Following up on the Law School edition, the issue of leaving school, license in hand, with an adequate breadth of knowledge to go out and represent living, breathing human beings remains problematic.  That would seem a reasonably uncontroversial idea, but it’s not.

When someone sent me a link to a post at Shilling Me Softly, a blawg dedicated to exposing the lies sold to those applying to law school with the expectation that becoming a lawyer is a guarantee of wealth and prestige, I saw much of the anger and confusion that gives rise to the conversion of law school inadequacy to lawyer incompetence.

Before going there, I should note that much of what Kimber Russell and the scambloggers (the name given the disaffected young lawyers who are angry at being deceived by law schools) say is absolutely true.  Neither law schools nor the ABA, nor the ancillary forces that support them, have been honest with law students, dealt with producing far more lawyers than society can absorb or sucked money (as reflected by law school debt) from students in the worst investment they will ever make.  But these are all problems I’ve discussed many times before.

That wrongs have been done to law students doesn’t lead to Russell’s conclusion that the nascent lawyer is entitled to do anything they can to make a buck.  She leads into this with support for the law student who came up with Shpoonkle.

One might expect that a future unemployed attorney who goes to such lengths to forge an innovative career for himself would be lauded for his efforts. Not so much, as evidenced by Scott Greenfield in his popular blog, Simple Justice.

But Mr. Greenfield is operating from the false assumption that those attorneys seeking clients from this type of online service are incompetent and unable to obtain clientele any other way.  What about young attorneys who simply have no funds to start a traditional solo practice because they are already carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable student loan debt?

§§§

I don’t know where you’ve been, Greenie, but the legal “profession” has been on the downslide for some years now, and once the ABA opened the door to legal process outsourcing, we’ve seen plenty of services previously done by expensive attorneys being shipped offshore to be done for pennies on the dollar.  And that is all at the clients’ behest, as they have finally awoken to the fact that legal fees have been wildly overvalued for decades, and much of the work can literally be done by any creature possessing opposable thumbs.

Why shouldn’t client demand drive the market for legal services, especially nowadays when we have such a surfeit of licensed attorneys?  Why is the mere notion of using technology to pair needy clients with attorneys who need the work comparable to working the corner, as Mr. Greenfield so eloquently puts it?

The reality is undeniable.  If I was in high school today, I would emerge a felon.  There was the time I replaced the frog reproduction movie in biology with the reel of Sally Rand, the bubble dancer, I found in my grandfather’s sock drawer. 

Then there was the time we took everything, and I mean everything, out of the algebra teacher’s classroom and she found us sitting on the floor when she came in.  She cried, then got the gym teacher to berate us for making her cry. Or the time I grabbed the 20 gallon bottle that looked like a hookah from chem lab and tried to sneak it out without the teacher knowing.  He saw and chased me (carrying this monster bottle) around the outside of the school, past every classroom window on the first floor.  Yeah, I was a prankster.

Somehow, I was never arrested. Never suspended.  Not even given detention.  I was called to the assistant principal’s office to be chewed out for nearly giving Mr. Corso, the chem teacher, a heart attack by making him run after me, but the assistant principal found it impossible to keep a straight face.  Yeah, I was a prankster then.

Today. I might be a felon.  A recidivist.  There’s a good chance the Sally Rand movie would place me on the sex offender registry.  I wouldn’t be a lawyer.  I wouldn’t have gotten into college.  I might be forced to live under a bridge.  My opportunities would be limited to street sweeper or a life of crime.  That’s what becomes of pranksters today.

Three kids in Woodbridge, New Jersey, not far from where I grew up and went to school in Metuchen, pushed  some live chickens through a window into their school. 

Cesareo and Tyler Bruno said they bought live chickens from a store in Newark and pushed the chickens through a window at Woodbridge High School in the middle of the night. A janitor found them in the morning before school started.

“I am very worried,” Pater said.

Pater said he’s not happy about the charges and of not going to the prom.

“For us not to be there, it would just be heartbreaking,” Pater said.

“It’s not fun anymore. No one knows how to have a good laugh,” Anthony Cesareo added.

Kids.  Anything for a laugh.

It may have been a joke to them, but police said it wouldn’t have been so funny if a student got hurt.

Get hurt how?  Chicken flu?  Slip on chicken shit feces?  Feather allergies?  Is there a significant chicken threat to the safety and welfare of students that I’ve missed?

I suspect there is.  From just a bit of poking around, I see parents, police, politicians and especially school administrators speaking of catastrophic concerns for children.  Apparently, everything is a potential threat.  There is an expectation that by insulating children, bubble-izing them, they will never skin their knee (and become infected with a life-threatening bacteria), become overheated (and die of heat exhaustion on the playing field) or be exposed to language or ideas that will turn them into serial killers or drug addicts.

I’m a parent.  I understand and appreciate the concerns a parent has for the safety of their child.  But this “new normal” belief that we can simultaneously eliminate every potential threat that conceivably exists while affording them the joys of childhood (provided they enjoy playing “peacemaker,” by “creating ‘a roundtable with a mediator and write a peace accord “).  Where does this fantasy world exist?

It’s not enough that children today will never have the horrible experience of falling down on the jungle gym and skinning their knee.  Heck, they don’t even get cavities anymore unless their hygiene is just awful.  They never learn how to deal with hurt feelings because no one is allowed to say a discouraging word.  And if they push a couple of live chickens through a school window, they will be labeled criminals.

The more I think about it, I wouldn’t just be a felon today.  I might be staring down the firing squad.  What normal person who grew up when I did wouldn’t?  And yet we facilitate, enable and empower those we entrust with our children to turn them into criminals.  We have failed as parents, and we have done more harm to our children than a couple of chickens ever could.

H/T Turley

There have certainly been a widespread public outcry against the use of full body scans or enhanced patdowns (feel ups?) by the TSA to protect us from the terrorist threat of old white women in wheel chairs and infants in diapers.  Has any initiative under the purported need of protecting the public met with such public disapproval?

No matter.  Stewart Baker posts at  Volokh Conspiracy that the government, in its largesse, has heard our cries and, because it’s good and benevolent, is trying to soothe our anguish.

I testified yesterday at a government oversight hearing on TSA.  It was a through-the-looking-glass experience for anyone whose memory extends back to, well, 2007.  That’s because the Republican members mostly lined up to bash whole body imagers and talk about privacy while the Democrats mostly spoke about the importance of air passenger security.  Government Oversight chairman Issa and subcommittee chairman Chaffetz were particularly vocal in scorning TSA’s current approach. This is reminiscent of the “big switch” on privacy in the late Clinton years, when Republicans began attacking the Clinton administration on civil liberties grounds.

When your party doesn’t control the Executive, the playbook says you should attack the administration on almost any basis.  So the switch isn’t a complete surprise.  But attacks like this have consequences, and the most obvious consequence of a successful campaign against TSA will be more reliance on metal detectors, which have no hope of catching any of the bombs al Qaeda has used since 9/11.

Baker’s Dodgson-esque experience likely won’t surprise anyone with an iota of cynicism any more than it did him.  It’s not that politicians lack principles, but that their guiding principle is the side opposite of their adversary, whatever that may be.  But where he goes from there is curious.

Still, there are things TSA could do to improve security and passenger dignity, and they got some attention yesterday.  TSA should spend more time looking for terrorists, and less looking for weapons. 

Why, that sounds remarkably like profiling.

We could see a TSA “known traveler” program in which passengers can volunteer more information in exchange for streamlined screening . . .

Why, that sounds remarkably like trading off the inconvenience of worthless searches for giving up one’s personal information to the government and becoming a trusted traveler.  Here’s the story he told the congressional committee:

Imagine you are among the majority who don’t see what the fuss over travel data is about.  You authorize TSA to access data about you – travel data,say, and perhaps criminal or other records.  When you show up for your flight, your boarding pass has already been coded to show that you’re entitled to use the trusted traveler lane.  Good thing, too, because that line is much shorter.  The TSA official checks your ID and boarding pass as usual, but he waves you into a fast lane, where the most aggravating and time-consuming security procedures have been eliminated – the liquids and laptop inspections, perhaps the shoe inspection too. 

No wonder the trusted traveler line is shorter; it is moving twice as fast.  Every once in a while, though, scanning the boarding pass sets off a beep, and the officer waves you into a standard line for the usual drill.  This is a random event, programmed into the system in advance based on all the data that TSA has.  The line is still a lot faster, because only a few of the trusted travelers end up in the standard inspection, but that random event makes it difficult for terrorists to game the trusted traveler program. The upshot would be faster inspections, less hassle, and more security.  More privacy too, for those who think that giving up a little information is a fair trade for fewer scans and patdowns.

After all, most people would be happy to tell the government anything it wants to know to be on the fast line.  Whatever could there be to hide?  We’re all good, law-abiding citizens.  Hardly terrorists.  We have no secrets, nothing to hide from our own government.  And we really hate the enhanced pat downs.  And we might even avoid having to take off our shoes and walk around barefoot on that dirty, disgusting airport floor.

From the outset of the TSA’s initiation of full body screenings and enhanced pat downs, pretty much everyone under the sun with any knowledge of security said it was an empty, worthless gesture despite the annoyance, intrusiveness, offensiveness felt by the public subject to it.  Should the government, in its benevolence and concern for our feelings, give it up in exchange for, say, the authority to profile combined with gathering as much of our personal information as it wants,

If this was the plan from the outset, it’s worthy of applause as being one of the most ingenious and well-conceived ever employed by the government.  I wouldn’t have thought the government capable of coming up with, and properly executing, such an involved scheme to circumvent the Constitution and get us to not only go along, but to beg them to make it happen.

Baker is quite right, that much of this country would adore the opportunity to beat the lines, the searches, the ugliness, at our airport gates.  Much of this country has no concern for their privacy, and would never see an issue with surrendering what little personal privacy remains for the transitory benefit of being in the fast lane.  And those who bristled at the idea would be begging to land on the potential bad guy watch list.  After all, refusal to play along, to give it up to the government, obviously suggests you have something to hide.

This is really a brilliantly nefarious plan, if plan it is at all.  Personally, I think they just lucked into it as the government could never produce such a coordinated, long term scheme to get the public to willingly surrender itself.  They just see the opening now and can’t help from exploiting it.

After all, wouldn’t any red-blooded American do anything to get through the airport faster?  Anything?

Rarely have I found myself in agreement with the politics of Wisconsin lawprof Ann Althouse, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t raised significant issues or has the right to speak out about them.  Thus, any disagreement is meaningless in the face of  this missive that appears at her blog.

The caveat is that this may be a joke, or a threat that is only meant to scare.  For all I know, this is the newest meme by a couple kids who think it’s hysterically funny that anyone, particularly Althouse, took note of it.  Whatever it is, it is.  Here are brief excerpts.  The original goes on for four pages.

WE WILL FUCK YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of shit, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the assholes on your side in real fucking life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath.”

Package 1: Pay your damn dues, you Union Freeloading pieces of shit

You are getting fat on union money. You are getting fat on our tax money. You are getting fat on an undeserved bully pulpit that you got from credibility won from the hard struggles of public sector workers, university professors and unions throughout history, and that increased dramatically in scope due to OUR MOVEMENT. So PAY YOUR DUES. We demand:

1) Because you have taken the words from our mouth — A complete recantation of all lies about #wiunion (not lies in leagalese – lies in the commonsense moral definition of the word. Choose an ethical system that you believe is fair, run it by us, and we will let you know which posts violate it) posted on your personal blog,in all comments sections of all other blogs, on your flickr account and your youtube account, spoken in podcasts or on bloggingheads, or said out loud anywhere in Madison. Take it all back. We don’t trust you, so we will draft a statement for you.

2) Because you have taken the bread from our table – a 5,000 dollar donation(each) in your own names and made public to the Industrial Workers of the World general fund, the Bradley Manning Defense Fund, the Recall Alberta Darling effort, a group of our choosing that advocates for the pro-democracy movementsin #libya, #algeria, #iran or in Pizza for the Protesters (we prefer Ian’s, the Nickelor Roman Candle, but any friendly place will do – if you attempt to order us shitty pizza or pizza from an unfriendly restaurant we will eat it and consider are demands still unmet).

3) Because you have attempted to take our very safety and indeed our lives,because you have incited violence against us and above all because you have proven yourselves inadequate to the grave and solemn responsibilites of Citizen-Journalism – Your silence. You want to make everyone shut the fuck up? Be the change you seek. We demand ZERO more posts about us, ever. We demand the admin pw for all of your shit to be publicly posted on a movement friendly facebook group or 4chan. We demand to be allowed to vet everything you post before you post it and edit it for any and all lies related to #wiunion, #wewarewi,#union, #usuncut #opesr #wikileaks #solidarity and#allthatisgoodandholyonthisearth. We demand that you Delete Fucking Everything.

4) You will never, ever, ever, ever in your motherfucking life come within 20 feet of the statue of Hans Christian Heg. Althouse, you are a job-hopping carpetbagger from New England. Meade, you are an obnoxious right-to-work Zombie from southern Ohio who only lives here because its apparently the only place in the world you can get laid. Heg is OURS. We are WISCONSIN. You don’t fucking touch Hans Christian. Ever. And that goes double for the Lady on the other side.

Package 2: Move the Fuck out of Our City

Get out, and stay out. Far out. Meade — You ain’t no man for this city. We’re out on the streets every day, all day. The 77 square is not for y’all. You say we’re from out of state? Bullshit. You’re from fucking out of state. We’ll show you just how fucking Madison we are. Althouse, we will ruin your goddamn career, your comfort, your pocketbook, your sense of safety and wellbeing, and your life. And don’t try to pull up at another one of our cities either. Don’t like your AAUP card? Turn it in. If you want to carry water for Koch and the Chamber, they can foot the fucking bill for it. Get a job on the Tea speaking circuit or with AEI or some other garbage think-tank in DC or Claremont or whatevs. We have friends everywhere. All land-grant University towns are occupied. All major cities are occupied. Everywhere with a critical mass of smart, uppity people is Occupied. If you want to advocate for national internetless, right-to-work rural fortress state hell with no transit in or out, you can live in it. If you want to defend Falangist Michigan, move to Pontiac. If you want to make us all work for Olive Garden you can fucking eat there. Why don’t YOU go shop at Wal-Mart. Because the shit you wear looks like it comes from places like Jazzman and Bop and we work there too and we aren’t having it any more. No more free rides, baby.

If you have not acceded to our demands within a week, it is ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. WE AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE. EVER. WE LIVE HERE 100% OF THE FUCKING TIME. YOU CAN’T BAN MADISON FROM LIVING IN MADISON, BUT WE CAN SURE AS SHIT BAN YOU. WHO ARE YOU GONNA CALL? COPS FOR LABOR? THE CHICKENSHIT TEA ASSWIPES WHO ARE SCARED SHITLESS OF THE TEAMSTERS TRUCKS? THE NATIONAL GUARD? SCOTT WALKER? NO ONE IS GOING TO COME AND CRACK DOWN ON US FOR YOU. THERE IS NO CAVALRY. ITS US VS YOU ON THE STREETS OF THE CITY GOING AS FAR AS IT HAS TO GO UNTIL A ) WE WIN OR B ) DOOMSDAY.

Chances are that there is nothing behind this, empty threats by idiots who will revel in the reaction they get.  I mean, “on like Donkey Kong?” Yet Ann Althouse and her husband Meade don’t need to concern themselves with this terribly funny, deliberately threatening, type of crap because she has disagreed with their politics by her public writings.

If this is real, then these people are sick.  If this is a joke, then these people are sick.  If you think this is funny or deserved, then you’re sick too.  You can disagree with someone all you want, but this is not a legitimate way to deal with it.  Ann Althouse is no teacup, too fragile to stare down disagreement, and it’s unlikely that this insane threat is going to cause her to pause in the expression of her thoughts for a second.  Still, nobody needs or deserves garbage like this.

And if this is a prank by a couple of kids to see whether they can get a rise out of someone whose words carry as much weight as Ann Althouse, then I hope to God that their parents give them a damn good spanking and ground them for a long, long time.

You vehemently disagree with someone on the internet?  Atlhouse?  Me?  Anyone?  Great, start a blog, write to your heart’s content and let the merit of your views draw in readers and persuade people to accept your point of view.  Anything else is garbage.  This letter to Ann Althouse, real or joke, is garbage. 

Update:  The author of the Althouse screed, Jim Shankman, is interviewed by Dan Riehl at Breitbart’s Big Government.

Shankman is currently unemployed, claims to not be a member of a union and says he most often works as a dishwasher when employed. He insists that he does not advocate for violence and in some ways sought to distance himself from his “manifesto,” while also acknowledging authorship. He says he’s done with the issue and was simply giving voice to thoughts and rhetoric he “regularly hears in the street.”

“I’m done with it,” said Shankman, adding that he intends to pull back some from social media. However, he did not back away from the manifesto, claiming he wanted to elevate the idea and that if others in Madison wanted to embrace it, then so much the better.

Welcome to the wild world of whackjobs on the internet.

H/T  John Burgess (below)

At PrawfsBlawg, Ari Ezra Waldman announces with some pride that he’s given testimony to the Hawaii Senate in support of a bill to conceal the names of “harassment victims so they could bring lawsuits against their attackers.”  While this suggests civil actions, it apparently covers criminal prosecutions as well.

The bill currently being considered allows certain domestic abuse victims to sue as “Jane Does” or “John Does.” It is an important bill and one, I must admit, I was surprised to learn was not already an option in every jurisdiction.

First, “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” filings do not prevent defendants from investigating and preparing defenses. It is a fallacy to suggest that such complaints are clouded in mystery until the moment trial begins and the plaintiff is sitting in his or her chair. Filings with pseudonyms shield identification and private information from the public, not the parties involved in the case.

it’s unclear what he means here, whether this is to suggest that the defendant, being guilty and all, obviously knows who he harassed, or that the defense will be given names while public documents will have the names concealed.  If the former, then Waldman is, well, nuts.  If the latter, then the law is either a sham as far as having any real purpose, since the defense can disclose the names publicly, or, assuming the defense doesn’t do so, the purported victim will be able to conceal their victimhood from the next person who attempts to research how many times a person raised allegations of harassment.

Second, while some evidence suggests that pseudonym filings make fact-finders wonder what would cause the plaintiff to hide his or her identity, judges can head this off at the pass by issuing clear jury instructions that the “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” filing means nothing with respect to the credibility of the defendant or his witnesses. Jurors are surprisingly smart when it comes to compartmentalizing inadmissible nonsense when given clear instructions from a judge.

Note the strong empirical basis for asserting that jurors can’t be prejudiced because they are “surprisingly smart” about this sort of thing.  I assume this comes from Waldman’s vast jury experience and the fact that all juries are the same anyway.

Third, open access to the courts is indeed an important value, but it is not absolute. Even if we require “strong counterveiling reasons” to insert some measure of anonymity into the process, those reasons exist. Domestic abuse is a grave problem, both in straight and gay relationships, and coming forward knowing that you will be identified as a victim of domestic violence is emotionally daunting and physically dangerous.

Physical danger is one thing, and the protection of the accuser from harm is a strong countervailing reason to conceal someone’s identity.  But from whom?  If it’s domestic violence, “a grave problem,” does the defendant not already know who his domestic partner is, whether or not the accusation is true?  Certainly, threats of physical violence aren’t going to come from the public, so who’s left to threaten the accuser?

But the trick isn’t the threat of physical violence, but the “emotionally daunting” nature of accusing someone of a crime.  No doubt it is emotionally daunting.  As it is in many allegations of crime.  As it is supposed to be in order to prevent false accusations. 

Finally, as to the unnecessary point, I am normally sensitive to this argument. Unnecessary laws are bad laws. But, this law is not unnecessary. In Hawaii, judges have routinely denied “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” filings without even considering a balancing of the harms. In fact, the drive for this bill came from a woman’s case where a judge rejected the premise of pseudonym filings out of hand.

And once again, a single case gives rise to a new law.  While Waldman neglects to mention the impetus for this bill, the ongoing theme of a law developed because of one bad outcome has become a meme in the law.  Omitted from his analysis is that judges have the power to conceal a purported victim’s identify.  That they don’t use it to Waldman’s satisfaction isn’t a reason to enact a law to conceal it, but a reason to appeal if the judge rejects the application improperly.  Of course, defendants don’t get interlocutory appeals, so if the judge granted it inadvertently, the defendant is screwed.

Of course, not everybody is in favor of this law.  The Hawaii Office of the Public Defender, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii and practicing lawyers oppose it.  But what would they know, compared to a lawprof? 

And lest I be unfair to Waldman, he’s not alone in his support of the bill.  Standing beside him is my old pal, Professor Danielle Keats Citron, of the University of Maryland Law School, who invited Waldman to the party.

Professor Citron’s testimony focused on female victims of cyberharassment — a growing problem indeed.

Come on.  You had to guess that Danielle had her finger in a law that was so fundamentally wrong and ill-conceived.  After all, the delicate teacup ladies of the internet can’t possibly survive without their advocate of cyber civil rights.

Riccardo McCray’s defense lawyer, Joseph J. Terranova, called them human cockroaches.  It was such an apt image that prosecutor James F. Bargnesi  sought a gag order to shut Terranova down.

McCray is on trial in Buffalo for the City Grill Bloodbath.

Twenty-four-year-old Riccardo McCray is charged with first- and second-degree murder, along with attempted murder and weapons possession in the Aug. 16 shooting outside the City Grill that left four dead and four wounded.

It’s a big case, and who doesn’t want to be in on a big case?  Not these guys :

One is a paranoid schizophrenic who helped McCray write letters while locked up with him in the Erie County Holding Center.

Another jailhouse informant, a crack cocaine abuser, spent recreation time with McCray on the Holding Center roof.

A third accuser, in the Holding Center for alleged sex crimes, sent nine letters to prosecutors offering to open up about his talks with McCray as a way to “seek atonement.”

A fourth witness never talked with McCray face to face but communicated through air ducts in the Holding Center, then approached prosecutors because “I needed a favor.”

The problem stems from the fact that McCray, whose entire criminal history consists of one conviction for disorderly conduct, an non-criminal infraction, but whose nickname according to the jailhouse snitches is “Murder” or “Murder Matt,” couldn’t be identified by one of the victims, Tillman Ward.

Police tried to get Ward to talk for months without success. He recently changed his mind after prosecutors offered to go easier on him in on felony weapons charges that he faces.

Tillman Ward, one of the victims in the carnage outside of City Grill — identified McCray as the gunman in an interview with police detectives last weekend at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, where he’s now jailed.

Miraculously, Ward ID’d McCray two days before jury selection, promise of leniency in hand.  But the gap in proof caused a loud bell to go off throughout the Erie County Holding Center.  It was the sound of opportunity, audible only to the ears of human cockroaches.

“We frequently see this in this kind of case. The human cockroaches come out of the shadows in all of these high-profile cases, and they’re willing to say what it takes to benefit themselves,” Joseph J. Terranova, McCray’s lawyer, said after Monday’s pretrial hearings in Erie County Court.

It was this reference to human cockroaches that so angered the chief of the Erie County District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau that he sought a gag order from Judge Sheila A. DiTullio.

Bargnesi told DiTullio that the name-calling violated rules of professional conduct.

While reporters are free to cover the proceedings “for as much or as little as they desire,” the interviews outside the courtroom are not necessary, Bargnesi said.

“It’s a distraction,” he said.

Human cockroaches. Rats.  Whatever animal comes to mind, it doesn’t alter the nature of the witnesses Bargnesi plans to use.  As Terranova says, you turn on the light and they scramble.  Is that the defense’s fault?

The problem facing the prosecution has nothing to do with the language used to describe its witnesses.  The problem is the witnesses.  The prosecutor will scrub them, comb their hair, put them into thoughtful looking glasses and dress them up in demure neutral colored cardigans to give them that Mr. Rogers’ look.  And they will still be jailhouse snitches, whose claims that the defendant said something inculpatory to them relies solely on their word.

Even Tillman Ward, who can at least take comfort in the fact that he was wounded to prove that he has some, any, legitimate connection to the crime, has a case to work off, and refused to identify McCray until a deal was cut.  One might impute a better motive to Ward, that he would want to convict the person who shot him (why would he lie?), but that ignores street justice.  Ward can always deal with his nemesis later.  Right now, he needs a favor and pointing at McCray is the way to get it. 

One might think that the prosecution in such a high profile case, given the alluring name “City Grill Bloodbath,” would be very cautious, very circumspect.  They must realize that it would attract every jailhouse snitch looking for a quick route to the door.  It seems impossible for them to not see that half the Erie County jail population heard that opportunity bell go off, and would be more than thrilled to answer its call.

McCray, in the meantime, says he’s just not the shooter, no way, no how.

McCray did not speak in court. But in a letter published in the Buffalo Challenger newspaper, McCray said he’s “about to be slaughtered in public for a crime that involves multiple people.”

“Please let the public know that several people were suspects in this case and because they are now witnesses instead of suspects, because they had something to say, I am left holding the bag,” McCray wrote in the letter.

“I am innocent of these charges, yet from the beginning of my arrest I’ve been treated as the guilty party,”

Talk about naive.  Did he expect the presumption of innocence?  What was he thinking? In the meantime, McCray says that his lawyer withheld witness statements from him.

McCray wrote that he was denied witness statements by his lawyer. “When I asked if I could have copies of the witness statement he told me no, because he didn’t want anything to happen to the witnesses,” McCray wrote.

“My heart goes out to the victims and their families, but I am not the shooter.”

Apparently, Terranova would prefer to make sure that none of the witnesses disappeared with extreme prejudice before trial, not exactly a rousing sign of faith in the innocence of his client, but perhaps a wise exercise of caution just in case.  Should anything happen, at least his client can’t be blamed given that he wasn’t provided the witness statements.

This will likely be an ugly trial, with some fertile ground for attacking the credibility of the witnesses against McCray.  Even if the prosecution gets its conviction, it will be permanently tainted with the nature of the witnesses it dredged up from the Erie County Holding Facility.  Call them rats, human cockroaches or snitches, they all come from the same menagerie, and no gag order is going to change that.

Not that it comes as any surprise, given the financial pressures many lawyers face and their facile ability to rationalize why that which puts money in their pocket isn’t evil at all, but still, it’s a shocker.  Via the Turk at New York Personal Injury Law Blog, the forward-thinking State of North Carolina has a bill before its legislature to allow non-lawyers to own law firms.

The proposal has some limitations designed to  address concerns. 

The bill introduced March 9 by Fletcher Hartsell, a Republican and lawyer, would allow non-lawyers to buy up to 49% of a firm, leaving it in control of licensed attorneys. (It came to my attention via AmLaw.) The bill, which would also allow outside investors to buy into accounting firms, includes language designed to prevent non-lawyers from interfering with the relationships between attorneys and their clients. Non-lawyer shareholders would be barred from interfering “with the exercise of professional judgment by licensed attorneys,” and in the case of a dispute among lawyers, shareholders and clients it shall be resolved according to the following schedule:

1. The duty to the Court shall prevail over all other duties.

2. The duty to the client shall prevail over the duty to shareholders

 That language is designed to allay concerns that lawyers would answer to investors instead of their own clients, or the courts of which they are considered officers.

Well that seems clear enough, ignore the people who are pumping money into your law firm because the rules say the client comes first.  What could go wrong with that?

As ethics expert and legal blogger Larry Ribstein put it here, far more eloquently than I could:

The rules are purportedly based on the notion that nonlawyer owners insufficiently imbued with professional standards would transform law firms from citadels of altruism into profit-hungry businesses.

Ribstein argues these rules are anachronistic and “limit the market for legal skills.” Instead of watching Goldman Sachs lure away the best lawyers with offers of higher pay, he suggests, why not let Goldman buy the whole firm and run it with the same attention to the bottom line as it applies to investment banking?

No doubt that’s because of the deep concern for altruistic Goldman Sachs demonstrates in the management of its own business.  Just ask  Sergey Aleynikov about Goldman Sachs’ concern for others.

Granted, law firms want to make a profit, and in the eyes of many are already “profit-hungry businesses.”  But if so, then why is there a need to change the rules? The fact remains that law firms, even Biglaw, tempers its hunger with substantial pro bono activities.  Whether you want to call it noblesse oblige or marketing, it happens.

As Eric the Turk points out, however, the interests of non-lawyer investors won’t be subject to the rules constraining lawyers in his niche, personal injury.

When the disciplinary committee comes a callin’, they will profess to be shocked, just shocked, at how their firms’ names were given to potential clients.

Let me show you how this works in the real world. This past weekend there was a horrific bus crash in the Bronx that killed 15 people. And attorneys are prohibited under New York’s 30-day anti-solicitation rules from approaching any of the injured victims or next of kin.

So how can lawyers work around this? By using marketing firms to launder their ethics.

And that’s how ethics are circumvents now, by those so inclined.  Add non-lawyer owners to the mix, and it slides downhill fast.  After all, the non-lawyers don’t report to the managing partner.  They aren’t subject to the nasty stares of the disciplinary committee.  Non-lawyers can thumb their noses at legal ethics, and make sure that they do everything necessary to make sure the bottom line is profit.

It’s no stretch to see how this could play out in criminal law, where guarantees of outcome could be sold like commodities futures.  How much does a winning witness cost these days?  And what is the price of silence for that poor crime victim?

Ribstein’s focus on the bottom line, and what he sees as the “brain drain” of lawyers from practice to profit, is bolstered by his couching his views in pejorative language, “citadels of altruism.”  It’s true that law has fallen off the wagon of being a profession with a fundamental obligation toward serving clients, but is the proper response to run as far away from the wagon as possible?  In the view of some, well, that’s absolutely how they see it.  Abandon all hope and do whatever it takes to cash in.

On the other hand, the assumption that the brain drain is a bad thing may be very short-sighted.  We’re awash in hungry lawyers as law schools keep churning out more than society can absorb.  Law schools need to fill chairs as academic profit centers and to keep their lawprofs’ Ferraris adequately serviced.  The ABA sees no problem.  Ever. 

Young lawyers (with massive loans to repay, as we’re perpetually reminded) demand their right to make money.  They are entitled, therefore,to anything that offers the promise of making money.  And as I’m told, it’s only  curmudgeons like me (and Mark Herrmann) who are standing in the way of their getting rich by throwing roadblocks like excellence, client service and ethics in their face.

The underlying problem, which cash-obsessed lawyers fail to recognize, is that they never should have been lawyers at all.  It’s hard to practice law.  Being a professional requires sacrifice, dedication to someone other than yourself.  it’s fine that some people don’t have a feel for such things, but then they have no business being lawyers.  Let the brain drain happen, and let’s rid the ranks of the legal profession of those who elevate profit over dedication to their clients.  They never should have been lawyers to begin with, and their loss is not only a non-problem, but a benefit to those who remain.

Whether the future of law firms is in equity, debt or just a return to the practice of law rather than praying at the alter of profit, is a question on the table these days.  Those who argue that the traditions of a profession are archaic relics of a dead society, and who simultaneously lust for lucre, should take their expensive educations and put it to good use.  Just not as lawyers. 

Let investors buy up firms of lawyers, who do anything but practice law.  Let them enjoy each other’s company and make fun of us curmudgeons.  We can take it.

And with that in mind, some song for thought.

The insider trading trial of Galleon boss Raj Rajaratnam is finally hitting its stride, with Ashby Jones at the  WSJ Law Blog chronicling every burp and yawn.  Coverage has been “colorful.”

Akin Gump’s John Dowd can be an aggressive lawyer. In fact, the WSJ described his tactics in his current defense of Raj Rajaratnam as “combative” just a little over a week ago.

After the government completed its direct of cooperator Anil Kumar, the former McKinsey & Co. director who claims he fed Raj inside information in exchange for hundreds of thousand of dollars, it was time for cross.  Finally, a chance to see Dowd use his CDL-fu.

Dowd Tuesday focused on the payments Kumar was alleged to have received in exchange for the information he paid to Rajaratnam. Dowd first highlighted his failure to report them on his tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

“In fact they were fraudulent,” Dowd said during one of several exchanges.

“Is that a question?” countered Kumar, who testified that he had turned over his income from Rajaratnam to the government and recently paid an additional $1 million to cover his potential tax liability.

A feisty witness, which is a critical lesson to a cross-examiner, who now knows that the witness is going to spar with him from the stand.  This adds a weapon to the cross-examiner’s arsenal, the ability to use the witness’ resistance to admit the obvious, to agree with what he’s already conceded, to show how he’s not there to tell the truth, or to vindicate his past criminal conduct, but to fight for his team.

With this knowledge in hand, Dowd goes in for the kill.

Dowd later asked what promises  Kumar had received in exchange for his cooperation to avoid prosecution on additional crimes and potentially receive a lighter sentence. Earlier, in his opening statement, Dowd had said government witnesses were testifying to “save their own skins.”

“It’s important to testify in this court to make [Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan] Streeter happy, correct?” Dowd said, referring to the lead prosecutor, Jonathan Streeter.

“Wrong,” Mr. Kumar responded. He said he was testifying to “uphold the law” and let the jury decide whether Rajaratnam should be convicted.

“Don’t you agree that the government’s objective is to convict Mr. Rajaratnam?” Dowd continued.

“Wrong,” Kumar said.

Wrong.  Wrong?  Of course, this isn’t a complete, or necessarily accurate, transcript of the cross-examination, but it appears to be highlights. 

Given that Raj has put his billions to use retaining Akin Gump’s Dowd, with a dozen additional minions to sit around the courtroom with their blackberrys aflutter, it’s a little surprising that the battle was joined with such a pedestrian cross, more along the lines of Cross of the Snitch 101 than a master class.

When you get an answer like Kumar’s “uphold the law” crap, that’s the time to go to town.  Smurf every crime Kumar committed, and conceded on direct, and end each question, “Did you do that to ‘uphold the law’?”  When you’re done, point out the intervening events that gave rise to his epiphany that he is now deeply concerned about upholding the law whereas before, he was deeply concerned that the cash was green. 

What are those intervening events?  Oh yes, you got caught.  Then you were prosecuted.  Then you decided to flip sides and cooperate.  Then you decided to leave your fate, your  sentence, in the hands of the prosecutor who would assess the value of your cooperation.  Then you came here to testify against Raj.  And now, your deepest concern is for “upholding the law.” 

“And you don’t care at all whether your testimony in this case means that you spend no time in prison or 30 years in prison, do you?”

“Now it’s all about upholding the law, and you would be happy to go to prison for the rest of your natural life, if it means upholding the law, right?”

“And you came to this realization, that your deepest, most sincere concern is for upholding the law, only after you were caught, prosecuted?”

“And that, you say, is the reason you are now cooperating with the prosecution, because your real interest is in upholding the law?”

“And you aren’t interest in saving yourself from a life in prison?”

No doubt the transcript of Kumar’s cross will reveal that Dowd ripped him a new one after Kumar tried to mess with him.  After all, the rat’s testimony that he’s doing it to “uphold the law” is as ripe a response as it gets, and opens the door to all sort of great mischief.  And you certainly can’t rely on Ashby to put all the really good stuff in a post, so the chance of Dowd’s having neglected to hammer Kumar on cross as would appear from the post is slim.

But just in case, maybe some criminal defense lawyers can offer him a bit of help in crossing the snitch who is testifying because he wants to “uphold the law.” As a courtesy to our Akin Gump brother, feel free to offer your version of cross in the comments.  Would that be wrong?

The  New York Times reports that the York Avenue Preschool has failed the offspring of Nicole Imprescia by not getting her into an Ivy League school.  Imprescia’s daughter, Lucia, is now 4 years old, but we all know that price of admission is paid early.

The suit charges that preschool education is critical to a child’s success in life, quoting from various news articles. “It is no secret that getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school,” says one. “Studies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school,” says another.

Instead of prepping little Lucia for the E.R.B.s, which will dictate whether she’s given the corner office in the long-term future, she “was ‘dumped’ into a class with 2-year-old children, talking about shapes and colors, according to the lawsuit.”  No mother pay’s $19,000 for preschool to have their baby dumped.

Turley has given Imprescia the nickname “Tiffany Mom,” to distinguish her from “Tiger Mom” and mom’s who drive minivans.

As entrance in top schools has become more and more competitive, parents are becoming more aggressive in seeking to guarantee every advantage for their children. In the case of Nicole Imprescia, this means going to court to sue a school over its failure to prepare her daughter for the Ivy League. Her daughter, Lucia, is four. The school is the York Avenue Preschool. It seems that there are “Tiger Moms” but then there are “Tiffany Moms.”

I assume that Turley means to suggest that Imprescia buys mass produced jewelry from once-great stores that are now chains and do a ton of catalogue sales, and trade off the impression that they are better than they are because they were once a significant brand.  Or maybe not, since Turley is a big public school supporter, meaning that he’s egalitarian in spirit and prays nightly that his kid doesn’t join the crips.

There’s nothing new about the attitude toward child-rearing demonstrated by Imprescia.  Or Turley, for that matter.  This has become a cliche among Manhattan wannabes, who indeed are Tiffany aficionados and left to believe that an inadequate score in the E.R.B.s spells a life of miserable poverty and, gasp, the potential of being dumped into a state school.  The shame is that Imprescia’s suit has doomed any possibility that little Lucia will ever be admitted to a decent private day school.  What was she thinking?

And in a bizarre twist of fate, Dan Hull, taking time off from his disco comeback album, posts today in Slackoisie Studies, a video by George Carlin that’s particularly apropos.

Law firms recruiting Generation Y lawyers may want to cut the description of their history and tradition on their websites and brochures.

Lawyers in Generation Y—which includes those up to 30 years old—typically have an expectation of change, according to Ballad Spahr diversity director Virginia Essandoh, in an article for the National Law Journal. They support innovation and creativity, expect up-to-date technology, and have a sense of fair play and civic responsibility.

It may help if the perks will impress the parents of Generation Y lawyers, since parental opinions may be important as new lawyers choose the law firms where they want to work, Essandoh says. Parents may be more likely to endorse a firm that demonstrates concern for the well-being of its associates with wellness programs, cab vouchers, and dinner programs for late-night work, she writes.

Ultimately, it comes back to pleasing the Tiffany mom.  Apparently, it’s true that everything one needs to know is learned in preschool.  Provided the preschool prepares you for the E.R.B.s.

Update:  Will today never stop dropping an embarrassment of riches on SJ?  Via Mike on twitter, the further escapades in American Exceptionalism:

Around mature developed areas, protection of a wonderful relic of our history, the family farm, is a high priority.  It provides open space, greenery and a vision of the once-bucolic nation that few would believe existed if they didn’t see it with their own eyes.  They are indeed worthy of protection as the last vestiges of an agrarian society.

In Florida, however, State Senator Jim Norman has taken his passion for farms to the extreme.  Via  Eugene Volokh and Kevin Underhill, Norman has  proposed a bill making it a felony to take pictures of a “legitimate” farm without the consent of the owner.  On its face, the law seems ludicrous, but the foundation appears to stem from farms coming under the scrutiny of groups like PETA and environmental organizations that fault the treatment of animals and farming methods. 

Via Treehugger, the point is driven home.

Norman’s motivation for the law originates in the increasing negative publicity that factory farming practices have received after a number of undercover videos taken by people posing as farmworkers exposed animal abuse and generally horrific conditions.

Ultimately Tom Laskawy’s reading of the situation in general is correct:

This is about the tendency in the food industry and, sadly, to believe that transparency and knowledge are the enemy of a functioning food system. People must not know how animals are slaughtered and processed. People must not know the nature and safety of all the chemicals involved in agricultural and food production and processing. People must not know if food is genetically modified. This belief now appears to undergird the very logic of the American industrial food system.

And points out, “It doesn’t take a close reading of the Constitution to know you can make photographing private property from a distance illegal.” Which is mostly true, but there are exceptions made for military installations and other places on national security grounds.

While blawgs have been quick to point out the faults of the law itself, and ridicule its proposal as either absurd or an over-reaction to some barely articulable harm, those involved in causes that seek transparency in the  “American industrial food system” aren’t laughing about it at all.

Indeed, there is a strong, if small, corps of people who go though great lengths to expose what they believe to be abject cruelty toward animals in the farming/ranching operations.  And they aren’t just taking photos from the road of the nice looking silo.  They are actively infiltrating operations.

But that wouldn’t have been the case with undercover videos of factory farming, which obviously require a person to be on the property rather than just shooting from a public space, and makes the whole thing enter into some legal grey area. Though, I’m inclined to believe that existing laws on clandestine filming and photography, as well as trespassing, are sufficient to cover the matter.

Which is all to say that whether this bill proceeds very far or not–I certainly hope it doesn’t–I wouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss it as legally absurd with a wave of the hand.

As Eugene points out, the bill as written is replete with flaws of imprecision, overbreadth and plain vanilla First Amendment violations.  As Kevin points out, the idea that taking a picture of a farm from the road could conceivably expose someone to a first degree felony conviction with a penalty of up to 30 years in prison goes so far beyond shocking as to be laughable. 

It is not a joke, however, to either the farmers/ranchers or those who find their methods abusive.

An unspoken reality is that most of us are carnivores, enjoying a good steak or Grandma’s meatballs.  They come from cows.  We know it, but we chose not to think about it.  We have no plans to give up eating meat, but we really have no desire to be confronted with how it gets from hoof to plate.

And eat your vegetables is a mantra that almost every child hears, but neither mother nor child wants to know what’s sprayed on them so that we can find brussel sprouts on the supermarket shelf looking oh-so-appetizing at such a reasonable price.  Take a quick glance at the organic version, and then its price, and consider the likelihood of much of America being able to afford to serve up a plate to the kiddies every day.

There is a huge battle being fought in the trenches of the farming and ranching industries, and not without reason.  Ultimately, people need to eat, and farms and ranches need to remain in business unless our concern for the welfare of domestic food animals and ingesting pesticides, both in our apples and water overtakes our hunger.

While the proposed law clearly goes far beyond the limits of law and reason, and is itself worthy of all the ridicule that’s been heaped upon it, the issue it seeks to address is quite important to all involved.  The fact that Jim Norman would put us in prison for pulling out the old Brownie and hoping Elsie smiles is just a product of incredibly poor drafting and total ignorance of unintended consequences.

The more fundamental question of whether you want to see videos of animals being slaughtered that will make your stomach turn, or whether you think soylent green is a viable alternative, is still in dispute.  We can make fun of this law all day long, but it belies some very difficult issues and problems for both sides of the debate.