ZiefBrief

Can You Sue God?

The answer from Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk is no.  According to this Associated Press story on Law.com, a senator in the Nebraska State Legislature, Ernie Chambers, tried to sue God in order to prove that "anybody can sue anybody."  Judge Polk disagreed, ruling that if Senator Chambers was not able to serve notice of the lawsuit on God, the case would have to be dismissed.  Although Senator Chambers tried to argue that God's omniscience made notice unnecessary, Judge Polk was not convinced, and he dismissed the suit.

The Texas Scuffle

Remember our post about a Houston's attorney indignant letter to a Dallas attorney about a deposition cancellation?  The Dallas attorney has responded and at great length.  Above the Law has full details along with ongoing commentary on this Texas saga. 

Typos Matter

Legal writing and research instructors spend a lot of time emphasizing the importance of proofreading briefs and memos, and here's why -- The Legal Intelligencer reports today that a federal judge decided to award just $26,000 in attorneys' fees instead of the requested $180,000, in part because the petitioning attorney's brief was filled with typographical errors.  In fact, the attorney inserted some text from a brief involving different parties, but never bothered to change the defendants' names.  The judge made this wry comment about the attorney's "cut and paste" error, "It is suggested that I sign an order which recites the wrong amount of McKenna's judgment and orders three strangers to this action to pay attorneys' fees and costs."  Ouch.  In his closing paragraph, the judge stated:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, each lawyer knew he and she could not nail any old slap-dash parchment to the church door and expect someone else to pay for it. Most lawyers who practice in this court also know that. They all should.

Follow-Up on Kennedy v. Louisiana

Weeks ago, we reported on the legal research omissions that led some parties to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana.  To bring closure to our coverage, we are linking to the SCOTUSblog post that reports on the Court's action in this area.  In a nutshell, the Court decided not to rehear the case, but it did modify the majority and dissenting opinions by adding a footnote to both segments.

Practicing Kindness: Dallas Lawyer Chooses Not To

I follow Mary Flood's excellent blog on Houston legal happenings, Legal Trade, because one of my closest friends is a Houston attorney.  Thanks to my friend's regular updates, I know just how disruptive Hurricane Ike was for Houstonians.  Yesterday, Mary Flood reproduced the text of a letter that a Houston attorney sent to a Dallas attorney regarding the Dallas attorney's demand for travel expenses for a deposition that had to be postponed so that the Houston attorney could deal with an Ike-related sewage disaster at his home.  From the letter excerpts below, readers will get a general idea of how understanding the Dallas lawyer was about the postponed depo:

I am sorry that a hurricane hit Houston.

I am sorry that the Houston Public Works Department had to use a fire hose to blow human feces out of my yard on the day our deposition was scheduled.

I am sorry that the city required my presence at the debacle noted immediately above.

I am sorry that your office communicated that you would only "agree" to my rescheduling the deposition if we agreed to pay your travel expenses. I am also sorry they did not mention anything about attorney's fees in your voicemail. I am especially sorry that your associate, after I agreed to pay your reasonable travel expenses, decided to put in writing that while the deposition was cancelled it was "unilaterally canceled," and that you did not "agree" to the cancellation. I am sorry that you either went back on your word or, more likely, just do not have a word.

I am sorry that you think the judge should be involved in this matter. I wonder if the judge will be sorry about that, too.

Just remember, the next time that you're tempted to be unpleasant and uncompromising with opposing counsel, your conflict could end up on legal blogs all over the country.  You can still play nice and advocate zealously for your client!

The No Billables Experiment: One Year Later

Last fall, we posted about an Atlanta law firm, Ford & Harrison, which dropped billable hour requirements for first-year associates.  So how is the experiment working one year later?  According to this National Law Journal article, the experiment is a big success with the firm's attorneys and, most importantly, with the firm's clients.  The clients are pleased to have junior attorneys working on their matters now that they are no longer paying for the new attorneys' training:

Clients don't want to see on their bill junior associates they don't know, so when we are billing for hours there is a real disincentive to having the partner bring an associate," Holman said. "With the clinical hours, the partners can tell the client not to worry about the bill. It is an effective client development tool.

The partners like the new system, too.  Partners report that associates are gaining the skills they need faster than they would if they were worried about billables:

Holman said the firm has been surprised at how fast first-year associates begin to produce work that is billable once they are no longer under pressure to do so. She called the 1,900 billable-hour requirement "an unreasonable expectation" for first-year associates.

And the associates?  They're happy, too.  One of the first-year associates quoted in the story notes that "a lot of my friends at other big firms do document review all day and into the night. I am already on cases, and they are not going to have a chance to do that for a couple of years." 

Will other mid-sized firms follow suit?  Stay tuned -- if we see any Bay Area firms eliminating first-year billable hour requirements, we'll be sure to report it here.

Attorney's Bar License In Jeopardy After Street Racing Death

We all know that having a license to practice law doesn't necessarily stop attorneys from engaging in negligent or criminal behavior.  However, until today, I never heard of an attorney who jeopardized his or her bar license by engaging in drag racing on public streets (!).  According to this Law.com report, attorney Kenneth Morgan of Tulsa, Oklahoma pled no contest to felony manslaughter after his law partner and friend, Andre Carolina, was killed in an accident that occurred during a 1 a.m. street race on Tulsa's public streets.  Carolina was a passenger in Morgan's car when an intoxicated Morgan lost control of his car during the race.  The Oklahoma bar hasn't yanked Morgan's license yet, but I think it's pretty hard to argue that drunken drag racing on public streets doesn't involve a hefty dose of "moral turpitude."  I would be surprised if Morgan emerges from this horrible incident as an attorney. 

Aftershocks From the LA Quake Hit State Bar

Somehow, we knew that this story wasn't going away anytime soon.  The National Law Journal has an article today, "Complaints Surface Over Bar Exam Disrupted by Earthquake," which details concerns that some test-takers had about the proctors' reaction to the quake.  Apparently, some proctors refused to grant any extra time in one area of the Ontario Convention Center test location despite falling ceiling tiles, while proctors in another test area at the same locale told test-takers they would receive an additional five minutes on the essay portion of the test, but then called time without granting the extra minutes.  One test-taker stated, "If I were a person who did not pass, and it was by five points, and I was in a room that got a five-minute disruption from the earthquake, I would definitely protest it. I would definitely make it an issue."   Most of the people who took the bar are now sunning themselves on a beach somewhere, so I don't think we'll hear much more about this issue until November when test scores are released.  But come November, I think the Cal State Bar will be contending with more than a few complaints from Los Angeles-area test-takers who failed the exam by just a few points.

Bar Examinees All Shook Up

Kevin Underhill's very funny blog, Lowering the Bar, has this wry report on the impact that last Tuesday's 5.4 earthquake had on bar examinees in the Los Angeles area.  According to Kevin, some of the test-takers were more rattled than others:

"One of my friends was in tears during the exam because she was so scared," reported the source.  "It was a pretty jarring event for people who were already under time constraints and enormous pressure," he said, noting that he had some difficulty continuing to type in a shaking room with shaking hands.  Yes, as you might have expected, many continued to type during an earthquake even as others were fleeing the room or taking shelter.  "A lot of people," the source reported, "did do the half-and-half method of ducking under the tables WITH their laptops so they could keep on typing."  You know, that kind of determination, plus 1900 billables a year, is just the sort of thing that might get you made partner someday.

For those of you wondering if the State Bar is going to grade more leniently because of the quake, the National Law Journal has this quote from Director Hawley:

Any interruption weighs heavily upon the takers," Hawley said. As a result, the State Bar is gathering data on the disruption that, along with reports from experts in psychometrics, will be presented to the committee of bar examiners in order to measure the earthquake's possible impact on test scores.

Read Law Professor Barack Obama’s Final Exams

There has been a lot of commentary about an article in the New York Times that discussed Barack Obama’s 12 years as a law professor at University of Chicago (click here to see article). Turns out he was generally considered brilliant by most students but enigmatic by some fellow professors. What the readers of the print version of the article didn't get to see is a collection of Professor Obama's final exams and the syllabus to his class Current Issues in Racism and the Law.

Links to the materials:

Syllabus: Current Issues in Racism and the Law

2003 Final Exam
2002 Final Exam
2001 Final Exam
2000 Final Exam
1999 Final Exam
1998 Exam
1997 Final Exam | Answer Memo
1996 Final Exam | Answer Memo