Turns Out You DO Work for the Firm!

Morning!

Did you know you work in a soul-sucking business environment that encourages risk-taking on behalf of clients because your firm can make more money delaying resolution, bickering over stupid discovery disputes, and litigating everything until there's nothing left no matter how picayune?

And that's coming from a fancy-dancy UM perfesser of ethics:

He said large, multinational law firms like Greenberg are driven by an "eat-what-you-kill compensation system that incentivizes risk-taking in transactions and litigation."

Greenberg started in 1967 as a Miami transactional boutique. After 10 high growth years, it now has 1,750 lawyers in 35 offices around the world.

Referring to the sanctions in the TD Bank case, Alfieri said, "This kind of institutional failure raises hard questions of culture, compliance and institutional regulation for Greenberg and hundreds of other Big Law firms and likewise for regulatory bodies like The Florida Bar and the American Bar Association."

On the other hand, no associate at this firm has ever failed the Bar exam!

On a happier note, Judge Bailey has done as fine a job as possible under dire budgetary restraints in dealing with the foreclosure crisis plaguing our State.

Here she answers questions by email for the Herald and concludes thusly:

Q. From your vantage point, who is responsible for the foreclosure crisis?

I deal with the cases that are in front of me. Moral judgment gets you nowhere. There is plenty of blame to go around. The banks shouldn’t have made the loans. The borrowers shouldn’t have taken them. It was a huge shell game with loans getting sold and repackaged into securities, with no responsibility. Everyone thought that somebody else should be the one to say ‘no.’’’ 

Smart judge.

Finally, Herald political reporter Marc Caputo, who is improving, wrote an article over the weekend in which he repeatedly used the phrase "Obamacare" as a neutral term for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

When I asked Marc about it, he kindly referred to a recent Obama ad as evidence the phrase is now the MSM consensus term of choice -- completely neutral, purely descriptive.

Now I recognize there has been much debate over how to deal with what began as a schoolyard pejorative.

And some Obamaites and even Obama himself have attempted to defiantly reframe the word.

I'm ok with all that, though for me "Obamacare" reeks of Frank Luntz focus-grouped "HillaryCare" and represents a further slide into collective Idiocracy.

But Marc, did you miss that whole debate?

Or are you saying the debate is over?

All Frank Jimenez, All the Time.

I don't know, I feel like we're getting a little Frank Jimenez chronic here, and yet more news keeps breaking.

Now it's this, in a fine story by Jordana Mishory:

Late last week, as the controversy over Jimenez’s nomination simmered, the governor’s office moved up the planned interviews with the Supreme Court finalists from early January to today and Christmas Eve. All six are set to meet with the governor, chief of staff Eric Eikenberg and general counsel Jason Gonzalez, the sources said.

But Crist spokesman Sterling Ivey said he was not aware of a schedule for the interviews and that he could not confirm if they were on a tentative schedule. He said he had not spoken with Gonzalez’s office before deadline. Calls to Gonzalez’s office were referred to Ivey.

Efforts to move up the interview process at the last minute could be thwarted by holiday plans. At least two of the finalists were on vacation. One source said Labarga had agreed to a phone interview. He could not be reached for comment.

Tony Alfieri, director of the Center for Ethics and Public Service at the University of Miami, said the efforts to speed up the interview process and the re-inclusion of Labarga hurts the credibility of the governor and the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission.

“In American law, the highest value is almost always the value of process,” he said. “Having brazenly undermined the Supreme Court nominating process, the governor is once again demonstrating how results-oriented calculations can damage the integrity of the Florida judiciary.”

Alfieri said it appears the governor is rushing the interviews in response to a public outcry “to mitigate any further controversy or damage to his administration.”

Process-shmocess: who cares if we like the result?

And another thing -- no one likes a scold, Professor!

Hmm, I'm trying to think of the last major political event that happened right before Christmas....no, nothing comes to mind.

Carry on, Governor!