Category: News Feeds

Getting arrested right outside of your own disciplinary hearing is the definition of exiting the frying pan into the fire.

Yesterday, 2018 Lawyer of the Year Michael Avenatti appeared before the state bar to discuss the charge that he pilfered $840K from a client’s settlement funds for personal use. Little did he know when he headed out that he wouldn’t be returning home.

During a break, federal prosecutors had a quick chat with the Avenatti team and arrested him for violating the terms of his release. The Daily Beast reports that an Avenatti attorney said that the arrest stemmed from an unrelated criminal matter in Santa Ana but declined to provide details. Quoting a separate Avenatti lawyer, Fox News reports that Avenatti will have a bail hearing at 2 pm Pacific today.

Avenatti, who appeared on Above the Law’s podcast last year, has had a wild couple of years from storming to prominence representing a porn star clashing with Trump to flirting with a White House run himself to facing multiple federal criminal charges to this — and that’s not even counting some of the stuff along the way.

We’ll learn more this afternoon.

Michael Avenatti Arrested by Feds at California State Bar Hearing [Daily Beast]
Avenatti arrested by IRS agents during California Bar Association hearing [Fox News]

Earlier: Michael Avenatti Charged With… A Whole Bunch Of Stuff Out Of Multiple USAOs
Michael Avenatti Charged With… A Whole Bunch MORE Stuff
Above The Law’s 2018 Lawyer Of The Year Contest: The Winner!
The ATL Michael Avenatti Interview

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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.

* President Trump is assembling a legal “Dream Team” to defend him in his impeachment trial. [NPR]

* A California lawyer has trademarked a moniker used by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Quite the entrepreneur. [Fox Business]

* Jay-Z’s lawyer has filed a lawsuit in support of Mississippi prisoners. Since Jay-Z taught us all about the Fourth Amendment in 99 Problems, this is not surprising. [NBC]

* The New York Attorney General is investigating whether the MTA is targeting people of color for NYC subway fare evasion summonses. [Politico]

* The “Bridgegate” matter has finally made its way to the Supreme Court, and the justices seem skeptical of the government’s case. [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.

What fictional judge made their debut in comics in 1977 and has appeared in multiple media formats including movies, novels and video games?

Hint: The character got their start in comic books, and in 2011, IGN ranked them 35th among the top 100 comic book heroes of all time.

See the answer on the next page.

More and more firms are adopting a non-equity partner tier, delaying equity consideration while extracting maximum value from high billing but relatively lowly paid senior attorneys tied to the job by the dangling hope of a future promotion that may never arrive.

Hospitals once again sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over its site-neutral payment policy. The final rule reduced Medicare reimbursement rates for procedures conducted in hospital outpatient departments, bringing them closer to what CMS currently pays for procedures conducted in-office and at ambulatory surgical centers. The policy is expected to save Medicare an estimated $800 million in 2020.

The American Hospital Association and Association of American Medical Colleges filed suit against CMS on Monday, saying CMS’ adjustments were unlawful and flouted a judge’s previous ruling against the cuts. The two groups had previously sued over site-neutral payments in 2019.

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that CMS had overstepped its statutory authority, noting changes to payments must be budget-neutral and could not target specific services. Because of that ruling, CMS will have to repay hospitals the difference for 2019, to the tune of roughly $380 million. However, Collyer’s ruling does not apply to the planned reductions in 2020.

“The 2020 Final Rule is no less an impermissible flex of regulatory authority than the 2019 Final Rule, and should meet the same fate,” AHA and AAMC stated in the complaint.

They added that if the rule is left in place, hospitals “…may have to make difficult decisions about whether to reduce services in response to the lowered payment rate. This is particularly troubling for hospitals already operating at low or negative margins.”

While hospitals have voiced opposition to the changes, some medical groups support them. The American Medical Association previously released statements in support of site-neutral payments, but with the stipulation that they should not result in a total reduction in Medicare payments.

“Medicare physician payment has not kept pace with the actual costs of running a practice,” the AMA wrote in a 2019 issue brief, seeking a reevaluation of payments for in-office procedures.

The Department of Health and Human Services is appealing the 2019 ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Photo credit: zimmytws, Getty Images 

Someone whose online handle is “hlsperson1111” is almost certainly insufferable unless in some freak coincidence they’re a Hofstra grad. But since we all know this is really the kind of person who went to Harvard Law and now — years into practice — still feels this fact is central enough to his or her properly gender-neutral identity to employ it online we’ll take judicial notice of their insufferabilitude.

But the first step to overcoming any obstacle is admitting you have a problem, and our friend hlsperson1111 seems to be grasping toward self-awareness over at the Top Law Schools board:

I’m a senior associate at a big firm. Over the years, I have developed an abiding hatred of people using “Thanks” without a period in emails. I think it’s sloppy and sends a message that the sender doesn’t care enough about your time to include a period. I see it often from partners and other associates around my seniority, and I suffer in silence because it’s not really appropriate for me to pick a fight with them about it. But I now am at the point where I am supervising associates who use “Thanks” without a period, and it drives me up the fucking wall. Is it too petty for me to tell them to cut it out and that it’s a bad look?

Thankfully moderator QContinuum (a handle that marks a very different kind of insufferable) offered the final word on the matter:

Yes, it would be petty. Thanks

And while that was a perfect way to end, if there are any of you out there who sympathize with hlsperson1111, you should know that your frustration should be with your own inability to understand the vagaries of human language. In a recent episode of the podcast Lexicon Valley (which is a fantastic program), Columbia University linguist John McWhorter discussed a phenomenon of human language known as “softeners.” These are the little wrinkles in communication that people often subconsciously throw in to indicate to the listener that they shouldn’t misread a potentially harsh sentence. It’s the “could you open the door?” when you mean to communicate the directive “open the door.” These aren’t set in stone, but evolve as human communication evolves.

Written electronic communication has brought a whole new set of softeners from emoji to aggressive overuse of the exclamation point! And one other recent marker he mentions in passing is the technique of omitting a period to avoid giving the message a sense of brusque finality. And by recent, it’s worth mentioning that we’ve been talking about this softener for at least nine years now.

Ending a message with “Thanks.” today would be understood by many if not most online literate readers as a “don’t even try to respond to this until it’s handled you plebeian.” It’s just how communication is evolving… leave the period off if you don’t want people to think you’re a dick.

Thanks.

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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.

This isn’t the first trial by combat motion we’ve seen in the last few years, but it’s definitely the first we’ve seen where the man wants a sword fight with his wife.

David Ostrom of Kansas asked an Iowa judge to allow him to take a sword to his ex-wife and her attorney “so that he can ‘rend their souls’ from their bodies.”

The judge withheld judgment for the time being.

Ostrom claims in his filing that he needs this remedy because his former spouse and her lawyer have destroyed him legally. Not to get technical, but it sounds like this trial by combat motion is not timely because if he’s been “destroyed legally” they already had the trial and he lost.

Now if he moved for a new trial first…

Man asks Iowa judge for ‘trial by combat’ with ex-wife, lawyer [KCCI]

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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.

The hard-drinking Biglaw culture can become unhealthy in a lot of ways, but one of the most glaring is its contribution to the incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s a connection that’s led some firms to phase-out drinking at firm social events in a bid to stay ahead of misconduct. But across the pond, Linklaters has appointed a number of booze chaperones to stay sober and monitor social gatherings to make sure nothing untoward happens.

The policy is really more of a strong suggestion, with the firm encouraging partners to designate chaperones to keep their people safe while pounding a few back.

“Our people work hard and we recognise the value of teams socialising together to help provide a healthy work-life balance,” a spokesperson for Links said. “As part of a wider set of guidelines covering social activities, we have recommended to partners, directors and business leaders that they designate a non-drinking role to a senior person to assist the smooth running of our social events.”

Just how blackout drunk are these folks getting that they can’t keep control of their gatherings without a hall monitor? The new policy, which was in place for the firm’s holiday party, brings it in line with the recommendations of the Law Society’s Junior Lawyers Division, the gathering of legal Brainy Smurfs who recently “offered up a range of alcohol-free networking alternatives including paint-balling, hat making and mini-golf.” Hat making. Talk about something that will drive people to drink.

The problem with all of these solutions is that while cutting back on alcohol for its own sake may be a worthwhile endeavor, tying it to sexual harassment misses the mark. The partner hitting on the associate may be the drunken expression of misconduct but most likely stems from a pre-existing problem that manifests daily in a million other ways. That more subtle inappropriate behavior is what needs to be stamped out.

If only there were sober chaperones keeping an eye out for misconduct every day at the office. We could call these people “human resources professionals” and take wild steps like having them “believe women” or “empowering them to make changes even if it could impact high revenue generating partners.” I know it sounds crazy!

Maybe we’ll just ban happy hour instead and call it a day.

Linklaters appoints sober supervisors to chaperone boozy social events [Legal Cheek]

Earlier: Biglaw Summer Programs Phasing Out ‘Boozefests’ To Create All-New, Worse Sexual Harassment Opportunities

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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.

West Virginia is ready to take home a big chunk of northwest Virginia, if only the residents of Frederick County will wake up and realize those country roads really are the place where they belong.

Yesterday the West Virginia State Senate passed a resolution inviting citizens of the commonwealth’s northernmost county to consider a change of venue. Noting that Frederick County, Virginia, had failed to fill out its RSVP card from 1862 allowing it to attach itself to the newly born Union state of West Virginia, the legislators generously offered to extend “all of the rights secured and protected by the West Virginia Constitution to the citizens of West Virginia” up to and including “the right to keep and bear arms without interference by the government.” Hint, hint.

Calling Frederick County the “mother” of the seven West Virginia counties which contain pieces of her original territory, the resolution invokes “the counties which are the children of Frederick County, and the citizens of those counties, [who] have pined for reunion with their mother county and prayed that she might join them in the State of West Virginia.” That’s the kind of chain migration the GOP can really get behind!

And the name of the Morgan County Republican sponsoring this heart-rending resolution?

Charles S. Trump.

Because this is 2020, and irony is dead.

But Senator Trump isn’t the only one coveting his neighbor’s comely flank. The website RedStateSecession.org (tagline “Preserving the American parts of America”) is also wondering if the consenting adults in Virginia’s western counties might be ready to explore Mountain Mama’s warm embrace. It’s Almost Heaven!

Theorizing that those elitist Democrats in Virginia’s newly blue statehouse would be only too happy about “strengthening the position of their party in their state by letting low-income Trump-voting counties leave” and “allowing the departure of counties that don’t pay their share of income and sales taxes because of lower incomes,” Red-State Secession’s proposed map looks like this:

Would Democrats willingly give up Winchester, Woodstock, Harrisonburg, Sheraton, Lexington, Marion, Pulaski, and Big Stone Gap, not to mention at least two members of the U.S. House of Representatives to ensure permanent control of state government? Seems unlikely.

Senator Trump’s proposal is headed for the West Virginia House for consideration. But sadly it appears the Frederick County citizens are staying put. The AP’s John Raby reports:

A message left for Frederick County Board of Supervisors chairman at large Chuck DeHaven wasn’t immediately returned Monday. But he told the Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Maryland, last week that Frederick County has no interest in becoming part of West Virginia.

It’s not you, Mountain Mama. It’s … it’s just so weird.

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