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Andrew Robertson, the former office manager for the Washington and Northern Virginia offices of Morrison & Foerster is accused of bilking $400K from the firm in the form of unauthorized credit card charges and transfers over a nearly two year period. As an office manager, Robertson had a company card and the authority to purchase office supplies to keep all the little MoFos flush with pens and legal pads.

Which is why it’s kind of amazing that it would take the firm so long to notice the designer clothing and big screen televisions that prosecutors allege showed up on the bills. But there was so much more!

There were more than a dozen pairs of Air Jordans, including one with a “gold toe” design. Other alleged purchases included an Apple laptop, a sleeper sofa from Crate & Barrel, a 24-inch gold chain necklace, a 1980s-style prom king costume and a white-gold pinkie ring.

Either MoFo’s D.C. office holds a bitchin’ throwback prom every year or that should have raised a red flag. In either event, the allegations make Robertson sound like a blast to party with.

Every time there’s a story about a disloyal law firm employee, it’s always amazing just how easy it appears to be to get the first $100K or so out of a firm. Obviously law firms deal in large sums of money — MoFo is a billion dollar firm after all — but this is like having a whole extra associate or two and not noticing. To its credit, MoFo did discover the discrepancies and turn the matter over to the authorities after firing him, but a lot of money got nipped before anyone caught it.

It makes you wonder how much firms around the country might be losing to schemes that stay below the threshold. This might be a good time for at least a cursory audit.

An 80s Prom King Costume, Designer Clothes and a Gold Pinkie Ring: Former Morrison & Foerster Employee Accused of Misusing Firm’s Credit Card [National Law Journal]

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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.

Government

Our thoughts exactly.

By Joe Patrice

at 3:01 PM

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The Rule of Three

One would do well to channel their inner Thomas Jefferson in legal writing. And while the likelihood that any of our writings will enjoy the warm, enduring shelf-life of his “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” is slim-to-none, we can still garner lessons from Jefferson to improve our prose.

Best-selling author and communication advisor, Carmine Gallo, poses the questions: Why did Jefferson choose three rights instead of twelve? Gallo explains the reason is the “Rule of 3.” Humans only have so much space in our short-term memory. This is the same reason that the TSA and military branches understand that disseminating information in groups of three is more easily processed, and thus, easier to follow. Hence why the TSA provides three simple steps to security: show ID and boarding pass, take out liquids and laptops, and take off shoes and jackets. And why the military teaches the “three rules of surviving captivity”: fellowship with other prisoners, survive, and return with honor (which feels ominously applicable to inner-office comradery)?

Granted, not every set of facts lends itself to a neat distillation of the issues into three categories, especially when there are a medley of litigants hurling counterclaims and crossclaims every which way, but the rule is still useful in drafting. For instance, I don’t think a judge or their clerk will have the time to read a string cite that is more than three cases long, so best not to include a dissertation on any single point lest you lose your audience’s interest. In our line of work making the most of the precious few minutes we have of a judge’s attention is critical. Channel thy Jefferson.

The Four Agreements

It’s been said that lawyers have a thankless job. Therefore, it helps to stay rooted in a philosophy that does not depend on the gratitude of others. The Four Agreements are a code that the ancient Toltec civilization (predecessor of the Aztecs) lived by, one that has application to the practice of law. The agreements are:

• Be impeccable with your word;
• Don’t take things personally;
• Don’t make assumptions; and,
• Always do your best.

If ever there were “four easy steps to success in law,” I think these are them. Regarding the, at times, thanklessness of our profession, “don’t take things personally” comes to mind. This stands for the proposition that anything anyone else says or does reflects themselves and their own reality, and actually has nothing to do with you. By not tying your sense of self-worth to the actions of others, you shall save yourself needless suffering, or so the Toltecs thought.

Being impeccable refers to speaking with integrity and not dragging the power of communication down to gossip or other lower rungs of expression. However, applying it as motivation to write the best brief of your career is not too far a stretch. Whatever works, right?

“Don’t make assumptions” could be the last thing every litigator tells themselves before giving an opening argument or conducting an examination. Be ready for anything and give your audience the facts it needs to find in your favor. Always doing your best is a given. Hard work is paramount in this profession, and that alone is just the first factor of entry into the realm of greatness that we strive to attain day in, day out. It is easy to get hyper focused on the latest deadline or next event in the calendar — and not necessarily a bad thing by any stretch — but keeping a broader perspective in mind keeps stress at bay.

The 30% Rule

In his second stint at Apple, Steve Jobs applied the 30% rule to great effect. That is, he focused the company’s efforts on the 30% of the products that were incredibly good and did away with the other 70%. This rule applies more broadly than to crafting arguments or drafting documents, but is also applicable to those tasks. Broadly, the rule is an acknowledgment that you cannot do everything, and that if you try to, you will fail at many of the things you attempt. In the context of writing a brief, this may be failure by trying to get too much information across to your audience and losing them altogether in the process. In the context of your day, the rule requires that you focus your resources on the 30% of tasks that are making you great and not be muddled by the 70% of distractions seeking your attention. This rule requires individuals to be focused and to make tough choices about what is most important to them. Now let us all go back to being focused and great.

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Timothy M. Lupinek is an attorney at Balestriere Fariello who represents companies and individuals in state, appellate, and administrative courts of Maryland. He focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation with thousands of hours of civil, criminal, and regulatory trial experience. You can reach Timothy at timothy.m.lupinek @balestrierefariello.com.

We used to have, and up until very recently, this has been the history of the United States, the expectation — which was the Framers’ expectation — that from time to time, the chief executive would abuse his power, in the sense of either doing something that the Constitution didn’t permit, or somehow overdoing the powers that the Constitution gives to the president. And the expectation was not that you were going to jump every time that happened to impeachment. There are other ways that the Congress, either by political pressure or by using the power of the purse, would be able to rein in presidential excess. The idea was that, you know, there is a lot of area between something that is wrong and something that is impeachable.

— Andy McCarthy offering a bold take on the Framers over at Fox News. While there’s little to no evidence that the Framers imagined an executive branch that ignores congressional edicts on a personal whim, the key to becoming a Fox legal analyst is to say whatever pops into your head and throw the phrase “the Framers’ expectation” in there.

A disciplinary complaint by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission against former Vedder Price partner Robert Hankes has all the trappings of a throughly entertaining story. There is a fired parter, alleged fake invoices, misused client accounts and golf fees that just have to be paid.

According to the complaint, Hankes, a one-time member of Vedder Price’s transportation finance team, faked invoices for more than $130,000 in fraudulent payments. Hankes was allegedly terminated by Vedder Price on Oct. 2, 2019 over the scheme, which had begun in January of 2018. Hankes was home grown at Vedder Price, he began working there in 2005 as a summer associate, and was made partner in 2014. Before joining the firm, Hankes, also a CPA, was auditor at Arthur Andersen and a financial analyst with Winston & Strawn.

As for the details of the alleged fraud, Law.com has the skinny:

The complaint asserts that while Hankes was employed by Vedder Price, the firm did work for a unnamed financial institution and sometimes billed fees for services to the financial institution’s customers, as the client directed.

Sometime before January 2018, the firm billed about $23,783 in work for a customer of the financial institution. Hankes allegedly reactivated an unrelated client account, fabricated an invoice for the billed amount, and deposited the payment as a credit into the reopened account, which he controlled. Hankes also billed the financial institution with the correct billing number and applied the payment to its account.

There were another eight allegedly fabricated invoices according to the complaint the resulted in double-billing the financial institution and its clients. The complaint also alleges that during this period Hankes would charge the dormant account for expenses including golfing, dining and travel and got reimbursed to the tune of at least $79,790.

Hankes has not issued a statement about the complaint, but he his bar status is voluntarily inactive and not licensed to practice in Illinois. As for the firm, they say they’ve refunded clients who were double-billed but did not provide further comment.

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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).

Just in time for the Senate impeachment trial, the White House has announced its dream team of Trump defenders. Let’s meet this motley crew of legal eagles!

Quarterback Pat Cipollone, current White House Counsel, will reprise his role from the House impeachment hearings. If history is any guide, he’ll confine himself to shouting “Congressional oversight is ILLEGAL!” in response to any and all questions. You pay his salary.

Heading up the defensive line we have Jay Sekulow, the president’s private attorney. This one’s a wild card, since he appears to have facilitated the pressure campaign on Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky in concert with Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas, and so may be called as a witness.

Next up is Alan Dershowitz, author of the recent book “The Case Against Impeaching Trump” which claims that colluding with a foreign government against the interests of the United States is not illegal. His theories on Supreme Court intervention in impeachment may be questionable, but one thing is for sure: He absolutely, positively kept his underpants on when he got that massage at Jeffery Epstein’s house.

Impeachment buffs will remember veteran Independent Counsel Ken Starr, who’s been at the game longer than anybody. At his last at-bat, he exposed President Clinton’s penis. But of late he’s become a lot more squeamish. In 2016, Starr resigned as president of Baylor University after the school was found to have systemically failed to address sexual assaults on students. And his current position is that, while lying about sex is definitely impeachable, using congressionally-allocated foreign aid to extort a criminal investigation of your political opponent is “defining impeachment down” in a shocking miscarriage of justice.

Robert Ray succeeded Ken Starr as Independent Counsel. You may recognize him from such hits as the final report on the Whitewater scandal, the final report on the White House travel office scandal, the final report on the White House FBI files controversy, and the prosecution of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, whom a jury acquitted on all 30 counts of receiving an improper gift. There’s no one better to make the case against politically motivated prosecutions.

Jane Raskin, the quiet one, is an experienced federal practitioner from Florida who successfully steered Trump through the Mueller investigation. And she managed it all without weekly appearances on Fox News. How does she even do it?

Bringing up the rear is former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, an adept multitasker who occasionally moonlighted as a Fox host while serving as chief lawyer of the Sunshine State. After receiving an illegal campaign donation from Donald Trump’s charitable foundation, she dropped an enforcement action against Trump University and became one of his staunchest defenders. She’s now employed at the White House as a “special government employee” whose impeachment job is to “attack the process.” You pay her salary, too!

CNN reports that the entire cast will have a speaking role in next week’s impeachment hearings, which may put a crimp in Mitch McConnell’s plans for a dignified, serious process. But let’s keep it PG, kids! In the people’s house, everybody wears pants. (Sorry, Dersh.)

Trump adds Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz to impeachment defense team [CNN]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Dying is expensive. The American health care system extracts its final tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or, if you’ve got something really good, maybe millions) from your rapidly deteriorating flesh, and then, once you’re gone, it costs a ton more to actually dispose of your mortal remains.

The zombie of Sears Holdings knows all about this. It spent gobs of money it didn’t have in a futile effort to cheat the grim reaper, as its own medical professionals hacked off parts health and gangrenous to give it a few more months or years with its one true love. Eventually, however, death comes to us all, and that’s where the lawyers come in. After all, extracting one-third of what your estate is owed from the guy who killed you is pretty damned expensive.

MUREWA, Zimbabwe

The 46-year old Miranda Chihota’s life took a turn four years ago when her husband died in a tragic road accident.

When she was still convalescing from the tragedy, she was forcibly married to her husband’s brother, whose wife, she claimed, had succumbed to AIDS two years before Miranda’s husband died.

As a result, Miranda now shares the disease with her new husband due to the culture of spousal inheritance still practiced across Zimbabwe.

“I had no choice, because in our culture if one loses a husband or wife, he or she is inherited by the relative of the spouse,” Miranda told Anadolu Agency.

Miranda, from Murewa — a rural district approximately 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) east of the Zimbabwean capital Harare — said she also now bears the brunt of nursing an HIV positive child.

Meanwhile, Tinashe Chipako, a Zimbabwean legal expert, said women in most cases are the lead victims when it comes to inheritance.

“Men can choose to marry without necessarily being forced to inherit the wife of a dead relative, unlike women who are given no choice, so this inheritance culture is very unfair,” Miranda told Anadolu Agency.

There is no specific legislation in the southern African nation forbidding wife or husband inheritance.

Sithembiso Mlauli of the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) based in Bulawayo — Zimbabwe’s second-largest city – said women are largely at the receiving end of the inheritance.

“A woman, the wife in particular, here in Zimbabwe, is being inherited like property after her husband dies even from AIDS, automatically becoming a wife of a husband’s relative who she never knew either had AIDS or not, thus putting herself at risk,” Mlauli told Anadolu Agency.

Cultural fanaticism behind AIDS spread 

Despite culture fanatics insisting to continue the norms of spousal inheritance in this country, HIV/AIDS activists have fought tirelessly against the custom.

“Inheritance of a wife or husband after either dies has contributed to the swift spread of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, especially in rural areas,” Trynos Tirivavi, who has been living with HIV for the past 16 years and also a member of the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV (ZNNP plus), told Anadolu Agency.

He got the disease at the age of 23 after he inherited his late brother’s wife. “People just wade into inheriting someone’s wife or husband with no knowledge about what led to the death of their spouse, which is dangerous,” he said.

Traditional leaders back inheritance 

Although many HIV positive individuals, like Trynos, testify about how they live their fate, some traditional leaders, including Elvis Mugumba from Maranda area in Mwenezi — a district in southern Zimbabwe – believes that the inheritance culture has to continue unhindered.

“Our forefathers lived and made sure the family continued to grow even after a husband died, by making sure his wife was inherited to keep bearing children with the help of the husband’s relative,” Mugumba told Anadolu Agency.

“One cannot, therefore, today tell us that this culture is responsible for spreading AIDS. People simply need to be faithful even in marriages resulting from an inheritance,” he said.

Yet, as traditional leaders like Mugumba maintain this stance, millions of Zimbabweans succumb to HIV and AIDS daily.

According to UNAIDS, an estimated 1.3 million Zimbabweans are currently living with HIV/AIDS.

In 2018 alone, 38,000 Zimbabweans were newly infected with HIV while 22,000 people died from an AIDS-related disease, it said.

This is despite the last year’s figures by UNAIDS, showing progress in the number of AIDS-related deaths since 2010, with a 60% drop from 54,000 to 22,000 deaths.

Even as cultural norms of inheritance threaten to thwart the gains made so far in combatting the sexually transmitted disease, UNAIDS last year also said the number of new HIV infections has fallen from 62,000 to 38,000.

AIDS activists against inheritance custom

For many HIV/AIDS activists like Tirivavi, “to stop further spread of AIDS in family circles, the culture of wife or husband inheritance should stop forthwith.”

“Imagine how HIV keeps spreading in family circles through inheritance simply because it is a culture that people ought to uphold,” he said.

Typically, therefore, according to HIV/AIDS activists like Tirivavi, “in this era of HIV/AIDS, the inheritance custom is extremely risky.”

An official from the National AIDS Council (NAC) who spoke to Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity, because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said the organization does not condone or condemn the practice of inheritance.

”But we urge people to know their HIV status before they are inherited following their loss,” the official said.

“For as long as the inheritance cycle keeps going, so goes also the AIDS scourge in families that uphold the culture without precautions being taken,” said the NAC official.

NAC is a Zimbabwean organization enacted through an Act of Parliament in 1999 to coordinate and facilitate the national multi-sectoral response to HIV and AIDS. The organization is also mandated to administer the National AIDS Trust Fund collected through the AIDS levy.

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