Tag Archives: Joe Patrice

Paraphrasing Mark Twain: “It is Better to Keep Your Mouth Closed . . . .”

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Appellate Law, Brief Writing, Contract Law, Legal Argument, Legal Writing

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Don’t Mock A Legal Argument If You’re Completely Wrong, by Joe Patrice, Above the Law Blog

https://abovethelaw.com/2013/09/dont-make-fun-of-a-legal-argument-if-youre-completely-wrong/

Mark Twain said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” It is always awkward when the court benchslaps your legal argument.

There are useful lessons here for all of us, not just State Farm. First, when your client is relying on the terms of a contract, note its details before you say something you will wish you hadn’t. Second, be careful with hyperbole and sarcasm when writing a brief for an appellate court.

I agree with Mr. Patrice. The opening paragraph of the Sixth Circuit Court’s opinion is worth repeating. -CCE

There are good reasons not to call an opponent’s argument ‘ridiculous,’ which is what State Farm calls Barbara Bennett’s principal argument here. The reasons include civility; the near-certainty that overstatement will only push the reader away (especially when, as here, the hyperbole begins on page one of the brief); and that, even where the record supports an extreme modifier, ‘the better practice is usually to lay out the facts and let the court reach its own conclusions.’ But here the biggest reason is more simple: the argument that State Farm derides as ridiculous is instead correct.

Appellate Court Benchslaps Trial Judge – Ouch.

25 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Appellate Judges, Benchslap, Judges

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Appeals Panel Rips Judge Over One-Minute Decision, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://abovethelaw.com/2016/10/appeals-panel-rips-judge-over-one-minute-decision/

The only thing more stinging than a satisfying benchslap is the cool, crisp bite of a sly insult. The understated quip can often accomplish so much more than the breathless broadside. For example, an opinion reversing the court below that signs off with, ‘next time, we assume you’ll do your job,’ boasts more devastating heft than anything Justice Scalia served up. It’s just so cold.

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Perfect Benchslap For Redaction Running Amuck.

08 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Benchslap, Court Orders, Federal Judges, Judges, Legal Writing, U.S. District Courts

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Judge Trolls Lawyers Without Saying Anything At All, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/08/judge-trolls-lawyers-without-saying-anything-at-all/

Joe beat me to it. Many thanks to Jessica L. Craft at Holden & Carr for the heads’ up. -CCE

Judge Charles Breyer proves that a redaction can be worth a thousand words. . . .

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Big Law Firms Miss $1.5 Billion Dollar Mistake.

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Diligence, Lawyer Supervision, Legal Ethics, Malpractice, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Rules of Professional Responsibility, Supervising Support Staff

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Mayer  Brown & Simpson Thacher Make Epic Screwup, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/mayer-brown-simpson-thacher-make-epic-screwup/

It is rare indeed to find such a dearth of responsibility among so many fine legal professionals. If you can, follow the bouncing ball. –CCE

Mistakes happen. It’s why pencils have erasers. But it’s also why law firms install tier after tier of increasingly senior professionals to second-guess every ounce of work product. It’s remarkably effective — and fairly lucrative on an hourly basis.

Unfortunately, the flip side of a tiered system is a tendency toward over-delegation. And that’s how an unwary paralegal ends up costing a bank millions. . . .

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Ex-Wife Cross-Examines Former Husband – No Squabbling!

20 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in Cross-Examination, Divorce, Family Law, Trial Tips and Techniques

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Biglaw Divorce Gets Nasty As Ex-Wife Cross-Examines Former Husband, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/06/biglaw-divorce-gets-nasty-as-ex-wife-cross-examines-former-husband/

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this was a good idea.

Hydee Feldstein, a retired Sullivan & Cromwell partner, decided to cross-examine her ex-husband Peter Gregora, a former tax litigator at Irell & Manilla, in their contentious divorce case — a case where Feldstein alleges Gregory stole nearly $20 million from her. They say a lawyer representing herself has a fool for a client. Well, Feldstein has outside counsel — indeed counsel from two firms, Miller & Ayala LLP and the Rudd Law Firm — yet it was Feldstein who cross-examined her ex in open court. After reading the resulting train wreck, perhaps there are fools on all sides of Feldstein’s defense. . . .

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Over-Delegation? Something Was Bound To Go Wrong!

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Law Office Management, Legal Ethics, Supervising Support Staff

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Mayer Brown Simpson Thatcher Make Epic Screwup, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/01/mayer-brown-simpson-thacher-make-epic-screwup/

Mistakes happen. It’s why pencils have erasers. But it’s also why law firms install tier after tier of increasingly senior professionals to second-guess every ounce of work product. It’s remarkably effective — and fairly lucrative on an hourly basis.

Unfortunately, the flip side of a tiered system is a tendency toward over-delegation. And that’s how an unwary paralegal ends up costing a bank millions.

era; loaned a good chunk of cash to General Motors as part of a $300 million synthetic loan. It also, in a completely unrelated agreement, joined other lenders in loaning GM $1.5 billion. When GM paid off the first loan, it prepared documents to release J.P. Morgan’s interest in GM property used to secure the $300 million. And that’s when this happened, according to the Second Circuit’s opinion:

A Mayer Brown partner assigned the work to an associate and instructed him to prepare a closing checklist and drafts of the documents required to pay off the Synthetic Lease and to terminate the lenders’ security interests in General Motors’ property relating to the Synthetic Lease. One of the steps required to unwind the Synthetic Lease was -to create a list of security interests held by General Motors’ lenders that would need to be terminated. To prepare the list, the Mayer Brown associate asked a paralegal who was unfamiliar with the transaction or the purpose of the request to perform a search for UCC‐1 financing statements that had been recorded against General Motors in Delaware. (emphasis added)

The paralegal passed the assignment on to one of the dudes in the mailroom and the cheese stands alone. . . .

Federal Judge Uses Benchslap Cartoon To Make Civil Procedure Point.

09 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Civil Procedure, Federal Civil Procedure, Jurisdiction

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Judge Uses Cartoons To Benchslap Jones Day, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://abovethelaw.com/2014/12/judge-uses-cartoons-to-benchslap-jones-day/

Judge Robert J. Jonker is a saucy one.

He once shot down Thomas M. Cooley Law’s trumped up defamation claims by declaring that the statement that Cooley “‘grossly inflates its graduates’ reported mean salaries’ may not merely be protected hyperbole, but actually substantially true.” Snap.

So it wasn’t a tremendous shock to see Judge Jonker involved when a recent benchslap kicked off with a cartoon.

Is it the funniest cartoon in the world? No. Indeed, it falls into the Ziggy realm of groan-inducing comics. But is it a special kind of embarrassing when a federal judge feels words are not enough to call out your inappropriate behavior and breaks the judiciary’s largely staid approach to put a comic into an opinion? Absolutely.

So what got him so irked? . . . .

Puppy Law Students Are So Cute When They’re Little.

20 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Recent Links and Articles

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Shut Up Everybody, New 1L Is Going to Explain How Smart He Is, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/ll2p24f

We’ve all have run into them, regardless of whether the person is a 1L or paralegal student. Thankfully, this stage is often temporary. In some cases, unfortunately, the condition is permanent. -CCE

Pack it in everybody! Mere days into the new year, there’s a 1L out there who has the ‘law’ all figured out. He can isolate the relevant aspects of a case at first glance and his agile mind can dismiss a flawed reading with ease. He’s so prepared that he’s already talking smack about law school graduates. And he did it all on Facebook so we can see how smart he is. We are truly living in blessed times. He will restore balance to the law!

Now, some naysayers would suggest that a 1L a few days into their law school career has no place calling out the work of those who’ve come before as irrelevant and untrue. That perhaps singling out by name a law school graduate and questioning his legal acumen was excessive for a mere pup. Ignore those voices. You can’t silence genius like this. . . .

Bad GPS Is A Defense? Who Knew?

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Consumer Law, Finance and Banking Law, Foreclosure

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Bank Robs House By Mistake, Refuses To Pay Up, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/mlm78h9

Imagine returning home from vacation and finding your home cleaned out. The thieves grabbed all the furniture, all the gadgets, all the kitchenware, and left you nothing.

That’s what happened to an Ohio woman recently, and the police are refusing to help.

That’s because the perpetrator was First National Bank. Except Katie Barnett was not behind on her payments; the bank just repossessed the wrong house.

Fair enough. Mistakes happen. The bank is going to pay her back though, right? . . . .

Federal Judge Benchslaps Counsel For Discovery Abuse In A Very Special Way.

03 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Depositions, Discovery, Federal Rules of Discovery, Objections, Sanctions, U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Iowa

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Biglaw Firm Ordered To Make A Video Apologizing For Discovery Abuses, by Joe Patrice, Above The Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/k9srego

Litigators get away with a lot of obnoxious stuff during discovery. For better or worse, the pre-trial discovery phase of civil litigation is every lawyer’s opportunity to relive those times when parents leave kids alone for the first time: every slight, disagreement, and jealousy on a slow boil explodes into anarchic back-biting once there’s no authority figure around to enforce civility. Bring on the mean-spirited letters and smack-talking RFAs.

When it comes to depositions, it doesn’t always reach ‘fatboy’ levels, but a federal deposition isn’t a deposition until someone threatens to call the magistrate — though never does.

Which is why this benchslap, where a federal judge levies a sanction straight out of elementary school, is so appropriate….

Legal Writing Faculty – It’s Okay To Sweat The Small Stuff.

16 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Bad Legal Writing, Citations, Education, Legal Writing, Legalese, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, The Bluebook

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A Law Professor’s Detailed, Thoughtful, and Comprehensive ‘Local Rules’ for Class: A Response to “Above the Law,” Legal Writing Prof Blog (guest post from Louisa Heiny, Adjunct Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law of the University of Utah, responding to recent post at Above The Law Blog)

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legalwriting/2014/02/atl.html

I used to teach Legal Writing and Legal Analysis to paralegals. Students had to work hard to earn a good grade in those classes. Some students appreciated the emphasis on grammar and punctuation, adhering strictly to court rules and the Bluebook, the eradication of legalese, and the insistence that details matter. Regrettably, not every student felt the same way, and missed the point. There was a reason why the bar was set high for my students. I wanted them to succeed once they were on the job.

If I learned anything from teaching, it was that the majority of students, when challenged, will work hard to meet high standards and expectations set for the class. If a teacher’s expectation are low, the work turned in will be mediocre at best. Both law and paralegal students face tough competition upon graduation. Quality matters more than ever.

It is nice to see that there are still legal writing faculty who set insist on quality. -CCE

I admit it: I read Above the Law. I read it every day. It’s even on my Facebook feed. It’s sometimes snarky, often witty, and has published some of the most ridiculously funny cease and desist letters I’ve ever seen. I use material from Above the Law in class to show students what not to do.

I’ll also admit that when I read the headline in Above the Law, ‘A Law Professor’s Detailed, Ridiculous, Condescending ‘Local Rules’ For Class,’ I panicked. There was a serious possibility that I was about to read my own syllabus. I’m an adjunct, so there was also a possibility that I was about to be fired.

After a moment’s relief that I was not the target of ATL’s ire, I read the article. Written by Joe Patrice, the post skewers the ‘local rules’ created by Santa Clara Law Professor Ray Bernstein for his legal writing class. While my own syllabus isn’t as detailed, Professor Bernstein has created a detailed, thoughtful, and comprehensive set of local rules designed to put students on notice of class requirements, as well as prepare them for the practice of law. . . .