Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, has spawned a courtroom subplot with real legal stakes: prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, widely read as a tribute to five-year-old Cora, who loved them. But even a well-meant gesture is a gamble, handing the defense a ready-made argument that the state is leaning on sympathy over substance and potentially seeding an appeal. Over in the business of law, private equity finally got the yes it's been chasing: Wood Smith Henning & Berman, a 500-plus-lawyer insurance-defense shop, reportedly signed a letter of intent to sell a stake to Charlesbank Capital Partners at a roughly $700 million valuation. Structured through a management services organization to sidestep Rule 5.4's ban on non-lawyer ownership, it would be the largest PE investment in an American law firm to date -- a toehold, not yet a takeover. And in the category of career moves we can't recommend, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney landed himself in a fraternity drug scandal. Paul Robinson, a practice-group chair at Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck, was charged with tampering and hindering apprehension for allegedly making evidence disappear from a multistate cocaine ring that prosecutors say his son helped run out of Penn State's Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi houses -- where, per the AG, packaging kilos doubled as a pledge task.  

Remember when Trump lost the birthright citizenship case? Because he doesn't. ----- Despite protestations that its deal with the Trump administration didn't forfeit the firm's independence, Paul Weiss reportedly seriously debated letting Stephen Miller review the firm's webpage edits according to the New York Times. The same reporting turned up the $3.5 million the firm spent to make its first openly transgender partner leave quietly. Elsewhere, Biglaw is now the largest employer of new law grads, even though it's a bigger slice of a smaller pie, with first-year hiring down for the first time since 2014. And having lost the birthright citizenship case, Donald Trump signed new executive orders explaining that he won it, moving one antecedent about six words to the left and calling it a holding. It's kicking off a string of proclamations from the White House that it's the real winner of cases it decidedly lost.

And Todd Blanche keeps trying to get over the Judiciary speedbump. ----- The biggest story in legal last week was an unfortunate guerrilla antagonizing of a couple making out on a park bench... who just happened to be a Wachtell partner and associate. And now an internal HR problem is suddenly national news. Say what you will about the person who filmed it, but "get a room" was good advice. Meanwhile, Todd Blanche's confirmation hearings continued to drag on, with former supporters abandoning him and even some Republicans wondering why he can't commit to ruling out a January 6 slush fund. A new book says Blanche once feared bringing frivolous cases. He seems to have gotten over that. And Elena Kagan publicly claims her colleagues get a "bad rap" for supporting Trump. She's wrong and making these statements unfairly maligns her liberal colleagues facing personal attacks for their work. Oh, and John Yoo is back in the news.