Left Jabs

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What Sort of Pro Bono Work is Big Law Signing Up For?

B ig Law is on the hot seat. Major firms have unexpectedly been thrust into the front lines of the war against Trump, and all their options are bad. I wrote about this two weeks ago, and since then a slew of big firms have either made a deal with the devil or joined the side of the angels. On the minus side, all but one of the top twenty firms have either taken the “deal” or stayed silent. I personally think they’re playing a bad hand badly. On the plus side — beyond those top twenty behemoths — there are hundreds of very large firms who have taken a stand, of sorts, against the junta. If you’re interested in keeping score , you can do so, but the whole thing keeps getting weirder. As we watch these “deals” being made, the one common denominator — and the most publicized aspect — is the “pro bono” work these firms are committing to. About a billion dollars’ worth of lawyering is available to be used in “conservative” causes. What does this mean? What ...

Artists and Dictators Have Never Gotten Along

History records that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was much the work of one man, Mikhail Gorbachev, and there is some truth to that. But one could also argue that the fall actually began in 1962, with the publication of a single book, and the astonishing bravery of the man who wrote it, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The book was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and the simple fact of its publication was, at the time, seismic. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, was walking a tightrope. He needed to find a way to pull Russia out of the abyss of Stalinism, and restore some sort of normal life after three decades of hellish oppression and mass death. But he had to do this without allowing any meaningful change to the sclerotic system that had created Stalin, and given absolute power to the Communist Party. So, for a short time, there was what became known as the “Khrushchev Thaw,” a loosening of the totalitarian shackles — both physical and psych...

DEI-Bashing and the Battle for the Soul of Big Law

T here was a time, not long ago, when a major corporate law firm would look to burnish its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” credentials in the marketplace. At which point that firm might hire a writer like, say, me. It was a given that Big Law firms needed to become more diverse, at least if they wanted to stay relevant in a work environment that was no longer male, white, straight, and old. Firms everywhere invested real money in the recruitment, training, and promotion of lawyers from widely varied backgrounds, and they paid people like me to brag about it to the world. Every firm needed a DEI page on its website. Some wanted printed brochures. Some wanted advertising. Most wanted the legal community, especially law schools, to know about their diversity efforts. Law schools were by then rating firms by their DEI “scores,” and the firms with the best scores were getting the pick of the litter from the graduating classes. What I liked about the work was...

If You Were Putin, What Would You Do?

S o let’s say you’re Vladimir Putin. Scary, I know. But let’s just say you’d been trained by the old KGB to hate the United States with a white-hot passion that you’ve had on simmer since long before you became dictator. It’s a hate you were taught in the Brezhnev years, which were almost as bad as Stalin’s but with mass death ruled out, more or less. You nursed the hate through the convulsions of the early nineties, when your beloved Soviet Union was scrapped and replaced with economic chaos and widespread privation, which the Russian people somehow endured, as usual. Then finally, in 2000, you got your shot. You took over the whole country, and your hate was given room to breathe. Still you took your time. Fourteen years till you “annexed” Crimea and moved on the Donbass. Two more years before you engineered Brexit and the self-destruction of the UK, the same year you stole a U.S. presidential election for a pliable con man you’ve owned for three decades...

Chuck Schumer Isn’t Quite the Villain He’s Being Cast As

E verybody’s pissed off at Chuck Schumer. His handling of last Friday’s continuing resolution (CR) vote has been widely excoriated, and calls for his head have been loud and rude, as befits the times. But even before the actual vote, I was thinking that his very public decision to not filibuster the CR — thereby allowing it to pass — was, in fact, the right one. To be sure, it meant allowing a deeply atrocious bill to become law. The consequences of that bill will need to be addressed, first in court, then in any strategy we can devise to save the country from these repulsive people, but I’ll get back to you on that. In the meantime, Schumer made his decision with eyes wide open. He expected to take heat for it, and he wasn’t disappointed. His reasoning is on the record. He says, I think accurately, that if the government were to be shut down, only “essential personnel” could be called in to work, but that it would be up to the executive branch to decid...

On What Planet is This Good for Business?

W here’s the upside of all this wanton destruction? Once you intentionally tear down a flawed but quite-workable system, once you reduce it to smoking ruins, once you’ve thrown much of your population into high-stress survival mode, what’s the benefit? And whose benefit is it? As I said last week , the biggest benefit always goes to Putin. But he’s not the only one looking to make the most of the chaos. Closer to home, there are any number of billionaires aspiring to oligarch status, plainly looking for opportunity in this new world order. I’ll use the word ‘oligarch’ as a catch-all for the extravagantly rich and powerful, as well as for the corporate interests they control and the negative influence they exert. Some are household names, but most stay well under the radar. Think of them as today’s Robber Barons. And they will indeed find ways to increase their wealth under the Trump regime. Which apparently, for some profoundly misguided reason, is ...