Minnesota Lawyer Blog

Effective today, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights has changed its name to The Advocates for Human Rights.

Although its name has changed, its "mission to promote and protect human rights locally, nationally, and internationally will remain the same," the group said in a press release sent out yesterday.

We shall, of course, miss having our state as part of this worthy group's name, but, given the international nature of what it does, the name change makes sense. Fortunately, the group formerly known as the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights will continue to be based here and do excellent work locally.

Good news for local lawyers and law students: You will soon have Nixon to kick around again!

OK, OK, it's actually the topic of Watergate that will be kicked around at a forum at the University of St. Thomas School of Law this April -- but that doesn't make nearly as interesting a lead in, does it? The program is titled, "Watergate revisited: The ethics of lawyers."

UST snagged John Dean as one of the panelists. (Dean was counsel to Nixon, for those of you who only recall Watergate as the place where Monica Lewinsky lived.)

The event will be held on Wednesday, April 2 from 4 to 6:15 p.m. in the Schulze Grand Atrium of UST Law located between 11th and 12th and LaSalle Avenue and Harmon Place in downtown Minneapolis. Admission is $25 for the program ($75 if you want the two CLE credits). Students are admitted free. Reservations required in advance.

For more details, click here.

We had a laugh yesterday afternoon at Minnesota Lawyer’s offices. When we put a poll on our main website asking voters whether we thought the attorneys at Minnesota’s Attorney General’s office should be allowed to unionize, votes soon started trickling – and then flooding – in, as people on both sides of the issue frantically clicked the “yes” and “no” options. (The anti-union folks seem to have been much busier.)

The response demonstrated (take your pick) A) the passionate feelings this issue stirs; B) the silly lengths that some on both sides will go to in order to make their point.

We’ve covered this story to some length, but a year after it first emerged, the basic facts remain the same: AFSCME wants to form a union in the AG’s office, the AGO is digging in its heels, lots of lawyers (about one-third) have left the AGO, and morale in the office is bad and getting no better.

In the meantime, we’ve gotten numerous anonymous communications from pro-union folks (both on this blog and via e-mail) about the heavy-handed tactics that continue to be used against AGO employees, but little of substance around which to build a story that wouldn’t be one-sided and full of unsubstantiated speculation.

At the same time, the AGO is as uncooperative with us as it is with other media outlets, refusing to return calls and failing to follow through on Data Practices Act requests. Lori Swanson and her loyalists seem all too happy to see this story go unreported, even if means pushing ethical boundaries. And current and former AGO employees who could potentially contribute to the story are either unwilling to speak for attribution or have a pro-union axe to grind.

That puts us and other outlets in a bind, because while there might still be a story to be told at the AGO, most of what we’ve heard is hearsay, and we can’t use hearsay. We have all the Deep Throats we need on this one.

If there truly is more to be told, we hope a few people from both sides of this issue will drop their cloak of anonymity and let us know.

A St. Paul Pioneer Press poll reports the unsurprising news that Minnesotans don’t want to be disenfranchised from selecting judges. It also found that Minnesotans would favor switching to a retention-election system, which is consistent with the recommendation of the Quie Commission’s majority.

A retention system has also received a qualified endorsement from the Minnesota State Bar Association. By a narrow margin, the MSBA voted in favor of switching to an appointment system, but also endorsed retention elections as the "next best" choice.

Interestingly, the PiPress reports that the survey is being released just weeks before the Legislature is scheduled to consider a constitutional amendment that would make judges subject to periodic retention elections.

It’s not my job to disrespect my colleagues, but the Legislature doesn’t go into session until Feb. 12 and the only scheduled “consideration” of judicial elections is a joint meeting on Feb. 4 of the Senate committees on the judiciary, judiciary budget and state and local government operations and oversight. The latter committee is chaired by Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope. Rest's administrator, Brenda Shafer-Pellinen, reports that the meeting is the only currently scheduled judicial election related event. The list of speakers at the meeting is not yet final, but should be available by the end of the week, Shafer-Pellinen said.

Most Legislature-watchers don’t expect a constitutional amendment to come out of this session.

One of the more interesting debates going on in Minnesota Lawyer right now is if the state should have a say in whether or not a defendant gets a jury waived-trial. So far, we have published two letters on the issue from Minnesota State Public Defender John Stuart and one from Stearns County Attorney Janelle P. Kendall, the president-elect of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association.

Depending upon how you want to frame the issue, the question is whether:
-- the defendant should have the right to a trial without a jury; or
-- the state should have a right to a trial with a jury.

Right now, defendants can waive juries in favor of having a judge decide their case without regard to how the prosecutor may feel about it. The MCAA recently announced that it plans to lobby for a law change requiring the prosecutor to sign off on such waivers, sparking the recent spate of letter writing.

It's an interesting issue -- and one that both defenders and prosecutors obviously feel very strongly about.

In an interesting decision earlier this week, the 8th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and inhumane punishment does not require a correctional facility to provide an inmate with access to an elective, nontherapeutic abortion.

Notably, however, the 8th Circuit did affirm the trial judge’s ruling that the inmate should be provided transportation for the procedure under relevant caselaw.

In Roe v. Crawford, et al., the plaintiff, an inmate in the Missouri Department of Corrections, requested but was denied transportation for an elective abortion. She then challenged the legality of the MDC’s policy against providing transportation for inmates wanting to terminate their pregnancies.

A federal District Court judge in Missouri found that the policy violated the woman’s Eighth Amendment rights because the desire for an elective abortion constitutes a serious medical need to which the correctional facility was deliberately indifferent.

The 8th Circuit disagreed, finding that in light of recent developments of the law, “an elective, non-therapeutic abortion does not constitute a serious medical need,” and a prison institution’s refusal to provide an inmate with access to the procedure “does not rise to the level of deliberate indifference” to be an Eighth Amendment violation.

Essentially, the decision is both a victory and a defeat for the pro-life and pro-choice folks. Ultimately, the court did clear the way for the inmate to get the abortion, however, so the pro-choice side in particular is touting it as a major win.

We received an interesting comment to the post directly below, "Billable hours are sooo 2007." (Believe it or not, we do read all your comments!)

This particular comment has nothing to do with the post to which it is attached, so we thought we'd pull it out and place it here in its own post so folks concerned with the topic would have the opportunity to get a look at it.

We do, naturally, have some thoughts on the topic the commenter asks about, but first wanted to open it up to see if anyone else had any input on this subject before we formulate a response. So, without further ado, here is the comment. Add anything you like, and we promise to address the substance of this sometime next week.

I'm disappointed in Minnesota Lawyer's recent lack of coverage of the ongoing story of attempts to organize a union at the AG's office and AG Swanson's ham-handed efforts to undermine that effort (the Keystone Cops would have done a better job a union-busting). Minnesota Lawyer's blog help make the story public earlier and exposed the questionable decision to keep Mike Hatch on board. Now Minn Lawyer appears to have forgotten to do any follow up coverage. It was big deal when there was unrest in the US Attorney's Office but somehow the departure of 1/3 of the line attorneys at the AG's office in the past year and ongoing unionization efforts doesn't make for a story of public interest? C'mon. Where's the journalism?

While you are waiting for our insightful reply, we suggest you check out the piece Steve Perry wrote last week for his blog, the Daily Mole. ("It's cat-and-mouse in the AG's Office as staffers try to unionize.")

It's not often that law firms are mentioned in the Fashion & Style pages of the New York Times. The practice of law is, after all, deeply rooted in tradition.

But some offices are easing away from billable hour requirements to lure new talent and place a renewed emphasis on work-life balance.

During a recent interview, attorney Trudy Halla with Briggs and Morgan told me that younger people are actively searching for — demanding even — a job that offers more than a fat paycheck for toiling 60 to 70 hours a week.

"This is not just an issue for women, it's a generational issue," Halla said.

Such is the reasoning behind Deborah Epstein Henry's FACTS program.

Henry is the founder of Flex-Time Lawyers, a consulting firm that promotes work-life balance for law firms. In the Times article, she outlines some new ways for law offices to budget employee time:

Fixed — lower profile work with a predictable schedule
Annualized — intense bursts of work followed by lulls
Core — working in blocks of time to coordinate family activities
Targeted — a customized schedule of working hours
Shared — sharing the workload with others

So is this the beginning of the end for billable hours? I think it's only a matter of time. But if you're trying to attract top talent, remember that flexibility is fashionable.

Oh, and get rid of that man-bag.

"I don't understand all the fancy lawyering, I just know a white kid robbed the bank and they beat me up."

-- Alex Hixon after settling his excessive-force case against Golden Valley police for 1.15M, as quoted by the Star Tribune in "Lawsuit's settlement brings no joy to man beaten up by police."

The entire Strib article is pretty interesting. Hixon talks about how the settlement is not grounds for celebration because he was traumatized by the event and had lingering mental-health issues. The frank reaction pokes a pretty big hole in the common misperception of personal-injury plaintiffs dancing on tables after they "hit the jackpot" with a big verdict.

Meanwhile, the city takes a highly questionable route by publicly portraying the officer as a victim and claiming (through its lawyer) that absolutely nothing wrong was done. I don't think that's the best way to go when paying out a million-dollar settlement after a jury finds against you. Better to just say you are not admitting liability and leave it at that.

Legislators are considering a new proposal to compensate survivors of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, but discussion of the plan seems to point out the bind the disaster victims are in when it comes to recovery option.

Under the proposal, survivors would be paid out of a fund that would limit awards to no more than $400,000 per person. The putative purpose of the effort would be to pay victims for losses not covered by insurance or other sources, but in some cases, survivors could be worse off accepting the payment.

For one thing, federal law allows insurance companies to recoup their costs in many cases like these, which means part of whatever is paid out could get skimmed off the top by insurers before the intended recipient sees a nickel.

Also, while survivors could still sue private companies under the compensation plan, anyone who accepts money from a fund would sacrifice their right to sue the state.

Even if victims forewent a compensation offer, Minnesota law limits the state's liability to $300,000 per person and $1 million total for everyone who sues over a particular incident.

The state has already received notice of potential legal claims from almost 80 injured bridge victims and their family members. Families of six of those killed also had outlined plans to sue the state for compensation.

Even if most of those suits never ended up getting filed, the eventual terms of the new compensation proposal (one of two being discussed) should be interesting.