June 19, 2020

It was supposed to be a quiet hearing marking the start of a resumed court season following months of closure due to COVID-19. What happened instead has set off conversations throughout the legal industry, prompted soul searching within the highest echelons of biglaw, and resulted in criminal charges being brought against four Skadden associates and two partners. Brian Wilson, a third-year litigation associate in DLA's New York office--one of more than six-hundred worldwide: "They'd already outclassed us in their briefing in the lead-up to the hearing, which had been a huge blow to team morale. They were citing to cases, laws, canons of construction that we didn't even know existed. Half of them we still haven't been able to track down two weeks after the fact. It's like they're operating on an entirely different level, accessing systems we can't fathom." His colleague, Tim Rubenstein, concurs, "We were going into court already badly shaken. We felt like Davids against Goliath, except here, we didn't win; there was no miracle."

Although accounts of what happened in the hearing are disputed, the court clerk, Dorthy Woodbridge, offers her rendition of events: "The parties' appearance in the courtroom wasn't so much an adversarial process as an execution. In my thirty years here, I've seen lopsided arguments before, but this one takes the cake." Witnesses, requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation, describe the Skadden attorneys displaying "Ciceronian" levels of oratory and rhetorical skill that so moved the court as to prompt the judge to order the lead partner to repeat sections of his argument so he "could get that ... on video, for my kids." Marcel P. (last name withheld) describes how "at one point, the Skadden partners just broke into Latin during a particularly thorny discussion on jurisdictional privity concerns. The judge picked up the thread and began questioning them in kind. Meanwhile, the DLA Piper attorneys are standing around like lambs to slaughter." Tony McDaniels, bailiff for Judge Daniels, describes DLA's attempted reply: "It was like retards playing ball. They didn't even know which direction to turn. A citation to a practice treatise? In front of Judge Daniels? Give me a break." Although typically a decision on a motion as complex as the one before the court would require weeks if not months, at the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Daniels instantaneously ruled in favor of Skadden's client and thanked the attorneys "for their service."

The violence continued outside the courtroom. In an interview with Lauren Percola, the lead DLA partner on the matter, she explains how "after the hearing broke, we made our way outside as quickly as possible, because we wanted to get out of Dodge after the thrashing we'd received. But [the Skadden attorneys] were already outside, waiting for us." Powell's account, corroborated by other witnesses, explains that the Skadden attorneys "surrounded us in a circle and began waving their Metropolitan Club cards in front of us and chanting 'Cornell, Cornell, Cornell' in an obviously mocking fashion. I didn't even go to Cornell, although several of my team members did--I'm a proud Texas Law grad." The circle was only broken up when police arrived thanks to an anonymous 911 call; the Skadden attorneys were last spotted heading in a caravan of blacked out Navigators toward the Electric Room to celebrate, while the DLA attorneys reconvened at a nearby Ruby Tuesday for a consolation luncheon.

On Thursday, following a pressure campaign waged over the internet and in public commentary by leading legal figures over the past ten days, the U.S Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York brought charges against the six Skadden attorneys present at the hearing and confirmed a "continuing investigation" directed at a back-office support team of a dozen additional associates and staff. The charges span a range of new crimes, including pursuit of prestige and improper demonstration of skill, along with more traditional ones such as RICO violations. Reached for comment, Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined to give a statement citing department protocol and an "ongoing prosecution." David M. Zornow, Skadden's head of litigation, issued a short, cryptic statement the same day through a spokesperson: "Skadden endures."

The events in Judge Daniels' courtroom and their aftermath have prompted conversations in the legal industry that some are calling long overdue. Balissa Rojunto, head of the Cornell Law Students Association: "It's discriminatory, plain and simple. Why should law students or attorneys who are smarter or write better or argue more eloquently be allowed to win an argument? It's a mind-boggling holdover from an old era. We need to do better, including through more vigorous hiring of Cornell students and alums." In response to the incident, several lower tier V100 firms have reportedly begun collaborating to form a lobbying group, the "Law Firms for Just Meritocracy," with the stated intention of "ensuring equal access among corporations to appropriate legal system outcomes, including through alterations to the standards of professional conduct and applicable hiring laws."

Lisa Tendrow, one of the associates on the DLA team, agrees: "This has to change. This idea that people should be able to bring together the best practitioners in the field to do the best possible work and then be paid accordingly for it, it's just outdated. There needs to be a level playing field and it needs to happen fast."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4564884&forum_id=2#40450542)

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(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4564884&forum_id=2#41156111)