SBM Blog

Memorial Day Tribute

Dirge for Two Veterans

THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

Walt Whitman

In Memoriam: Frederick G. Ecclestone (1916-1944)

Staff Sergeant Frederick G. Ecclestone, a Detroit attorney, died of wounds on September 10, 1944, while serving in Italy.  He had been awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action May 23, in the vicinity of Campo Morto, for capturing 29 Nazis and risking his life in the face of overwhelming odds, enabling his company to reach its objective. He was a private at the time and was promoted four grades for the action to staff sergeant.  He had been in military service 13 months.  Sergeant Ecclestone was born May 25, 1916, in Saginaw.  He was a graduate of Cooley High School, Michigan State Normal College and Detroit College of Law, and was admitted to practice law in November, 1940.  His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley P. Ecclestone, and a sister Jane M., survive.

Michigan Bar Journal, June 1945

If you have information about a Michigan lawyer killed in military action to be featured on this blog, or a Michigan lawyer whose military service you would like included in a tribute on Veterans Day, please contact [email protected].

9/11 Worker Class Action Lawyers Offer to Reduce Fees

The AP reports that the $657 million settlement offer for workers injured during the World Trade Center clean up, rejected by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in part because the lawyers for the plaintiffs would have received a third or more of the settlement, may be back on track. The law firm representing the workers has now offered to cap its legal fees at 20%, or $115 million.  See earlier post, $675 Million WTC Worker Settlement Rejected by Judge.

The Most Decorated Soldier in US History Wanted to Be a Lawyer

The Guinness Book of Records recognizes him as the most decorated soldier in U.S. history.  He was nicknamed the "Ghost" for his eerie ability to get back in the fight after being wounded.
His name is Matt Urban, and he settled in Michigan after the war, where he held positions as a recreational director in Port Huron, Monroe, and Holland.  When he retired, he remarked that he might have become a lawyer or public speaker had his vocal chords not been damaged in combat.

Pull Up That Anchor!

Jonah Lehrer writes fascinating posts about your brain, and mine, and his.  His latest post is about "anchoring," roughly defined as mental bias toward an arbitrary value. It strikes me that understanding anchoring is especially helpful for lawyers, who need to consciously understand or have a gift for intuiting mental bias -- their own, their clients, and fact-finders' -- in order to maximize success in trials and negotiations. Here's Lehrer's explanation of the phenomenon:

One of my favorite demonstrations of anchoring was done by a group of MIT economists led by Dan Ariely, as they conducted an auction with their business graduate students. (The study was later repeated with executives at the MIT Executive Education Program with similar results.) The items for sale included everything from a fancy bottle of French wine to a cordless keyboard to a box of chocolate truffles. The auction, however, came with a twist: Before the students could bid, they were asked to write down the last two digits of their social security number. Then, they were supposed to say whether or not they would be willing to pay that numerical amount for each of the products. For instance, if the last two digits of their social security number were 55, then they'd have to decide whether or not the bottle of wine or the cordless keyboard were worth $55. Finally, the students were instructed to write down the maximum amount they were willing to pay for the various items.

If people were perfectly rational, then writing down their social security numbers should have no effect on their bids. In other words, a student with a low valued social security number (like 10) should be willing to pay roughly the same price as someone with a high valued number (like 90). But that's not what happened. Look, for instance, at the bidding for the cordless keyboard. Students with the highest social security numbers (80-99) made an average bid of $56. In contrast, the average bid made by students with the lowest numbers (1-20) was a paltry $16. A similar trend held for every single item. On average, students with higher numbers were willing to spend 300 percent more than those with low numbers.

Lehrer's whole post, about how anchoring theory can be applied to belief, e.g.  the reaction to the Gulf oil spill and the Icelandic ash cloud, is a provocative read. Here's the conclusion (but read the whole thing):

The only way to avoid anchoring is to know about it. We need to be more aware that anchoring is a fundamental flaw of human decision making, and that our first reaction to an event will continue to shape our ensuing thoughts, even after that reaction is no longer relevant or valid. Our old beliefs might be wrong, but their influence lingers on, an intellectual anchor holding us back.

Enjoy a Great Legal Read on the Beach this Summer

It looks like we can expect hot, sunny weather in Michigan this Memorial Day weekend, and if you're looking for the perfect beach read, consider these great law-related options.

Pick up a Classic

Harper Lee's Pultizer Prize winning classic novel, "To Kill a Mocking Bird" is celebrating its 50th anniversary in print this year. You know it's been too long since you last read about Atticus Finch, Scout, Tom Robinson, Jem and Boo Radley, so pick it up again this summer. If it's one of your favorites, visit this New York Times story to see how the anniversary is being celebrated across the country. The NYT piece also contains a link to the original review of the book, when it was released in 1960, and a link to a biography of Harper Lee.

New Releases

The last novel in Stieg Larsson's "The Girl" trilogy was just released and is called "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

Good News on Crime. Really.

Crime in the U.S. is down substantially from 2008 according to the FBI’s preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report.  Violent crime decreased 5.5%; property crime 4.9%; forcible rape 3.1%, and arson offenses 10.4%.  If the data holds up, it would be the third straight year of crime decreases, as well as a sharply accelerating rate of decline.  The New York Times story suggests the decline is noteworthy in the face of economic turmoil  and high unemployment,but Contentions notes that crime rates also fell during the Great Depression: 

As David Rubinstein of the University of Illinois has pointed out, if you chart homicide beginning in 1900, its rates began to rise in 1905, continued through the prosperous 20s, and crested in 1933. They began to decline in 1934, as the Great Depression began to deepen. And between 1933 and 1940, the murder rate dropped by nearly 40 percent, while property crimes revealed a similar pattern. One possible explanation is that times of crisis, including economic crisis, create greater social cohesion.

Whatever the explanation, the preliminary data are a cause for preliminary celebration.  

Here is the FBI press release.  Here is the link to the preliminary report. 

How the Other Half Dresses

Just in case you're curious how your counterparts in BigLaw offices in New York are going to be dressing these warm summer days, ATL shares the summer dress code for Weil Gotschal & 's male and female lawyers.  (ATL's emphasis added).

Big Law and a Regulated Profession: What Next?

If you've been lying awake at night, like we have, wondering about the condition of the legal profession and its future, SBM has some suggested reading material: "From Ethics to Regulation: The Re-Organization and Re-Professionalization of Large Law Firms in the 21st Century".  "The legal profession has redefined its professional character from that of autonomous producers to employed lawyers who now exercise discretion within tightly constrained corporate limits. This is paralleled by the move away from individualistic codes of conduct towards entity-based regulation."  Here's the SSRN link. Sleep well.

New Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision Defied Conventional Wisdom

Anna Christensen, analyzing this week's decision in Lewis v Chicago at ScotusBlog, says that the decision ran counter to the pundits' expectations:

Had the petitioners in Lewis v. Chicago (No. 08-974) heeded the current wisdom of the commentariat and the legal academy, they might never have tried to take their case to the Court.  After all, they were minority firefighters alleging claims of disparate impact discrimination based on the City of Chicago’s use of the results of a performance exam—almost the mirror image of Ricci v. DeStefano (No. 08-328), last term’s decision in favor of white firefighters who alleged discrimination in the City of New Haven’s failure to use the results of a similar test (and on which the Court had granted cert. by the time the Lewis petitioners filed their petition).  Moreover, the case was dismissed by the Seventh Circuit as barred by the statute of limitations; to prevail, petitioners would have to establish that they are entitled to challenge the effects of a discriminatory policy even though the statute of limitations would prevent them from challenging the establishment of the discriminatory policy itself.  Not exactly the ideal case to press before a Court thought to be conservative on Title VII.  But petitioners ignored this conventional wisdom, and yesterday they were rewarded:  in a unanimous opinion by Justice Scalia, the Court not only held that petitioners’ disparate impact claims were not precluded by the statute of limitations, but also actually expanded the range of circumstances in which disparate impact lawsuits can be raised.