Update!! Professors Unfamiliar with Actual Practice of Law
It's something of a rainy afternoon here in DC, so I swung by the bookstore for something to pass the time. I saw Kermit Roosevelt's "In the Shadow of the Law." It came out in hardcover a while ago and is supposedly a sharp novel about big firm litigation, a murder case, mass torts, all mixed up in a suspenseful slurry. For the record, Kermit Roosevelt is a professor at Penn, Supreme Court clerk, yadda yadda.
So I'm about 100+ pages in. None of the characters bear any resemblance to anyone I've met (or me). The rampant fraudulant billing is unbelieveable. The excerpted legal documents, a complaint and a supreme court opinion, are comic. The description of discovery sounds like the horror story I heard in Civil Justice Workshop from the young Stanford professor who visited. But now, here it is, an oral argument... and one of the attorneys cites to an opinion from the Northern District of Virginia.
Mr. Roosevelt's bio claims he practiced in Washington before becoming a law professor. I find this... questionable. There is no Northern District of Virginia. And I think every practicing attorney in DC knows that.
(Nor, as he described earlier in the novel, are there any firms that can take up "thirteen floors of the building" because DC's building codes cap buildings at 12. If the firm was one of the rare few with a 13 floor building, they would have occupired the *whole* building, not 13 floors of it.)
Credit Mr. Roosevelt this - I keep turning the pages. I want to see how this turns out. But don't let the context fool you. This is a novel set in an academic's view of the law (see the title, a sly reference to Mnookin's famous settlement article), not a practicing attorney's. I think a practicing attorney would get the names of his district courts correct.
(There's also a hilarious description of an attempt to defeat class certification in one of the chapters, as well as a wholly unbelievable beginning to the story when the law firm gets called in).
--
And now I've finished the book. Still entertaining, but how quickly the story spiraled out of control and believability (perhaps why it was so entertaining?)! A good airplane read, but wacky legal content and for any 0Ls, 1Ls, etc. - not much like firm life.
So I'm about 100+ pages in. None of the characters bear any resemblance to anyone I've met (or me). The rampant fraudulant billing is unbelieveable. The excerpted legal documents, a complaint and a supreme court opinion, are comic. The description of discovery sounds like the horror story I heard in Civil Justice Workshop from the young Stanford professor who visited. But now, here it is, an oral argument... and one of the attorneys cites to an opinion from the Northern District of Virginia.
Mr. Roosevelt's bio claims he practiced in Washington before becoming a law professor. I find this... questionable. There is no Northern District of Virginia. And I think every practicing attorney in DC knows that.
(Nor, as he described earlier in the novel, are there any firms that can take up "thirteen floors of the building" because DC's building codes cap buildings at 12. If the firm was one of the rare few with a 13 floor building, they would have occupired the *whole* building, not 13 floors of it.)
Credit Mr. Roosevelt this - I keep turning the pages. I want to see how this turns out. But don't let the context fool you. This is a novel set in an academic's view of the law (see the title, a sly reference to Mnookin's famous settlement article), not a practicing attorney's. I think a practicing attorney would get the names of his district courts correct.
(There's also a hilarious description of an attempt to defeat class certification in one of the chapters, as well as a wholly unbelievable beginning to the story when the law firm gets called in).
--
And now I've finished the book. Still entertaining, but how quickly the story spiraled out of control and believability (perhaps why it was so entertaining?)! A good airplane read, but wacky legal content and for any 0Ls, 1Ls, etc. - not much like firm life.
Labels: Law School, OCIP/Employment
posted by Tom Fletcher at 4:16 PM
25 Comments:
Please, Tom. This is just too lame. First, a cursory search of the internet yields the startling discovery of Prof. Washington's resume from the U Penn web-site: http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/krooseve/cv.pdf. And guess what? His "claim" to have practiced law is the truth -- he practiced at Mayer, Brown and Platt (apparently in Chicago).
With respect to the whole Northern District of Virginia thing, I mean really. You honestly think he (who held two clerkships in DC) doesn't know there isn't a Northern District? It's fiction. The DC building code? Outside of the District, where the DC height requirements don't apply (in NoVa, for example), there are many buildings over 13 floors. Regardless, he's allowed to make things up, without having his knowledge of the practice of law called into question by a rising 3L -- who has what -- fully 8 weeks of legal practice under his belt?
This isn't meant to be a personal attack, I just find your own personal attack a little light on evidence and somewhat misplaced. You can do better.
Yeah I'm reading a similar novel by Brian Haig where the main character comments about the firm taking up like the top 20 floors or something ridiculous (and this is within DC).
But I would rephrase Tom's criticism to something like, "Great read, but frustrating if you actually practice...or are good at random trivia."
Mmmm... Cool-aid.
FYI, this comment is coming from the 12th floor of a 14 floor luxury condo building in D.C. I just wanted to remind everyone once again that Tom Fletcher doesn't know shit.
The point I was trying to make is that the book, while entertaining, is skimpy on key details. It's also (at 270+ pages in) too much of the black-and-white sketch of the law firm world that I hear law professors whisper about. No one talks, thinks, or practices like they do in the book. It's a book about the practice of law written by a law professor whose viewpoint seeps through. It doesn't mean it's a bad book, but it's not the detailed and accurate fiction I was hoping for.
Oh, and thanks 1:47, good to hear from you. Are your ceilings particularly short?
Actually, I read the book last year and I found most of it pretty believeble, although it did get pretty creative at times. Kim is a smart guy and I can see traces of things he's done in the past all over the book. I think TF's criticisms may come down to the fact that he (TF) went straight to law school from undergrad so he's very new to the law and the real world in general. Anyway, and despite everything TF says, I highly recommend the book. I recognize a lot of it in my experiences with big law firms and the types of people who wind up working at (and leaving) such firms. Also, let's not forget the book got a lot of outstanding reviews from some big-time people in the field, such as Alan Dershowitz (who has a lot more than 8 weeks' experience practicing law).
wow, i didn't know there was so much pent-up anti-TF sentiment. best watch your abnormally long back fletch...
I don't think most of the commenters are anti-Tom. I think they are just criticizing Tom for sometimes getting a bit too big for his britches and trying to speak authoritatively about things he only has limited knowledge about. To be fair, Tom is somewhat of a quick-draw sometimes. See, e.g., Tom's assertion that fraudulent billing doesn't happen in law firms; his belief that his law firm is really different from all of the others and a great place to work and have a good life full of interesting work. Petty criticisms notwithstanding, Tom's abnormally-long back will be fine.
his back may be fine, but did you stop to think about his feelings??
Clickety-clack, long back and feelings still intact. I'll just make sure to keep my seat in the back...
PS, Anon 12:38... if you're aware of some billing fraud, it might be wise to report it / not be complicit in it. That, wellm any fraud really, is a lose-your-license type of thing. I really hope it isn't happening!
Fletch can take the heat, he is a champ!
Regarding fraudulent billing, consider the data from a couple of firms:
1. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz had gross revenues of $443 million in 2005 with only 185 lawyers. That equals average revenue of $2.4 million per lawyer. Let's be generous to the firm and say most lawyers there bill on average 2,400 hours per year. That means lawyers there bill $1000 per hour ON AVERAGE. The firm has about a 1:1 partner associate split and the media reports only a handful of attorneys nationwide bill at $1000 an hour these days and most partners are nowhere near $1000 an hour. Sounds like a few of the hours billed may be padding...
2. Cravath had gross revenues of $500.5 million with 391 lawyers. That equals revenue per lawyer of $1.3 million. Way less than half of Cravath attorneys are partners, perhaps under 100 total. Padding? Likely.
3. Sullivan & Cromwell had gross revenue of $875 million with 538 attorneys. That equals $1.6 million per attorney. Way less than half of Sullivan attorneys are partners. How much do you think they charge for an hour of first-year associate time? Probably well under $300. Of course, they probably average 3,000 hours a year. Yeah right.
The moral of the story? It's pretty hard to explain some financials for big firms without talking about padding hours. Perhaps Mr. Roosevelt was onto something after all.
Anon 3:25
I thought that Wachtell routinely bills for premiums based on the value of the deal, which would render your analysis inadequate. Do you agree? If not, why not?
3:25's post reminds me of that Quest for the Holy Grail part where they're trying to figure out if the woman is a witch.
"And what else floats on water?"
"A DUCK!"
"So if she weighs the same as a duck..."
"Therefore, she's a witch."
More technically, you're begging the question.
That's an interesting approach, but I would be astonished if the clients of those august firms allowed themselves to be routinely ripped off. There's a very competitive market for legal services. The "beauty contest", or as Zoolander would call it "walk-off", for defense firms in big products cases is common. In those situations, clients award work to the low bidder, which would destroy the incentive to pad hours. Consider also bankruptcy, where the judge has to approve the fee award. I can't imagine every bankruptcy judge in the country is oblivious to this problem.
I'm inclined to think the reasonable explanation for the numbers is simply costs. The law firm bills its attorneys out per hour, but that does not include the additional photocopying, LEXIS, Westlaw, airplane, hotel, overhead, etc. that gets tossed on top of the hourly rate. That's all revenue. It may not be profit (unless they charge a margin on these support services too), but it would epxlain staggering revenues.
I simply find it hard to believe that the world's most sophisticated firms filled to the brim with numbers people far smarter than in a law firm can be bamboozled with billing fraud. I'd be shocked if a law firm's billing accountant could pull one over on Goldman Sachs. And even if it could once, it does not seem like a long-term strategy that's very healthy for the firm. Look how quickly a little fraud can kill a firm - Milberg Weiss has lost two of its four offices (and counting?) and it's only been indicted!
The funniest comment here is the one claiming that a review from Alan Dershowitz implies that a book is factually correct. I practically shit my pants at my desk; thanks, 6:46 AM (and wtf are you doing up at that time?)
Why Wachtell does not come to Boalt...any thoughts?
Leaving Wachtell's billable rate aside, let's go back to why Fletcher is getting such a hard time. I think it's because he's the last idealist in the Class of 2007. Fletcher likes his firm, likes the work he's doing and is actually looking forward to going back to make a career at his firm after graduation (and that District Court clerkship he will definitely get). Very few of us are in the same boat. Now let's follow the lead of Dean Shelanski in the email he just sent us about the bankruptcy class and get our priorities straight. We need to stop hating on our classmate and hate on that school in the South Bay instead. The Big Game is in Berkeley this year, after all.
Yeah, Fletcher doesn't deserve all this flack. He's a good guy with a good head on his shoulders.
His aw-shucks enthuasiam is a refreshing tonic to the jaded elements of the legal community.
Now, let's kick-off the Fletcher for Governor campaign in 2027.
fletch takes his bourbon with nuts and salami. 'nuff said
So here's the word on the DC building code. Buildings in DC can't be more than 13 floors. There is a loophole, however. You can have a 14th floor for the mechanical stuff above the elevators. This 14th floor cannot be served by the same elevator as the other 13 but you can have a special elevator that goes from 13 to 14. If you build a 14th floor using this arrangement, that floor can have offices, etc.
It looks like those Penn law professors know a bit more than we thought!
How intriguing!
And absurd.
Would rents really be as high, and Arlington in possession of such an impressive just-over-the-border skilyine, were it not for the preposterous (and unlucky) limitation?
The best reason for disapproving of those entire chapters of the Property book can be found on Craig's List DC (or SF for the matter).
I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and disagree with TF on this one. Yes, yes I know, "et tu Brute." But the reason for the height restriction is that buildings in DC cannot be taller than the top of the dome of the Captiol Building. The tallest building in LA is the US Bank tower. Imagine if the tallest building in DC had a similar name...though a bit less patriotic. What if let's say it was the Credit Suisse First Boston tower?
DC is a very special place. It is the seat of the national government...Arlington is not. Whatever building codes Arlington wants, Arlington may enact, but in that square grid, I am glad there are no buildings to eclipse the people's house.
armen, i thought you were working on banning EW from this blog
what's comic about the complaint and the supreme court opinion? or the attempt to defeat class certification? you can't just assert those things based on your experience when you're criticizing someone who actually has substantially more experience than you with all of them. and what's the rampant fraudulent billing? i only recall one character doing it. i also don't recall the nd va citation, but if you did find it, hurry up and tell scott turow that there's no such place as kindle county.
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