SBM Blog

"Death Bet" Investors Dealt Setback

A ruling last week by the influential Delaware Supreme Court cast a shadow on the growing phenomenon of  "death bet insurance" -- in which an insured party sells his life insurance policy to an investor (or hedge fund) who pays the premiums and collects after the insured's death.  The ruling allows insurers to challenge the legitimacy of a policy that has changed hands at any point, even after the period for contesting policy payouts has expired. The Wall Street Journal says that the ruling "may embolden insurers to challenge more policies, and raises the risks for investors who own the policies."

"Path Cleared" for U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Health Care Law

By failing to ask the 11th circuit to reconsider its decision finding the health care law unconstitutional, the Department of Justice has cleared the path to the U.S. Supreme Court.  So says the Wall Street Journal, while acknowledging that review in the term that starts in October "isn't a sure bet." The story notes that the District of Columbia appeals court heard arguments on the act's constitutionality only last week and that the U.S. Supreme Court typically pays close attention to that circuit's opinions.

Backwards and In High Heels

The staff of the State Bar seized the editorial helm of SBM Blog today to announce that Michigan Lawyers Weekly named me its 2011 Woman Lawyer of the Year.  They believed (correctly) that I would not be comfortable posting about the award.  But since they brought it up, I do have something to say on the subject.  First, the other women honored today are very impressive people and I was thrilled to be included among them.  I know firsthand that Michigan has many really remarkable women lawyers, including, just for example, several in attendance at today’s luncheon.  And, consequently, I know that I am very, very lucky to have been singled out today.

Second, Michigan Lawyers Weekly did a beautiful job of telling the stories of the honorees.  I don’t envy MLW the task they have set themselves of choosing twenty women each year from among all the accomplished women lawyers in the state. Had there been a Michigan Lawyers Weekly the year I was born, the challenge would have been very different -- which four of the 24 women lawyers in Michigan to exclude.

Which brings me to my third and not very original point:  how far women have come in the legal profession just in my lifetime, and how grateful I am to the women who have been pioneers in the law in Michigan, among them last year’s MLW Woman of the Year, Jean Ledwith King, and Florence Schoenherr-Warnez, the mother of 72^nd State Bar President Kim Cahill and Representative Assembly Vice-Chair Dana Warnez.  Thankfully, little by little, the most ridiculous and pointless barriers that have prevented women from full participation in the law have fallen, but not without the effort of some very determined women and some enlightened male supporters.  In accepting the award from MLW today I struggled to make the point that women’s accomplishments in the law deserve special recognition specifically because of these obstacles, and incorrectly gave Noel Coward credit for the witticism about Fred Astaire: "Sure he was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards . . . and in high heels!"

But bias, of course, still haunts the legal profession, locking too many lawyers, female and male, into or out of specific practices or roles. I believe that those of us practicing today, especially those of us who are the beneficiaries of the pioneers who shattered stereotypes, have a special obligation to help bring down the remaining barriers.

Those points, plus one more, are the bones of the remarks I would have made had it actually occurred to me that I would be in the position to make remarks.  The remaining point is another obvious one – any individual honor is shorthand for honoring many, many others. In my case, the shorthand most clearly encompasses the wonderful staff of the State Bar, its extraordinary leaders, and the magical ensemble of gifted people who led and contributed to the Judicial Crossroads Task Force.  Backwards or forwards, in high heels or flats, it’s been a joyous dance, and the music plays on.

SBM Congratulates Executive Director Janet Welch, MIchigan Lawyers Weekly 2011 Woman of the Year

The State Bar of Michigan staff would like to wholeheartedly congratulate our Executive Director, Janet Welch, on winning Michigan Lawyers Weekly's 2011 Woman of the Year Award!

Welch was chosen as Woman of the Year out of a field of 20 Michigan Women in the Law honorees at a luncheon hosted by Michigan Lawyers Weekly this afternoon at Detroit Marriott in Troy.

Welch is pictured at left with her Woman of the Year award and current SBM President Julie Fershtman. She is pictured at right, hearing the news of her win, with her husband, Ben Hare.

Stay tuned to www.michbar.org for more information about the award. Video from the luncheon follows.(5:52)

Up With Start-Ups, Up with Michigan

The University of Michigan Law School's ZEAL program  -- to offer free legal advice to student entrepreneurs and train law students to serve entrepreneurial businesses -- looks especially brilliant if the research by Tim Kane, a senior researcher for the Kaufman Foundation, is right:

Kane’s research suggests a pretty shocking reality: brand-new start-ups drive just about all job growth in the U.S. They’re responsible for about 3 million new jobs a year, while older companies (including even companies that are just two or three years old) are basically net job destroyers.

American Criminal Justice System Dysfunction: Diagnosis and Prescription

Salon features excerpts from the new book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, described as a "great untold story of our time":

There are three keys to the system's dysfunction, each of which has deep historical roots but all of which took hold in the last sixty years. First, the rule of law collapsed. To a degree that had not been true in America's past, official discretion rather than legal doctrine or juries' judgments came to define criminal justice outcomes. Second, discrimination against both black suspects and black crime victims grew steadily worse -- oddly, in an age of rising legal protection for civil rights. Today, black drug offenders are punished in great numbers, even as white drug offenders are usually ignored. (As is usually the case with respect to American crime statistics, Latinos fall in between, but generally closer to the white population than to the black one.) At the same time, blacks victimized by violent felonies regularly see violence go unpunished; the story is different in most white neighborhoods. The third trend is the least familiar: a kind of pendulum justice took hold in the twentieth century's second half, as America's justice system first saw a sharp decline in the prison population -- in the midst of a record-setting crime wave -- then saw that population rise steeply. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States had one of the most lenient justice systems in the world. By century's end, that justice system was the harshest in the history of democratic government.

The author, William Stuntz, who was the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard University, offers remedies:

For Mature Viewers Only: Graphic Portrayal of "A Profession in Decline"

Marc Leichter, creator of The Law School Tuition Bubble ("An Amateurly Illustrated Think Tank of One"), gathers and analyzes graphs from a variety of sources to bolster his thesis that the legal industry has been in decline for decades:

The mainstream media’s insistence on presenting the "Golden Ticket" fallacy is pernicious not because it's lazy, uninspired writing promoting  an inaccurate explanation of the legal profession's problems, but because it conceals an eerie, hallowed "SmallLaw Dead Pool," haunted by the ghosts of failed practices, debt-slaves, and disrupted lives. Unacknowledged by the profession, concealed by the law schools.

There are vigorous critiques of this view, of course, Cooley Law School's chief among them. SBM Blog promises to post any graphic rebuttals to Leichter's post when they pop up online.

HT: AmLawDaily

The Unfathomable Market for Judicial Clerkships

A story in the New York Times describes the competition among federal judges to sign top law school graduates as clerks "lawless."  That's because some judges are ignoring genteel guidelines on when recruiting and signing are supposed to happen in order to get a jump on the "best" candidates. From afar (i.e., far removed in time and realm from this process), it's fun to muse about how the buyers and sellers in this rare commodities market have such confidence that they know the value of what they're getting.  A post at The Faculty Lounge opens a thread on the subject of whether the phenomenon of "trading up" to a more "attractive" clerkship during the offer period will become part of the game.

30 Years Ago Today, A U.S. Supreme Court First

Michigan Law grad and novelist Meg Waite Clayton has an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times, "Flirting with Justice,"  commemorating the 30th anniversary of the swearing-in of Sandra Day O'Connor as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Touching Tribute to A Lawyer Turned Teacher

John Spreitzer was a highly successful lawyer who left the law at the top of his game to become an English teacher at Chippewa Valley School in Clinton Township. He died suddenly, September 20, at the age of 58.  Brian Dickerson has a must-read appreciation.

Mr. Spreitzer was a graduate of J. Reuben Clark Law School and practiced at Dykema. He is survived by his wife Michelle, and children Elise, Erik, Luke, and Karl.