Fashion Diktats

(Left)Here he is, fashion icon, former Congressman, Youngstown, OH Sheriff, and accordingto Wikipedia, the only man to successfully self-represent himself in a criminal RICO action. Unfortunately, for Jim Traficant--he's completing a prison term for some other bad acts. None of that detracts from Traficant's status as male fashion template.

I'd publish, and I will publish my favorite photo of Jimmy T when I find it--splendid in an 70s double-knit poweder blue two button that knocks my socks off!

Where to begin with Jim, I'm just kidding of course, you begin with that small animal on top of his head. Google Traficant images for the many views of this pelt. Amazing.

Then of course there's the skinny wedding singer ties, the various colored blue denim is a nice touch and the gym bag/brief case is great. It communicates to juries--I can't wait to get the hell out of court and go do something really important like work on my abs.

The whole denim thing is something you see with lawyers that I blame Superlawyer Gerry Spence for starting the trend. Spence dresses like a rancher, in fact he owns a dude ranch. A lot of young lawyers paid thousands of dollars to go off to Spence's dude ranch to learn how to be Gerry-like--and they come back wearing bolo ties, and cowboy hats (uh, see pic of Charles Binder). I know a lawyer, far as I know--never been out of the Big City except for maybe a Spence dude ranch seminar, wears custom-made Nudie western wear and lizard boots. Authenticity mmmmmm, maybe not.

Sincerity and Insincerity

Pride is the most crippling of all defects of character. My Dad, suffered false pride. He was ever on the alert for insincerity in others, for instance when a salesman would get familiar with him, the hari on the back of his neck would go up and the transaction would not happen. My father would not pursue jobs or relationships that he pre-determined woudl result in his rejection. Disabling false pride, myDad had an 8th grade education, but he read and wrote beautifully. Someone along the line someone pointed out to me that the so-called illiterate of which my Dad was not one--but, the same lesson proves to be true--are often so much more intellectually adept than the literate because of the need to read so many other social and environmental clues. Maybe this was at the spring of his insecurity? I remember defending a lawyer years ago who was sued by a client the lawyer truly ill-served, nonetheless, my lawyer client caused no harm--as I was deposing the plaintiff/former client something occurred to me that had not occurred to any of this man's lawyers. The plaintiff/client couldn't read. When this became apparent, the malpractice claim fell apart since the claimed the lawyer didn't communicate with him about "fatal dates" but as it turns out the client wasn't able to read the letters the lawyer did send to him. What insight clued me into this problem--I can't say after all these years. An intuition, like my father developed or thought he had developed.


If I've developed any good trait as a lawyer it is that I empathize with my clients and witnesses particularly unsophisticated clients--the real, the sincere, the dear ones. On the other hand my pride has me reject out of hand so many people in this profession who I perceive to be insincere--in this respect I overreact to my detriment. As a matter of sheer Karma I am inheriting the wind--my hostility to the insincere world--is paying me back. I built little goodwill in the world as a matter of course by my fuck-you-attitude no matter how sincere and no matter how appropriate the response. That quality of mercy that by rights belongs in all my dealings my pride only permits me to dole out to those like myself or more accurately I perceive to be like me. Thus I've gone through life preemptively rejecting relationships that might have proved rewarding or better yet nurturing while clinging to relationships that were--in the psychobabble of our day--dysfunctional.

College was awesome! Law school disgusting. College offered an endless buffet of dishes to sample with plenty for everyone. Law school by contrast was a badly catered funeral at which long festering family feuds erupt and the funeral home directors keep taking away the chairs.

Law school is presided over by Professor Bag-O-Wind, romantically embodied by John Houseman in the Paper Chase--who is attended to by worshipful students who lap up or pretend to lap up every syllable of wisdom. These geniuses of the law, like Professor Bag-O-Wind frequently turn out to be wonderful and brilliant and utterly meaningless--they impact the law by glacial influence on jurisprudence and by their rare involvement with outside legal matters. My negative reaction during my law school was to the sycophancy of classmates--which I took to be a symptom of a wider competition over everything. Having no lawyer relatives, no lawyer friends, no lawyer acquaintances, law school was for me at least immersion in a piranha tank. This tendency on the part of law students to compete over everything including which seat you sat in repulsed me--I reacted with barely contained and self-defeating rage. At an early stage in my law education we were all assigned a research project with opposite sides of the same issue. In those days computer research was barely on the horizon--we did it the old fashioned way as Houseman might say--we read law books. Some pantload razored-out the one aggregate article summarizing the relevant case law fucking over his classmates. Really it was endless.

The insincerity of professors and classmates readily became for me the insincereity of judges and lawyers--continually reaffirmed by the pomposity and hypocrisy of Judges and lawyers in my day to day experience. I viewed the world as a hostile sea, and my approach to law was to serve as a bulwark on behalf of clients against being swept overboard, oh, so many drowned thinking I could save them--now, me. But what I'm fumbling with is trying to change the way I look at universe--find in myself something beyond a cynical laugh at the human comedy. Let's allow by way of DISCLAIMER: that contrary to anything I might say here, I really don't know what the fuck I'm talking about and more importantly, even my running assumptions are wrong. Can we continue?

The Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal--Part B

The Catholic Church is not commonly thought of as a country or more accurately, a nation, but it is. In the too-balanced essay by Adam Liptak in the NYT for which I provided a link in Part 1, Liptak makes this point. But there is no better source to see so for yourself than the Holy See website:http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm. Some great reading, here--try the Canon Law: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM --amazing stuff. But let me digress.

The pic is from Bishop A. James "Bagman" Quinn's retirement mass. As I said this is one of the real Bad Lawyers. More than a mouthpiece--this is the guy who told a group of canon and civil lawyers how to destroy evidence of sex crimes by priests by shipping troubling information off to the Vatican ambassador. Great stuff. A disciplinary complaint filed by outraged Catholic lawyers present at the confab was dismissed without comment. I had the pleasure of deposing Bishop Quinn, and I asked him about the speech which prior to the deposition had only been "reported." Quinn did his best Bill-Clinton-kind-of-denyial--until I pulled out a tape recording of his actual remarks. A priceless moment!http://www.snapnetwork.org/news/vatican/Trail_leadsto_rome.htm

In this Midwest Canon Law Society speech, Quinn reassures the Catholic lawyers, on the eve of the scandal--don't worry, he told them, we've survived scandals in the past, then Quinn went on to relate a humorous anecdote about the Buffalo priest who murdered his housekeeper and dropped her body parts into Niagra Falls. What a joker!

You see, the Church gamed the system. It gamed the courts, it gamed the Judges, it gamed the cops. The Church baptised, educated, married, and buried so many of the persons and family members of the persons occupying positons of authority over you. While the Church paid a price for the sex crimes--it was scattershot, you see Quinn was right; they survived it. In many jurisdictions, like here in Your Home Town and in Your Home State--the Church paid next to nothing because the Church lobbies (there are great pics from some of these events circa, the sex abuse scandals of the 1990s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Mass), the judges, the lawyers, and the legislature to maintain strict adherence to unbelievably rigid statutes of limitations. The children of the parochial schools, now Irishname and Italianname Judges, held the line against rational exceptions to these time limits refusing in some cases to apply laws on the books that reasonably excused delays for mental and emotional disabilities caused by the sexually abusing priests.

Let's all go read the Canon Law, there will be no quiz. More to come.

The Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal--Part 1

Out of Law School I went to work with ambulance chasers, the kind of guys who would love to have had mesothelioma commercials; or wear Cowboy hats on teevee telling you to let them handle everything, 'cause you have so much to worry about.

My mentors were amazingly scummy, very little was beneath them--even as a Bad Lawyer I had to take a shower after spending a day with these characters. When I hear the ambulance chasing commercials that run endlessly on Cable News channels, with their phony empathy, I cringe in disgust. And as repulsive as these golems were, they couldn't hold a candle to my beloved Church--the one true church.

Let me give you a for instance, Auxiliary Bishop A. James Quinn, Esq., civil lawyer and canon lawyer. The guy at the center of the response to the Catholic Sex Abuse scandal in America. The Conference of Catholic Bishops legal hit man--when the scandal began to break in New Orleans and Boston who did the one true church call? Bishop Quinn. And was there any tactic beneath Quinn, not a chance! He specialized in smears, threats and libel but his specialty was obstruction of justice. Cover-ups r us, all the while sounding as sincere as Charles Binder, you have enough to worry about. for a too balanced discussion from Adam Liptak see, http://www.weillaw.net/images/NYTimesApril2002.pdf. More later. In the meantime a great general resource: http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/

Judges

In Your Home Town, and in Your County, the public officials are in full meltdown caught in historic rapacity. The political bosses have been on the take from contractors doing business with the government and in exchange for the politicians doling out your tax dollars, the prosecutor, the judges, the office holders of all stripe have been caught taking bribes, vino, trips to gambling destinations, home improvements, jobs for relatives, and this is just the stuff caught on tape, so to speak. A lot of the take is shockingly penny ante--these publicos are the same ones behind Judge Irishname, Judge Italiano, and Judge Jewishname. One contractor was so brazen as to call up Judge TooStupidTooLive, ex parte, as we say and commiserate with her about screwing over one of his subcontractors in her Honor's courtroom.

One of the recurring themes of this blog will be the gaming of the judicial system by powerful interests. Part of what's going on is that Your Local Newspaper and Your Local News channels failed over many years to tell you who these clowns are, that these jokers had power over your very life and welfare, and that these Bozos have little regard for your interests. Instead Your Local Newspaper and Local "News" channels let these Judges get away with grandstanding moments--like throwing the keys away when a particularly pathetic criminal was sentenced. Judge Polishname got the covergirl treatment from the Your Home Town Magazine for being Your Home Town's toughest Judge. It did not matter to the journalistas that she was also a psycho-hose-bag who wouldn't act in the citizen's interest if our lives counted on it.

The media is only partly responsible, the whole method for judicial selection is skewed against any meaningful democracy or merit-selection. Because Judges are elected and the Governor of Our State fills vacancies, the positions are skewed towards names that resonate in the common memory. The Judges: Irishnames can run against and beat Cicero-reincarnate, because somewhere in the collective memory we remember something about Judge Irishname, (circa 1920) and we don't know anything about Judge Cicero.

The other aspect of this boondoggle masquerading as democratic election of Judges, is the role that parochial education played in the insular political party games. Many if not most of the Irish prosecutors and Judges went to local Catholic schools together; their parents, their grandparents, their siblings and cousins populate police, fire, and law positions in Your Home Town. To a lesser extent other ethnic groups particularly the Italians find their way into these roles the same way. There's a certain Italianname in Your Home Town that has endlessly been elected to judicial and other public offices that is now plays a major perpetrator role in the current bribery scandals--does that meant that Judge Nancy Italianname is going to choose the name of one of her other ex-husbands to run on the next time she's up for reelection. Yes, her Honor couldn't get a job as a lawyer, but got elected to the bench by running on her ex-husband's electable Italian name beating well-qualified Judge Weirdname in the bargain.

The Governor can appoint lawyers to judicial vacancies but since history demonstrates that only certain types of names can hold onto the seat at Your Home Town election there is a disincentive to appoint just any "qualified" lawyer. It sucks, and what's worse--these are the men and women, your Judges who most directly effect your lives. When your civil disputes, when your marriages, or your children become involved in routine legal proceedings these are these brainiacs are supposed to effectuate resolution, by and for and of the people. Righto.

Contempt of Court

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/us/18judge.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Texas%20judge&st=cse

Here's the deal, we all know this is an arrogant judge--but it's Texas. I honestly never imagined that a Judge like Judge Sharon Keller would face a consequence in Texas of Godawfulplaces--at least, for the puny little act of greasing the needle. I'm surprised Judge Keller isn't getting a Judicial award of some sort.

Here's a clue--this sort of judicial arrogance is par for the course. So many of your public officials and so many of your tax-funded support staff--have nothing but contempt for you, you, the citizens they are supposed to serve.

In trial, my partner and I represented a rape victim and her husband--the elected trial judge was too lazy (er, busy) to try the case himself so it was "spun" to a "visiting" judge (an old retired sack of gas); at the outset of the trial, the Judge in front of the jury shouted at the rape victim's husband when the Judge who was nearly deaf, couldn't make out the husband's answer to a preliminary question.

An objection to the Judge's rudeness and disrespect made privately in chambers, by your Bad Lawyer, was later characterized by the Judge to the jury in open court as the rape victim's lawyer lying about him! The court of appeals later exonerated the Judge's trial conduct by saying that a later curative instruction to disregard his odious conduct fixed any mistake the Judge made in tainting the trial which ended in a 6-2 verdict against the rape victim and her husband. Justice in your home town--ain't a whole lot better then deep in the heart of Texas.

Alcohol: The Bad Lawyer Performance Enhancing Drug

The correlation between Bad Lawyers and alcohol (or drugs) is fairly strong--at least, I accept that it is so. I am an alcoholic; at least twenty-three years ago I was an actively practicing alcoholic. Drunk.

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous points out the salient feature of all good practicing alcoholics: we're mentally ill. That is, I have a mental and emotional obsessiveness that became in my case a physical compulsion to drink like a fish. As a young, single, attorney I drank a lot and when I was not drinking a lot, I was thinking about drinking a lot.

I heard lots of stories at AA meetings in the years since May, 1986; many of them related to "supply problems" getting and keeping enough alcohol on hand. In my case I had no supply problems, I could always buy enough alcohol: instead I had a disposal problem. I drank so much that I was socially embarrassed, dealing with the empty cans and bottles.

Once I understood the mental obsession element of alcoholism; I got it. I accepted that that was what I had. I drank, I thought about drinking, I thought about getting over the consequences of my drinking, and I thought about when will I next be able to drink the way I want to drink. Even today, as I struggle with my status as a Bad Lawyer it is the mental stickiness that bogs me down. My obsession over the mistakes and wrong turns keep me awake at night.

God, relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do your will!

Mouthpiece Hall of Infamy

Was there ever a pant load like Roy Cohn? Let us give pause to consider all those lawyers we have known who like Cohn, confuse zealous representation of the client with acting in the client's interest.

Dahlia Lithwick: We are not worthy.

http://slate.com/id/2220031/ Is there a better commentator on the Law, than Dahlia Lithwick? I don't think so. I like Toobin, Linda Greenhouse was great--but, Lithwick connects at the--are-you-kidding-me level.

Taxes--Until Death Do Us Part, Part 1.

Uuuuuuugggghgghghhhhhh! gurgle....it is not the obligation, it is the mechanism, or maybe the lack of mechanism.

This part is supposed to sound a little like that song, "Patches:" I was born a poor hungry white trash baby boy deep in the heart of south. My daddy had an eighth grade education. My mom, bless her soul, graduated from a convent high school, she was the well-educated adult in our extended family of almost-trailer white trash.

Not a lick (can you visualize the Dueling Banjo-meme?) of business sophistication or experience, nor higher education, no professionals, not one adult to serve as a role model or mentor. To summarize: lawyers, doctors, accountants did not run in my family shrub.

I graduated from Your Town High School in 1972 having had zero sessions with a guidance counselor and not having sat for any college boards. After three years abroad in US Army fatigues, I attended the large middle west college that my girlfriend was going to--on the academic theory that it was good to sexually active--and supported by the Viet Nam-era, GI bill. All earnings I had at that point and until I became a Bad Lawyer were subject to withholding.

During law school at the prestigious Your Town Law School (Harvard Law of the Underbelly) I moved into law practice with some ambulance chasers in a cooperative office where I had clerked. My economic life no longer involved the seamlessness of receive paycheck, pay taxes--instead the grind was starve, trickle of money, starve, starve, money!!!!!, pay all the bills, starve, ignore bills, ignore bill collectors, tell the accountant you have no money, get lots of money, pay everyone and taxes, starve. This pattern has existed throughout my twenty-seven years of practice. I profess no talent and no special insight for stabilizing or organizing myself out of feast or famine.

As a Bad Lawyer I've compounded my tax problems by wishful thinking, and by believing that through some miracle my tax problems would resolve themselves after the mythical BIG HIT. After all, I repeatedly won multi-million dollar verdicts that would prove to be uncollectable. What a way to make a living, huh! These last few years have been particularly grim, and crushing.

As you might say in "pleading" I incorporate by reference, my first entry on my current disciplinary-status--let me share an image with you: I like to ride a bicycle through Your Town Metropolitan Park, a road bicycle, old Italiano Steel. I ride nearly everyday. Even though I am riding in a park, on the parkway road, on many occasions cars edge behind me, 2 -tons of metal very close, and while I blissfully, prayerfully, chug along contending with the road in front of me these frustrated (because they have to touch their brake pedals)--drivers will unleash with the horn, and shout at you to get "off the road." In my case, the Disciplainry authorities are the motor car drivers, not only do they want me off the road, by taking away my profession until I pay my bills, they are blasting the car horn in my ears. I am powerless to do or say anything constructive to the disciplinary authorities, except to say roughly the same thing I say to the motorists who harass me--well, I don't actually speak , but I do salute them. Go ahead make an example of me.

But can we ever forgive him, Bush v. Gore?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/us/19olson.html?_r=1&hpw Good show, Ted Olson! He's well on his way to becoming a Bad Lawyer.

Scalia, what an asshat!

I promise to write at length about our Catholic jurists, being RC, myself I will not feel any need to restrain my remarks. But for the time being let's let brother Dershowitz take a good crack at everyone's favorite Justice Italianoname: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-18/scalias-catholic-betrayal/?cid=hp:mainpromo3

Malpractice Suit-Part 2

Attorney Evel Basterd and I go way back--high school, different high schools, but those years, the early-70s. Basterd's reputation for misanthropy was well-fixed even in those days. Years later I inquired of his office as to why a certain serial pedophile was not being prosecuted and my effort was rewarded with a letter from the Basterd, himself, telling me to mind my own business. The pedophile in question molested again, and was prosecuted and finally put away by prosecutors elsewhere in our State.

Basterd's career is just about as ignoble as mine, his mentor sacked him when he showed signs of instability on the job--then a couple of years ago his son accidentally shot him in the back at a skeet range. Evel Basterd is now wheelchair bound, a paraplegic. The recording of the 911 call from the son at the scene of the accident was something of a sensation. Here, was a bit of media in which a clearly distraught son called for help while Evel Basterd is heard in the background berating and accusing the son of intentionally trying to kill him.

I had never seen Basterd try anything until last Friday. Can I say it, here was this evil bastard, wheelchair bound, but absolutely terrific in trial. Focused, barely an extra word spoken, utterly impressive. And while I think, legally, he, his client and their claim is full of shit; I'm the one wondering if Judge Irishname is about to pile another big financial obligation on my back.

As I told my attorney, Saint Lester--truly the epitome of a Good Lawyer--I don't feel negligent in the sense of a professional breaching a duty of care towards a client. I believe that I did let Pedro down. I let him down, because there was more I could have done for him, that I did not do. There was professional help I could have found for Pedro, that I did not find for him. The trustee Monee Grubber, his bankruptcy attorney, Joe Haircut--all they saw was a guy getting what they saw as a windfall that the bankruptcy laws entitled to the trustee. They did not see a payment of compensation to a rape victim--inadequate to the purpose but representing to Pedro, his youth, his innocence and his faith. I saw that, and in your State Court last Friday I saw how my carelessness played out in Pedro's life. I've laid awake, since. Guilty.

The Malpractice Suit--Part 1

The malpractice suits--sorta sounds like a garment from the Menswearhouse.

27 years no malpractice claims--that is, until Pedro sued me.

From the standpoint of a client, the lawyer holds nearly all of the cards as it pertains to malpractice actions. Technically, a malpractice lawsuit is a "tort" action that alleges/says that the lawyer acted in a way that was negligent in his representation of the client and, this is essential--the lawyer's negligence caused the client's claimed injuries and damages. The first part of the claim against the lawyer requires that the client show that the lawyer owe the client a duty of professional care which the lawyer screwed up. The second part is called causation--in sum: the lawyer's screw up caused the damages. Lawyers screw up all the time, but they might not owe a duty to the person bringing the lawsuit; this happens all the time in divorce court where the pissed off ex-spouse wants to sue the opposing lawyer. No duty, no lawsuit. The second obstacle--causation is the more difficult obstacle to plaintiffs. Let face it, clients come to lawyers because things are already bollixed in their lives--the damages already exist. Proving that the lawyer caused damages through their screw up is a pretty arduous burden for most clients.

Pedro sued me because he said I gave him bankruptcy advice that he relied on to his detriment. To tell the truth, I really did not view Pedro's claim as a real threat to me--since I am not a bankruptcy attorney, and I wasn't Pedro's bankruptcy attorney; Pedro had a bankruptcy attorney, that was not moi. I represented Pedro in a civil lawsuit which settled for $175,000. Pedro had been told that he was to turn over the proceeds to the bankruptcy trustee by the bankruptcy trustee (see illustration), and his bankruptcy attorney. So where's the problem, you ask?

Pedro was 45 years old when I met him. He was one of 5 or 6 Hispanic men who as youth were raped and molested by a Roman Catholic Priest. The claim I handled was against the archdiocese--one of hundreds of claims I championed for victims of sexual abuse over my career. When Pedro's claim settled he told the lawyers that he didn't know if he could keep the money--we didn't know, I didn't know; but we said maybe his money because it related to a claim for injuries he sustained as a minor--perhaps it wouldn't be a bankruptcy asset. I agreed to hold his money in escrow until he obtained a definitive answer. In the interim Pedro was to consult with his bankruptcy attorney, and when he did not get the answer he hoped for I referred him to other bankruptcy attorneys. Eventually, I received a document from the bankruptcy court saying his matter was at an end, and I paid Pedro his money. He spent it. The bankruptcy trustee came after Pedro and came after me.

Eventually, the bankruptcy court deemed Pedro's actions tantamount to fraud and Pedro's claim that he relied on my advice--ridiculous. The bankruptcy court and a later appellate panel of the bankruptcy court pointed out that he had a personal injury attorney: me, and a bankruptcy attorney, Joe Haircut. he could not credibly claim to have relied on my "bankruptcy advice" when Joe Haircut was his bankruptcy attorney; and more importantly because, the Bankruptcy Trustee: Monee Grubber, ordered him to turn over all the dough from any settlement he might get, at Pedro's initial bankruptcy hearing long before the claim was settled.

Pedro hires a well-known former prosecutor: Evel Basterd. Attorney Basterd chooses to pursue me despite the facts. As I said, I gave the matter little thought and no concern. My sainted attorney, Lester, working by the way, pro bono, had already obtained the bankruptcy court results relating to my non-responsibility for Pedro's actions--we waived a jury and went to trial in front of Judge Irishname, brother of Judge Irishname, son of the late Judge Irishname, and grandson of the very late Judge Irishname; oh, and married to Judge Irishname.

Judge Irishname did not view the outcome of the federal bankruptcy court proceedings as binding on the state court and we proceeded to trial. How can I put this succinctly(?), I am fucked. So much more later!

Disciplinary Complaints

You can get to a disciplinary hearing through a variety of routes; none of them pleasant.

Cheryl, my big-titted secretary attracted the interest of the testosterone-poisoned, senior litigation associate, Marco Pantload. Pantload could not understand how Cheryl could resist his big hairy apeface--so Pantload made her life miserable. Since Pantload was separately shtupping the office manager and presumably his wife--well, let's just say there was tension around the office. When I was let in on the situation sometime after the harassment began I confronted Pantload--there were long term unintended consequences.

Ultimately, Pantload rifled, or had his girlfriend, the office manager--rifle my business records and sure as shit there was plenty of evidence of less than stellar business practices by yours truly including the aforementioned trust account checks paying questionable, non-law related private obligations of Cheryl's. And to be honest,--checks withdrawing attorney fees I had earned that properly should have been first depositied in a law office management account.

You'll be relieved to know that the disciplinary authorities of Your State don't hesitate for a second to prosecute ethical lapses, even technical lapses (the money taken by Cheryl was mine--not client money) even when in this case the motive for the grievance came from a lawyer, like my former associate Marco Pantload seeking revenge over nookie not gotten and ego-shattering allegations of sexual harassment.

Let's be clear, I am not a victim. I made the mistakes, committed the ethical lapses, (oh and so many others for which I will never be held to account) that find me at this moment. My pal Pantload got the information leading the authorities to recommend my suspension because I did the things and created the trail. Fuck me.

A little lawyer humor, so you don't kill yourself.

This one seems pretty good: http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Lawyer.htm

Ah, welcome!

Have a seat. I paid $700 for those wing-back "client" chairs about 15 years ago. They were used then, but very nice. Velour. Comfortable? I've always liked them, but I think they are little too comfortable for the purpose. When I need you to sign your life away--the chairs are a little too low and too cumbersome. But we're just talking, and these chairs are just right. If I'm lucky money will fall out of your pocket and I'll get to it before the cleaning lady does.

I received a notice from the disciplinary panel that heard the action against me, the recommendation is a one year suspension plus a year probation if I can (a. pay off all my creditors; and (b. take a law office management class; to give proof that I learned how to supervise my big-titted secretary so as to prevent her from writing anymore checks out of my Trust Account to pay her Nordstrom Credit Card. Apparently the panel of my fellow lawyers isn't convinced that the sheer horror of learning that this took place is enough to adequately chastise me. And isn't ironic that the debtor is punished by having his or her ability to earn income stripped from him contingent upon paying their bad debts a truly functional way of sorting it all out. When I read this disciplinary panel recommendation, I thought: righto, old chaps I'll just ring up accounts payable and order them to pay those pesky creditors--isn't that what they do in the white shoe firms? I'm a bad lawyer and a deadbeat.

How did this Bad Lawyer come to the attention of the authorities? Next time.