Shelley DuBois with Fortune recently wrote this article regarding the decline in value of “making partner.” The article states:

But making partner doesn’t mean what it used to. It hasn’t for a while, in fact. And still, many entering the workforce covet that milestone.

Why? There are a couple of reasons, most of them having to do with tradition and pay. And while making partner isn’t meaningless, job seekers entering the workforce should question whether it’s a solid end-goal.

My Take: The key point here for young lawyers is that making partner in their firm is a step. It’s not the finish line. If you treat making partner like the finish line, the ascension of your career is over. It may even decline.

“Law firms just have to face the reality that they can’t make too many people equity partners or they can’t survive,” says Gerry Riskin, founding partner of law firm consulting firm Edge International. As a result, he says, some offer tiered partnerships with equity partners at the top. Other levels of partnership, Riskin says, “may be based on what other firms are doing, or may be just a glorified way of paying a salary.”

My Take: This is the reason that you have to keep your nose to the grindstone after you make partner.

Partner is as broad of a word as cancer is,” says Ken Young, who is part of the American Board Association’s Law Practice Management Section. “To the business community, it means something, but people need to dig beneath the title.”

My Take: Did that guy just use ‘partner’ and ‘cancer’ in the same sentence? One of his friends probably just lost a bet.

“I don’t think there are any givens anymore, and perhaps the old model had more givens,” Serino says. “The people that navigate that successfully have to reconsider the assumptions and constantly be ready to anticipate how workplace market conditions are going to change.” In other words, young people at big firms will need to redefine the old milestones.

My Take: Making partner is not job security. Job security is being able to get work. Getting work from within the firm counts, but getting work from outside the firm is what gets firm lawyers to the top compensation tiers.

My personal opinion is that in general, Mississippi defense firms are not doing enough marketing activities to raise their firm profile and attract business. Too much Mississippi defense work is going to law firms in other states. It would be understandable if the out of state lawyers were better than their Mississippi counterparts. But they aren’t. The difference is that these lawyers and their firms are out-marketing the Mississippi lawyers and firms. If Mississippi firms do not do more to address this issue, the value of making partner will continue to become marginalized.

There are excuses like “the dog ate my homework.” And then there is soon to be disbarred attorney Michael J. Brown’s excuse for stealing and “loaning” to a buddy nearly $2 million from De Mon McClinton’s minor guardianship that Brown “represented.” Brown’s excuses far exceed any “dog ate my homework” excuse known to man.

I mean, there are dogs. And they sometimes do eat things they aren’t supposed to. Maybe even homework. Sure the dog probably didn’t eat your homework. But it’s possible. That’s the thing with that excuse—it’s unlikely, but it’s remotely possible.

Michael J. Brown’s excuses, however, are impossible. His excuses are that the unicorn ate his homework. A non-existent mythical creature ate his homework.

Jackson Jambalaya has the details in coverage that far surpasses mass media. Here is Kingfish’s post on Tuesday’s hearing in which Hinds County Chancellor Dewaye Thomas ordered Brown back to jail for being a crook. The post includes a copy of Judge Thomas’ order. Here is Kingfish’s prior post with copy of special master report by Special Master Paul Rogers.

Here are some of the gems about Brown and the hearing from the JJ post, followed by my comment in brackets:

• The hearing began after Mike Brown and his attorney Clayton Lockhart arrived 15 minutes late. [Real smooth. Piss the judge off before the hearing even starts].
• He [Paul Rogers] testified $1.2 million of De Mon McClinton’s money went directly into Brown’s attorney account at Trustmark and that the overall amount the attorney improperly received was $1.54 million. Mr. Rogers said those funds were used to loan nearly $600,000 to Linus Shackelford. Brown also loaned himself money out of the account. Rogers also took issue with the $398,000 fee Brown charged the estate in 2001 for establishing the guardianship. He said Brown would have had to devote nearly two thousand hours at his $150 per hour rate to earn that fee, which he said was impossible. He also said Brown’s fee of $110,000 for an opinion letter was “fraud” as he literally copied an opinion letter from another attorney. [Proceed straight to jail. Do not pass Go].
• Mike Brown assumed the stand. He stated he had no money to deposit with the court because he had provided an accounting for all money for the estate. [”You see judge, there was this unicorn….”].
• Mr. Brown said “I did it this way to protect De Mon” and then said “I am paying the ultimate price for this because I’m being condemned . I apologize to my family and I apologize to my daughters on this whole thing. [”it was a bad unicorn judge…”]
• Upon questioning by Mr. Lockhart, Mr. Brown said he had discussed the Shackelford investment with Judge Robinson. Judge Thomas finally had enough and said there would be no more references to alleged conversations with judges that did not exist in any record. [i.e., enough with the damn unicorn.].
• Judge Thomas jailed Mike Brown on contempt of court and perjury. His bond is set at $250,000. [maybe Brown can sell his unicorn to cover his bail].

Any lawyer who has ever walked past the chancery courthouse knows that Brown’s story is complete and total B.S. Chancellors are sticklers for the rules and they want guardianship funds locked up tight. The suggestion that any chancellor would verbally approve bogus sounding investments and loans is preposterous, as is every other detail of Brown’s story. It is beyond preposterous.

Michael J. Brown is a disgrace to the profession. He deserves a long prison sentence.

Chancery Judge Larry Primeaux published this post about expert witnesses yesterday on his blog. The entire post is a must read, but I found this paragraph to be particularly interesting:

• If you are asked in discovery to provide the information set out in MRCP 26(b)(4)(A)(i) as to the subject matter, the substance of facts and opinions, and a summary of the grounds for opinions, you must provide a substantial enough answer to give the other side a reasonable idea of what the expert’s opinions will be and what it is that the expert uses as a basis for the opinion. If you do not timely provide that information, the testimony may be excluded, or you may be severely limited by a skimpy answer. This is important, and may be crucial to your case. If you don’t have a system in place to remind you to update and supplement your discovery well in advance of trial, you’d better come up with one for your survival’s sake.

This is interesting to me because I see a lot of the “skimpy answer” in my practice, but none of the “you may be severely limited by a skimpy answer.” It would be real interesting to see an expert’s testimony limited to the skimpy answer. Lawyers who practice before Judge Primeaux are on notice that it could happen to them.

Chancery Judge Larry Primeaux published this post about expert witnesses yesterday on his blog. The entire post is a must read, but I found this paragraph to be particularly interesting:

• If you are asked in discovery to provide the information set out in MRCP 26(b)(4)(A)(i) as to the subject matter, the substance of facts and opinions, and a summary of the grounds for opinions, you must provide a substantial enough answer to give the other side a reasonable idea of what the expert’s opinions will be and what it is that the expert uses as a basis for the opinion. If you do not timely provide that information, the testimony may be excluded, or you may be severely limited by a skimpy answer. This is important, and may be crucial to your case. If you don’t have a system in place to remind you to update and supplement your discovery well in advance of trial, you’d better come up with one for your survival’s sake.

This is interesting to me because I see a lot of the “skimpy answer” in my practice, but none of the “you may be severely limited by a skimpy answer.” It would be real interesting to see an expert’s testimony limited to the skimpy answer. Lawyers who practice before Judge Primeaux are on notice that it could happen to them.

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office announced yesterday that a Mississippi lawyer was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars:

The Secretary of State’s Office has been alerted to an internet scheme with international ties that bilked a Mississippi attorney out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Mississippi attorney received an email from someone purporting to be Robert Larsen of Larsen Fabrics located in the United Kingdom. “Mr. Larsen” claimed a Mississippi company owed money on a contract and was willing to settle. “Mr. Larsen” employed the Mississippi attorney to collect the debt. The attorney was then informed the Mississippi company was prepared to settle.

A fraudulent settlement check was sent to the attorney, allegedly from the Mississippi company. The attorney deposited the check and wired funds to a Japanese account before the fraud was discovered. The Mississippi company had no knowledge of the scheme until contacted by investigators.

The Mississippi Bar warned lawyers the same basic scam in 2009. I’ve written about lawyer email scams multiple times on this blog. I’m not so much surprised that someone got scammed as I am that someone bought the same tired scam that worked 3 years ago. I used to get multiple emails per week trying to run this scam. It now seems like it is down to no more that 1 a month.

I don’t know who it was who fell for this scam, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Bill M. Lott.

Alan Lange announced on Monday that he will no longer be the primary face of Yall Politics:

All good things must come to an end. My tenure as the primary face of YallPolitics is one of those things. I am happy to announce that Frank Corder of the FireMcCoy blog will now be the face of YallPolitics.

There are a lot of reasons why I am making this change, but ultimately the biggest one is I just think it’s time.

The accomplishments of the site are staggering:

Over 40,000,000 page views
Almost 30,000 posts that now serve as a living breathing Mississippi political archive
Regularly named as one of the best state political blogs in the state/country
Mentions by the WSJ, LA Times, Forbes, WAPO, Overlawyered, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Pajamas, Politico, RedState, the Hill (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few) and just about every Mississippi political columnist and pundit around
And, of course, the book Kings of Tort that I co-authored as a result of our coverage of the Dickie Scruggs scandal.

Lange was an active blogger for 7 years.

My Take:

He ran a blog for 7 years? Many blogs go dormant before they have 7 posts. Blogging for 7 years is about like playing running back in the NFL for 20 years. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hang in there on this blog. But I bet it’s not 7 years.

Blogging is like shrimping. Hard. And sometimes you wonder why the hell you do it. Particularly when you piss people off. And if you have a decent political or legal blog, you are going to piss some people off.

Alan Lange is one of the founding fathers of Mississippi blogging. He built Yall Politics into a one-stop site for political information in Mississippi, including legal issues with mass public or political interest. In addition to reporting and commenting, Lange led a legal challenge a to secrecy orders in a court proceeding. In writing about that case I stated:

It’s an interesting indicator of the direction of the media that the challenge was made by a blog instead of a print newspaper. In the past, newspapers would have made this type of challenge. But with circulations down and news papers both struggling financially and controlled by large corporations, the days of newspapers being the conscience of the community appear over. That role appears to be shifting to bloggers. But in Mississippi at least, there are probably not enough bloggers yet to completely fill the void.

Lange and Yall Politics are a big reason why there are any bloggers to fill the void. We have some very good reporters in Mississippi. But we do not have enough of them. Blogs like Ya’ll Politics, Jackson Jambalaya and NMissCommentor play a huge role in keeping people informed. And they do it for free.

I doubt that this blog would exist if Yall Politics never existed. That probably applies to other current and future blogs that Mississippians rely on for information. It’s hard to overstate the impact that the site has had under Lange’s leadership. Lange will be in the inaugural class of the Mississippi Blogging Hall of Fame.

There have been rumors swirling for months that Jackson based Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis will merge with the New Orleans based Jones Walker firm. This would add to Jones Walker’s presence as a regional firm.

Virtually every Mississippi lawyer who I have talked to this week wants to talk about this rumor. Word is that the merger is taking place and most Watkins Ludlam lawyers will be a part of Jones Walker going forward. It sounds like Watkins Ludlam—one of Mississippi’s venerable law firms—will no longer exist.

I am hearing that more than a few Watkins Ludlam lawyers will not be joining Jones Walker.

There have also been a lot of rumors about Brunini merging with Baker Donelson. I am hearing that there is no truth to that rumor.

Yesterday the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed further proceedings in the Union Carbide v. Brown case pending a determination of Union Carbide’s motion to recuse Judge Eddie Bowen. Here is the Supreme Court’s Order. Here is my post where I wrote about the recusal motion.

The Clarion-Ledger article confuses me and makes me suspect that I am missing a piece of the puzzle. I get this part of the article:

Union Carbide Corp. had asked Bowen of Raleigh to vacate the jury award and to step aside from any further action in the case because he didn’t divulge that his father had filed two similar asbestos cases.

Bowen’s inaction resulted in Union Carbide petitioning the Supreme Court to force him off the case.

The judge’s bias and prejudice against Union Carbide and Chevron Phillips, the other party being sued, were evidenced in his rulings, comments in front of the jury, and his coaching of Brown’s attorneys in questioning witnesses, according to Union Carbide’s motion.

Here is where the article loses me:

Georgia Pacific filed court papers last month saying Bowen, who was presiding over three Mississippi lawsuits involving the company, had sued one of the company’s subsidiaries in Jasper County.

The company said the lawsuit filed by Tullos on behalf of Bowen and others is materially similar to the pending lawsuits assigned to Bowen.

What is this talking about? How did the article go from Union Carbide to Georgia Pacific? Is this talking about the same case or a related case? Did Judge Bowen not recuse himself from the case even though he had sued the defendant? I can’t tell.

Someone help me out here.

Yesterday the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed further proceedings in the Union Carbide v. Brown case pending a determination of Union Carbide’s motion to recuse Judge Eddie Bowen. Here is the Supreme Court’s Order. Here is my post where I wrote about the recusal motion.

The Clarion-Ledger article confuses me and makes me suspect that I am missing a piece of the puzzle. I get this part of the article:

Union Carbide Corp. had asked Bowen of Raleigh to vacate the jury award and to step aside from any further action in the case because he didn’t divulge that his father had filed two similar asbestos cases.

Bowen’s inaction resulted in Union Carbide petitioning the Supreme Court to force him off the case.

The judge’s bias and prejudice against Union Carbide and Chevron Phillips, the other party being sued, were evidenced in his rulings, comments in front of the jury, and his coaching of Brown’s attorneys in questioning witnesses, according to Union Carbide’s motion.

Here is where the article loses me:

Georgia Pacific filed court papers last month saying Bowen, who was presiding over three Mississippi lawsuits involving the company, had sued one of the company’s subsidiaries in Jasper County.

The company said the lawsuit filed by Tullos on behalf of Bowen and others is materially similar to the pending lawsuits assigned to Bowen.

What is this talking about? How did the article go from Union Carbide to Georgia Pacific? Is this talking about the same case or a related case? Did Judge Bowen not recuse himself from the case even though he had sued the defendant? I can’t tell.

Someone help me out here.

On Wednesday the West Virginia Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s legislative damages caps. Here is the opinion in MacDonald v. City Hospital, Inc. One of the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case was Robert Peck, who argued for the plaintiff last week in the Sears v. Learmonth case at the Mississippi Supreme Court.

This is not good news for people hoping that the Mississippi Supreme Court will strike Mississippi’s caps in the Sears case.