There’s no passing up a good body slam to make a point.

Long time readers know there’s no better way to illustrate judicial body slams, choke-holds and slap-downs than with images from professional wrestling.

Maybe it’s a throw-back to my childhood when I found the over-the-top histrionics of yesteryear’s grapplers and brawlers so hilariously fascinating. Who cared if it was all fake? Who would tell a 12-year old?

However, there’s nothing fake about what some members of the berobbed do to the clueless, rude, ill-prepared or the plain unlucky appearing in their courtrooms. Or that it’s not deserved when they can’t get out of their own way.

And I’m not just talking about the lawyers. Litigants may also find themselves facing the judicial wrath.

And it must also be acknowledged that sometimes the head-drops go the other way, as with the recently announced suspension of Putnam County Judge William “Chip” Watkins III.

What hastened Judge Watkins’ travails is ascertainable from the video clip below — viewer discretion advised.

Also see, for instance, Judge Martin McDonald’s “I’ll strangle you.” 

A ‘Hall of Fame.’

All this said, then, it’s no surprise that I took particular delight in acquainting myself earlier this month with the artistic license of a Georgia personal injury lawyer by the name of Jamie Casino. I’ll be darned if Casino doesn’t like those spandex-wearing body-tossing rasslers as much as anyone!

An obviously enterprising fellow, he must surely warm the gasconading cockles of the hearts of other passionate lawyer advertisers — such as the many “Battling Hammers” – not the least being rapping Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley or of other notable quotable personal injury client hawking luminaries.

By comparison, the stereotypical ”I will fight for you” advertisers seem almost staid. So much for cliché over creativity or the good, bad, and ugly of attorney advertising.

Still it has to be said here that for lawyers who see themselves as part of a noble profession — nay, who may be besotted with a self-image redolent of a rarefied priesthood, well those sacerdotal practitioners will always get their cassocks in a bunch over the audacious advertising antics of their earthier colleagues.

That’s too bad. After all, if there’s any justice in such matters, the commercially capering counselors ought to at least have their own ‘Hall of Fame’ if for nothing else, the entertainment value they bring to the public.

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Photo Credits: Wrestling Match, May 1938, by Russell Lee (for the Farm Security Administration) at Wikipedia Commons, public domain; “Austin Aries performs a brainbuster on Mark Haskins during the Impact! taping on January 28, 2012 in Wembley, England.” by Ed Webster at Wikipedia Commons, via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic; “El Hijo De Santo vs Blue Demon Jr,” by danksy at Wikipedia Commons, via Flickr  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

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Faith, the Kardashians, and Free CLE.

Certain things will remain eternal mysteries to me. Take, for instance, the tension between free will, predestination and an omniscient God — concerns that first troubled me as a parochial school boy.

My smart mouth annoyed the nuns no end not least when I posed the conundrum of our supposed unfettered will versus God’s infallible foreknowledge.

In religion class, I raised my hand and asked Sister Estelle, “If God knows and sees everything, including what we’re going to do — how is it we’re supposed to have free will?”

Sister Estelle’s answer was “To have faith,” which of course, was as much an explanation as J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan explaining that “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”

Not till much later did I find infinitely more solace and satisfaction from Alexander Jablokov’s pithy “The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.”

Speaking of which, I will continue scratching my furry head over people’s fascination with all things Kardashian, especially the recent tabloid headlines that the congenitally protuberant but now excusably pregnant Kim is allegedly tipping the scales at 205 plus lbs. Why is this news? Better yet, “Who cares?’

Of considerably greater interest has always been Kardashian paterfamilias and O.J. Simpson attorney, the late Robert Kardashian and the answer to the question, “What was Robert Kardashian carrying in that bulging Louis Vitton garment bag?” Hmmm, what’s the more substantive Kardashian inquiry? Binging on sweets or bloody clothes and a knife? Also see “Background Facts on O.J. Simpson Case . . . .”

FREE CLE.

“The best things in life make you sweaty.” - Edgar Allan Poe

Fortunately, not all life is a mystery. We don’t have to worry our pointy, pretty little heads, for example, over one thing and that’s that I will continue posting on FREE CLE.

The latest roundup follows:

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Downloadable Webinars – Upchurch Watson White & Max

A dozen complimentary CLE programs on alternative dispute resolution for Florida CLE Credit.  Presented by Upchurch, Watson, White & Max, a Florida and Alabama based professional association of mediators.

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Practising Law Insitute (PLI)

Violence Against Women Act 2013

April 29, 2013, 1-2pm ET

Violence Against Women Act 2013 (Audio-only)

• The history of VAWA
• Expanded protections under VAWA 2013
• Immigration Provisions of VAWA 2013

Supreme Court’s 2012 Blockbuster Term: Review of  Major Cases -

(Audio-only)

May 2, 2013, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm (E.D.T.)

Dean and law professor Erwin Chemerinsky reviews the major cases from the October Term 2012 docket, including:

 

• Maryland v. King
• Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin
• Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder
• Hollingsworth v. Perry
• United States v. Windsor
• Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum

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Courtesy of a tip from a Wisconsin lawyer friend who earned 3 continuing legal education credit hours for the following: “Eichmann Prosecutor Interview: A Conversation with Justice Gabriel Bach, Senior Prosecutor in the Adolf Eichmann Trial.”

Eichmann Prosecutor Interview

Frank Tuerkheimer

Law Professor Emeritus

University of Wisconsin

Wisconsin lawyers will likely have to submit a request for CLE credit via CLE Form 2 – Wisconsin Court System.

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Webinar – Attorney Protective

Title:	Great Procedures to Reduce Risk
Date:	Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Time:	1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/436025096

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ARDC, “Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission”

• New Trends in Lawyer Regulation: Illinois (Part I)  Recorded Webinar (posted March 15, 2013) (1 Hr. MCLE/PCLE Credit in Illinois) CLICK HERE
  

• New Trends in Lawyer Regulation: National (Part II)  Recorded Webinar (posted March 15, 2013) (1 Hr. MCLE/PCLE Credit in Illinois) CLICK HERE

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• The Lawyers Guide to Technology CLE Course - Online Webinar (1:04:37)
• 1.2 Credits (General)

“This free CLE course will give you the ability to streamline your office technology, increase your billable hours and increase firm productivity overall.”

Download Rekall Course Materials (PDF)

• The Ethics Behind Client Data Security – Online Webinar (1:16:28)
• 1.5 Credit (Ethics\Professionalism Or General)

“This free CLE course gives you all the successful technologies that you need to work with in order to fulfill your ethical obligation to your clients, your colleagues, and the court. We explain the relationship between technology and ethics and show you ethical technology solutions and less ethical options for you law firm, we also explain possible consequences when working with less ethical technologies and client data information.”

Download Rekall Course Materials (PDF)

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Photo Credits: “Edgar Allan Poe Pop Art, ” by Chelsea Daniele at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution;”How many nuns does it take to change a light bulb?” by kevin dooley at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Nuremberg Trials,” Wikipedia Commons, public domain.

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“I’m shocked, shocked — to find that churning is going on in here.”

Casablanca — a story about a man caught between love and virtue came to mind this week after reading that law firm client Adam Victor had sued his lawyers over an allegedly inflated legal bill.

Not that a fee dispute between a lawyer and his client is anything new. All the same, I couldn’t help but recall that classic movie and particularly, Vichy Captain Louis Renault’s quip about how disingenuously shocked he was to discover gaming going on in nightclub owner Rick Blaine’s “Rick’s Café Américain.”

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” Captain Renault said as a croupier hands him a pile of money. “Oh thank you, very much.”

Interestingly, in the original play upon which the film was based, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” nightclub owner Rick Blaine was a lawyer. Always — with the lawyer.

But when it comes to love and virtue, and specifically love of money and virtue over fees — what to make of seeing lawyers again in a bad light?

And lawyers accused of overbilling? Should we be “shocked, shocked”? Hardly the novel recrimination — not when you consider that when it comes to whether fees are excessive, you have to shock a lawyer’s conscience.

So much, too, for embarrassment or for thinking of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield’s rejoinder against the Lord Shaftesbury’s “ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just.”

“Churn that bill, baby!”

When the world’s largest law firm, DLA Piper, sued their client over $675,000 in unpaid legal bills, Adam Victor did what all clients do when pressed. He countered. In his case, he accused the firm of the “sweeping practice of overbilling.”

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And thanks to pretrial discovery, disadvantageous exasperations happen. Once the firm turned over internal communications to Victor’s lawyers — the Bandini hit the fan.

Take DLA Piper lawyer Christopher Thomson’s email, which said of a colleague working on Victor’s bill, “Now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode. That bill shall know no limits.” Oy vey!

Overripe mackerels.

When it comes lawyers and their billing practices, something previously explained at “more art than science,” the topic is overripe — indeed, redolent of that proverbial mackerel stinking in the moonlight.

It’s the stuff of the credulous honest heart fancying a belief in “the lawyer who under-charged . . . and other fairy tales.”

To avoid such astonishments, then, clients would do well to heed what Mae West once observed, “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”

Or in a more serious-minded vein, to note longtime lawyer blogger Carolyn Elefant’s remonstrations on the matter of lawyer overbilling — “so long as lawyers are driven by a desire to maximize revenue, without regard to the client’s best interest, then clients will suffer.”

To which the DLA Piper/Victor fee dispute unsurprisingly leads, it’s the question begged by Forrest Wickman, a.k.a. the Explainer at Slate Magazine, who asks, “When did lawyers get such a bad reputation?”

Looking chronologically, culturally and humorously at what underpins the practice known as “Churn That Bill, Baby!”, Wickman provides his answers.

But if Wickman’s explanations still don’t suffice, there’s always this:

“A man phones a lawyer and asks, “How much would you charge for just answering three simple questions?”
The lawyer replies, “A thousand dollars.”
“A thousand dollars!” exclaims the man. “That’s very expensive isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” says the lawyer. “Now, what’s your third question?”

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Photo Credits: “Screenshot of the title screen of the trailer,” at Wikipedia Commons via public domain; “paul henreid, ingrid bergman & humphrey bogart – casablanca 1943,” by Raoul Luoar at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Danger! Manure!,” by whatleydude at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Mrs. Grace Herr churns butter at her farm home, Butter1web.jpg” at Wikipedia Commons, by the National Agricultural Library of the United States Department of Agriculture‘s Agricultural Research Service. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

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“Lean in” like the moneyed class. And the Arizona Bar wants to know about lawyer kibble.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg — she of the Harvard College summa cum laude Economics sheepskin and Harvard M.B.A. leaves work at 5:30 p.m. for a brand-new 9,000 square foot McMansion and her two kids. She’s just another Suzy Homemaker with a nine figure net worth.

Sandberg’s smart enough to have known that as a well-entrenched member of the 1%, she might face a wee bit of criticism for preaching in her new book to a congregation sitting outside in the cold.

Does an exceptional pedigree, rarefied corporate power and mind-boggling wealth dilute a feminist empowerment message: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead? No doubt.

If it only took “Will” — and not a whole bunch of “Benjamins” to pull off what Sandberg advocates in her self-help tract. Among other things, she tells women that to get ahead, they need to ‘lean in‘ at the workplace.

Give her credit for brass even as she faces criticism for the temerity of a billionairess’s personal fortune that “must leave her tone-deaf to the plight of the typical worker.”

How tone-deaf? About $96,261′s worth, which according to Investopedia is how much a homemaker is worth these days — or at least that’s how much money is needed to pay for the army of help to pull off the glass ceiling-crashing career Sandberg envisions for her childbearing sisterhood. For the moneyless classes, it’s “The True Cost of Leaning In.”

When you’ve successfully satisfied all your physiological and safety needs like she has, the rest is easy — from a self-satisfied self-actualized pulpit.

Our society, though, has a long history of  the privileged and entitled lecturing the rest of us on how to be successful.

Still, while obvious, her points are well made. Speak up. Don’t hold yourself back. Enough with the ‘shrinking violet’ stuff. We shall overcome“the leadership ambition gap.”

Arizona Lawyers: How much do you make?

And speaking of tone-deaf, then there’s the Arizona State Bar, the self-styled consumer protection agency that wants to know how much kibble is in the lawyer kitty.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before but the Bar is again asking their lawyers to pony up their economic data. It was almost three years ago when the Bar last asked, ‘take our survey — so we can sell you the results.’

Unlike last time, however, this time they’re curious enough to inquire, “How much law school debt are Arizona attorneys carrying?”

So why do they want to know? What difference does it make? Will Bar dues go down? Or the cost of Bar-sponsored continuing legal education? Or is it, like before, to publish a full report so the Bar can sell it to its members?

Maybe it’s for calibrating the economic pain meter to justify how much to charge lawyers for the continued privilege of practicing law in the state?

Maybe, it’s simply a legally palatable, anti-trust compliant way for firms to figure out legal services pricing based on market average billing rates?

Perhaps, it’s all of the above. All the same, if Arizona lawyers belonged to a member-friendly voluntary bar like in Kansas’, they wouldn’t have to pay for a copy of the full report. In Kansas, bar members receive the 2012 Kansas Economics of Law Practice Report gratis.

But then Arizona is a mandatory membership bar like New Mexico, Oregon, and Mississippi and the majority of U.S. jurisdictions. However, in those three mentioned jurisdictions, their members don’t pay for the full report. They download their compensation surveys free of charge. See The Economics of Law Practice in New Mexico Lawyer Compensation  and Oregon’s 2012 ECONOMIC SURVEY – Oregon State Bar and Mississippi’s 2012 ECONOMIC SURVEY September 2012 – The Mississippi Bar.

So having dutifully ignored the first two emails, the Bar emailed my “Last Chance – Your Link to the 2013 State Bar of Arizona Economics Study” last week. No thanks. Ear-trumpet and all, can’t hear you.

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Photo Credits: “ear trumpet 1,” by Eknath Gomphotherium at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content for noncommercial use requiring attribution; “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” at Wikipedia Commons via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license;

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Inspiring, impossibly unstoppable “Inocente.”

Sometime ago, I blogged about Gerson, Alejandro and Jonathan, three illegal immigrant students living a hard life “on their own.”

Coming at the time amidst the fall-out over Arizona’s enactment of the anti-illegal immigrant law known as SB 1070, the local Phoenix newspaper ran an affecting story about the three youths. The reporter put a warm, compassionate face on their daunting struggle.

Following the 85th Academy Awards last month, I was intrigued once more by yet another undocumented immigrant student’s story. On the world-weary face of it, you might ask, “What’s the point of another such story?” After all, there are many such Dreamers.

Nevertheless, I was curious enough to find out more about the winner for “Short Documentary,” Inocente.

What I found was a surprisingly relatable, emotionally stirring and ultimately uplifting story of a fifteen-year-old called Inocente. She is a homeless, undocumented immigrant who admits to dreaming “silly dreams.” Even so, she is nonetheless determined to become an artist — “and go her own way” despite the long odds and an unsparing future.

It’s an affecting, beautifully rendered film. And she is an inspiring and talented young woman. “What if we could walk the clouds and ride shooting stars?” she asks.

“I have impossible dreams, but I still dream them,” she explains.

“Homeless, creative, unstoppable.” Inocente is very much worth knowing about.

See the Oscar-winning documentary ‘Inocente‘ (complete video) at Pocho.

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Photo Credits: DSC_0886, by Robert Silz, longislandwins at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; Innocente Cover at “Stories 99,” http://stories99.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Inocente-Cover.jpg.

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Law school fabulists.

Reinvented journalist turned healthcare worker Edward Barrera wants to recreate himself — again. This time it’s via nascent fabulations of attending law school.

He said so in Southern California’s Pasadena Star-News, a newspaper not on my usual reading menu. But thanks to Internet aggregatorYahoo! News, I chanced on Barrera’s fatuously entitled essay, “Law school and combat.”

I’m still holding my nose from his brain infarctions, especially talk about “combat,” as though the law was bereft of combatants.

After reading, I was compelled to comment here and on his blog.

Barrera wants to join in on the so-called “fun” he thinks a lawyer friend is having. By becoming a practicing lawyer, he imagines he’ll re-experience“the thrill of combat” he once got as a journalist.

Presumably, he’s no callow youth — despite the ‘visions of sugar plums dancing in his head.’

Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” So against my better judgment, I find myself rescinding an earlier vow to stop weighing in on law schools and their unconscionable hosing of students and graduates.

I do so perhaps, less from Barrera’s delusions or his invocation of the overworked oft ill-used Shakespearean quotation, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (To his inestimable credit, he pointed out the quote is usually out of context and misinterpreted).

More likely, I’m posting because I contemporaneously read one more law school dean’s self-interested prescription on fixing law schools and by extension — the 21st century legal profession.

This time, it was James Huffman, dean emeritus at Lewis & Clark Law School, who at least courageously confirmed the identity of the 800-kg. poop-making producer in the punch bowl — the American Bar Association (ABA).

The self-interested stakeholders inside law school academia are always too quick to offer self-serving solutions that safeguard sinecures, preserve privileges, and bless all their benefices . . . forever and ever, Amen.

But in his Wall Street Journal epistle, Perverse Incentives of the Lawyers Guild, Dean Huffman did at least state the obvious: “The ABA should start by looking within: The organization is a major source of the problem. Those large law-school faculties with some of the highest salaries in the academy, the palatial facilities, a persistent emphasis on theory instead of practical-skills training, and a limited reliance on online instruction have all been encouraged, if not mandated, by ABA regulations and the accreditation process.

“As often happens with regulatory systems, whether governmental or professional, the ABA accreditation process was long ago captured by legal education’s most influential stakeholders. ABA accreditation site-visit teams routinely include a dean, tenured classroom faculty, clinical faculty (historically untenured but now increasingly tenured, thanks to ABA requirements), a librarian, a university administrator and one judge or member of the practicing bar—but no students or consumers of legal services.”

Years ago, a high-end hotel executive described the problems cost-conscious innkeepers encountered from guests when they tried eliminating a room amenity — whether chocolate on a pillow or a packaged shower cap. “Once given, always expected,” he despairingly muttered.

Likewise, Dean Huffman’s proffered solution is no solution at all. It does nothing to disturb the entitled classes: avaricious law schools-turned-university-cash-cows; overpaid, under-worked tenured faculty; and high-level administrators ensconced in fancy facilities.

Dean Huffman instead looks elsewhere. He wants the ABA to release law schools from most current standards so that “the enormous intellectual power of their faculties” can sow innovations and make “a thousand flowers bloom.”

Oh, puh-leeze. This will merely wrest the keys away from the ones running the asylum and give them to the inmates instead.

Moreover, the dean emeritus forgets his own criticism of the insular ABA accreditation site-visit teams who do not deign to include “students or consumers of legal services” in their sacred process. Apparently, flowers never bloom from those infertile fields.

In sum, before considering law school, aspiring lawyers should first read Tucker Max’s list of “The 6 Wrong Reasons to Go to Law School” at the Huffington Post’s: “Why You Should Not Go to Law School.”

And deans, emeriti or not, should revisit law professor Brian Tamanaha’s apostasy, “How to Make Law School Affordable.“

The former will be prudential simethicone for mental vapors. And the latter will provide the proper prescription, which is to inject overdue rationality into a madhouse.

Recast, then, the busted business model and reform the economics. Rein in the money. And align the incentives so that besides a commercial interest in their own prosperity, law schools finally have an accountable stake in the post-graduation success of their students.

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Photo Credits: “Large walrus on the ice – Odobenus rosmarus divergens – contemplating the photographer – Alaska, Bering Sea,” by Captain Budd Christman, NOAA Corps, at Wikipedia Commons, public domain; The Madhouse by Francisco Goya, at Wikipedia Commons, public domain.

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92-year old Dorothy Ellis and living to a final wish.

Here’s an item from yesterday that made my day. 92-year old Dorothy Ellis, late of Iola, Kansas, got her dying wish fulfilled — and the rest of us are the better for it.

For me, it was a particularly welcome respite from the unremitting reality that old folks don’t always have it so good.

Fortunately for Dorothy, though, her family’s a gem, especially her granddaughter Holly who with Dorothy’s hospice nurse, made sure she got her final wish. After seeing a man flying over her house in a motorized parachute, Dorothy told her family she wanted to do the same: to fly over her southeastern Kansas ranch home in the same airborne contraption. Six weeks before her death, Dorothy’s last wish was granted.

A poet once admonished, “Live as you would have wished to live when you are dying.” Good advice.

And from Dorothy Ellis, it was ‘over the rainbow’ inspiration personified.

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Photo Credits: “Not in Kansas Anymore,” by garlandcannon, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.

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Lies, lies and pretending to be something you’re not.

Two cases making their way through New York’s criminal justice system grabbed my attention this month. Though unrelated, both shared one thing in common. They involved persons pretending to be something they’re not.

The first was a lawyer pretending to be someone else and the other someone pretending to be a lawyer.

Soma Sengupta was the lawyer who wanted to be someone else. Though she was late 40-something, Sengupta said she was 29. Fibbing about her age wasn’t half her problem — but lying about her age was what led to her downfall.

The ‘Tower of Deception.’

Bogus claims about work history and purported accomplishments also caught up with Soma Sengupta. It led to her conviction on eight felony forgery and false instrument charges and one misdemeanor conspiracy charge. The Manhattan D.A. called her actions a “tower of deception.”

Ironically, as a NY lawyer and Georgetown Law Grad, it wasn’t like Sengupta didn’t already have decent credentials. All the same, she felt compelled to embellish her curriculum vitae with forged transcripts, reference letters and nonexistent trial experience all so she could win a competitive post with a British firm.

Sadder still was the odd case of the ‘Fake lawyer’ arraigned after allegedly representing clients with no degree.” The reportedly mentally troubled 42-year old Terrence Kindlon is alleged to have falsely represented a client in court three times last year. He’s not a lawyer but pretended to be one in the same courthouse where he himself is a defendant in two open burglary felonies.

So besides facing the two felony charges, he’s now also charged with offering a false instrument for filing as well as the unauthorized practice of law. He also managed to annoy the Manhattan DA’s public integrity unit chief who said, “The defendant has shown the utmost contempt of the courts — pretending to be a lawyer in the same courthouse where he has two open cases.”  

An era of B.S.

As it turns out, lying about credentials is common. Some people can’t resist the temptation to burnish the B.S. to get ahead. For instance, there’s Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson who padded his resume and lost his job. And Laura Callahan who lost her post as a senior director with Homeland Security’s Chief Information Office because of a diploma mill-laden resume. Or who can forget George O’Leary who quickly lost his job as Notre Dame’s football coach because he misrepresented his academic and athletic background?

And then there was Juan Miguel Ramirez Sanchez, the Mexican university president found to have a fake degree and Pedro Delgado, the Ecuador Central Bank President who resigned after admitting his own fake degree and Bausch & Lomb CEO Ron Zarella who after admitting to falsely claiming an NYU MBA, lost a $1.1 million bonus.

Last year, a Maricopa County judge dropped out of her election campaign amid scrutiny over credentials she once claimed to have but later didn’t.

The Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct issued an Order December 4, 2012 reprimanding Justice of the Peace Melanie DeForest for violating the Judicial Conduct Code when among other lapses, she “provided incorrect information about her educational qualifications for purposes of her online judicial biography, included incorrect information on her resume that inflated her qualifications.”

Judge DeForest had been appointed to the job when prior JP Phillip Woolbright was relieved of his duties after the Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended a 60 day suspension for ethical misconduct.

Lord only knows why with the JP qualifications bar already set so low, she bothered at all. The only requirements to earn a handsome six-figure annual salary as a Justice of the Peace in Arizona “are that you be a registered voter in Arizona, reside in the justice court precinct and understand the English language.”

But really, what’s the point of lying? Sooner or later, B.S.’ers and impersonators get outed. Some get caught routinely mislabeling seafood. And others get exposed selling horse meat masquerading as beef.

Whether fraudulent food or counterfeit credential, it seems few can resist the pressure to get ahead — to unfairly compete.

Is it because increasingly, “the college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement” and it “takes a BA to find a job as a file clerk”?

But with privacy eviscerated by social media and 24/7 media, there’s little place to hide — not to mention the proliferation of background checkers and employment screeners. Indeed, according to one background checking company, as many as 40 percent of resumes contain phony information. And in 2011, a European background screening firm revealed an astounding 48 percent increase worldwide in the number of known fake diploma mills.

The lies we tell ourselves.

It’s been said “There are two kinds of secrets; the ones we keep from others and the ones we hide from ourselves.” Maybe, that’s why some may insist, “I wasn’t lying — I was over credentialed,” — an explanation not far from what the late comedian George Gobel famously quipped, “I’ve never been drunk, but often I’ve been over served.”

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Photo Credits: “Benvenuti_ISO800,” by nestor galina at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Wishful Thinking,” by uppityrib at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Bud taking a closer look,” by ♥ HunterJumper ♥, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “From the Bartender’s Point of View,” by Charles Dana Gibson (American illustrator, 1867-1944) 1904 pen and ink on paper illustration for Collier’s Weekly; published in the artist’s collection Everyday People (1904)and sourced by MCAD Library at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution;

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A parting love song for Boyle Heights’ Eddie Goldstein.

Last month, Los Angeles Times‘ talented story-teller Hector Becerra wrote a graceful postscript to his well-told December 2009 story about Eddie Goldstein.

Like Becerra, Eddie was also from the ‘hood’ — “One Of A Kind In Boyle Heights.”

Eddie Goldstein was born in Boyle Heights. He fell hard for Esther Guzman, a girl from the neighborhood. He married her. And though the old Jewish neighborhood changed, Eddie stayed and put down roots even deeper into the kind of hardscrabble community the late journalist George Ramos once said of — the “American Dream Lives in the Barrio.” And even after Eddie’s beloved Esther died, he stayed. Eddie never left.

A couple of years ago, I happened on Eddie’s story and I blogged about it, especially about Becerra’s superbly drawn and evocatively poignant biography of then 76-year old Goldstein.

In January of this year, Becerra was contacted by Eddie’s family. He was informed that Eddie had passed away at age 79.

In a postscript to his earlier memorable account, Becerra again captures Eddie’s essence in a parting love song — Remembering ‘the last Jewish man of Boyle Heights.’ Writing about Eddie, Becerra describes how racial and ethnic constructs can be flimsy when love is involved.

But this final chapter is neither doleful or dreary. That’s not Becerra’s style. Nor was it Eddie’s, who “kept a yarmulke in the trunk of his prized Cadillac, which he called his “black beauty.” 

What we leave behind.

Not to get excessively sentimental or morose, this New Year like every New Year before and every New Year that will follow — ushered in beginnings and endings.

In the past four weeks, two friends have passed on. Their absences left the world and the lives of those they left behind, much altered and greatly diminished.

And so it was with Eddie Goldstein, someone who I knew only through Becerra’s stories. And who was the kind of man Eddie’s rabbi eulogized as a “Mensch” — a person of integrity and honor.

While there are those who think of life as “muddling through the middle,” it’s really about our legacy, how we seized our days and how we came home.

This is the harder truth about the beginning and the ending that endures. And not so much and not necessarily what Alice Munro says is “something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.”

No, it’s what writer Mitch Albom elegantly lingers upon in his bestselling parable, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It’s what happens after and what we leave behind. Albom’s story was coincidentally, also about the passing of someone else named Eddie and about how we’re all interconnected. And about how “Life has to end. Love doesn’t.

So to find a summation in the life of Eddie Goldstein and that of my two friends, it comes down to what that wise Jesuit Baltasar Gracian believed, “What matters isn’t being applauded when you arrive — for that is common — but being missed when you leave.”

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Photo Credits: “Off Soto in Boyle Heights,” by meltwater, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Moon over Boyle Heights,” by Laurie Avocado, lavocado@sbcglobal.net, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.

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The end of “too big for trial.” Will Elizabeth Warren scare the regulators to act?

I felt like standing up and cheering last week. On Valentine’s Day, I savored how new U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) took down our nation’s weak-kneed financial regulators for their shameful timidity.

Finally — someone with sufficient juice, gravitas, and know-how was challenging those lame, flimsy rationales for why regulators had failed to aggressively prosecute the country’s biggest financial institutions for their part in causing the greatest financial catastrophe since The Great Depression.

Already knowing the answer before she asked the question, Warren — herself a lawyer, artfully asked three other lawyers, Elisse B. Walter, SEC Acting Chair, Daniel Tarullo, U.S. Federal Reserve, and Thomas J. Curry, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, “When did you last take… a large financial institution, a Wall Street bank, to trial?” 

Here’s most of the transcript:

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WARREN: I appreciate your all being here.

I want to ask a question about supervising big banks when they break the law. Including the mortgage foreclosures, but others as well. We all understand why settlements are important, that trials are expensive, that we can’t dedicate huge resources to them. But we also understand that if a party is unwilling to go to trial — either because they’re too timid or they lack resources — that the consequence is that they have a lot less leverage in all the settlements that occur.

Now, I know there have been some landmark settlements, but we face some very special issues with big financial institutions. If they can break the law, and drag in billions in profits, and then turn around and settle paying out of those profits, they don’t have much incentive to follow the law. It’s also the case that each time there’s a settlement, and not a trial, it means that we didn’t have those days and days of testimony about what these financial institutions have been up to.

So, the question I really want to ask is about how tough you are and how much leverage you really have in these settlements. And what I’d like to know is … tell me a little bit about the last few times you’ve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial.

WARREN: … Anybody?

TOM CURRY: Um …

WARREN: Tom Curry?

CURRY: … to offer … um … my perspective …

WARREN: Sure.

CURRY: As bank supervisor … uh … we primarily view the tools that we have as … uh … mechanisms for correcting deficiencies? So, uh, the primary motive for our forceful actions is really to identify the problem, and then to demand solutions on an ongoing basis.

WARREN: And then you set a price for that — sorry to interrupt, but I just want to move this along — it’s effectively a settlement. What I’m asking is when did you last take — and I know you haven’t been there forever, so I’m really asking about the SEC — a large financial institution, a Wall Street bank, to trial?

CURRY: Uh … the institutions I supervise — national banks and federal thrifts — we’ve actually had a fair number of … uh … consent orders … uh … we do not have to bring people to … uh … aaaa … trial …

WARREN: I appreciate that you don’t have to bring them to trial. My question is, when did you bring them to trial.

CURRY: We have not had to do it as a practical matter to meet our supervisory goals.

WARREN: Ms. Walter?

WALTER: Thank you Senator. As you know, among our remedies are penalties, but the penalties we can get are limited. We actually have asked for additional authority — my predecessor — did to raise penalties. And we truly believe that we had a very vigorous enforcement program. We’d look at the distinction between what we can get if we go to trial and what we’d get if we don’t.

WARREN: I appreciate that, that’s what everybody does. So, the question I’m really asking is, can you identify when you last took the Wall Street banks to trial?

WALTER: I will have to get back to you with the specific information, but we do litigate. And we do have settlements that are — that are — either rejected by the Commission, or not put forward.

WARREN: Okay, we’ve got multiple people here. Anyone else want to tell me about the last time they took a Wall Street bank to trial? I just want a note on this: There are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens — sometimes on very thin grounds — and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial.’ It just seems wrong to me.

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In a 2009 article, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi famously called Goldman Sachs, “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Almost 3 years ago, acerbic wit, consummate gadfly and cheeky financial advice columnist Malcolm Berko — who wields a keyboard like a rapier — of big banks, aptly wrote, “a well-oiled, politically connected money machine and, like Goldman Sachs, can do almost anything it wants to.”

“Too big to jail.”

So far, the financial giants have been getting away with it. They’re “The Untouchables” – “too big to jail.” No Wall Street executive has gone to jail.

And so-called civil settlements with government overseers have been laughable — with all the sting of a wasp in lucite.

                                                                                                                                                   Writing at “Crime and Lack of Punishment” at Creators.com, Malcolm Berko went further explaining how the Wall Street giants gamed the system. “Those firms paid niggardly fines, which were covered by errors-and-omissions policies. Not a centime came from management’s purse, and not a single New York financial mafia executive spent a day at a federal facility.

                                                                                                                                                           “The reason these good old boys got off scot-free is their myriad friends in Congress receive (under the hat) regular and significant campaign contributions.”

As of Valentine’s Day 2013, we can hope that in Senator Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street finally has one less ‘myriad friend in Congress.’

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Photo Credits: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Government, public domain, at Wikipedia Commons; “Boss Tweed,” by Thomas Nast, at Wikipedia Commons, United States public domain.

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