Minnesota Lawyer Blog

I was pleased to see that Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for her superb portrayal of the career-obsessed general counsel of an agricultural products company in “Michael Clayton.” As I have blogged about before, Swinton’s character, Karen Crowder, is a perfect example of someone whose priorities are out of skew.

One excellent scene juxtaposes a video crew interviewing Crowder on taking over the general counsel job from her mentor (who has been kicked up stairs to the boardroom) with earlier scenes of Crowder nervously preparing for the interview as she gets dressed. In the interview, Crowder appears, calm, poised, professional and completely collected. In the preparation scenes, she’s a mess, practically having a panic attack as she grapples with how she will answer the questions. The question that gives her the most challenge is the obligatory one that has to do with life balance. She comes up with the clearly erroneous conclusion that her job is her life balance.

Trying desperately to protect her company and her mentor from some potentially devastating revelations in a class action lawsuit, Crowder crosses the ethical line. Ultimately, she goes so far as to become complicit in a murder and an attempted murder.

Despite Crowder’s obviously wrong choices, Swinton makes the character sympathetic. You can’t help thinking that things would have turned out a lot better for her if she just had more balance in her life.

It put me in mind of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, the local group that aids members of the bar with their life issues. LCL is currently seeking a funding increase that would be paid for by adding another $8 on the fees attorneys pay to maintain their licenses. (Minnesota Lawyer has a story this week, password required.) The money would be used to allow LCL to maintain and expand on its excellent work. Sounds like an idea worthy of $8 to me.

After an interesting week at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, I think the parties would best be served by taking a time out, reassessing their positions and trying to find some common ground to work on together.

While you can certainly disagree with the methodology, Attorney General Lori Swanson took an important step in confirming that there are a significant number of staff members with management-related concerns. I think the office should have a chance to work those out internally. It’s in the common interest of both sides to do so rather than letting anyone make political hay out of it.

And so, for the time being, we will return to our regularly scheduled topics, such as the size of Larry Craig’s briefs.

I was recently reading an online article on the The Rake site about the the growing importance of Web media ("All the News that Fits and Then Some.") Since Minnesota Lawyer is both a print and online information provider, it is with some interest that I read such thoughtful reflections on how the migration of readers to the Internet has affected the media industry.

The Rake included the results of a survey of "a bevy of local online media folks" asking them where they go on the Web for news. The Rake listed the top 25 responses or so, and lo and behold, there was the Minnesota Lawyer blog on the list! I felt pretty good about that until I tried the link to our blog in the article and discovered it was faulty. Sigh. Being an online news provider is all about being humble.

You only have two more days to nominate your favorite young guns for our Up & Coming Attorneys award.


This will be Minnesota Lawyer's eighth year presenting the awards. We're looking for attorneys admitted to the bar within the last 10 years whose work has influenced you, your practice or the profession. In particular, we are looking for counselors who have distinguished themselves through any of the following:

• professional accomplishment
• leadership
• service to community or profession
• achievement as in-house counsel

You know who they are, now tell us! An online nomination form is available here, and a .pdf version can be downloaded here.

Nominations are due Friday, Feb. 22. We will announce the award winners in early March and host a lunch celebration for the honorees in May.

Thanks!

Minnesota Lawyer's website just posted the results of today's "informal survey" of attorneys at the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. (Click here for article).

Staff attorneys were asked whether the writers of a recent letter critical of Lori Swanson spoke for them. The majority of those present and willing to participate said no. (The vote was reportedly 52-30, with 12 declining to participate and 30 out of the office or not otherwise available to vote.)

It's hard for me to say what that vote means because I find the question itself confusing. You could be in favor of a union and not agree with everything that was in that letter. Or you could agree with everything that was in that letter, but not want to give the letter writers the authority to speak for you. It would have been a much simpler and cleaner affair if they had just asked the employees if they wanted to unionize.

An interesting twist on the labor dispute at the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. According to another e-mail to staff posted on this site, Lori Swanson has announced that Miles Lord (former judge, AG, U.S. Attorney) and former Judge Jonathan Lebedoff will conduct an "informal advisory" on the staff's stance on unionization. The unionization issue -- which had been festering since Mike Hatch left the office last May -- recently resurfaced when three assistant AG's publicly identified themselves as supporting a union and called upon Swanson to recognize it.

Lord and Lebedoff -- who combined have practiced law in Minnesota since the days the dinosaurs roamed the Earth -- will apparently function as a two-man Warren Commission, visiting the attorneys in the office today to help Swanson get a "sense of the staff."

I am not sure how I feel about this idea, but I think it's better than Swanson doing the gauging herself as she indicated she intended to do in yesterday's e-mail. At the very least, one has to give Swanson points for innovation for coming up with this.

Hennepin County District Judge Denise Reilly took the unusual step of postponing a trial because too much information about the case was contained in a Star Tribune article about the case.

The article, published Monday, reported that two former lawyers with the firm of Heins Mills and Olson filed suit over the way the firm distributed $103 million in legal fees from a nationwide class-action suit against AOL Time Warner.

The suit said that lawyers Samuel Heins and Stacey Mills got $48 million and $32 million, respectively, several times more than was received by the other lawyers who worked on the case. The suit to be heard before Reilly was filed by one of the lawyers who claimed to be short-changed.

William Pentelovitch, representing Heins Mills, said the article went beyond the facts of the pending lawsuit, citing background information that could prevent prospective jurors from being impartial. Reilly agreed.

Should newspapers be restricted in what they can report about a case before it goes to trial? It seems that substantiated, relevant data shouldn’t have to be embargoed for the benefit of one or the other side in a lawsuit.

In an e-mail sent to her entire staff this morning, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson offered a response to a letter sent by three of her assistant AGs late last week calling upon her to recognize a union in the office. (As Minnesota Lawyer reported yesterday, the letter represents the first time current staff members in the AG’s Office have stepped forward and openly advocated for a union.)

Swanson said she was sick with the flu last week when the letter was posted on the Internet, and that she was “disappointed” the employees distributed the letter to the public and the media before she could respond.

“This suggests a communication that is more about a political swipe and less about a good faith attempt to communicate,” Swanson wrote. “It does not further the mission of this office to have political debate with staff members who are supposed to represent this office as professionals.”

(In their letter, the three had disclaimed having any political motivation. “[This effort] is not supported by any outside political interests, nor is it the product of any political vendetta,” they wrote. The three assistant AGs who wrote the letter were all hired during the administrations of AGs from the DFL Party – one under Swanson, one under Mike Hatch and one under Skip Humphrey.)

Swanson said in the e-mail that she “strongly disagrees” with the accusations in the letter, which include assertions that a campaign has been waged in her office to stifle the unionization attempt.

She said she will have two of her deputies meet with the three assistant AGs who wrote the letter to “to flesh out the purpose of the letter and whether the three signatories actually represent the rest of the staff.” She also said she has her own "sense of the staff" and plans to gauge the staff further.

Swanson also noted in the e-mail that Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, yesterday distributed copies of the three staff members’ letter on the floor of the House and called for an investigation of her office.

A copy of the full text of Swanson’s e-mail appears as a comment to another post on this site. We have verified through independent channels that staff members received the posted e-mail.

The Wall Street Journal law blog tackles a topic today that has gotten a lot of play locally -- the attorney-discipline case of Hennepin County prosecutor Gemma Graham. ("Prosecutor Suspended for Spurning CLE Requirements.")

The facts of Graham's case will be familiar to our readers at this point, but the comments the post generates make good reading. For example, there is a lot of negative commentary on the value of mandatory CLEs. Here's one of the more cutting:

This is genius, skip CLE for 20 years and get a 900 fine! I’d do that in a
second. CLE is the biggest scam in the world. It provides no value except to the
CLE companies who bilk their customers and line the pockets of the state bars
for mailing lists and stringent requirements.

Although the comment is a bit harsh, I personally prefer a voluntary CLE system to a mandatory one -- even with the breaks for bagels and chocolate chip cookies.

The posting also contained the revelation that Minnesota is the home state of the principal writer of the WSJ Law blog, Dan Slater. While the Manhattan litigator turned blogger left the Minnie Apple for the Big Apple some time ago, his nod to the Gopher State shows he hasn't forgotten the taste of lutefisk.

This joke practically writes itself, but a motion for an enlarged brief has been filed in the Sen. Larry Craig case.

Truth be told, it's the Metropolitan Airports Commission, not Senator Craig, with the apparent problem in its brief size. The MAC says it needs the extra room to address all the novel issues raised by Craig and his amici in their briefs.

"Despite honest efforts, I am unable to abbreviate the text to the extent required by the Minnesota Rules of Appellate Procedure while giving proper attention to the issues raised by both factions in this appeal, and I wish to provide the Court with all information and analysis necessary to make an informed decision," writes the MAC's attorney, Christopher P. Renz.

No word yet from Craig on his stance on this. It is widely expected that he will be understanding of the difficulties inherent in trying to keep within a very confined space.

Phil Resnick, who died yesterday of pancreatic cancer, was a fine lawyer. I first met him in 1981, while I was still in law school and clerking for Hennepin County District Court Judge Patrick Fitzgerald. Resnick came before the court defending a man named Isaac Brown.

It was a tragic and notorious case: an 18-year police force veteran, Richard Miller, was shot as he walked up to check on Brown's vehicle, which the officer suspected was stolen. Miller was alone in his squad car and back up couldn’t get there quickly enough. Brown shot him five times. Police hunted Brown for three days until he surrendered with the aid of his minister.

Faced with Brown’s confession and an eyewitness, Resnick put on a defense focusing on the fact that Brown was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol. The defense was meticulous, professional and spirited. (Brown was ultimately convicted.) I remember Resnick putting his hand on Brown’s shoulder at the counsel table during the trial. I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that it was only for the jury’s benefit. Resnick did a great job with an impossible task.