Legal Pad

Chief Justice Calls Out Lawmakers Over AB 1208 Shenanigans

SACRAMENTO – The battle in the state Assembly over AB 1208 may be over, but Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye isn’t walking away without a few parting shots.

In a speech to court executives and presiding judges last week, the chief justice accused Assembly members of parroting “meritless, false claims” about the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts during the AB 1208 floor debate on Jan. 30.

(Here’s the entire 19-minute speech. The AB 1208 discussion starts around the 5:15 mark. The AOC has also released an abridged version of the speech.) 

Cantil-Sakauye also accused Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, of reneging on pre-vote assurances that members would be allowed “to vote their conscience, that it wouldn’t be the subject of political maneuvering.” The chief justice said she was disturbed to learn that, after only 32 Assembly members voted “aye” on the first roll call, Perez worked the floor to help bill author Charles Calderon find another nine votes to secure AB 1208’s passage.

“It’s one thing to lose an argument based on merit. It’s another thing when the facts are not represented,” Cantil-Sakauye said. The bill, she added, isn’t headed to the Senate “on its own legs.”

In response, Perez spokesman John Vigna would only say “The Chief Justice certainly has an opportunity to present her case to the Senate.”

Maybe the chief justice’s remarks were simply aimed at rallying her troops for the possible fight ahead in the Senate. And only she and the speaker really know what was promised or not promised in terms of pressure on Assembly members.

But on its face, the indignation comes across as a bit naïve, especially when you consider Cantil-Sakauye worked for two years in the Deukmejian administration. Anyone who watched the AB 1208 debate in the Assembly Judiciary Committee last May could see the speaker was behind this bill from the start – and that he was willing to use his political clout to move it. And as for the speaker working votes after the first roll call on AB 1208, that’s the sausage-making process that goes on in the Capitol. Love it or hate it, it happens all the time, particularly on bills that are a tough vote for lawmakers.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has said he has no immediate plans to send AB 1208 to a committee hearing. In her speech, Cantil-Sakauye said she is grateful for the time-out and the time it gives the branch to focus on the budget. The judiciary, she said, is seeking another $100 million from the state’s general fund, $50 million in “redirections” from within the branch budget, $100 million from trial courts’ reserves “for [their] own needs” plus the $50 million in new fees included in the governor’s spending proposal.

That’s a big wish list from a branch whose leader just poked the Assembly and its leader with a sharp verbal stick.

Courts Sticking With Monthly Closures Through June (At Least)

Nobody likes 'em, but the once-a-month, statewide court closures will continue through June at least, the Judicial Council decided Thursday.

At least three presiding judges pressed for an end to the mandatory closures, arguing that they could afford to keep their local courthouses open while still making the required spending cuts.

But Council members cited a number of reasons to keep the closures going: a desire for uniformity; a continuing bleak fiscal forecast; a projected savings of $63 million; and a nod to legislators who “went out on a limb,” Chief Justice Ronald George said, to OK 10 days of monthly closures last year.

Two Los Angeles County Superior Court Judges, Lee Smalley Edmond and David Wesley, abstained from the vote after suggesting the Council needed more information about the closures and the courts’ budgets. The rest of the Council voted to continue the closures.

The controversial issue of tapping two alternative pools of money –- funds set aside for a new computer network and courthouse construction –- was not discussed on Thursday. But it’s sure to surface again when the Council is forced to decide later this year whether to continue closing courthouses in July and beyond.

—  Cheryl Miller

Sprechen Sie Deutsch? You're In Demand For Contract Lawyer Jobs

At Robert Half Legal, the legal staffing division of Robert Half International, one Bay Area recruiter tells us that the outlook for contract jobs is looking up.

Monica Tobin, a Robert Half Legal recruiter who places all levels of lawyers, says that from where she sits, law firms of all sizes are super focused on clients. “They are in a mode where they need to preserve all their clients,” Tobin said. “They basically have been able to retain a lot of work through being very flexible.” And she’s seeing that flexibility translating into higher demand for contract attorneys -- partners and associates alike -- than for permanent lawyers. (Though she notes some bright spots she's seeing for the latter, too, below.)

How speaking German, or other languages, fits into the picture, after the jump …

Fresh Young Grad Charts His Own Course: As a Solo

Coming out of Loyola Law School with his J.D. last May, Joseph Tojarieh didn’t like what he saw on the job scene. So he did what very few recent grads do: He launched his own solo firm.

Cray-zee? He doesn’t think so. And neither do his mentors.

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how legal professionals and new grads cope with an era of economic crisis.

“I’m young. I graduated from law school when I was 23. I passed the bar the first time, I can take that risk,” Tojarieh told Legal Pad this week.

He says his decision stems from two facts: His practice interests are narrowly defined, and he didn’t graduate in the top of his class. So instead of settling for a legal job that wasn’t paying enough, or one that paid but wasn’t related to the sort of plaintiff work he wanted to pursue, he opened the Law Offices of Joseph F. Tojarieh in West L.A.

His plan raised a lot of questions in our mind, but the guy has answers.

Answers, after the jump.

Jones Day, Skadden Lead Deals Market (such as it is)

While deals are half what they were in 2007, Jones Day and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom continue to lead the ranks of firms in what’s left of the M&A space.

Jones Day sealed 164 deals, the highest number of deals in 2009 (.pdf), according to MergerMarket. The total value of those deals was $21 million.

Skadden led in terms of value, with $290 million worth of deals sealed across 127 transactions.

MergerMarket reported that overall deal value in 2009 was down 7 percent from 2008, while deal volume dropped 25 percent. Both metrics are down by almost half from their 2007 levels.

The fourth quarter of 2009 was the strongest of the year, with $223 billion worth of deals completed in North America. Zusha Elinson noted in today’s Recorder that deals are coming back, but so are regulators.

"From a purely legal perspective, that's one of the more important things to be watching in 2010," Kenton King, a veteran Palo Alto dealmaker with Skadden, told him. "When you do these deals, certainty of closing and regulatory issues are in the forefront of the minds of people on the board level."

But hey — at least they’re coming back.

— Amanda Royal
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Being a Staffer Beats Being a Federal Judge (Says Some Web Site Or Other)

Today we read about CareerCast.com’s recent ranking of 200 jobs from best to worst (hat tip: Wall Street Journal), a list where each profession is given scores for five “core criteria” –- environment, income, outlook, stress and physical demands.

From all this we've learned today that, yes, it is better to be a federal judge than an attorney. But it’s even better to be a paralegal assistant.

We contemplate our next career move, after the jump …

New Century Case: What Took So Long?

A long awaited lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission against former executives from mortgage giant New Century arrived Monday. It left Legal Pad a bit underwhelmed.

Like Countrywide, New Century was one of the first subprime lenders to go belly-up, heralding the economic Armageddon the country may or may not be emerging from now. New Century’s bankruptcy spawned a months-long investigation by a court appointed examiner, who released an encyclopedic 581 page report on the calamity — all the way back in March 2008.

So after nearly two years, we were expecting something really explosive from the SEC. Perhaps counts against those executives that made exceptionally lucky stock trades after it was clear the business was circling the drain? Or some exquisite liability theory against KPMG, the company’s outside auditor that was intimately involved in its accounting practices?

See the goods, after the jump ...

UC Regents, So Predictable, Confirm Fee Hikes

UC Regents went ahead and voted today to increase student fees systemwide to deal with a $1.2 billion state funding gap. 

We had the story of discontent among Berkeley’s future lawyers, and today ATL talks about general discontent among UCLA’s general population.

As we reported yesterday, part of the package includes price hikes for four UC law schools, with the biggest hit to Berkeley and Davis. Those campuses will see certain fees jump by about 22 percent for state residents in academic year 2010-11.

The fee increases are expected to generate $505 million, of which $175 million is to be earmarked for financial aid, according to the UC Office of the President.

UC President Mark Yudof urged students to help UC take the fight to Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

The vote follows a day after the Regents finance committee discussed the matter and voted to push the increases through while protestors gathered on campuses at UCLA and Berkeley. Surviving members of the Associated Press detail today's move, and the unrest around it, here.

— Petra Pasternak

State Lawyers: Assuming You Only Win, You Still Lose

No pressure, state lawyers. But if you could win all those lawsuits challenging California policies on furloughs, the prison population, redevelopment funding and social services cuts, the bean counters in Sacramento would be really grateful.

That’s because the Legislative Analyst’s Office, in a report issued today, says its projection of a staggering $21 billion budget deficit through 2011 assumes the state will prevail in every pending legal challenge tied to the state’s budget. If that assumption is wrong, unfavorable court decisions could put California several billion dollars more in the hole.

After the jump:  Hey, we practice law for love, not a fair wage, right?  Hello?

'Who You Callin' Better Off?' (How to Start a Budget Slapfight)

In times of tense budget talks (like now), be careful about alleging that another department is better off financially than your own. That’s the implicit message of a letter the San Francisco County Superior Court presiding judge sent to the city's mayor Tuesday.

In the two-pager, Presiding Judge James McBride made it clear that he did not think an Oct. 28 press release issued by Public Defender Jeff Adachi was fair to the court. In that release, Adachi had noted that the mayor’s office had approved filling 200 positions for the district attorney, police, sheriff, probation departments and the court while rejecting the public defender’s seven requests to fill positions in his department.

After the jump, a note on timing: Budget blah blah blah isn't water under the bridge, ever, anymore. Why just yesterday, the mayor's office asked the city's legal offices and other departments to make more cuts ...