solved challenging problems that I had never encountered before. And in the process, I created value and assets for the company on both sides.  
• On business and legal, I have shaped the company’s strategy and had a measurable impact on its future.
• My legal training, experience, and expertise have been instrumental in both business and legal adventures. In fact, in both areas, combining my legal skills with a creative, open mind was vital in finding success.

So, I wonder if it’s accurate to call my adventures on the business side a “recovery,” rather than just, say, an “exploration.” What am I recovering from, and how?

Could it be that the separation between legal and all other parts of a company is just as mythical as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? Maybe pretending that we have no choice but to “stay in our swim lane” is an outdated way of thinking. Maybe swimming diagonally and across lanes is more impactful for your company and career.

And most importantly, could the risk and creativity that you take on when leaving behind a thousand-year-old path lead to a more rewarding and satisfying career and more exciting life? What do you think?

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Olga V. Mack is an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor at Berkeley Law, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to serve on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw to prepare women in-house attorneys become general counsel and legal leaders and WISE to help women law firm partners become rainmakers. She embraces the current disruption to the legal profession. Olga loves this change and is dedicated to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and inclusive than before. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.

The Indiana State Bar’s Probate, Trust, and Real Estate group has an email listserv to discuss professional developments and build a sense of community among the membership. In this way, it’s not much different than any other professional group around the country. A couple pleasantries about the weather that everyone on the list can delete in between their work emails and Fantasy Football advice newsletters.

On Friday, the group’s leader, Steven Robinson, put out a blast that stuck to a well-worn tradition when it comes to these newsletters and kicked it off with a little trivia fact to hook the readers:

Delightfully light information. It’s hard to believe Piggly Wiggly once dominated the grocery game, but here we are. In a sense, the future grocery model that Robinson’s talking about is almost a repudiation of the Piggly Wiggly model — a return to an era where you told the clerk what you wanted and they’d gather it for you rather than letting you select it yourself and grocery stores don’t have ridiculous names.

But as Chekov says, “if you mention ‘grocery/shopping’ jokes in the first act, it needs to go horribly awry in the second act.”

This is where someone will inevitably chime in that everyone should “chill out” and “have a sense of humor.” They may even turn this into a jeremiad about “PC culture” and contend that outrage over jokes represents the downfall of America. The person making these arguments will be a white dude — probably Bret Stephens.

Everyone capable of chewing gum and maintaining a basic sense of decorum at the same time can identify why “tits” jokes don’t play in a professional setting in 2019 — if they ever really did. It’s not the end of comedy to put a lid on jokes like these; it’s the end of played-out hackery.

Bringing us to the third act of our play — a little over four hours later:

It’s… an apology, though perhaps not the apology the situation warrants. While excising the tits certainly pushes this closer, the joke’s still gazing over a wide chasm at acceptability in the far-flung distance. The foray of one character’s “tits” into the z-axis are the only thing keeping the women from being entirely two-dimensional and that’s still not going to be enough. That women are jealous, overreacting harpies sucking the joy out of every moment of life is what makes this joke “funny” and consequently what makes it profoundly unfunny to a considerable swath of the intended audience.

At least this isn’t a group of lawyers charged with meting out the rights of spouses after someone dies — you know, the sort of discipline where a profound lack of respect for wives might be a professional problem!

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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.

Hours after we published our account of Katie Sears, an Iowa attorney and prostitute taking a break from the latter job, the Iowa Supreme Court suspended the law license of her husband and law practice partner John Sears, forcing her to take the whole load for the time being.

In the original coverage of Katie’s alternative career, many were impressed by her husband’s “I don’t really care that much” attitude about her sex work. Based on the findings of the Iowa Supreme Court, he seems to care far too deeply, indeed dangerously, about a lot of other stuff.

From the opinion written by Justice Susan Christensen:

Five months after his admittance, on February 6, 2018, law enforcement located Sears on a highway in Polk County pushing a heavily damaged, disabled vehicle. Sears indicated he rear-ended an unknown vehicle; he did not understand where he was or where the accident took place. Law enforcement located an open bottle of vodka in the back seat of Sears’s car. After failing field sobriety tests, Sears consented to a breath test, which returned a result of 0.181 blood alcohol concentration. He was then arrested for OWI in violation of Iowa Code section 321J.2 (2018).

Driving while intoxicated is a crime that far too many attorneys commit — a byproduct of overarching substance abuse issues in the profession and the dangerous overconfidence the profession preaches. Placing the public at risk is an entirely reasonable basis for discipline. John Sears was ordered per his one-year probation on the criminal charge to attend a treatment program. He never showed up.

This is where the facts in the opinion get decidedly dark:

About two weeks later, on October 7, West Des Moines police received a 911 call from Jane Doe. The 911 call revealed a panicked Doe explaining, “[M]y ex . . . is trying to break in” and “he was here and he attacked me and then I got him to leave, and then he came back.” As it turns out, Doe is Sears’s former spouse. Apparently, Doe and Sears divorced in May but remained intimate.

His ex, who he was suing for replevin of some sex toys characterized by the judge as “described in shocking detail,” spent the day with him at her apartment according to testimony, but at some point he became intoxicated and got Doe’s handgun and asked to kill himself with it. The account continues that Doe took back the handgun and hid it, Sears beat her, she gave him back the gun, he came back looking for bullets and she took the gun back, and then he left only to return later pounding on the door and prompting the 911 call.

When police found him, they took his phone and reported these texts with current wife Katie:

At 10:04:30 PM, Sears texted, “I’m drunk as fuck.”
At 10:04:38 PM, Sears texted, “7 have I gun.”
At 10:05:00 PM, Sears texted, “And I’m leaving her 7.”
At 10:05:37 PM, Sears texted, “Let this make you happy.”
At 10:06:31 PM, Sears texted, “I’ve assaulted her.”
At 10:07:34 PM, Sears texted, “I’ve threatened to kill myself. I can’t so with her.”
At 10:08:08 PM, Sears texted, “I don’t want to kill her.”

This resulted in a restraining order, the adjustment of his earlier probation to include “secured continuous remote alcohol monitoring,” and another one-year probation for the domestic assault.

While he denies violating the restraining order, his ex-wife states that he tried to contact her multiple times afterward and eventually came to her apartment on January 30, 2019. The disciplinary commission believed her side of the story and found the whole affair to be “precisely the sort of conduct which reflects a connection between the conduct and the fitness to practice law.” The Iowa Supreme Court reviewed those findings and decided to suspend John Sears from the practice of law in Iowa indefinitely with no possibility of reinstatement for two years.

Hopefully, with the pressures of practice lifted for the time being, he can get the help he needs.

(Check out the whole opinion on the next page.)

Earlier: People May Think All Lawyers Are Prostitutes, But This Lawyer Is Literally A Prostitute

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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.

Contract attorneys have long been a staple of the legal profession — especially in the world of eDiscovery. But the work that’s traditionally been foisted upon them is the least desirable in the industry — trust me, I know. But what if it were possible to do real legal work — think legal research, court appearances, or brief writing — with the flexibility of a freelancer schedule?

That’s exactly what Lawclerk is doing to transform the legal profession. In this week’s episode of The Jabot podcast, I talk with Lawclerk co-founder — and law firm partner — Kristin Tyler about startup life, balancing being an entrepreneur with a legal practice, and why the legal market needs more flexibility.

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench. It’s a reminder that even when we aren’t winning, we’re still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Happy listening!

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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).

The results of the July administration of bar exams around the country still haven’t been released — but there is very good reason to think we’ll be seeing an increase in passage rates. That’s great news for all those who’ve finished law school — likely taking out massive student loans to do so — and are waiting to become real-life esquires.

According to Judith Gundersen, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the average national score on the July 2019 administration of Multistate Bar Exam is up 1.6 points, to 141.1 — the largest increase in scores since 2008. The MBE counts for 50 percent of the overall score in 44 of the 54 jurisdictions that use the 200 question multiple choice exam; in the remaining jurisdictions, it counts for between 33 and 45 percent of an applicant’s bar exam grade. Regardless of the specific breakdown, an increase in the average MBE score is likely to mean an increase in passage rate. And as Gundersen notes, it is good news:

“The increase in the July MBE mean is certainly good news,” she said Monday. “While pass rates depend on a lot of different factors, we do expect we’ll see more people passing the bar exam this July as a result.”

But it is probably too early to start the celebrations. Though the bump in MBE scores is nice, it comes off of a 34-year low in 2018. Even with the sizable increase, the average score is below the mark — 141.7 — set in 2017.

However, for those that are waiting to find out if they’ve passed what is probably the biggest exam of their life, they can see this as a good sign they’ll soon be members of the bar.

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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).

Only about a third of Americans can identify the three branches. Another third can only name one branch of government. Ten percent thinks Judy Sheindlin serves on the United States Supreme Court. Judge Judy! I’ve got great respect for her, but she is not one of my colleagues.

— Justice Neil Gorsuch, lamenting the fact that the American public does not understand the structure of government and its institutions in an interview with the Washington Post.

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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.

Professional staff members at Biglaw firms are under a lot of stress and pressure to perform their jobs well, but it seems as though all of the recent attention that’s been paid to mental health in the legal profession is being afforded only to associates and partners. The results of a new survey by fSquared Marketing, a Canadian legal consulting firm, seem to confirm that this is how law firm staff members — legal marketers especially — feel about the situation.

The survey polled 200 law firm staff members, comprised of legal marketers and business professionals, 72 percent of whom worked in the U.S., with the remaining 24 percent in Canada and 4 percent in other countries.

The American Lawyer has the details on the results:

More than 75 percent of legal marketers agreed with the statement that they “often feel overwhelmed at work.” And it wasn’t about compensation or hours worked: More than 70 percent of respondents felt they are compensated appropriately. Much of the stress, they said, stems from the feeling that attorneys do not understand or respect their work.

Half of the respondents strongly agreed with the statement that attorneys lack respect for their role, while 74 percent of business professionals felt that lawyers do no understand their role in the firm. …

Only 9 percent of respondents agreed that there is a focus on the mental well-being of “non-lawyers,” and 71 percent said their law firm does not provide formal support related to stress management and mindfulness.

“It’s difficult to convey the stress to attorneys of what we do. To try and convey how many balls we are juggling sounds defensive and lame, so we suck it up and consequently [have] stress,” said one respondent. “I think mental health is an issue like many others in law firms: if there’s any attention paid to it, it’s as it relates to attorneys — not staff,” said another.

This is extremely disheartening news. We certainly hope that Biglaw firms will quickly address this elephant in the room that is their unhappy ranks of their staff members. These are the people who make sure law firms run efficiently, and it’s high time proper attention is paid to their needs.

Stressed Out: Law Firm Staff Say Their Mental Health Is Being Ignored, Survey Finds [American Lawyer]

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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.

On our podcast, Thinking Like A Lawyer, we recently discussed when it is and is not acceptable to blame a lawyer for their clients. In a justice system that demands attorneys be willing to zealously represent everyone — especially the worst among us — to maintain its credibility, should lawyers be held accountable in the court of public opinion for their representations?

One name that came up during the conversation was Lisa Bloom. For those who don’t recall, the gild came off this particular Bloom back in 2017 when her own mother called her out for representing Harvey Weinstein against those accusing him of sexual assault. Bloom quit working for Weinstein as soon as it became public. At the time, we noted that this is precisely the sort of pressure that attorneys deserve to face. Unlike a run-of-the-mill defense attorney, Bloom posits herself as a defender of women victimized by sexual misconduct. When she crosses the line to represent Weinstein — for a reported $895/hour rate — it’s not so much that Weinstein doesn’t deserve representation as it’s a move that undermines Bloom’s credibility as an advocate to every other client and prospective client she hopes to work for. How does one trust opening up about painful experiences to a woman who is willing to represent a public figure accused of perpetrating the exact same misdeeds?

It turns out, Bloom’s representation of Weinstein may have been more involved and more troubling than first reported. A new book titled She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, brings together more detail than ever before on the Weinstein case. The New York Times took a look at the new book and in the process revealed some troubling details about Bloom’s work for Weinstein:

Allred’s daughter, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, a prominent victims’ rights attorney, was working behind the scenes with Mr. Weinstein — at a rate of $895 an hour — to quash the journalists’ investigation and thwart his accusers. In a confidential memo to Mr. Weinstein that Ms. Bloom wrote in December 2016, which is reproduced in “She Said,” she offered to help him damage the reputation of one of his accusers, Rose McGowan, and portrayed her background as a victims’s rights advocate as an asset.

“I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them,” Ms. Bloom wrote, before laying out a multistep playbook for how to intimidate accusers or paint them as liars. One of Ms. Bloom’s suggested tactics for undermining Ms. McGowan: “We can place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”

One time where it’s entirely reasonable to rip an attorney for their work is when they cross the line from defending someone into… well, this stuff. Leveraging her career as an advocate for women to say she knows how to discredit someone? And let’s shine a light on: “Help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them.” Is Bloom suggesting that she thinks McGowan is a liar and telling her clients that, by extension, she doesn’t believe them either? Or is she saying she believes McGowan but fully understands how to use extrajudicial means to deny her justice? It’s not entirely clear which of these interpretations is worse for Bloom.

Ms. Bloom accompanied Mr. Weinstein on a surprise visit to the Times the day before the initial article was published, to present the journalists with information intended to portray several accusers — including Ashley Judd, the first actress to go on the record — as unreliable and mentally unstable.

For her part, Bloom has branded her representation of Weinstein as a “mistake” and points out all the money she’s recovered for victims of others accused of sexual misconduct. But this doesn’t address the fundamental issue that Bloom’s clients want someone committed to their cause and she broadcast to the world that she’s ready to toss that commitment to the curb — and employ terroristic, scorched-earth tactics on the reputations of women when it suits her.

McGowan believes Bloom should be disbarred. Whether or not it rises to that level is another question. But whatever happens, as summer comes to a close, Bloom’s practice should definitely begin to shrivel up.

New Book Says Lisa Bloom Offered to Damage Rose McGowan’s Reputation to Help Harvey Weinstein [Jezebel]
Previously Unknown Sources Come Forward in a New Book About Harvey Weinstein [New York Times]

Earlier: Mother Knows Best: Gloria Allred Disses Daughter’s Decision To Rep Harvey Weinstein
When Are Lawyers To Blame For Their Clients

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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.

A top notch litigation Am law firm is seeking an entertainment litigation associate with 2-4 years of experience for its LA office.

Must be barred in California and have litigation experience from a top tier firm along with excellent academic credentials from a top tier law school.

To be considered, please apply through this posting or submit your resume to jobs@kinneyrecruiting.com.

In 2003, when Evan Miller was just 14 years old, he and a friend followed a guy into his trailer home in Alabama, got high with him, then took his wallet when he passed out.  While slipping the empty wallet back inside the man’s pocket, the man woke and a struggle ensued.  Miller used a bat to clobber him until he lay unconscious. Later, Miller and his friend set fire to the trailer to cover up the evidence. The man died of his injuries and smoke inhalation.

Miller came from foster homes and poverty.  His stepdad abused him; his mom was both an alcoholic and addicted to drugs.  He was tried for murder as an adult and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Based on that sentence, the 14-year-old would never see the light of day again outside a prison yard.  That was until the case went to the Supreme Court.

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, Justice Elena Kagan writing for the majority noted, “Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features — among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.” She added, “It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him — and from which he cannot usually extricate himself — no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.”

    With this decision, children up to age 18 can no longer be sentenced to either death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.  It was a landmark case in its time, but it begs the question: What’s so special about turning 18?  Does a young person really become an adult at that age and fully responsible for his decisions and actions?  Is 18 that different from 19, 20, or even 21?

    Although there’s not been a lot of studies on the 18–to–21 age group in the past, recent research shows that particularly in “hot” situations (situations involving emotional arousal), young adults from 18 to 21 are more likely to act like teenagers than adults in terms of their ability to control their impulses and resist peer pressure. With these new findings, it’s time for courts to reconsider whether the age of 18 should be the line in the sand, or whether an older age, say 21, is more reasonable.

      A federal court in Connecticut in 2018 decided even though a kid was 18 years old and five months, a life in prison without parole was cruel and unusual punishment.  At that age, Luis Cruz, a member of a street gang, killed two boys of a rival gang.  He was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.  The Connecticut federal judge listened to extensive expert testimony about brain development of young adults and concluded — because of issues of impulsivity, heightened suggestibility to peer influence, and lack of full development of those parts of the brain that impact impulse control and long-term thinking — that the cut–off at age 17 and 364 days, could be extended beyond 18.  

The issue is on my mind because my client, Manuel Rivera, awaits sentence after having been found guilty in the stabbing murder of “Junior” Lesandro Guzman-Feliz.  Manuel was 18 years and nine months old at the time of the killing, just over the Miller threshold and thus subject to a sentence of life without parole.

The prosecutor argued that Manuel knew what he was doing during the crime and made a fully informed choice. After all, 18 is the age of reason in the U.S.  That’s when a young person can vote, be drafted, or join the military.  It’s the age at which parents no longer have to support their children.

But there are contradictions in this reasoning.  First, it ignores recent science.  As noted above, neuropsychologists who are now studying the 18- to 21-year-old age bracket are determining that parts of the brain that help them think ahead and control their actions are yet to be fully functioning until at least age 21.

Next, even our country has made conflicting determinations on how old is old enough to do certain things. For example, a young adult has to be 21 before he can drink, and 21 before he can legally own a firearm (by federal law). He’s got to be 25 before he can rent a car.  And now it’s recognized that young adults up to the age of 26 can be covered by their parent’s health insurance.  Compared to prior decades, kids marry at older ages, are independent later, and come back to the parents’ home even after finishing college. Does it still make sense to use 18 as the cut-off point in criminal matters?

Then there’s the issue of fairness.  First of all, a 14-year-old sentenced to life will be spending a lot longer in prison than a 50-year-old.  Next, have we given up on the idea that people change?  We’re not the same people we were at 40 as we were at 20. We don’t hang out with the same crowd, have the same outlook toward life, or take the same chances.  As Justice Kagan wrote in Miller, “Life without parole forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal. It reflects an irrevocable judgment about an offender’s value and place in society at odds with a child’s capacity for change.”

   For my money (and having had three kids and watched them grow), 18- to 21-year–olds need a few more years to mature before they reason like adults.  The criminal justice system should recognize that and treat them accordingly, no matter the crime.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.