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OBABL Links & Resources
2009 October
Oct
26
Who Would You Add To The Root 100?
Filed Under The Profession • Leave a Comment
Last week TheRoot.com published it’s first ever The Root 100. According to its editors:
The Root 100 is a newly minted honor intended to celebrate the leadership, service and excellence of African-American men and women whose passion, dedication and innovative work have set them apart. The Root 100 is the manifestation of a core component of The Root’s mission—to bring to light people and ideas who are quietly having an impact on our lives and our communities.
Interestingly, a quarter of those named to The Root 100 are lawyers, who are either politicians, law professors, pundits, nonprofit heads, media executives or members of Team Obama. See the breakdown below then in the comments section, tell us who you would add to this list and why.
Team Obama
Melody Barnes
Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council
Hill Harper
Actor, Obama campaigner and now a member of the Obama for America National Finance Committee
Cassandra Butts
Deputy White House Counsel, Obama Administration
Derek Douglas
Special Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs
Tony West
Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division
The Politicians
Cory A. Booker
Mayor of Newark
Artur Davis
Congressman from Alabama’s 7
Adrian Fenty
Youngest mayor of Washington, DC
Harold Ford, Jr.
Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council
Kamala Harris
San Francisco District Attorney
Craig Watkins
District Attorney, Dallas County
Yelberton “Yebbie” Watkins
Chief of Staff to House Majority Whip, Rep. James Clyburn
The Non-Profiteers
Debo Adegbile
Director of Litigation, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Semhar Araia
Oxfam’s Horn of Africa Regional Policy Advisor, Founder, Diaspora African Women’s Network (DAWN)
Lateefah Simon
Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area
Maya Harris
VP, Peace and Social Justice Program, Ford Foundation
Richard Buery, Jr.
First black president and CEO of the Children’s Aid Society
The Professors
Kimberle Crenshaw
Professor at UCLA School of Law
James Forman Jr.
Professor of Law at Georgetown University
Angela J. Davis
Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law
The Media Executives
Matthew Johnson
Entertainment Lawyer, Partner, Ziffren Brittenham LLP
Alfred Liggins III
CEO Radio One
Deirdre Stanley
Executive VP and General Counsel of Thomson Reuters
Dean Garfield
President/CEO, Information Technology Industry Council
The Pundits
Carlos Watson
Founder and publisher, The Stimulist; MSNBC contributor
Elie Mystal
Editor, Above the Law
Oct
26
Law Firm Recruiter, Ron Jordan Offers OBABL Readers Career Advice
Filed Under Social Engineer • Leave a Comment
OBABL has heard from many attorneys and law students seeking career advice, so we’ve decided to partner with Ron Jordan, the founding Principal of Carter-White & Shaw. With more than thirteen years of experience in attorney placement and law firm mergers and acquisitions, Ron has successfully placed many law firm partners and facilitated mergers with major law firms.
Whether you’re just beginning your legal career, looking to transition to government, or reposition yourself after a firm layoff, Ron is hoping to help you sort through this legal career maze.
Post general career questions in the comments section or feel free to send your resume and query directly to Ron at rjordan@diverseattorney.org.
From the MCCA article Debunking the Mystique of Top 20 Law Schools
“GPAs don’t practice law. People practice law,” notes Ron Jordan, founding principal of Carter-White & Shaw. “Their various experiences, along with their theoretical background, will determine what type of lawyer they will become. Going to Harvard is not going to guarantee that you’re going to be successful.”
From Law.com article Agents of Change
Ron Jordan, senior principal director at Carter-White & Shaw, says during a recent day he received calls from a San Francisco firm asking for two attorneys, a firm in Minnesota that needs three attorneys, as well as a New Jersey firm on the lookout for three.
“One year ago, I would have had to solicit those calls,” said Jordan, who says he used to cold call law firms to generate business.
Oct
20
BigLaw Not Big On Diversity?
Filed Under Social Engineer, The Profession • Leave a Comment
The National Law Journal has a lengthy story on the lack of diversity in the legal profession. It seems we lag behind accountants, dentists, and even doctors. While there are several initiatives and institutions–Call to Action, Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the ABA’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Legal Profession, and the Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession–committed to increasing the number of minorities in law firms, so far meaningful results have been hard to come by.
From NLJ:
Five years ago this month, Roderick Palmore wrote “A Call to Action” — a pledge signed by the general counsel of some of the country’s largest corporations vowing to make diversity a major consideration in their selection of outside counsel.
Palmore, now the general counsel of General Mills Inc., wanted companies to put more business pressure on law firms to improve the diversity of their attorney ranks, where racial minorities long have been woefully underrepresented.
Diversity efforts across the profession mushroomed after the Call to Action was issued. Nearly every major law firm has created a diversity committee tasked with boosting minority and female representation. More scholarships for minority law students were established, affinity groups were formed and more so-called pipeline programs popped up to encourage minority students to pursue the law. Nary a week passed, it seemed, when a firm wasn’t unveiling a fresh diversity initiative or trumpeting an award received for its efforts.
Still, real progress in diversifying the profession has been painfully slow. Since 2004, the percentage of minority attorneys at U.S. law firms has crept up from 10 percent to just 12.6 percent in 2009, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) is hoping to change that:
The (LCLD), led by Palmore and Hunton & Williams managing partner Wally Martinez, brings together law firm managing partners and general counsel from major companies to hold legal leaders accountable for their minority numbers. The previous strategy, in which corporations and law firms tackled their diversity problems separately, didn’t yield the desired results, Palmore said.
“[Diversity programs] have been going on for a long time, and the results speak for themselves,” Palmore said. “They’ve been marginally successful, at best. That indicates a new approach is warranted.”
Oct
14
Prominent Civil Rights Lawyer, Raymond A. Brown, who represented the Black Panthers and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, has died. From the New York Times:
Mr. Brown, a tall, slender man blessed with the courtroom gifts of a strong voice, sweeping arm gestures and a prowling gait, developed his ardor for civil rights as an African-American soldier sent to Army bases in the South and seeing firsthand how shabbily and humiliatingly blacks were treated. He honed his reputation with Southern civil rights cases in the 1960s and later defended some of the black students — including his son — arrested for taking over a building at Columbia Universityin 1968.
But his talent for courtroom bravado, oratory and canny legal strategies was such that clients like New Jersey politicians, organized crime figures and union officials sought him out when issues far from civil rights were involved. He defended the mayor of Camden, N.J., Angelo Errichetti, in 1980 in one of the Abscam cases involving congressmen and other politicians accused of taking bribes in what had been a sting operation by federal authorities pretending to be wealthy Arab sheiks.
Oct
14
The Minority Law Journal reports that top in-house lawyers fear erosion of law firm diversity efforts. They quote our “Call to Action” hero, Roderick Palmore, General Mills Executive VP & General Counsel and Microsoft GC Brad Smith:
The danger is that the progress we have made on diversity will erode,” says Roderick “Rick” Palmore, general counsel of General Mills. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith concurs: “Even before the onset of the recession, we were seeing a situation where progress was disappointing. It’s very important that we not slide backward.
MLJ offers a number of quotes from summer associates and midlevels attesting to the fact that “It’s a scary time…” From MLJ:
Judging from our most recent Minority Experience Study, there’s definite cause for concern. This year we set out to measure the impact of the recession on midlevel associates of various racial groups. While all associates reported a falloff in work compared to last year, along with layoffs and benefit cuts at their firms, minority midlevels — particularly African Americans — seem to be feeling the economic crisis’s effects most acutely. Compared to those of their white colleagues, the workloads of black, Asian American, and Hispanic lawyers are lighter, and their billable hours are lower. Minority lawyers are also experiencing higher levels of anxiety about layoffs. That was true in our 2008 survey, but this year a greater percentage of associates in all ethnic groups said that the recession has affected them.
When Elie Mystal over at Above The Law first reported on MLJ’s survey, some commenters raged with the usual accusations that blacks from schools like Harvard and Stanford were merely affirmative action beneficiaries, who were unqualified to walk the halls of BigLaw in the first place. One commenter wondered why blacks hadn’t built their own V100 firms:
When Jews discovered that their full potential wasn’t recognized and used, they formed their own law firms and completely outclassed their WASP competitors. If the black lawyers really are equally competent and really are discriminated against, why is there not a single black law firm in the V100?
Another commenter noted the problem that could ensue at the mention of watermelon:
Why would I want to build a “professional relationship” with someone who comes from a culture that is increasingly obsessed with branding me a racist by any means necessary? It’s not worth the risk, e.g., that making a positive comment about the watermelon served as part of a lunch meeting won’t get me written up. Race relations have turned into such a PC minefield that I’d rather just stay out of it altogether.
Now the conservative blog Occidental Observer is predicting a white revolt:
And if young White lawyers start heading in a pro-White direction, by the way, this could mean big problems for the system. By positioning, they are expected to be on the enemy side: They’ve been trained in law “schul,” as a friend likes to say, and see their elders hold up “civil rights” and Atticus Finch (while they, meanwhile, grew up with O.J.). Today, they’re being laid off by the hundreds and see affirmative action ridiculousness up close, so they wouldn’t seem to have as much to lose.
Say what you will about lawyers, but they are articulate, and they are good at making trouble. Now that the system needing dismantling is essentially anti-White, this could come in handy.
Oct
13
Calling Defendant by ‘Murder’ Nickname Wins Him New Trial
Filed Under Social Engineer • Leave a Comment
The New York Law Journal reports that a gang member convicted of murdering a 14 year old was granted a new trial because prosecutors repeatedly referred to him by his unfortunate nickname. Hmmm…C-Murder take note:
Prosecutors’ repeated “gratuitous” references, “with a lot of arch emphasis and many facetious asides” to the nickname of a defendant — “Murder” — entitled the defendant to a new trial for attempted murder, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in United States v. Farmer, 07-2729-cr, that Laval “Murder” Farmer had been denied due process because the prosecutors “invited prejudice by repeatedly emphasizing Farmer’s nickname in a manner designed to suggest that he was known by his associates as a murderer and that he acted in accordance with that propensity in carrying out the acts charged in the indictment.”
Oct
12
Prominent Civil Rights Lawyer, Raymond A. Brown, who represented the Black Panthers and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, has died. From the New York Times:
Mr. Brown, a tall, slender man blessed with the courtroom gifts of a strong voice, sweeping arm gestures and a prowling gait, developed his ardor for civil rights as an African-American soldier sent to Army bases in the South and seeing firsthand how shabbily and humiliatingly blacks were treated. He honed his reputation with Southern civil rights cases in the 1960s and later defended some of the black students — including his son — arrested for taking over a building at Columbia Universityin 1968.
But his talent for courtroom bravado, oratory and canny legal strategies was such that clients like New Jersey politicians, organized crime figures and union officials sought him out when issues far from civil rights were involved. He defended the mayor of Camden, N.J., Angelo Errichetti, in 1980 in one of the Abscam cases involving congressmen and other politicians accused of taking bribes in what had been a sting operation by federal authorities pretending to be wealthy Arab sheiks.
