Legal Pad

Would-Be U.S. Attorney Haag's Financials Are Released

[Dan Levine]

Every U.S. attorney nominee has to fill out a financial disclosure form, and the Senate Judiciary Committee released Northern District hopeful Melinda Haag’s over the weekend. Haag is a white collar partner at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe in San Francisco, where she made $1,059,740 last year, according to the document. Average profits per equity partner at Orrick in 2009 were $1.36 million (sub. req.).

SEC Lawyers and Porn: Do the Tax Dollars Buy Offices or Cubicles?

Now we finally have the real answer about why the SEC didn’t catch Bernie Madoff. It seems they were busy probing other things.

The Washington Times reports that two dozen SEC employees have been caught looking at porn on the taxpayer’s dime over the past few years.

Indeed, one higher up seemed far more eager to be investigating money shots than money trails.

The work computer of one regional supervisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span: "It was kind of distraction per se," he later told investigators.

The Times, which got its info from a public records request, said the government wouldn’t give the names of the offending SEC lawyers. But lest you think they were wasting your hard-earned tax dollars, listen to this:

One employee caught snooping estimated that he had been spending part of his workday looking up pornography for more than a year, though he added that he tried not to let it affect his work.

"I justified it because I would work late and I rarely would put in for any kind of comp time or anything like that.”

— Zusha Elinson

Yoo Delights Fed Society With Tales of Stewart-Sparring

I ventured into a pocket of San Francisco conservatism last night to hear Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo address the local Federalist Society chapter. The event was held on the 17th floor of Sheppard Mullin’s offices in Embarcadero Center, far from where any no goodnik protesters could penetrate — what with all that pesky shouting of the “t” word (not that any demonstrators were on the Federalist mailing list, and knew to show up).

Yoo was there to plug his book, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush. But he couldn’t resist taking a victory lap over his recent performance on The Daily Show, where host John Stewart couldn’t land a punch on him (Stewart later admitted as much). Yoo explained proudly that he spends much of his time facing off against unruly students “who hadn’t done the reading.”

“Just a few seconds of the Socratic method, and he was mine,” Yoo said. The lawyers loved it.

Herrera Unhappy About Leak of Sanctuary Memo

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera took elected city officials and their staffs to task today after a San Francisco Chronicle story on the city’s sanctuary policy quoted a confidential memo from his office.

“Confidential legal advice is not intended to be fodder in political disputes,” Herrera said in a statement released Thursday evening. “Principles of comity in the legislative process dictate that confidential legal advice should not be used in this fashion.”

The political dispute concerns Supervisor David Campos’ proposal to change the city’s sanctuary law so that undocumented juveniles are turned over to immigration authorities only after they’re convicted of a felony. According to the Chronicle, the confidential memo advises the Board of Supervisors that the proposed law would violate federal and possibly state law and could undermine the city’s existing sanctuary policy.

“The memorandum was prominently labeled as ‘privileged and confidential,’ reflecting the fact that it was a confidential attorney-client privileged document,” Herrera wrote in his Thursday memo addressed to Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors.

An update (a confession!), after the jump.

The Downside of Taking Volunteers

Volunteer lawyers: Young casualties of Big Law layoffs and deferments are offering themselves to government service as a way to stay in the game and gain experience. But are they free labor for cash-strapped government officials, or arrogant leeches slumming in the public sector while their Big Firm cleans house?

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how laid-off legal professionals cope with a crisis economy.

“It is arrogant to think that new lawyers from Big Law firms can pick up the work of criminal defense in a short time span without considerable institutional investment in their training,” Contra Costa County’s Public Defender, David Coleman, said in an email this week. Only after months of training is there a potential net gain for the public sector law office.

Furthermore, Coleman writes, letting in BigLaw carpetbaggers is no way to treat your dedicated attorneys:

It is not fair to young lawyers who have willingly chosen the public sector at “50 cents on the dollar” for what big firms pay to have their opportunity to accrue trial experience diminished so that same trial experience can be obtained by a civil firm lawyer who

1/ eschewed lesser compensation in favor of high salaries and bonuses,

2/ had less interest in the criminal justice system,

3/ is destined (chomping at the bit) to return to Big Law as soon as the Firm will have them back.

In the same email exchange, Coleman points out that a new lawyer in a DA’s or PD’s office in Contra Costa may handle 20 jury trials in their first year of work. “That is the number of jury trials that a civil lawyer might have in, say charitably, 20 years of work.”

Coleman notes that if the volunteer is willing to do less glamorous grunt work, that calculus might change. Why should a deferred associate get the same opportunities as the young lawyer or student who is truly committed to the cause?

Plus, what if you like them? … after the jump.