Judge Laurence Silberman interviewed

By Peter Robinson, at Uncommon Knowledge (site):

Lawyering is an essential component of democratic capitalism, but too much lawyering can be too much of a good thing. A disproportionate amount of our talent in the United States goes into law as opposed to business, which creates wealth. Lawyers redistribute the wealth, but they do not generally produce wealth.

Judge Silberman’s classic 1978 article, “Will Lawyering Strangle Democratic Capitalism?” — originally published at my old magazine Regulation, though before my time there — is available in PDF form from Cato here.

Related: “Scalia: ‘We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to’ Lawyering” [WSJ Law Blog]

Judge-menacing Philly lawyer ignores disbarment

A “judge ordered the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to lock [Allen] Feingold out of his offices” after he went on practicing law notwithstanding his suspension and eventual disbarment, even going so far as to use another lawyer’s letterhead and electronic-filing code without his permission. That was aside from the question of whether he’d earlier attempted to choke, or only attempted to strike, a judge who’d ruled against him on an arbitration matter. [Above the Law, Legal Intelligencer, AmLaw Daily]

Defensive medicine and hospital admissions

Unnecessary testing and prescribing is often the first example that comes to mind in discussions of defensive medicine, but Stuart Turkewitz, M.D., explains why needless hospital admissions, especially of older adults and those with chronic medical problems, should also be seen as a prime example. Just to lend interest, Dr. Turkewitz, an internist and geriatrician, contributes the views as a guest blogger at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, published by his lawyer brother Eric.

Update on Mraz v. Chrysler

Readers might remember the Mraz case, where a driver was run over by his own truck because he failed to engage the parking brake, and a jury nevertheless awarded $55 million. (March 8 and March 21, 2007.)

The Chrysler bankruptcy threw a wrench into the appellate process. Given the number of unsecured (and secured!) creditors who were taking a haircut on what Chrysler owed them, and the weakness of the case, one would expect the claim to be extinguished. But Chrysler unilaterally (and almost certainly politically) decided not to extinguish product-liability lawsuits against it, and the Mraz case has settled for $24 million. (Amanda Bronstad, “Chrysler bankruptcy judge approves $24 million personal injury settlement”, National Law Journal, Sep. 25). Of course, the likely $8-$10 million attorneys’ fee in this case is being funded by taxpayers’ bailout money.

There’ll always be a Cook County

Don’t miss: Abdon Pallasch of the Chicago Sun-Times takes a look “inside the beast” at how the Cook County Democratic Party “slates” its judges. Women with Irish-sounding names do best with voters:

That’s why lawyers of Jewish or other ancestry often legally adopt Irish names to run for judge here. That’s why when party leaders slate men without Irish names, such as William Haddad, who would have been the first Arab-American full-circuit judge in Cook County, the party must recruit Irish women lawyers to run as “ringers” or “stalking horses” to flood the ballot and fracture the Irish-woman vote.

There’s a Corboy & Demetrio angle, too. And the National Law Journal covers the controversy over the Cook County Clerk’s decision to accept paid lawyer advertising on her office’s website (earlier).