I was all ready to be outraged by the video posted at Carlos Miller’s blog.  All set. Ready to go. Ready. I pushed the button and watched. 

 

I started it over and played it again. Yup, the same thing the second time too. 

Carlos describes the interaction:

It took less than a minute for Keene Police Sgt. Gene Geheb to drag 77-year-old Lynn Bedford out of her car, even though she said she would give him her license.

She just didn’t do it fast enough.

Geheb had pulled her over last month after clocking her driving 66 mph in a 50 mph zone.

Bedford, who was driving home after playing piano at church, explained that she was in a hurry because she had a bladder infection and needed to use the bathroom.

But Geheb had no sympathy.

He goes on to note that Geheb’s chief backs up his conduct in the video, saying it neither violated law nor policy. 

It struck me that those who want to find fault with cops will see this as a “contempt of cop” video, a cop who needlessly dragged an old woman from a car for no good reason.  Those who love cops, or hate old women, will see this as a video of an uncooperative woman, refusing perfectly proper commands and begging to be dragged from her car.

I saw both. I saw two egos clash. I saw a women who didn’t quite grasp that when pulled over by a police officer, the driver doesn’t get to run the show and tell the cop how the stop is going to proceed.  I see a cop who didn’t have the discretion of a child, and immediately spiraled down, into that place where cops go when someone isn’t obsequious, even though they know it’s going to end badly when it doesn’t have to.

As for 77-year-old Lynn Bedford, my suspicion is that she’s more used to doing the telling than being told, and doesn’t like the latter much.  I bet she would have been plenty comfortable in the blue uniform pulling some young whippersnapper over in church for sneaking a look at a young woman’s patent leather shoes.  Now, not knowing her, this is sheer speculation, but she had attitude right out of the box. That has to come from somewhere.

Then there’s Sgt. Geheb, who wishes he had taken a deep breath before flying off the handle like this old woman was a gangbanger.  Frankly, he probably didn’t violate either law or policy, but he surely behaved, like a total ass. Would it have killed him to listen to the old woman’s problems for a moment?  Was it necessary, even if it was permissible, to drag her out of the car onto the ground?

Would he have been as cool about it had that been his mother?

Watching this video and being aware of the outrage over this interaction, the fact that the driver was a 77-year-old church lady was certainly the critical distinction. Would anyone have bile rising in their throats had this been a 19-year-old black kid with grills, droopy pants and a baseball cap turned backward?  Had this kid said the same thing to the cop that this women did, how many people would have thought, “what an idiot. He got what he deserved.” 

Why?  Is the handling of a citizen any different when they’re an old white woman and a young black man?  Does one have the right to be treated kinder and the other not? Is the urge to urinate stronger in one than the other?  Doesn’t every person deserve to make it through a traffic stop without being manhandled because he lacks the bone in his head that makes him jump as fast and high as the cop commands?

The anger this video evokes reflects not only the handling by the police officer, but our own bias about how different people deserve to be treated differently. Yet that’s not how it’s supposed to work.  Equal protection suggests that the old white woman and the young black man be treated the same. So would we react the same, or are we just as tainted in our expectations as anyone else.  Or do we adjust our expectations to align with our personal sympathies, treating the elderly better than the young, or white better than black, or church ladies better than gangbangers?

There’s a certain element of schadenfreude in this video, given that Bedford, had she been a bit less arrogant and self-absorbed, probably would have driven away unscathed to the comfort of her bathroom.  I’ve met Lynn Bedford a thousand times before, and she behaved the same with Sgt. Geheb as she has with me, refusing to yield control no matter what the situation.  It’s quite frustrating and exasperating.

Now reimagine the entire interaction if both had been less concerned with being in charge of the situation and having the other bend to their will.  Apply to that to every interaction between a cop and citizen, and wonder how many needless arrests, how many tases, how many broken bones and even how many dead bodies, could be avoided.

The press release from the United States Embassy issue on September 11th, before the missile attack on the embassy in Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others, came from the hand of one staffer who ignored instructions not to issue it.  It was a public relations disaster.

The content was conciliatory and failed to reflect a correct statement of American constitutional rights. At the time it was issued, though, the embassy faced a massive protest which appears on the verge of imminent violence.  Misguided as the statement might have been, its purpose was conciliatory. Not only is that what diplomats do, but that was what the situation called for.

First, calm things down. Later, over a nice cup of mint tea, have a nuanced discussion of comparative civil rights.  I cannot find fault with someone deciding not to tell a guy with a metaphorical gun to his head that he’s blithering idiot. It’s just not the right moment.   To call it a “pusillanimous press release misstating and abandoning core American values” is facile when not sitting in an embassy under seige.

While the statement was wrong and misguided, it wasn’t issued under the best and most deliberative of circumstances. The fact that it failed to calm the hordes doesn’t mean an effort to be conciliatory at that particular moment in time was wrong. Not everything works.

But there is no excuse of extremis to explain the  publication by USA Today of an op-ed by University of Pennsylvania Religion Professor Anthea Butler.

If there is anyone who values free speech, it is a tenured professor!

So why did I tweet that Bacile should be in jail? The “free speech” in Bacile’s film is not about expressing a personal opinion about Islam. It denigrates the religion by depicting the faith’s founder in several ludicrous and historically inaccurate scenes to incite and inflame viewers.

Whatever should we call the legislation soon to be pending? “Sam’s Law,” perhaps?  This is the law that will criminalize speech that Butler finds despicable because “it denigrates a religion.”  Ken at Popehat/Salon eviscerates Butler’s op-ed.  Curiously, the two similar posts received almost opposite reactions by commenters based on the local crowds.  

A  lawyer might note that Butler’s argument is replete with logical contradictions and a gross misapprehension of the law:

Bacile’s movie is not the first to denigrate a religious figure, nor will it be the last. The Last Temptation of Christ was protested vigorously. The difference is that Bacile indirectly and inadvertently inflamed people half a world away, resulting in the deaths of U.S. Embassy personnel.

* * *

While the First Amendment right to free expression is important, it is also important to remember that other countries and cultures do not have to understand or respect our right.

Inflaming others is the purpose of speech, not a flaw.  Respecting other cultures, and wanting them to respect ours, is a wonderful aspiration, but not the basis for a crime.  I’m unaware of anyone defending the Bacile video; it’s a piece of trash.  And to the extent such a piece of trash was the source of havoc in the mideast (which, while it may be the focus, may not prove to be as accurate as now assumed, and just a stalking horse for other forces at work), that’s the price of a core American value of free speech. 

In the comments to Ken’s Salon post, writers who have the opportunity for thought and reflection “breathlessly” try to rationalize why Butler is right, even if for the wrong reasons, by throwing words against the wall without any grasp of their meaning.  Every exception to the First Amendment, plus a few that aren’t, is bandied about as a reason to imprison Sam Bacile (or whoever he is).  And as is the internet’s wont, the locals cheer the cause in which they believe.

But when putatively smart people rationalize away rights by terrible outcomes, and seek a criminal solution to the things they wish hadn’t happened, it forces others to “breathlessly” defend those rights.  Just as every dead child gets a new law named after him, the cries for Sam Bacile’s blood in retribution for the way people in foreign lands reacted resonate with many.  And with the voice of a Penn professor, they gain legitimacy, if not rationality. 

This entire scenario has the scent of a huge set-up, from the creation of this film to its being used as the mechanism to inflame Muslims, while others had rockets aimed at an embassy. It would come as no surprise to eventually learn that we’re busy arguing over the curtailment of constitutional rights under false pretences.  Maybe Osama’s ghost is laughing at us for what we’re doing to ourselves.

That words inflame, however, is nothing new. On a good day, that’s what words are meant to do, inflame passion and thought.  That the inflamed turn to violence rather than protest, or just more words, is unexcusable.  But the fact is that it happens, and will happen again in the future, Words, even incredibly stupid words, can evoke feelings, and some people are incapable of controlling their feelings, to the point that they harm others.  The problem isn’t anger, but that the angry take it to the level of violence. 

There is a lot of anger floating around this situation, and there have been real people harmed by it.  There has been a lot of brazen talk, much of it ignorant and self-serving.  There has been a lot of chest-thumping by well-intended advocates of one side or the other.  All of this is how Americans work out their disagreements, by screaming at each other, calling out each other’s arguments and airing our differences. We aren’t always the smartest bunch around, and much of what we have to say is pretty foolish, but we still get to say it.

These are the situations that test our resolve.  As long as we don’t harm others in the course of our disagreements, we can disagree all day long. It’s messy, frustrating and often disturbing, but it isn’t a crime.

Maybe Morad Elusta thought the world of his lawyers.  When a client needs a lawyer’s help, and a lawyer is there to represent the client without need for any payment up front, love and appreciation are often in the air.  After all, without the willingness of the lawyer to take on the client’s cause, there would be no means of redress.  It’s all love, love, love.

But like a marriage, the love and gratitude wanes when money comes into the picture. And that’s what happened to Morad Elusta.  From Courthouse News :

In a February 2006 complaint against Chicago and several officers, Morad Elusta claimed that police used excessive force while searching his home and falsely arrested him. The city offered to settle Elusta’s claims for $100,000, but Elusta refused the offer because he was unwilling to award his attorneys, David Cerda and John De Leon, a 40 percent share.

Eventually, Elusta hired new counsel – Zane Smith and Shelia Genson – who took the case to trial before a jury that awarded him $40,000.

The court later awarded Smith and Genson $83,000 in fees and ruled that Elusta owed his former lawyers, Cerda and De Leon, $15,000 for their services.

Elusta then moved to have Chicago pay Cerda and De Leon, but give him 60 percent of the amount. He also said Smith and Genson should turn over 60 percent of their fee award to him.

“Elusta argues that the phrase ‘the attorney’s fees’ does not clearly cover all of the attorney’s fees,” Judge Diane Wood wrote for a three-member panel.

In a side note, Wood likened the argument to a quotation from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” where Humpty Dumpty says, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The contract cannot bear Elusta’s interpretation,” Wood wrote. “What it does, in effect, is to say that counsel is entitled to receive 40 percent of any damages (the contingent fee); if fees are awarded to Elusta pursuant to §1988, the attorneys receive all of that award. The language that the attorneys ‘will divide the attorney’s fees recovered’ unambiguously covers all of the attorney’s fees recovered.”

Even the legitimate press sings the blues from time to time, including the Daily News. It’s Brooklyn court beat reporter, Oren Yaniv, who has gained a reputation around here as both a straight shooter and a guy whose stories can be trusted, was trying to cover a decade old case of Mario Metellus, accused of murdering his secret gay lover, Calvin Colbert, in 2002.  Newsworthy, right?

The case was being tried before Kings County Supreme Court Justice William Garnett, who admitted into evidence the dreaded photos of the victim.  These are the photos every defense lawyer hates, and fights tooth and nail to keep from the jury’s eyes.  They already know the victim is dead, so their introduction into evidence, ugly, nasty, horrible, serves only to inflame and prejudice the jury.  A terrible crime has been committed, and someone must pay.

And that’s exactly why Edward Purce, the prosecutor, offered them.  That’s why any prosecutor trying a murder case offers the photos of the body.  Despite defense counsel’s protestation, in they come, to shock and anger the jury.  Metellus’ lawyer, Glenn Morak, cried prejudice, but nobody was interested.  Who better to prejudice than the defendant.

But Yaniv, because accuracy matters, sought to get his hands on the photographs admitted into evidence, he hit a brick wall.  He made an oral request for admitted evidence, as reporters usually do when covering a trial, and got smacked.  He followed up the next day with a written request, and Justice Garnett rallied the lawyers for their positions.

According to This entry was posted in Uncategorized on September 13, 2012 by SHG.

Adnan Farham Abdul Latif should have been released from Gitmo in 2004, when the Pentagon conceded that they screwed up when the snatched him from Pakistan to fill their daily quota of fake terrorists.  He should have been released in 2009, when, by unanimous vote of all United States intelligence agencies, it was concluded there was no reason to hold him.  Instead, Latif remained a prisoner.

Latif is now free, but not because the “land of the free” finally did the right thing. Latif is dead.

Via NBC’s World News :

The Guantanamo detainee found dead in his prison cell last weekend had been cleared for  release three years ago by an Obama administration task force that concluded that his detention was no longer necessary, NBC News has learned. 

The disclosure that the detainee, Adnan Farham Abdul Latif, a 32-year-old Yemeni citizen, had been approved for repatriation could raise new questions about the handling of his case and those of scores of others held in Gitmo who also have been cleared for release. Instead, the detainees remain stuck in legal limbo in the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists with no prospect for getting out any time soon. 

At 32 years old, Latif had spent about a third of his life in an American prison.  He didn’t take well to it, and it didn’t take well to him either.

Military officials say that Latif had been a disciplinary problem: He had been on a hunger strike that he ended in June and recently had hurled a “cocktail” of food and bodily fluids at guards, causing him to be placed in a special disciplinary cell in Camp 5, where he was isolated from other detainees.

Isolated. Sedated. After all, maintenance of discipline and control is critical for a prison to run smoothly.  Everybody knows that.  Who does this guy think he is being all pissed off at America for holding him since 2002, having whisked him out of Pakistan and put him in an American-made orange jumpsuit.  So what if he did nothing to justify a decade in prison; you can’t expect to hurl a “cocktail” and get away with it.

And so they put Latif in the hole, where he was found dead.  And nobody knows why, because it’s not like they have cameras on every body and every place in Gitmo.  But these things happen.

Latif’s death is the ninth at Gitmo since the U.S. prison for terrorists opened in January 2002 and the third since last year. The case is now the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Military officials say that Latif, who had no serious medical problems, was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at Camp 5 on Saturday afternoon. After efforts to revive him failed, he was rushed to a hospital at the base and pronounced dead. An autopsy was conducted on Sunday, but the results have not yet been released.

Back in 2002, we were all filled with anger.  So when somebody told somebody who told an American that a guy was a terrorist, that was a good enough reason to snatch him and throw him in Gitmo.  They didn’t need charges, because they were enemy combatants, and that was reason enough.  Grab him now and let someone with a higher pay grade sort it out later.  Until then, at least we’re proving to the world that we won’t let the terrorists get away with this.

And they did sort it out, though no one cared. And even though they sorted it out, and concluded that they grabbed a 22-year-old for no good reason, they held him.  And no one cared.  And ten years after he was grabbed, he was in isolation because he had the audacity to be displeased with losing a third of his life to American Exceptionalism even though there was no reason for him to be there. And no one cared.

And now Latif is dead. And no one cares.

Had someone named Smith been snatched and taken to a prison in Iran, we would care.  We might send in Seal Team 6, or maybe drop the bomb.  And if Smith was found dead in a hole, it would be the lead story on every network that night.  There would be outrage on Sunday morning television, and presidential candidates would be spitting at the camera. 

But this kid in Gitmo has the misfortune to be named Latif instead of Smith.  And misfortune to come from Yemen instead of Missouri.  And so his life means nothing to Americans. 

Eventually, the results of the autopsy will be in, but there will be no media reports about what really happened to Adnan Farham Abdul Latif.  How do I know this?  Do you know how the other eight died?  Do you care?

Cameras in the courtroom is controversial enough. But in the holding cell? When a defendant first meets his lawyer to talk about the case?  That’s where a new National Geographic show, Criminal Defense: And Justice For All, starts. 

After all, there is the long-playing television reality show, COPS, with the catchy Bad Boys song, showing police going from one trailer park to another, keeping the streets safe for people who don’t shop at Wal-Mart.  With the cameras rolling and lights flashing, nobody ever gets beaten for kicks, so the show isn’t a total waste. Why not a reality show about what criminal defense lawyers do? 

The “actors” are from the Brooklyn Legal Aid Society and the streets of Kings County.  In the best of worlds, it’s a juxtaposition to the excitement of real life cops and robber, showing the tedium of real life public defenders trying to defend real life defendants from false accusations and overreaching prosecutions.  What could possibly go wrong?

Gideon, another real life public defender, wonders how well this show will depict reality :

The show follows public defenders at the World Famous© Brooklyn Legal Aid as they represent clients during the course of their humdrum, everyday routine while doing things like climbing ladders at crime scenes to prove that the cops are lying. We all do that, right? Whether this show accurately captures the life of a public defender and the day-to-day workings remains to be seen.

But deeper concerns abound:

Over at Legal Ethics Forum, Brooks Holland, who I can only assume is a LawProf, asks an interesting question : are these shows good or bad? Specifically:

A great chance to profile the important, difficult, and under-valued work of public defenders, and to humanize the experience of clients and other individuals who navigate our criminal justice system. At the same time, I wonder about confidentiality, even with client consent, and how a TV camera could affect client representation and advocacy, consciously or unconsciously. What do folks think of the pros and cons of this kind of show—should lawyers agree to participate?

I’d love to see what the confidentiality waiver looked like for participants. Will prosecutors try to argue that any and all confidentiality was waived? Will lawyers be tempted to be on their best behavior and actually perform their jobs and will judges and prosecutors play nice because there’s a camera around? Will people get the wrong idea about just how messed up the criminal justice system really is?

There is little doubt in my mind that the camera changes things.  In time, players get used to the camera over their shoulder, and return to their normal behavior, but the players aren’t long term television stars and never reach the point where the cameras are forgotten. But that’s really not a huge concern. So what if it’s a phony, a television show that sugarcoats reality and has all the players on best behavior.

The issue of confidentiality is huge, and Gid only scratches the surface of the problem.  There is no way a defendant in a holding cell awaiting arraignment can waive confidentiality, no matter how long and detailed the waiver may be, without the advice of independent counsel.  When you see a Legal Aid lawyer meeting with her client for the first time, all captured on the camera, did he have another lawyer, not with Legal Aid, advise him of the implications and consequences? 

Gid asks whether that will vitiate privilege altogether.  It would certainly appear so. The price of fame, and a waiver, is expensive, and that includes confidentiality. Why wouldn’t a prosecutor argue that the defendant waived confidentiality?  And why wouldn’t he prevail?

In a second segment, the video trailer shows a Legal Aid lawyer, Adam, doing a crime scene investigation (which beings with an advertisement, because NatGeo wants a quick buck like everyone else).  Gid gets a bit snarky about the lawyer playing James Bond, climbing up fire escapes in the search for truth.



Drama aside, you learn at the end that he thinks his pictures will have a big impact on the defendant’s trial, which starts the next day.  He notes that the defendant has been in jail for a year awaiting trial.  Did it dawn on anyone that the lawyer should have inspected the crime scene a year ago?  Did it occur to anyone that he’s about to go on trial and has no theory of defense yet?  He’s first interviewing witnesses the day before hearing and trial?

Did it occur to anyone that had he done his job promptly, perhaps he could have persuaded the prosecution that the defendant wasn’t the perp and to drop the case?  Maybe get his bail reduced?  And how does he plan to get his pics admitted into evidence?

No doubt the video is meant to show the great lengths to which the Legal Aid lawyer will go to prove his client’s innocence. What it actually shows is that a defendant sat in jail because a lawyer neglected to do his job until the day before trial.  And what if he made that trip and confirmed what the cop claims? 

For that matter, what if the Legal Aid lawyer interviewing her client in the pens got an admission instead of a denial?  Or what if she pressed his denial, and got that “you got me” face, with the big, broad smile when the defendant concedes he just lied to his lawyer about “nothing happened” and comes clean?

Is 15 minutes of fame worth 15 months in the pokey?  Or 15 years?

Someone at the Legal Aid Society thought this was a good idea, a way to show the heroics of public defenders.  But criminal defense isn’t about the lawyer, even if they’re public defenders with their perpetual inferiority complex.  It’s about the defendants, and whoever approved of this failed to consider what they were trading off for their moment of glory.

Granted, fictional dramas about criminal defense are nonsensical, and give the public little clue about the reality in the trenches.  But then, does the public’s curiosity (assuming they are curious) about the human beings behind the accusations trump the lawyers duty to their clients? It never has before, and it surely doesn’t now. And even recognizing this problem, not every criminal case has a fairy tale ending, reducing what appears to be cherry picked footage to just another reality show fantasy.

H/T @PaleoRage

Nancy Gertner is one of the few criminal defense lawyers who made it to the federal bench without forgetting where she came from.  Now that she’s retired to Harvard Law School, she has the freedom to give us the occasional smack back to reality, and does so in a post at Cognoscenti.

There is a canned, formulaic newspaper story about any criminal case. It can be repeated in every prosecution, no matter what the crime, no matter who the defendant.

Here’s how it goes: Judge X sentenced defendant Y to five years (or whatever the number). The prosecutor argued for 10 (or higher than the number the judge gave). The victim’s family is appalled. When interviewed, they stridently proclaim their outrage at the judge. The press then echoes that sentiment.

All concerned assume that the right sentence is the one the prosecutor wanted or the victim demanded. So when the judge sentences the defendant to less, they cry foul. Another lenient judge! Another liberal! Another blow against the “tough on crime” mentality!

Sure, there are occasional exceptions to the rule, but it’s reporting made easy to scream outrage and turn an otherwise humdrum article into a cause célèbre for justice for [fill in the blank].  It turns a page 37 story into a front pager, maybe even an editorial about the deplorable state of the judiciary.  And the point is that some punk prosecutor’s cries for 79 years makes it the bar by which a sentence is judged. 

Judges have to explain the sentences they impose. Not so prosecutors.

The prosecutor cannot be so monitored. He picks a number and does not have to explain it, beyond justifying it in the particular case. There are no public, transparent guidelines for prosecutors, no Sentencing Commission, no standards. He cannot be easily reviewed to see if he is biased, choosing mandatory minimums for defendants of color more than for those who are white, or simply going with his gut.

It’s as if prosecutors have some magical way of plucking a number out of thin air that makes it real, and makes the media embrace it as the proper measure of punishment. 

The by-product of this sentence inflation is sentencing creep.

Never do you see the opposite: a columnist decrying a sentence that was too high or a reporter noting that these sentencing lengths are just arbitrary numbers – five, 10, 15, 20 – without any relationship to what works to deter crime, what is cost effective, etc. And they are “just” numbers that will inevitably increase over time, precisely because they are contentless.

These numbers only reflect the public’s and the district attorney’s spleen – and so whatever the number was before the sentencing of this defendant, they “must” be higher in the next case, with the next defendant. There is, in short, no end.

As I’ve pondered many times, what makes a sentence of 17 years right, but a sentence of 16 years, six months, wrong?  After all, the parsimony clause commands that a defendant be sentence to no more than is necessary. So is that last six months truly necessary?  Why?

More significantly, our collective sense of harshness, disproportionality, has shifted markedly over time, and not in a good way.

Twenty years ago, we considered five years a very long sentence. In most European countries that is still the case. But now, in the United States, we increase sentences by fives. It’s like a betting game. Five does not send a message if it is what the defense lawyer wants. OK, I’ll raise you five more. Why five? Why not 10?

Sentences that used to be measured in years are now measured in decades.  How did it happen that a five year sentence, an extraordinary length of time for a person to be imprisoned, separated from his life and family, because a slap on the wrist?  And yet that’s how it’s perceived today.  It used to be that a sentence of greater than ten years was huge.  Today, it’s barely adequate for jaywalking.

The public not only has a short memory, but one that’s never been particularly good at proportionality when it comes to the damage inflicted on others.  And the media’s need to inflame, to create the sensational in its race for eyeballs, is insatiable.  But the fodder for the public’s angst and the media’s outrage of the day are actual human beings. 

When was the last time a reporter demanded that a prosecutor explain why he asked the court to sentence a defendant to more than 20 years in prison?  When was the last time a reporter followed up by demanding a substantive rationale, beyond the visceral retribution because the crime was so horrible?  And how many readers of that reporter’s story say to themselves, five year of a life is a very long time to lose?

While Judge Gertner remembers what it was like to sentence a human being to decades in prison, other former federal judges, like Utah lawprof Paul Cassell, pound the misery of victims, demanding constantly greater flesh to assuage their suffering.  How long before some prosecutor intones  Jeralyn Merritt’s ironic joke, life plus cancer, as if a judge should really impose it as a sentence?  And how long before some reporter writes about it as if anything less is a travesty of justice? And readers nod their empty heads in agreement?

Unless we heed Judge Gertner’s warning, this is where it will eventually go, as we run out of lifetimes to sentence people. 

While dozens of upstarts in the legal services market made a  splashy entrance before swiftly falling into the abyss of worthlessness, Avvo has stuck.  It  wasn’t at all clear whether Avvo, the self-proclaimed lawyer rating service, justified by its altruistic claim that it would bring transparency to lawyers for the benefit of legal consumers, would survive.  It’s still there.

Over time, it shifted from lawyer rater to marketing promoter,  quietly changing its focus for the true purpose of any startup, to make a buck.  Advertising makes money. Rating lawyers (and later physicians and dentists) makes squat.  Yet, the ratings remain, without which Avvo would be no different than the rest of upstarts.

In the beginning, like many curious lawyers, I grabbed my Avvo profile and put in some stuff to see what I could make of my rating.  It started the day as a 6.5 and ended as a 10, the highest rating Avvo gave.  We had some fun playing with Avvo that day, but our work was done and that was the last time I bothered screwing with my profile.

When a lawyer is rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell, the rating remains for the rest of his career.  Yesterday, I learned that Avvo ratings don’t work quite the same way.  I was told that my Avvo rating, 10 as of the end of business on day 1, had decayed.  As of yesterday morning. I was a 9.7.  I didn’t feel any less competent, so I asked my pal and Avvo’s general counsel, Josh King, what I did to become a worthless, crappy 9.7, when once I was a masterful 10.

Aside: I actually sent an email to both Mark Britton, Avvo’s CEO, and Josh.  While I heard back from Josh right away, not a word from Mark, which made me sad as Mark and I used to hang out together in warm climes.  Sadly, I think Mark doesn’t likes me anymore since I told him his baby was ugly .

The answer is . . . it depends.  The Avvo Rating algorithm takes into account many biographical details in a lawyer’s background, and there is an “aging factor” that goes into how those details impact the rating.  As time passes, years of experience will count more, and past misconduct will count less.  Speeches, publications, awards, etc will all contribute less as time marches onward.  So depending on the score and the amount and type of information in a lawyer’s profile, the score could go up, go down or stay the same.

The technology gods giveth. The technology gods taketh away.  And when the technology gods happened to wear a black a turtleneck and came up with the coolest of shiny toys to win the hearts of the youth, it’s all wrapped up in a patent owned by Apple. 

Via RSN :

Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem “sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.”

In other words, these powers will have control over what can and cannot be documented on wireless devices during any public event. And while the company says the affected sites are to be mostly cinemas, theaters, concert grounds and similar locations, Apple Inc. also says “covert police or government operations may require complete ‘blackout’ conditions.”

There are no doubt good and legitimate uses for this technology.  And then there is the ability to use this tech for evil, to foreclose the ability to video cops doing bad things, for example.  But like so many uses of tech, it’s largely perceived by the public as good or evil based on promotional rhetoric.

“Additionally,” Apple says,” the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote source is one example of a threat to security. This sensitive information could be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to an examination administered in an academic setting.”

How great is that! This tech can thwart threats to our national security!  Nobody wants our national security threatened. That would be unAmerican.  So how would this defender of our national security work?

Apple patented the means to transmit an encoded signal to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.

Those policies would be activated by GPS, and WiFi or mobile base-stations, which would ring-fence (“geofence”) around a building or a “sensitive area” to prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.

Pretty cool, right?  Create a “geofence” around anything sensitive and there’s no way a smartphone can record it and send it off to Russia. Or China. Or Youtube.  And who would control this magic?

Apple may implement the technology, but it would not be Apple’s decision to activate the “feature” – it would be down governments, businesses and network owners to set such policies, analyzes ZDNet technology website.

After all, Apple is in the inventing cool stuff business, not in the defending the nation from threats business. That would be a government job.  At least we can all take comfort in knowing that the government would never use this technology to silence the recording of wrongdoing or things done by those “few bad apples” that would otherwise appear swiftly on the internet and alert the rest of us to what our government is up to.

It’s been a great ride, watching videos of cops lying and government malfeasance on the interwebz.  Hope you enjoyed it.  But with the help of Apple, the Halcyon days are over.  Just as it was before, it never happened until there was video.  And then the government flips the switch and activates this geofence, it will never have happened again, and we can get back to a society were cops do no wrong and never lie.

Thanks, Apple.  Got any more cool, shiny things in store for us?

At Inside the Law School Scam, Colorado Lawprof Paul Campos posts about a letter he received from a 2010 law grad.  According to the letter, he was an Ivy League undergrad, a top five law school graduate, and is now a fixture in his mother’s basement.

Since graduating in 2010, I’ve lived with my parents.  I have about as much debt as you’d expect.  I really want to be able to move on with my life, live like a grown-up, not be broke, and be able to be proud of my career.  I’m just not sure how.

I recently ordered test prep books for the GMAT, so that I can apply to full-time MBA programs.  I’m great at standardized tests, so even though business school admission isn’t as numbers-based as law school (I wish), I think I might have a good chance of getting into a top MBA program. 

Aside from business school, I don’t have many other good ideas.  I’ve thought about starting my own firm- probably mostly criminal defense, but I’d take whatever work I could get.  But the problems with that are: 1) I’m unsure whether I’m qualified, at least by my own standards; and 2) I know many small firms struggle to bring in enough business.  Since my biggest priorities are 1.) not be poor; 2.) move out of bedroom; and 3.) end unemployment deferment of loans, struggling to start a firm with the hope that if I’m successful I might clear $40k after a year doesn’t seem like a very good option.

During my phone call, we spoke of the baby lawyers hanging out in the hallways trying to catch the attention of a defendant’s mother with $100 in her pocket.  We spoke of n00bs, barely competent if at all, taking felonies for $1500 total.  He didn’t blame them, knowing they had loans to pay.

I planned to practice criminal defense, immigration, civil rights (police and corrections misconduct), and consumer law (debt defense and FDCPA).  My essential plan was to finance contingency civil rights work with revenue from flat-fee criminal, immigration, and consumer work and contingency FDCPA work.