Alabama State Bar

Chief Justice Cobb to leave office
By Lisa Tindell, Brewton Standard
June 29, 2011

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb squelched two rumors Wednesday — she will not seek re-election to the office nor will she hold the office after August.

Cobb announced her decision to resign from her position in an effort to spend more time with her family. In making the announcement Cobb ended speculation about her political future.

“For many months there has been speculation about whether or not I would seek re-election for a second term as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court,” Cobb said. “For a variety of reasons, I have decided that not only to announce that I will not seek another term but also that I will be stepping down as Chief Justice.”

Cobb said the decision was a difficult one for her, in part because of the financial status of the system.

“This decision has been infinitely more difficult because of the inadequate funding budgeted by the Legislature for our judicial system,” Cobb said. “I desperately wanted to depart leaving the system on better financial footing than when I came.”

Personal reasons Cobb noted as having some bearing on her decision included her family.

“My mother is 87 and my daughter, Caitlin, is 15,” Cobb said. “Another statewide race at this point would require me to sacrifice precious time which I could be spending with my family. I am now entering a new phase of my life. Beginning the first day of August, I will be able to dedicate the bulk of my time to being a better wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, church member and friend.”

Alyce Spruell, president of the Alabama State Bar, said Cobb’s announcement to leave the office is one she is “sorry” to hear.

“We are sorry to see Justice Cobb leave her position but wish her well,” Spruell said. “During her term she has always been sensitive to the concerns of the practicing bar. I know from personal experience, having worked side by side with her during my term as president of the state bar on issues affecting the profession and courts, that she approached every task with tireless dedication.”

Spruell said Cobb served as a leader in many ways including the justice system and women who are a part of that system.

“Justice Cobb led Alabama’s courts to institute innovate and progress reforms that have increased the public’s confidence in our legal system and ensured that equal treatment under the law is provided for all,” Spruell said. “Besides knocking down the last major hurdle for women in the judiciary, Chef Justice Cobb left a record of successes in her stewardship of the Supreme Court and in her role as chief executive officer of the state Court system.”

Cobb said she also hoped that Governor Robert Bentley would give ample consideration when choosing the next person for the job.

“I urge Governor Bentley to appoint someone who is an experienced trial judge, someone who understands that the most important aspects in people’s lives are impacted by the curt system: their children, homes, jobs, reputations, freedom, or whether the, in fact will live or die,” Cobb said. “I pray that my replacement will dedicate his or her time and energy to improving the access and quality of the justice system and most importantly, will be someone who cares about doing what is right rather than doing what is politically expedient, someone who cares more about the next generation than the next election.”

Cobb has served in her position as Chief Justice since 2007 having begun her career in Alabama’s Supreme Court in 1997 when she was appointed to serve as the Judge of the Court of the Judiciary. A former resident of Evergreen, Cobb lives in Montgomery with her family.

See also: “Cobb steps down as Chief Justice,” Scottsboro Daily Sentinel
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Next legal clinic for Alabama tornado victims set for Tuesday in McDonald Chapel
By Robin DeMonia, The Birmingham News
June 27, 2011

Storm victims who have legal questions about dealing with insurance companies,
government agencies, building contractors or landlords can get free answers from lawyers who are volunteering their services.

The next legal clinic in Jefferson County is scheduled Tuesday night at Katherwood Baptist Church in McDonald Chapel, said Elizabeth Clark, communications coordinator of the Birmingham Volunteer Lawyers Program. The lawyers will be available at the church from 6:30-8:30 p.m., she said.

Future clinics are being planned at other sites, including Concord and Pratt City.

A three-day clinic last week in the Bessemer courthouse drew only six storm victims over the course of three days, Clark said.

Lawyers who volunteered their time in Bessemer said storm victims may not have had enough notice because the clinic was put together in a hurry to beat an approaching deadline to register for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That deadline has now been extended to July 18.

But the lawyers who volunteered at Bessemer said they are sure the low turnout is no indication that storm victims don't have legal issues. A number of them have clients who have come to their offices with problems involving such things as insurance contracts and mortgages.

The lawyers worry that some storm victims may not be aware they need help or might not know the questions they should be asking.

"Being your own lawyer in these kinds of situations can cause you a lot of problems," said George W. Beasley, who practices in Hueytown.

Doug Burns, a deputy district attorney who helped lead the charge for the clinic in the Bessemer Cutoff, said at least some people were helped. But he wants others who need it to avail themselves of the service.

"These are not law students," Burns said. "They've got lucrative law practices, and they're giving it up to be here."

Among other things, lawyers can help storm victims recover lost personal records such as birth certificates and Social Security cards.

Across the state, hundreds have received free legal help at these kinds of clinics and by calling an Alabama State Bar hotline at 1-800-354-6154, according to reports from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

But longtime Bessemer lawyer Jim Holliman, who volunteered at last week's clinic, said the needs of storm victims remain vast. "It's going to be a continuing thing," he said. "We can't stop helping, because this is going to take years to get over."
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Long-time lawyer took interesting journey - Ruth Sullivan studied medicine before settling in for a law career that age can't seem to slow down
By Alvin Benn, The Montgomery Advertiser
June 26, 2011

DADEVILLE -- An aversion to biology class dissections in college led Ruth Sullivan to a law career more than half a century ago.

At the age of 80, she's still at it, arriving every day at her office across the street from the Tallapoosa County Courthouse where she's established quite a reputation.

"Ruth is a legend among lawyers in this county," said District Attorney E. Paul Jones. "One reason is she's never been intimidated by anyone, be they judge or opposing attorney."

Sullivan and Alice Lee of Monroe County are the only female attorneys in Alabama who have been practicing law for more than 50 years.

Medicine, not the law, was Ruth Simpson's original career goal after graduating from Gadsden High School and enrolling at Vanderbilt University.

During biology class, the doctor's daughter found herself in front of a frog that had been prepared for dissection. One look at it and she came to the conclusion that medicine as a career was not for her.

"What was happening to that frog was more than what my stomach could take," she said. "That's when I decided to switch to political science."

Politics soon gave way to another profession and she enrolled at a law school in Ohio. After two years, she learned that University of Alabama Law School graduates did not have to take a state bar exam at that time.

"I just figured why not do that if you can avoid taking the bar," she said. "My dad didn't raise an idiot."

Those who know her in and around Tallapoosa County are quick to praise a woman who has been one of Alabama's most successful lawyers for a very long time.

"She is a brilliant lawyer," said Alexander City attorney Tom Radney. "We all recognized that fact at law school."

Radney not only shared space in the same law school class with her, he also introduced her to her future husband -- Charles Sullivan.

It happened at a Montgomery restaurant in 1955 when Radney and Sullivan, a reporter at The Alabama Journal at the time, had supper with Miss Simpson, who was admitted to practice law that year.

Simpson and Sullivan were married the following year, had two sons -- Stanton and Paul -- and eventually settled in the Camp Hill area of Tallapoosa County.

Before that, the future Mrs. Sullivan tried to make a go of it in Lee County, where she tried unsuccessfully to find work at a law firm in Opelika.

"No one would have me," said Sullivan, who has practiced law for 56 years. "Those old fogies just wouldn't have a woman lawyer working for them. One told me later that he wished he had hired me because I knew more about the law than he did."

After hanging out her own shingle, she began picking up clients, including one who provided her with one of her most memorable victories.

A bartender charged with stealing money from the saloon owner came to her for help. Without much of a clientele at the time, she jumped at the opportunity.

"The first question I asked him on the stand was whether he did it, and that set Tom Young off," she said, referring to the prosecutor. "I thought he was going to fall out of the courthouse because he said that wasn't the kind of question you ask your client."

As far as Sullivan was concerned, her question was "pretty basic." It was good enough to convince the jury that the bartender was innocent.

When her client came by after the verdict with $40 for her services, his smile was matched by hers because business wasn't exactly booming at the time.

It got a lot better as her reputation spread through the county and huge circuit. Before long, she was busy handling everything from trials to wills, deeds, divorces and other mundane but profitable cases.

Physical ailments have slowed her down in recent years, but she isn't giving in to Father Time.

"She's a wonderful lady," said Becky Pennington, who is her receptionist and legal assistant in waiting. "It's unreal for somebody her age to maintain the schedule she has."

Pennington picks up her boss at an assisted living facility in Dadeville and drives her to and from work. She also takes her to a wellness center, where the octogenarian lifts weights and rides a stationary bicycle.

"She's the reason I'm in school," said Pennington, who is enrolled at Faulkner University in Montgomery. "She told me to get off my butt and get to work because she wouldn't be around forever."

Pennington hopes eventually to become Sullivan's "official" legal assistant and, who knows, maybe a lawyer herself one day.

Charles Sullivan died four years ago after a lingering illness, and his widow has kept herself busy at work when she's not fussing over her sons and grandchildren.

At night, when her legal duties are completed, she relaxes by listening to classical music or watching Vanderbilt's baseball team on television.

Ruth Sullivan, who turned 80 earlier this year, might need a walker to get around these days, but those who know her best prefer to brag about her mental abilities, not how far she can walk.

"We all recognized her brilliance in law school," said Radney. "Her honesty also set her apart. She's been a fine lawyer for a long time."

And, it's all because she just couldn't bring herself to cut up a frog in biology class back at Vandy so long ago.
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The Lawyer Surplus, State by State
By CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times
June 27, 2011

We’ve written before about the tough job market for recent law-school graduates. The climate is hard partly because of the weak economy, but also partly because the nation’s law schools are churning out many more lawyers than the economy needs even in the long run.

Now a few researchers have tried to quantify exactly how big that surplus is. The numbers were crunched by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (also known as EMSI), a consulting company that focuses on employment data and economic analysis.

The company’s calculations were based on the number of people who passed the bar exam in each state in 2009, versus an estimate of annual job openings for lawyers in those states. Estimates for the number of openings is based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

According to this model, every state but Wisconsin and Nebraska (plus Washington, D.C.) is producing many more lawyers than it needs. (See table below for full data.)

In fact, across the country, there were twice as many people who passed the bar in 2009 (53,508) as there were openings (26,239). A separate estimate for the number of lawyers produced in 2009 — the number of new law-school graduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — also showed a surplus, although it was not quite as large (44,159 new law grads compared with 26,239 openings).

In raw numbers, New York has the greatest legal surplus by far.

In 2009, 9,787 people passed the bar exam in the Empire State. The analysts estimated, though, that New York would need only 2,100 new lawyers each year through 2015. That means that if New York keeps minting new lawyers apace, it will continue having an annual surplus of 7,687 lawyers.

California and New Jersey have the next largest gluts of new lawyers, according to EMSI.
As noted above, not every state is overproducing lawyers. Nebraska and Wisconsin actually have small deficits of lawyers. The place with the biggest shortage is the District of Columbia, which is projected to have 618 new jobs opening annually for lawyers for the next few years, but had only 273 bar-passers in 2009.

Given this shortage, it is perhaps unsurprising that the District of Columbia has the highest median wage for lawyers in the country: $70.96 an hour.

2010-15 Est. Annual Openings 2009 Bar Exam Passers 2009 Completers (IPEDS) Surplus/Shortage Median Wages
New York	2,100	9,787	4,771	7,687	$56.57
California	3,307	6,258	5,042	2,951	$50.61
New Jersey	844	3,037	787	2,193	$43.84
Illinois	1,394	3,073	2,166	1,679	$51.54
Massachusetts	715	2,165	2,520	1,450	$43.89
Pennsylvania	869	1,943	1,697	1,074	$46.05
Texas	2,155	3,052	2,402	897	$41.55
Florida	2,027	2,782	2,781	755	$36.39
Maryland	560	1,277	548	717	$41.46
Missouri	362	943	908	581	$39.96
Connecticut	316	880	510	564	$43.69
North Carolina	503	1,032	279	529	$37.79
Minnesota	378	888	948	510	$43.69
Ohio	686	1,194	1,513	508	$34.69
Georgia	779	1,217	894	438	$46.11
Colorado	547	967	509	420	$40.83
Virginia	956	1,375	1,435	419	$49.34
Louisiana	357	731	810	374	$33.35
Tennessee	389	735	446	346	$37.34
Washington	619	935	678	316	$37.37
Oregon	291	594	519	303	$34.51
Indiana	339	602	825	263	$32.48
South Carolina	262	506	410	244	$33.03
Kentucky	261	478	389	217	$34.39
Nevada	219	392	143	173	$40.32
Arizona	440	607	378	167	$37.51
New Mexico	134	298	114	164	$29.78
Michigan	862	1,024	1,993	162	$35.22
Kansas	190	351	296	161	$31.16
Alabama	295	455	406	160	$37.98
Iowa	155	290	556	135	$32.16
Rhode Island	102	209	184	107	$39.65
Hawaii	76	179	88	103	$33.70
Mississippi	173	268	335	95	$28.86
Utah	308	401	283	93	$37.04
W. Virginia	100	191	152	91	$32.51
Montana	81	163	83	82	$24.96
Maine	75	153	91	78	$29.70
Arkansas	152	227	243	75	$30.83
Wyoming	40	113	80	73	$29.86
New Hampshire	92	154	146	62	$30.84
Oklahoma	326	387	489	61	$29.56
South Dakota	38	83	73	45	$29.19
North Dakota	33	63	80	30	$28.78
Idaho	128	157	97	29	$30.77
Alaska	41	66	0	25	$37.80
Delaware	116	141	235	25	$60.67
Vermont	51	55	191	4	$30.48
Nebraska	112	109	279	-3	$32.47
Wisconsin	262	248	691	-14	$36.43
D.C.	618	273	2,109	-345	$70.96
Nation	26,239	53,508	44,159	27,269	$44.22

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New rule takes aim at judges and their campaign supporters
By Carlyn Kolker, Thomson Reuters
June 28, 2011

NEW YORK, June 28 (Reuters) - In an attempt to combat the influence of money in the courtroom, New York has adopted a rule prohibiting elected judges from overseeing cases involving their major campaign contributors.

Judges will be automatically disqualified from hearing the cases of parties, lawyers or law firms that contribute at least $2,500 in the preceding two years to their campaigns.

Ethicists cheered New York for establishing hard-and-fast rules rather than pliable guidelines, even as at least one observer referred to it as an "administerial nightmare."

The final rule, first proposed by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman in February, was released Tuesday and will become effective July 15.

The rule could sharply reduce campaign contributions from lawyers who help elect judges in the state. There are about 1,000 elected judges in New York, or about 70 percent of the judiciary. Judges serving on most state trial courts are elected, while appellate court judges are appointed.

New York is one of 39 states that elect some judges, according to Justice at Stake, a nonprofit organization that advocates for judicial transparency. Most states typically rely on judges to recuse themselves and let litigators appeal if they disagree with the decision.

But the new rule comes with a catch: It leaves the disqualification determination in the hands of court administration, which must maintain records of campaign contributors in an updated, workable, easily-accessible database.

"It's an administerial nightmare across the board," said Marc Gann, past president of Nassau County Bar Association.

Lippman defended the rule, saying that electronic information obtained from the board of elections will be used to determine when a judge should be reassigned.

"I think like anything else there will be a learning curve and a phase in which we are getting up to speed," he said.

The governing body of the court system, headed by Chief Judge Lippman -- himself an appointed judge -- drafted and approved the rule. A committee of court administrators will help implement it.

PREVENTING MISUSE

The rules issued on Tuesday include some modifications from the proposed rule, after the court system received public comments from judges, bar associations and nonprofit groups. One key change is a new provision aimed at preventing parties from gaming the system by giving large chunks of money to judges that they do not want to appear before.

To avoid this, the court's chief administrator is empowered to establish a system where the noncontributing party can waive the disqualification rule -- essentially negating a contributor's attempt to achieve disqualification.

"The whole idea of a waiver is it allows somebody to decide if their rights have in fact been compromised," said Charles Hall, spokesman for Justice at Stake, which advocated for the waiver. The provision "makes the rule sustainable," said Hall.

Money has not yet infected New York judicial election campaigns to the extent it has in other states, according to anecdotal reports from lawyers and ethics groups. In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Alabama, by contrast, total candidate contributions topped $4 million in high-court races in 2007 and 2008, according to Justice at Stake.

Limits on campaign contributions vary according to the race and the district; the highest cap for campaign contributions from individuals in judicial races in New York is $50,000, though they rarely approach that number.

'AHEAD OF THE CURVE'

James Sample, an ethics professor at Hofstra Law School, applauded New York for "being ahead of the curve in addressing the concern before it is really a problem."

New York is at the forefront of a movement among states to force greater disclosure of judicial contributions. That movement was born of the 2009 Supreme Court decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, in which the court ruled that a West Virginia judge should have recused himself from an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against Massey. The company's chief executive had spent $3 million to get the judge elected.

Eight other states have implemented judicial recusal or disqualification rules since the Massey decision, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Georgia and Tennessee also have rules in the works. Four states -- Montana, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin -- considered reform but rejected it.

The American Bar Association is considering a model rule to guide individual states and courts to implement recusal and disqualification procedures. The rule is slated to be presented for passage at the ABA's annual meeting in August.

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Jim Pratt has become a go-to man for the lawmakers and Jefferson County
By Eddie Lard, The Birmingham News
June 19, 2011

It was near midnight on June 9, the last minutes of the 2011 legislative session ticking away. But there was one last bit of business for the Senate and Jim Pratt.

No, Sen. Scott Beason didn't have a last-minute change of heart and agree to drop his contest of the taxing authority bill for Jefferson County that Pratt had worked so hard to try to get passed.

The Senate presented the Birmingham lawyer and incoming president of the Alabama State Bar a resolution commending him for the work he did in the Legislature.

"Jim was ready to go home. We had to keep him in my office," said Sen. Cam Ward, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who joked he spent as much time with Pratt during the session as he did with his family.

Ward said Pratt had been going hard even on the session's last day, trying to get the Taxpayer Bill of Rights bill through, only to see time run out on it.

"I told Jim, 'You know what you remind me of? That scene at the end of 'Schindler's List,' where Schindler is standing on the tracks, holding the ring and saying 'I could have saved one more.'

"Jim was running around saying we can save one more bill. Finally, I said to him, 'Jim, you've already saved 20 bills.'"

Twenty bills is a light-hearted exaggeration, but not by much. Pratt played a critical, behind-the-scenes role to free logjams and get key bills through the Senate and House.

Ward, an Alabaster Republican, said Pratt was integral in getting important bills, such as tort reform and indigent defense, passed in a legislative session that Republican leaders bragged was one of the most successful ever.

But wait, isn't Pratt the former president of the state trial lawyers association, with whom Republicans and business groups such as the Business Council of Alabama fought bitter and expensive battles in the past for control of Alabama courts, and over the very subject of tort reform? How did Pratt become the go-to guy for Republicans and business leaders?

Pratt credits former state bar president Mark White for laying the foundation three years ago.

"He decided the state bar did a good job with regulatory functions, such as continuing education and licensing for lawyers," Pratt said of White. "But it had no role in trying to support state government."

White appointed Pratt and fellow Birmingham lawyer Boots Gale to co-chair a legislative liaison task force.

That task force organized a "Panel of Neutrals" -- people with expertise, especially in law, who made themselves available to lawmakers, providing free research and advice on various issues. Some key members include former Gov. Albert Brewer, former UAB President Scottie McCallum and former state Sen. Butch Ellis.

"The idea was to offer the Panel of Neutrals to facilitate or mediate issues as a resource to legislators," Pratt said. "Once they saw they liked that concept and started using us more, and because of the time and energy involved, we (bar leaders) started doing it ourselves instead of giving it to the Panel of Neutrals."

For the past two years, Pratt has been in the middle of the fray, helping get things done in the Legislature and in mediation. In addition to the Legislature's, he has become Jefferson County's go-to guy as well.

In the August 2009 special session, Pratt helped get the sides together to approve a new occupational tax after courts earlier in the year struck down the old tax. More recently, he was the middle man in the settlement that determined how much occupational tax will be refunded to taxpayers.

In the just-ended session, Pratt played a major role in moving county bills against long odds. The Legislature passed a bill to allow the county to levy business license fees. And the House passed a bill to allow the county to raise taxes up to $50 million a year to make up for the lost occupational tax.

Even though Beason killed the tax bill in the Senate, Pratt said progress was made in winning support that should help in the future. That includes convincing Gov. Robert Bentley to call a special session.

"We need some additional time to work through the issues," Pratt said. "It is possible to do so by September if there is to be a special session."

Even if powerful lawmakers such as Beason and Reps. Arthur Payne and John Rogers continue to oppose the bill?

"I don't worry about the politics. I'm aware of them, but I focus on what's doable."
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Alabama lawmakers approve overhaul of indigent defense
By Katherine Sayre, Mobile Press-Register
June 10, 2011

MOBILE, Alabama -- State lawmakers today voted to create a statewide indigent defense office to oversee how Alabama pays lawyers to represent the poor in criminal courts.

Gov. Robert Bentley’s administration has pushed for restructuring the indigent defense system in an effort to cut costs and balance the state budget.

The legislation calls for a new director of indigent defense to provide “fiscal responsibility and accountability” by reviewing lawyers’ bills across the state.

As a constitutional right, criminal defendants deemed unable to pay for lawyers are appointed representation. Last year, the state spent $63.8 million on indigent defense, including $3.6 million in Mobile County and $1.2 million in Baldwin County.

Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, said the new system would save the state an estimated $23.5 million.

He said indigent defense costs statewide have jumped from $30 million in 2005 to more than $63 million last year.

“A 110 percent increase is unacceptable,” Ward said.

The Office of Indigent Defense Services would be part of the Alabama Department of Finance. The indigent defense chief would be chosen by the finance director from candidates nominated by the Alabama State Bar.

In Mobile County, the circuit court appoints lawyers for indigent defendants on a case-by-case basis. The lawyers are paid an hourly rate.

Under the new system, defense lawyers will be paid a flat rate of $70 per hour. There will be no fees for overhead costs, such as maintaining an office.

Previously in Mobile County, lawyers were allowed to charge $60 per in-court hour, $40 per out-of-court hour and an additional $25 per hour for overhead.

In other parts of the state, courts either contract with lawyers for a monthly payment or operate a public defender’s office with salaried lawyers.

The legislation approved Thursday allows for a local advisory board chaired by the presiding judge in each circuit to decide which system to use. If the state director disagrees, that decision can be appealed to a statewide review panel.

The director’s tasks also include prescribing the minimum levels of experience for appointed lawyers, examining lawyers’ caseloads and reviewing their performance.

Baldwin County courts use a contract system, hiring 21 lawyers to handle nearly all indigent cases. Thirteen of the lawyers serve in circuit court, each getting $45,000 per year, no matter how many cases they’re assigned.

In Mobile County, five lawyers last year were paid more than $100,000 each in appointed work, accounting altogether for one-fifth of the county’s indigent defense costs.
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Can Justice Be Bought? – [Editorial]
The New York Times
June 15, 2011

Two years ago, the Supreme Court tried to bolster public trust in the nation’s justice system by disqualifying a state judge in West Virginia from a case that involved a coal company executive who had spent more than $3 million to help get the judge elected.

At a time when torrents of special interest campaign spending is threatening the appearance and reality of judicial impartiality, the ruling in Caperton v. Massey drove home the need for states to adopt more rigorous rules for recusal. The message has largely gone unheeded.

For the most part, state courts set their own recusal rules. According to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice and Justice at Stake Campaign, so far, courts in nine states — Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Utah and Washington State — have made recusal mandatory when contributions by a party or attorney exceed a certain threshold amount or create a question about the judge’s impartiality.

Courts in two other states are considering similar proposals. But several other states have rejected stronger rules — or have actually weakened them.

In 2009, Nevada’s top court rejected a reform commission’s modest proposal to make recusal mandatory when a judge received contributions totaling $50,000 or more from a party or lawyer over the previous six years.

Last year, in Wisconsin — home to some of the nastiest big-money judicial races — the State Supreme Court rejected proposals to trigger recusal at $1,000 or $10,000 contribution levels. Then the court weakened the recusal standard, adopting a new rule that campaign donations or expenditures can never be the sole basis for a judge’s disqualification.

The remaining states, including epicenters of special-interest-dominated contests like Illinois and Pennsylvania, have done nothing to keep campaign cash from tainting the courtroom. The Supreme Court has ensured the money problem will get worse with its 2010 ruling allowing unlimited special interest spending in all campaigns.

Many judges wrongly view mandatory disqualification rules involving election money as a personal insult and a threat to judicial independence. The real threat to independence lies in doing nothing to protect judicial integrity in the face of obvious conflicts.

The American Bar Association should be leading the way here. In an encouraging step, the group’s president, Stephen Zack, has seen to it that the issue will be taken up at the August meeting of the association’s House of Delegates. By adding a strong recusal provision to its influential model code of judicial conduct, the bar association would provide needed guidance to state judiciaries and help goad them to do the right thing.

A good rule would have four basic elements. It should explicitly recognize that recusal may be necessary because of campaign spending by litigants or their lawyers. It should specify that the final decision about whether a judge’s impartiality can reasonably be questioned not be left to the challenged judge. It should require that decisions on recusal requests be in writing. Finally, litigants and attorneys must be required to disclose any campaign spending relating to a judge or judges hearing their case.
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Delivering a Lawyer Within 15 Minutes (Soda Extra)
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, The New York Times
June 16, 2011

The wheels of justice tend to be slow, but arrests can happen with lightning speed — and what happens next can be crucial. In searches, seizure and interrogation, things can go badly wrong.

At that moment, a lawyer might help keep things from getting out of hand, asserting Miranda rights against interrogation or starting the bail process. But getting that lawyer is no easy thing, said Chris Miles, who co-founded a company, LawyerUp, to get lawyers on the case within 15 minutes.

“If I want a pizza, I can get a pizza in 15 minutes,” he says. “I can get a plumber in the middle of the night. Why can’t I get a lawyer?”

He co-founded the company in February, and started full operations this month in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, having built a roster of criminal lawyers who do not mind getting late-night calls.

The service’s personal plan, aimed at young people, costs $4.95 a month. Those who do not have a subscription can pay a flat fee of $100 for the first call, which the company calls its “pay-in-a-pinch plan.” For all clients, an operator checks contact information and processes the lawyer’s initial fee of $250 on a credit card for the first hour of service.

Perhaps inevitably, there is an app for that, already available on Android phones and under development for the iPhone. It is basically a panic button, speed-dialing the service.

Lawyers do not pay to sign on to the roster, or for the client calls. Legal ethics rules frown on arrangements in which lawyers split fees with nonlawyers, and especially when lawyers pay people to round up clients — a practice known as using runners. A Connecticut lawyer who signed on, Patrick Tomasiewicz, said that when he got the call from the company, his main question was whether he would need to pay LawyerUp. The company satisfied him that its structure avoided runner issues.

The legal profession tends to be wary of innovation, he noted, adding that he had found the LawyerUp process to be far less questionable than many forms of legal advertising he sees on billboards and late-night television. “I don’t have my name on a cab,” he said.

No one has called him yet, Mr. Tomasiewicz said. “It may pan out for us. It may not.”

Ralph J. Monaco, the president of the Connecticut Bar Association, seemed a bit ruffled in an interview when asked about the company, calling the name “so tasteless.” He said he fretted that it might create a relationship that an unscrupulous lawyer could use to gouge the new client.

Does that mean lawyers like Mr. Tomasiewicz should worry about getting involved? “I don’t think so,” Mr. Monaco said. “I would want to see how it’s put into action.”

Mr. Miles, who is not a lawyer, argued that it was the current system, not his company, that was open to abuse. “There has got to be something more fair than a pay phone and a phone book in a police station somewhere,” he said. The lawyers, he noted, had been vetted before being added to the list, and “I’d hire any one of these attorneys to represent me or my family.”

So far, Mr. Miles said, 700 people have signed up and only a handful have made the call.

And no, they do not want to talk about it.
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Lawyers Make Up 6.2 Percent of the Nation’s Highest Earners
By Debra Cassens Weiss
June 20, 2011

The ranks of the nation’s highest earners—the .1 percent of Americans who make $1.7 million or more—are dominated by executives, managers and supervisors, but lawyers are also well-represented.

Forty-one percent of the top earners are executives and managers at nonfinancial companies, and 18 percent are managers at financial firms or financial professionals at any kind of firm, the Washington Post reports.

Next come lawyers, who make up 6.2 percent of top earners, followed by real estate professionals, at 4.7 percent; and media and sports figures, at 3 percent.

The statistics are based on research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim, who reviewed tax returns for the information. Their findings are evidence that boosts in executive pay are contributing to growing income disparities that are at their highest levels since the Great Depression, the story says.
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Law grads going solo and loving it - The recession has forced many new lawyers to hang their own shingle; some are succeeding
By Anika Anand, msnbc.com
June 20, 2011

Many law graduates are being told that in today’s tight job market, beggars can’t be choosers. But when Damon Chetson graduated with $90,000 debt and no job prospects, he decided he wasn’t going to beg for anything.

The 37-year-old attorney earned a degree from the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in May 2009 and had his own criminal law practice up and running by the end of September.

The economic downturn has prompted more graduates like Chetson to open their own law firms rather than take the law firm or corporate attorney route. Many newly minted solo practitioners are succeeding by turning to digital media to hang their own virtual shingles.

“I don’t need a big copier, I don’t need a huge support staff to manage all my paperwork and I don’t need an expensive phone system,” Chetson said in a recent interview. “Basically I just need a laptop and cell phone and I’m off and running.”

The number of recent law graduates going solo increased from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 5.5 percent in 2009, the biggest one year jump since 1982, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reports. That percentage increased to 5.7 percent of all private practice jobs for the class of 2010, the highest it’s been since 1997.

That’s no surprise, considering the job market new law school grads are facing. Since May 2008, the legal services sector has lost about 54,000 jobs, according to seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite this decline, law schools still mainly focus on placing their graduates in government, public interest or corporate law firms.

“Law schools are not equipped to help you start your own firm,” asserted Chetson, who said he made more last year than the $150,000 to $160,000 that a mid-level associate at a big law firm typically earns.

"Law schools are not equipped to help you start your own firm," said Damon Chetson, who hung his own shingle after getting his law degree.

Digital technology is key

Everything Chetson learned about starting his own firm was self-taught. First, he set up a website, where he still attracts the majority of his clients. Then he spent the next couple of months working long days to create a website and a web presence. He also uses Google voice and efaxing software so he can manage a virtually paperless office.

Maintaining a blog and being active on social networks helps him get the word out to potential clients.

For Rachel Rodgers, 29, technology is also central to her business model.

The 2009 Cardozo School of Law graduate spent a year clerking for a judge and then decided to start her own firm while working a part-time job at a law firm. She was laid off after they ran out of work for her to do, but her unemployment gave her the push she needed to dedicate more time and effort to building her practice.

By working from her home in Phoenix, Ariz., and using her website as her storefront, she manages to keep overhead costs less than $500 a month. Her virtual office allows clients to log into her website and, like a bank’s secure online system, send information back and forth between her clients.

“There have been times when I’ve woken up in the morning and I have new clients,” she said. “They’ve found me online somehow and I’ve never had any interaction with them, but now they’re my clients. It’s pretty sweet.”

Rodgers is catering to other people like herself— burgeoning first-time entrepreneurs, some of whom have been laid off due to the poor economy.

She, like Chetson, maintains a blog, writes on other blogs and stays active on her Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“Twitter has helped me be on the cutting edge. I know what’s going on right when it’s happening,” she said. “Also I work in my office by myself most days, so it’s like these are my coworkers. That’s who I interact with throughout the day. It helps me not to be so lonely.”

Rodgers credits her success to the confidence she gained from the clerkship and to Solo Practice University, a subscription-based website founded in 2009 that offers video, written and audio tutorials for prospective or current solo practitioners.

“Solos have always been neglected,” said Susan Cartier Liebel, founder and CEO of the company. “Now that the legal market is being squeezed and law schools are coming under tremendous pressure for getting placements, solo practice is becoming popular again.”

“In terms of the attention it’s getting, it’s a direct result of the economy,” she added.
After graduating from Connecticut’s Quinnipiac School of Law in 1994 and passing the bar, Cartier Liebel hung her own shingle with two other recent graduates. She, like many solo practitioners, received no practical business training at law school. Her company’s tagline is: Solo Practice University picks up where your legal education left off.

Solo practitioners pay $125 a month, or $695 annually, for courses like “Virtual Law Practice—The Delivery of Legal Services Using Technology” to “How to Hang a Shingle Right Out of Law School… Or Shortly Thereafter.”

“There’s a whole economic engine behind law practice and to not get that business side of it in law school sucks,” Rodgers said.

When she started out, Rodgers worked 18 hour days reading everything she could about solo practices and reaching out to numerous solo practitioners. After practicing for less than a year, Rodgers is on track to bring in $42,000 in revenue, equal to what she was making as a law clerk.

“I say screw the economy,” Rodgers said. “You worked hard, you got your law degree, so make something happen with it.”

Are law schools missing the boat?

Chetson doesn’t blame his school’s career services for focusing more on maintaining long-standing relationships with bigger, more established companies. But he does blame law schools for being as expensive as they are, causing students to rack up a large amount of debt only to be faced with meager job prospects.

“Law schools recognize that to get people to keep coming, you’re going to have to hold out the hope that you’ll be able to make $150,000 at the end of the year,” he said.

Maria Mangano with UNC School of Law’s career services office speculates that more graduates would go solo if they had less debt. For 2010 graduates, the average amount of money borrowed by a public school law student was $68,827. It was $106,249 for a private school law student, according to the American Bar Association.

Considering this amount of debt and that most classes deal with theory rather than every-day, practical law, Chetson said the three years of law school are unnecessary and should be shortened.

“I love some of the classes I took at UNC, but virtually none of them are useful,” he said.

Law school is too expensive, agreed the ABA’s president, Stephen Zack, but it should not be shortened.

“Law school, everyone knows, trains you to think like a lawyer,” Zack said. Courses such as jurisprudence may not have any practical application for a recent law graduate, he said, but they’re the ones to reflect on and use down the road.

Professional organizations such as the ABA, exist to support graduates after they leave law school. But solo practitioners have often felt neglected by bar organizations, an article in the most recent issue of ABA’s Bar Leader magazine said.

Nearly 50 percent of all private lawyers in the U.S. are solo practitioners, according to the ABA. Yet only an estimated eight percent of solo or small-firm lawyers are members of the ABA, according to the article.

In response, the ABA recently has cut its membership fees by nearly half for solo practitioners, launched a Smart Soloing School, which provides web-based continuing legal education, and established the Smart Soloing Center, which aggregates resources for solos.

Chetson said he is not a member of the ABA. Rodgers said she joined because the first two years of membership are free, but it hasn’t been a particularly useful resource for her.

Going beyond legal theory

Meanwhile, some schools are embracing more business-oriented courses. When Dr. Silvia Hodges first proposed a “Law firm as a business” course, Sheila Foster, the associate dean for academic affairs of Fordham University School of Law, was skeptical.

“I wasn’t completely convinced that was a subject that our students would catch on to, so I asked her to further develop the concept,” Foster said.

But Hodges remained persistent. Now students consider the law firm management class and the law firm marketing class Hodges recently began teaching among the most useful courses at the school.

“Just having that technical knowledge is not enough in today’s world anymore. They need a more well-rounded picture,” Hodges said.

Chetson agrees, saying that if law schools really want to place their students in good jobs, they need to teach them to be self-sufficient.

Aaron Street, co-founder and publisher of legal resource blog lawyerist.com, said a majority of law schools continue to focus on how to interview for jobs or submit resumes for job postings, rather than honing the skills needed to be a successful business person.

“Current or prospective law students need to understand that you can’t just sit back and have classes spoon fed to you and think it’s going to be done,” he said. “You’re going to have to figure out things on your own and if you’re not prepared for that don’t go to law school.”
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Volunteers sought for new court programs
By Dennis Sherer, Decatur Times Daily
June 6, 2011

Local attorneys are being asked to become volunteer mediators for Colbert and Lauderdale district courts.

Colbert District Judge Chad Coker said he hopes to begin offering mediation as an option for resolving civil lawsuits. His plan calls for a mediator to be available at all district court sessions involving civil cases. Litigants in the lawsuits will have the option of trying to resolve their cases with the assistance of a mediator or Coker will issue a ruling to settle the case.

Lauderdale District Court Judge Carole Medley said she plans to begin offering mediation as an option for civil lawsuit litigants in her court in August.

She and Coker stress mitigation will be an option, not the rule for resolving civil cases.

Medley said if the plaintiff or defendant in a civil lawsuit prefers she issue a ruling to determine its outcome, she will.

“We are not going to force mediation on either party,” Coker said. “But if they want to try to resolve their differences with a neutral third party rather than having me hear the evidence and issue a ruling, they will have that option.”

Medley expects mediation will help expedite the resolution of lawsuits in her court.

Baldwin County District Court Judge Jody Bishop said mediation has been highly successful in resolving civil cases. Baldwin County has used mediation to help resolve district court lawsuits for about 10 years.

“We've had tremendous success with our mediation program,” said Bishop, president of the Alabama District Judge's Association. “Fifty to 70 percent of our cases that go to mediation are resolved. With all the budget cuts going on in the court system, anything we can do to help keep cases moving in the system is a big help.”

Sue Bell Cobb, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, asked district judges throughout the state to consider offering mediation as one option for resolving civil lawsuits. Lawsuits of up to $10,000 and small claims disputes are assigned to district court in Alabama.

Baldwin County uses attorneys and volunteers from the community who have been trained by officials from the state Administrative Office of Courts to operate its mediation program.

Coker and Medley plan to use attorneys as mediators in their courts. The attorneys will not be paid for their work.

Mike Ford, a veteran mediator from Florence, is helping organize the mediation program in both counties.

“It's going to be great for the people of Colbert and Lauderdale counties and the state of Alabama,” Ford said. “It's not going to cost the county or the state anything, and it will help streamline the process for resolving civil cases in district court.”

Ford expects to have no problem finding local attorneys to assist with the Colbert and Lauderdale mediation programs.

“We have a lot of great lawyers in this area. I'm sure a lot of them are going to be willing to step up and help with the mediation programs,” Ford said.

Bishop expects more judges will being offering mediation as an option for resolving civil cases.

“Mediation is the wave of the future,” Bishop said. “It can really help speed up the process for moving district civil cases through the court system.”

Franklin County District Judge Paula McDowell said she has no plans at this time to begin a mediation program for civil cases in her court.
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Ala. House passes bill revamping indigent defense
The Associated Press
June 1, 2011

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The Alabama House has passed a bill that revises the state's system of providing defense lawyers for defendants who can't afford to pay their legal bills.

The House approved the bill 78-14 Wednesday. The House version differed from the version passed earlier by the Senate. The Senate voted 33-0 to reject the House version and sent the bill to a conference committee to try to work out the differences.

The sponsor, Republican Sen. Cam Ward of Alabaster, said the House version saved less than the $23.5 million annually that is needed to help balance the General Fund budget.

The bill calls for lawyers' pay for representing indigent clients to be increased to $70 per hour, but it saves by eliminating extra payments for lawyers' overhead costs.

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Alabama Supreme Court race has lawyers buzzing
By George Talbot, Mobile Press-Register
May 25, 2011

Sometimes politics is like a duck on a pond — calm and quiet above the water, paddling like crazy beneath.

That’s the case in Alabama in a torpid year for elections. There are no statewide races on the ballot in 2011, a welcome respite after a combative 2010 election cycle. But serenity does not last when it comes to Southern politics. The undercurrents are always churning, and this month they are stirring strongest in Alabama legal circles.

Last week, rumors began sweeping through courthouse hallways that Mobile Presiding Circuit Judge Charlie Graddick was eyeing a run for chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 2012.

Graddick has done nothing to throw cold water on the speculation, and in fact has quietly been reaching out to key supporters to lay the groundwork for a campaign.

Graddick, a Republican, would be a formidable candidate. At 66, he is a leader within the Alabama court system and, as a former attorney general, can claim supporters in every corner of the state.

The seat is currently occupied by Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, a Greenville native who serves as the court’s only Democrat. Cobb is a natural politician, and she’s used her position on the court to advocate for a series of badly needed reforms to the state’s judicial system.

Her latest initiative is a package of laws that would dramatically change the sentencing guidelines for nonviolent and drug offenders, a plan that she says will save the state millions of dollars in prison costs and improve public safety.

Those bills could come up for a vote as early as today. Cobb told me last week that she wanted to get through the current legislative session before making a decision about her next political move.

"I’ll make an announcement about that in June," she said.

Insiders, however, say they expect Cobb will choose not to seek re-election, sitting out a 2012 election cycle that could shape up to be a tough one for Democrats. That would position her as a top contender for the party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2014.

Cobb is the sort of dynamic campaigner that Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Mark Kennedy — himself a former Supreme Court justice — could build his entire 2014 strategy around.

The possibility of an open race for chief justice has lawyers buzzing across the state. Graddick is the earliest and strongest name to surface so far, but he’s just one of three potential candidates from the Mobile area who could jump into the race.

Supreme Court Justice Lyn Stuart of Bay Minette is said to be planning to run, and would have the financial backing of the Business Council of Alabama’s influential Civil Justice Reform Committee.

Another hot name: Bradley Byrne, a former state senator and two-year college chancellor who is looking to bounce back from a tough loss in last year’s GOP primary for governor.

Byrne, a Mobile lawyer who lives in Montrose, said he’s interested in the position, particularly its responsibility for administering the state’s court system. "I’ve been encouraged to look at it, and I’m doing that," he said Monday. "But I’ve made no decision, and frankly I’m no where near a decision at this point."

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Stubborn Facts about Judicial Elections
By Carrie Severino, National Review Online
May 31, 2011

Last Friday the Washington Post published an excellent op-ed by Professor Chris Bonneau defending judicial elections from attacks by Justice O’Connor and her allies in the Soros network. He exposes these attacks as based on rhetoric detached from empirical facts. Here’s a taste:

There is no proof that elected judges are for sale. Critics of judicial elections frequently point to Caperton v. Massey as an example of how judges can be “bought.” This West Virginia case, in which a judge supported by the Massey coal company won election and then did not recuse himself regarding the company’s appeal of a $50 million verdict, includes several facts that are routinely ignored.

A news release from the West Virginia Court of Appeals noted that Chief Justice Brent Benjamin — the judge who allegedly benefited from millions of dollars in campaign ads paid for by the chief executive of Massey Energy — voted against Massey Energy or its subsidiaries 81.6 percent of the time, including in the Caperton case. These votes “cost” Massey Energy approximately $317 million. In contrast, Massey “benefited” from Benjamin’s votes 18.4 percent of the time, for a total sum of about $53.5 million. So, was Benjamin’s vote “bought”? The numbers are unconvincing. More generally, there is no systematic evidence to date that judges’ votes are influenced by campaign contributions.

Little has also been said about the biases in the systems with which critics would like to replace elections. No method is perfect. But, unlike the “merit” commission process most frequently offered as an alternative — in which judges are selected by the governor off a list formulated by political and legal elites and then retain their jobs simply by receiving a majority of “Yes” votes in an uncompetitive election — elections are at least transparent processes open to the public.

In the debate so far, many of the arguments have been based on rhetoric, not fact. It is important to remember that efforts to maximize judicial “independence” from the electorate can also maximize independence from the law and the Constitution. Without a mechanism for effectively holding judges accountable, judges are free to “go rogue” and make decisions based solely on their political views. Is that better than a campaign season every now and then?

Before Justice O’Connor could announce her response via robo-call, the Post published a brief letter-to-the-editor response by Bert Brandenburg and Seth Andersen. Brandenburg and Andersen are leaders of the Soros-funded Justice at Stake and American Judicature Society, respectively, and the most active proponents of the Missouri Plan. They believe Bonneau’s op-ed “skipped over important data suggesting that justice could be for sale.” Specifically, “State supreme court candidates raised more than $206 million in the past decade, shattering records in 20 states.”

Apparently they failed to actually read the op-ed, which persuasively demonstrates that the “justice for sale” meme is based on rhetoric rather than evidence. Quoting the total for campaign spending (over ten years in 22 states and hundreds of candidates, no less) is exactly the type of rhetoric Bonneau criticizes — it does nothing to show actual bias or corruption among judges. But let’s address their point anyway.

First: Of course spending has gone up — in proportion to the enormous damage done by liberal activist courts. Why is that a surprise? As much as the Left would love the American people to roll over and accept rule by liberal judicial elites, it is being fought hard wherever the people have a say in the selection of judges. Brandenburg and Andersen prefer a world in which judges face no consequences for making decisions on the basis of political views and cronyism rather than the law or the Constitution.

Second: Since when is campaign spending a bad thing? According to the findings of a 2007 study by Professor Bonneau and Professor Melinda Gann Hall, “increased spending in elections to state supreme courts has the effect of substantially enhancing citizen participation in these races.” Moreover, as Bonneau and Hall have also written, the nonpartisan elections that Brandenburg and Andersen prefer actually inhibit citizen participation and increase the cost of seeking office.

Brandenburg and Andersen’s real agenda is to lay groundwork for the spread of the Missouri “Merit Deception” Plan for selecting state supreme court judges. As I have written before, there is a growing body of evidence showing that the Missouri Plan has dramatically tilted the composition of state supreme courts to the left. This is how the people of Iowa ended up with a supreme court that unanimously ruled in favor of gay marriage, the people of Missouri with a supreme court that cited “the views of the international community” to invalidate a death sentence, the people of Kansas with a supreme court that has repeatedly injected itself into the state’s budget process, and the people of Alaska with a court that invalidated the state’s reasonable, pro-life Parental Consent Act.
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Legal Outsourcing Firms Creating Jobs for American Lawyers
By HEATHER TIMMONS, The New York Times
June 2, 2011

Career prospects can look dim these days for young American lawyers.

Top American firms have cut hiring or moved to a lower-tier pay system for many new associates. Corporations are reducing their legal departments. Legal temp companies now pay as little as $20 a hour to board-certified lawyers for document reviews that a decade ago might have been billed at $200 an hour.

But there is at least one glimmer of light. And it comes from a surprising direction.
Outsourcing firms, the companies that in recent years added to the financial woes of the American legal profession by sending work to low-cost countries like India, are now creating jobs for lawyers in the United States.

The American salaries for outsourced work, typically in the $50,000 to $80,000 range, may look meager compared with the six figures that new associates might still hope to draw at a big firm. But outsourcing jobs typically pay better than temp work — and certainly better than no work at all.

And at that salary range, American lawyers start to look a bit more competitive with their offshore counterparts — and more attractive to potential American clients that might not be comfortable sending legal work overseas.

“If we’re going to deliver a fantastic client experience, the only way to do it is to have an onshore facility,” said Sanjay Kamlani, co-chief executive of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm with offices in New York and Mumbai.

Pangea3, which was bought by Thomson Reuters in November, has just opened a 400-seat office in Carrollton, Tex., a Dallas suburb. The new office means Pangea3 will have lawyers working during United States business hours, on tasks that, because of logistics or American law, can be difficult to perform outside the country — like writing and vetting export control documents, military contracts and some patent reviews.

Many of Pangea3’s main competitors are already doing legal work in the United States and have been hiring steadily in recent months. And though the industry’s total number of employees in the United States is still estimated to be only in the hundreds, analysts predict fast growth for the field.

Because legal outsourcing companies grew steadily during the recession as corporations trimmed legal staffs, the industry was able to attract investors like Thomson Reuters and Intermediate Capital Group. Now legal outsourcing companies and others are opening offices and hiring lawyers in lower-cost areas in the United States, like West Virginia and North Dakota.

Legal outsourcing companies employ about 16,000 people worldwide, according to Edward Brooks, founder of the LPO Program, which matches legal outsourcing companies with potential clients.

The industry made an estimated $400 million in revenue in 2010, according to the researcher The Datamonitor Group, which was just a tiny fraction of the world’s $200-billion-a-year legal market. But Datamonitor predicts legal outsourcing revenues will grow to $2.4 billion by 2012, based on the industry’s recent rapid expansion. In part because of the harsh economic climate of the last few years, “the reality is that the United States and the United Kingdom have many lower-cost locations and good supplies of legal professionals,” said Mark Ross, a vice president at Integreon, an outsourcing company based in Los Angeles.

Integreon has lawyers and paralegals in 17 offices around the world, including India and South Africa. But the company, which is now hiring lawyers and other legal professionals in its Fargo, N.D., and Bristol, England, offices, currently has about 500 employees in the United States and expects to have 600 by the end of the year.

In the United States, outsourcing companies are hiring lawyers from temporary legal services firms or recruiting them directly out of law school. The pay is often comparable to lawyers’ salaries in smaller cities. And the jobs can come with other benefits, like equity stakes in the company and management opportunities that might not be widely available at conventional law firms.

Lily Liu joined Pangea3’s new Texas office after six years as a temporary lawyer and previous experience as a trial lawyer in Texas.

“This is truly a global working environment,” she said of her new job, in a telephone interview. And though she still handles document reviews, which were her responsibility at the temp agencies, Ms. Liu said she finds more variety and meaning in this job. “We interact with the clients, unlike in the temporary world,” she said.

In April, Pangea3 sent Kirit Amichandwala, a senior manager from Mumbai, to train new employees in Texas on how to conduct document reviews and other tasks the way the company’s lawyers do in India. The new hires “all have good document review experience,” Mr. Amichandwala said, “but a lot of the processes we follow are pretty unique to us.”

One of Pangea3’s main competitors, UnitedLex, has started regularly swapping teams of lawyers between the United States and India so that employees in both countries can learn to work the same way.

The big challenge is “how do you get a bunch of American lawyers to believe that we might be doing things smarter” by using a process developed in India, said Shelly Dalrymple, senior vice president for global litigation support at UnitedLex.

One American law firm was so won over that it asked a UnitedLex document review manager from India to train its own team in Boston, Ms. Dalrymple said.

Although UnitedLex is based in Kansas, so far most of its 700 employees are in India. Still, about 240 employees are in the United States, with more to be hired. In March the company announced plans to move its headquarters to a new 24,000-square-foot facility in Overland Park, Kan., to allow for further growth.

“There is some work that just can’t be outsourced to India,” said Daniel Reed, UnitedLex’s chief executive.

Though legal outsourcing companies may not provide the mentoring and diversity of experience of a traditional law firm, they are a career option that law school graduates should not ignore, said Cassandra Burke Robertson, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University’s school of law.

Right now, she said, most graduating lawyers were “happy when they have a job that pays the bills.”
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