Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

Down With Love, Up With Blogs

It's always fun to troll through the archives of favorite blogs. That's what I was doing when I found George Wallace's post "Pure Piffle for Now People" about the movie Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. On George's recommendation, I rented Down with Love, and I concur with his brief review.

It makes sense to get movie recommendations from blogs. When you become a regular reader of a certain blog, you get to know a lot about the author's tastes and interests; if those tastes and interests agree with yours, you can trust the author's judgment about movies. Among law bloggers, Ernie, Jim Dedman, and Xavier Morales all post about movies. If you want to cast a wider net, Maud Newton recommends pullquote .

Note to Media: Tort Reformers Should Be Held Accountable for Their Claims

From Saturday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Malpractice debate again puts Metro East under microscope," by Kevin McDermott. The article contained these unsubstantiated claims, among others:

Medical groups and their Republican allies claim an epidemic of frivolous suits against doctors, especially in the Metro East, has driven up malpractice insurance premiums. They claim the resulting exodus of doctors to other states has led to a crisis of scarce medical care in various parts of the state.

"The dirty little secret of Illinois is that the Madison County legal system has helped to create this crisis, and I think one of these days we're going to have to take that on," a visibly angry Rep. Julie Hamos, D-Evanston - an opponent of caps on litigation awards - said Friday in committee debate.

Like every newspaper article this past year, there is nothing to back up these claims--or others made in the article--about medical malpractice cases in Madison County, Illinois. The only real data about Madison County appeared only once, in a December article from the Belleville News-Democrat: "Report details malpractice suits," by Brian Brueggemann. According to that article, which was based on a report by the court clerk, there have been only eleven malpractice verdicts in Madison County since 1996. Doctors won seven. In the four cases won by plaintiffs, the amounts of the verdicts were $1.78 million, $470,000, $75,000 and $25,000.

Enough, Already! We'll Vote for George Bush. Just Promise to Stop Scaring Us--We're Running Low on Duct Tape

At a news conference last Wednesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that intelligence reports suggested that Al Qaeda is "almost ready to attack the United States" and has a "specific intention to hit the United States hard." Yesterday, however, the New York Times reported that Ashcroft's announcement presented nothing new and "appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush's sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq."

Weekly Law School Roundup #11

Mike of BuffaloWings&Vodka Is Scammed by AT&T . . . And asks, "Is there a class action suit that I missed out on?" According to Mike, the charge to accept a collect call from the AT&T 1-800-Call-ATT service is a whopping 99 cents/minute, plus some other charges. Sound unbelievable? As a hard-working consumer lawyer, I took it upon myself to do some investigation. I found the rate information here, at the AT&T website. It didn't give the rates, but directed me here, where I got this message: "You have requested data that is no longer published on this site." I also dialed the phone number that the AT&T website said would give me the rates, but I got a recorded message stating I should call back during "normal business hours." Next, I searched for "1-800-Call-ATT" and "ripoff" and found a number of complaints just like Mike's, finally confirming his story and the 99-cent/minute rate. Death to Carrot Top!

Beware the Courthouse Secretaries About their tendency to give lawyers the runaround, Bekah of Mixtape Marathon writes, "Note to people in menial positions of authority: The fact that you sit behind a counter and hold a clipboard or preside over a royal file cabinet does not give you permission to be a completely uncivilized monster to other people. " (Before concluding this paragraph, I feel obliged to state that I am just the messenger, and mean no disrespect to the courthouse staffs of Madison County, Illinois; St. Clair County, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Clayton, Missouri; or any federal court in the entire nation--you all are the best!)

Teaching Recent Law School Graduates Without the Crutch of the Socratic Method Taunting Happy Fun Ball is blogging about BAR/BRI. Not everyone agrees with this approach to studying for the bar exam, but I know many satisfied customers.

Love the One You're With? From Justin of musclehead comes news of a study titled "Money, Sex and Happiness" that "sets out to estimate the relationship between income, sex and happiness." Justin notes, "What stands out is that the happiness maximizing number of sexual partners for the previous year is one." Justin thinks the finding may have more to do with love than sex--to find out why, read his post.

A Summer Associate Who's Happy With His Job I'm speaking of TJ of Undeniable Dilemma, who claims to be satisfied with the firm where he's working. He writes, "The firm tries really hard to 1) give you work you're interested in and 2) give you work that produces a really tangible result." That's all well and good, but some conspiracy theorists wonder whether TJ fears his employers might have found his blog. If he writes that all the firm's lawyers are good-looking, our hunch will be confirmed.

Rubber-Neckers Wanted to Read Blog Post The author of Neo Tokyo Times, who's working in South Dakota this summer for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, happened upon a gruesome car accident and blogged about it. I'm sort of embarrassed to say I read the entire post. Here's a spoiler: "[T]he crumpled car didn’t explode, and the unconscious woman wasn’t unnecessarily moved."

Want More Information About Law School Blogs? I learned about it from Dylan at The Slithery D: a list of law school blogs, organized by school but still in its infancy, at blawg.org. Meanwhile, Dylan is working on an "international arbitration project"; I wonder if he knows that before I became evil, I spent countless hours helping to research and write Theory and Practice of Multiparty Commercial Arbitration with Special Reference to the UNCITRAL Framework, by Isaak I. Dore. Hey, Dylan, what's so "Satanic" about that?

This Week’s Extreme Wit at the Law Schools Award™ Goes To . . . Larry of Lonestar Expat, for his post about the summer intern who couldn't work the phones. I should also mention that I enjoyed Jeremy Blachman's fictional elevator story, which reminded me a little of J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise.

Greg Raymer Was Right: Lawyers Are Better Poker Players

Back in 2001, there was a long thread on rec.gambling.poker that began with this question: "[I'm] curious how you all rate attorneys at the table?"

There were many answers. This one was memorable, and is quoted here with its errors intact:

I am currently in law school and know of almost no attorney that possess people skills. Those that do, don't necessarily understand how others think or why they act. Their is an unfortunate stereotype that lawyers are any more intelligent than the general public. More educated yes. More intelligent no.

Later, a lawyer named Greg Raymer wrote:

I think lawyers, especially patent attorneys from southeastern Connecticut, are about the best poker players in the world. And those feline, waxy-mustached lawyers from NYC aren't bad either.

And now comes word that Greg Raymer, a/k/a Fossilman, has won the World Series of Poker, along with its top prize of $5 million. Think he'll be spending some of his winnings on his lawyer friends from NYC?

Weekly Report #20: Too Many Lawyers

One of the problems being a lawyer is that you have to see too many lawyers. As I've said on this site many times, I like lawyers, but my life would benefit by mixing it up a bit. What about a conversation with an English professor, for example, or a musician? I write, I play the guitar--hey, I'd have something to add to the conversation. I could hold a conversation with a riverboat pilot, a corporate CEO, or a circus clown--bring it on!

This week, though, it was all about lawyers. I counted them in my head: I had conversations with thirty, at least, just at this week's meeting of the Madison County Bar Association. Throw into the mix two meetings with my old partners, one in their offices, one in a bar; a deposition; a settlement meeting--it was enough lawyers to populate a sinking ship or a burning building.

I'm joking, of course. The conversations, by and large, were interesting, if you like talking about politics or the business of law. Generally, I do. This week, though, all those lawyers wore me out. They've already made me forget that I spent most of the week at home, helping with the new baby. Of course, my wife's a lawyer too, so while trying to get Sam to eat, we had some necessary conversations about her clients, the ones I'm supposed to be helping now that she's taking some time off.

Only my mother-in-law and my other children provided a little ballast to right this week's conversational imbalance. This weekend, I plan to read some books. It will be a direct infusion of non-lawyer voices into my head, and relief will wash over me--sort of like Rush must have felt when he was popping those Vicodins.*

*I mean, allegedly popping those Vicodins.

In a Mass Tort Ruling, Federal Judges Do the Right Thing

Score one for the victims of corporate wrongdoing. In the ongoing fen-phen diet drug litigation, a federal appellate panel has ruled the victims of Wyeth’s flawed drug won’t be bound by a lower court's gag order that had prohibited the victims from telling juries the details of Wyeth’s conduct. As a result of the ruling, anyone who opted out of the class action settlement and is now proceeding to trial will be allowed to tell the jury about Wyeth’s allegedly bad behavior, as long as these details are relevant to the issues being tried.

Many of the remaining fen-phen cases are pending in state courts. Despite the disdain of tort reformers for the state court system, the federal appellate panel stated that “we are confident that the state courts . . . can and will capably manage [the] task” of making appropriate evidentiary rulings. The full decision can be found here (PDF).

Those Nutty Plaintiffs' Lawyers!

In Manhattan this week, two rival plaintiffs' firms battled it out in court. Only one could emerge victorious: it was Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, which won a $1.4 million verdict against rival Mallilo & Grossman.

What happened? According to an account in the New York Law Journal, it was client-stealing by a Mallilo & Grossman associate--

That associate, -------, a 1997 graduate of Touro Law School, went to enormous and ultimately illegal lengths to make a name for himself as a rainmaker . . .

On almost every weekend between March 1998 and May 1999, ----- would call Rosenberg Minc's answering service pretending to be partner Daniel Minc.

He would use the intercepted messages to contact potential clients and get them to sign retainer agreements as quickly as possible.

It was some out-of-the-box lawyering that almost caused the young associate to end up in the can. Ultimately, he was sentenced to three month's probation and disbarred, despite begging for leniency on the grounds of his "inexperience as an attorney" and the "'pressure cooker' atmosphere of Mallilo & Grossman."

UPDATE: The linked article now includes this correction--"The original version of this story incorrectly stated the time frame over which ----- called Rosenberg Minc's answering service. The correct time frame was the first five months of 1999."

Advice to Young Lawyers #9

Dear Mr. Schaeffer:

I’m an associate in a mid-size firm of about 500 lawyers. I work for a partner with a low-pitched, scratchy-sounding voice who occasionally leaves me research assignments on a voice-mail message. I think his voice sounds creepy. In fact, when I listen to his messages I sometimes get scared. What can I do?

Signed, Nervous in Nashville

The Legal Underground Virtual Retreat, Update 1

The Legal Underground Virtual Retreat, scheduled to take place sometime in June, was first announced in this post. Since then, I’ve made a few decisions about the format and schedule, which I wanted to pass along.

An important thing to keep in mind about the retreat is that it’s virtual. If you want to attend, all you have to do is turn on your computer and read this blawg. I’ll take care of the rest.

I’ve decided the first Legal Underground Virtual Retreat will take place in New Orleans at the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street. Though all are responsible for their own accommodations, that’s where I’ll be staying.

The retreat will be a single-day affair, most likely on a Friday so that you can stay in New Orleans over the weekend if you want. For tax purposes, we’ve got to have some speakers, though I promise no one will be taking attendance.

So far, I’ve only thought of a few topics:

Focus on Class Actions: The Break-Up of Milberg Weiss, How It Affected Bill Lerach, and What It Means for the Future of Really Bad Haircuts

Focus on Mass Torts: How You Can Use Clever Marketing to Persuade Other Lawyers to Send All Their Cases to You, Even Without Extensive Mass Tort Experience, Just Like Johnnie Cochran

Designing Your Law Firm Website: How Large an Emphasis to Place on Your Photo, Including Your Face, and Whether It Should Ever Take Up the Entire Screen Like Gerry Spence

Speakers are still being lined up. If you’d like to suggest topics or speakers, please leave a comment.