The incoming president of the state bar of California is blasting lawyers for their role. [L.A. Times]
Posts Tagged ‘bar associations’
“Lock the law school doors”
There are too many lawyers entering practice already, argues former litigator Dan Slater in the NYT’s “DealBook”. “The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. …. many law schools appear to profit from what may charitably be called an inefficient distribution of market information.” Profs. Bainbridge and Ribstein react.
Deceased Austin lawyer probed over demand letters to restaurants
Prominent Austin, Texas lawyer and judicial candidate Mina Brees, who died Aug. 7, is the target of a probe by the state’s attorney general after sending scores of letters to Houston and Dallas area restaurants advising them that their business name registrations had expired and that they could buy them back by dealing with her at a cost of $20,000 or $25,000 each. The letters informed them that a client, Chicksports Inc., had taken possession of the names, but did not mention that she herself was the president of Chicksports or that it operated from the address of her solo-practice law firm. The Texas Restaurant Association had advised its members not to pay and said under state law lapses in name registrations do not deprive restaurants of their legal rights to their distinctive names. Brees had been on strained terms with a famous son, NFL quarterback Drew Brees. [Mike Tolson, Houston Chronicle/KHOU, Austin American-Statesman, more Houston Chronicle, Tex Parte, DeadSpin] Per the Austin American-Statesman, “Brees received the Austin Bar Association’s 2005 professionalism award for legal ethics and professionalism.”
“Lawsuit Claims Indiana Law Examiners Violate the ADA”
“The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has launched a class action against that state’s board of law examiners, asserting that inquiries into the mental health of those seeking a law license violate federal disabilities law.” [NLJ]
Sotomayor and the ADA/bar-exam case
As I mentioned last week at Point of Law:
The one case of [Sotomayor’s] of which I’ve been most sharply critical over the years is Bartlett v. Bar Examiners, the famously long-drawn-out disabled-rights case in which Judge Sotomayor ruled that a seriously learning-disabled bar applicant who’d already failed the bar exam several times with extensive accommodations was legally entitled to yet further chances and accommodations. I wrote up the case here and here, among other places; Jim Dwyer of the Times has an account that is much more sympathetic to Bartlett’s cause.
Now a post by Anthony Dick at NRO “Bench Memos” gives a quick summary of why the case is so controversial:
you might think that, since reading ability is an important part of practicing law, and the bar exam is designed to ensure minimal competence among lawyers, papering over a test-taker’s lack of reading ability would somewhat defeat the purpose. It would seem clear to most people that, in the language of the ADA, compromising the standards of the test regarding a basic legal skill would not qualify as a “reasonable accommodation.” But that would be a decidedly unempathetic point of view. Such an attitude is in fact “invidious,” according to Sotomayor’s opinion.
It is far from clear that any of this will constitute so much as a speed bump on the path to Senate confirmation for Sotomayor, since lawmakers on the Hill have shown little or no interest in reining in adventurous interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act — indeed, when the Supreme Court moved on its own to rein some of them in, Congress responded with legislation to overturn the decisions and re-liberalize rights to sue under the law (cross-posted at Point of Law). A different view: Larry Ribstein.
March 5 roundup
- Uninjured patients of California, unite to demand the money you have coming to you! [Russell Jackson via PoL]
- Lawyer’s nastygram to blogger Patterico: how dare you talk to my witnesses as part of your research on my case? [Ken @ Popehat, Sheffner/Copyrights and Campaigns, Volokh, Hricik/Legal Ethics Forum; lawyer Kathy Kelly retracts and regrets her threat; the underlying article by Radley Balko, alleging extraordinary misconduct by Mississippi-based medical examiners in a Louisiana case, is here [caution, disturbing images and videos]; reactions to that from Patrick @ Popehat, BoingBoing, Coyote]
- Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) being helpful to trial lawyers? Old news to Overlawyered readers [AmLaw Daily, Wood @PoL, our earlier coverage of Specter]
- California lawyers are obliged to pay $500 annual dues to the state bar, which leaves one member irritated when the official bar publication showcases a predictable brand of politics [Bookworm Room on CLAY awards, California Lawyer] More: Discriminations on the Virginia state bar;
- So is the New Jersey Law Journal going to start printing regular tutorials on how to take unlawful action against blogs that criticize one’s client, or is it just going to be the one time? [Ron Coleman]
- New blogger Andrew Grossman joins Point of Law, expert on the “overcriminalization” of life [intro, proposed we-must-do-something-about-chimps “Captive Primate Safety Act”]
- R.I.P. Murray Teigh Bloom, author of The Trouble With Lawyers (1968), whose obituary appeared in the New York Times the other day;
- Eric Turkewitz continues his investigations of online solicitation of victims of the Continental #3407 Buffalo crash; might the New York anti-chasing rules be working? [fifth and sixth posts in series]
- Stadium patdown case: California constitution “does not grant courts a roving commission to micromanage” security arrangements at private facilities [Egelko, Chronicle]
February 18 roundup
- Golfer’s ball bounces off yardage marker and hits him in eye, and he sues; not the Florida case we blogged last month, this one took place in New Hampshire [Manchester Union-Leader]
- Who needs democracy, much easier just to let the Litigation Lobby run things: elected Illinois lawmakers keep enacting limits on med-mal awards, but trial-lawyer-friendly Illinois Supreme Court keeps striking them down, third round pending at the moment [Peoria Journal-Star, Alton Telegraph, Illinois Times, Reality Medicine (ISMS)]
- “A sword-wielding, parent-killing psychopath can be such a help around the house.” [we have funny commenters]
- Brooklyn lawyer Steven Rondos, charged with particularly horrendous looting of incapacitated clients’ estates [earlier], said to have served the New York State Bar Association “as vice president of its guardianship committee” [NYPost]
- Updated annals of public employee tenure: Connecticut state lawyer who assumed bogus identity to write letter that got her boss fired drew a $1000 fine as well as a reprimand — and then got a raise [Jon Lender/Hartford Courant and more, earlier here and here]
- Judge Bobby DeLaughter indicted and arraigned as new chapter of Dickie Scruggs judicial-corruption story gets under way in Mississippi; Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson, central figures in Scruggs I, each draw 2-year sentences [NMC/Folo and more, more, YallPolitics, more, earlier on Balducci, DeLaughter]
- Disney “Tower of Terror” ride not therapeutic for all patrons: British woman sues saying she suffered heart attack and stroke after riding it several times [AP]
- Convicted of torching his farm, Manitoba man sues his insurance company for not making good on policy [five years ago on Overlawyered]
February 1 roundup
- A “retired Reserve captain is threatening to sue her local California school board if the board’s members do not address her by her military title” [Navy Times, Popehat]
- Members revolt at Florida bar’s selling their email addresses to marketers; general counsel of bar suggests they maintain multiple email addresses [Daily Business Review]
- “Panel Upholds $17M Attorney Fee Award, Cites Bad-Faith Patent Litigation by Drug Companies” [NLJ; fees awarded to Takeda Chemical Industries against Mylan Laboratories and Alphapharm Pty. Ltd.]
- Much of what you think you know about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr./National Journal; Point of Law, more]
- Not only prejudicial, but a whiskery urban legend to boot: fictional “Winnebago tale” (man thinks cruise control function will drive RV for him, sues after crash) makes its way into an Australian lawyer’s courtroom argument [Rees v. Bailey Aluminium Products]
- Posner was scathing about the class action lawyers’ conflicts of interest in the Mirfasihi v. Fleet Mortgage Co. case, but Max Kennerly thinks the judge got the case wrong [Litigation and Trial, earlier]
- Fight erupts over fee split in Blue Cross eating-disorder class action settlement [NJLJ, earlier]
- “Many attorneys from both parties also marvel at the sheer number of lawyers Obama has picked so far” in staffing White House [Washington Post]
ABA publishes flattering book as part of lawsuit settlement
Kudos to Law Librarian Blog (via Ambrogi) for this astonishing story: longtime readers may remember the bizarre defamation case filed by Philadelphia lawyer Richard Sprague against the American Bar Association over an article in which Terry Carter, a respected veteran of legal journalism, had described Sprague as “perhaps the most powerful lawyer-cum-fixer” in the state of Pennsylvania. Although the word “fixer” is long established in its meaning of “political wheeler-dealer and problem-solver”, a sense which cannot be said to imply any illegality, Sprague argued that in this instance it implied that he “fixed” legal cases. When the settlement was announced, its terms were disclosed only in part: Shannon P. Duffy of the Legal Intelligencer quoted Sprague’s lawyer, the very powerful James Beasley Jr., as saying it was a “damned good settlement.” Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular, as I’ve had occasion to note in the past, have a local tradition of plaintiff-friendly jurisprudence for public figures that is almost enough to make you wonder whether they exist as part of the same country as the rest of us who publish under the Times v. Sullivan regime.
But I never anticipated what was to emerge next from the ABA/Sprague entanglement. Here’s the first paragraph of Robert Ambrogi’s blog entry:
The American Bar Association’s book division recently published Fearless: The Richard A. Sprague Story. The ABA calls the biography the chronicle of “the significant events of a renowned Philadelphia lawyer” and the “compelling story of a man who wasn’t afraid to risk everything to fight for his fellow man.” Amidst all this praise for the book, the ABA never mentions that it agreed to publish it only as part of a settlement of Sprague’s libel lawsuit against it.
Sprague long represented Pennsylvania State Sen. Vincent Fumo but eventually fell out with him; he makes a cameo appearance in this vignette which itself tells much about the, um, vigorous way some figures in the Philadelphia political establishment deal with their critics. Fumo is now the defendant in a spectacular trial on corruption charges that itself deserves much more national attention than it has received. More: Philadelphia Daily News.
More from Ken at Popehat: “I’ve seen many things exchanged in aid of settlement — money, real property, personal property, apologies, handshakes, and a wide variety of promises. … However, before now, I had never seen a litigant promise to act as a vanity press.” And attorney/blogger Max Kennerly of the Beasley Firm also has a comment giving further background on the controversies, as well as on the Fumo trial, which he’s been blogging.
From comments: lawyer referral fees
Reader Phil Grossman, in comments to yesterday’s post about the hawking of injury case leads to lawyers, advances some interesting contentions, including some I’m not knowledgeable enough to evaluate, about lawyer referrals and fee-splitting:
…Lawyers are the only professional group that considers it ethical to pay referral fees. The bar associations allow and approve referral fees as long as they are paid only to other lawyers.
In the sort of mass tort lawsuits that this company is dealing in, it is extremely common for ‘clients’ to be bought and sold, sometimes multiple times, with a typical referral fee being around a third of the contingency fee. The general public doesn’t realize that the lawyer advertising on TV or out on the Internet for mass tort clients is usually just a marketer, selling all the clients he collects to other lawyers. It is actually more lucrative to advertise for clients and then sell them to other lawyers than to do the actual work of representing clients.
If, for example, someone is injured in an auto accident, it is common for a relative or friend who happens to be a lawyer to offer to refer the victim to a “good personal injury lawyer”. But the victims aren’t aware that their relative or friend is probably making money off of their accident by collecting around a third or so of the contingency fee from the lawyer they have been referred to. Although bar association rules usually say the referral fee and its amount should be disclosed to the client, in practice it is always kept secret from the client, who thinks his or her lawyer relative or friend is just being altruistic.
But it appears that this company might be trying to collect money up front from its targeted lawyers, rather than taking the normal percentage payment of their referral fees from the contingency fees after the fact. If so, the targeted lawyers need to be very cautious indeed.
And:
Read On…