Wesley Snipes is facing sentencing today after being convicted of several tax misdemeanors. He had some of his friends submit letters to the court asking for leniency and attesting to his good character. Among the letter writers were Denzel Washington, Woody Harellson, Judge Joe Brown, a Shaolin monk, and Snipes’ personal driver and personal stand-in (who presumably doesn’t have to stand in his stead in this instance).

But the winner by a mile is the letter submitted by Bokeem Woodbine which is actually handwritten on college ruled paper ripped from a spiral notebook (to his credit he did use both sides of the sheet). What on earth was Bokeem doing that he couldn’t find the time to compose his thoughts on a computer? Hell, an email to the judge would carry more weight.

Bokeem

“Oh shit! They Got Wesley? This is an injustice! I need to express myself to the judge! No… no time to log on. You know how slow Windows Vista is. I’ll just (*rip*) take a few of these sheets and put pen to paper….”

The letters can be found here (pdf). If you just want to see Bokeem’s letter, and who could blame you, it is the very last letter in the document.

Thousands of lawyers took to the streets in Islamabad to protest General Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule (which included the suspension of the Constitution, the firing of the judges of the Supreme Court, and the closing of privately owned television news channels and curbing of broadcasts by international broadcasters).

Photo: Mohsin Raza/Reuters

Query: What would it take for lawyers to rise up like this in the United States?

My friends’ baby (her father is a lawyer).

I just got around to reading Jonathan Lethem’s truly inspired piece entitled The Ecstasy of Influence in the February Issue of Harpers Magazine. The piece explores plagiarism and influence in art. It is a must read. I really like what Lethem is doing with his own art. He isn’t merely philosophizing on copyright, he is walking the walk. Check out his Promiscuous Materials project where he has given non-exclusive rights to various stories and music lyrics for a dollar. He also recently decided to give a free option to the film rights for his latest book You don’t love me yet to one lucky filmaker.

I have been maintaining for quite a while that Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court might have been a politically brilliant move. What if President Bush threw her in to the fire to get people talking about qualifications and cronyism, knowing that she would withdraw and that he could then have a free pass to appoint an associate justice like Judge Luttig or Judge McConnell?

With Democrats having burned their political capital on arguments over qualifications, they could be silenced by the nomination of an appellate judge with overwhelming credentials (but with a judicial philosophy that is antagonistic to everything Democrats believe in - well almost everything).

When did it become OK to openly admit such things as the following:

“The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.”

- As reported in the Washingtonpost

Lie to me fellas. Just lie to me. I liked it better when I didn’t know.

I just want to archive this quote for future reference. It is from Jack Balkin’s article entitled, “What Brown Teaches Us About Constitutional Theory” in the University of Virginia Law Review.

“Judges are sort of like place kickers in football. Most place kickers are pretty bad at making an open-field tackle to stop a speedy running back returning a kickoff. But place kickers can help pile on after the other players have tackled or slowed down a runner. That is sometimes how I imagine courts and their relationship to social change: They see the running back lying on the ground, groaning under the weight of a huge pile of linebackers. The judges say to themselves, “It’s time for us to do some justice!” and they throw themselves on the pile.”

If your living on anything even closely resembling my law school budget, the new federal law, the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, affectionately known as “Check 21″ may be of interest to you. The law, which went into effect today, allows banks to use electronic copies of checks, which will drastically cut own on the time it takes checks to process. As the Jennifer Kingson of the New York Times explains:

“Technically, what Check 21 does is create a new negotiable instrument called a substitute check, which permits a bank to take an image of a check that is presented for deposit and process it electronically. There is no need to transport the check to the bank against which it was written; that bank can print a substitute itself and send it to its customer.”

I am totally for this law, which eliminates much of the inefficiencies in banks, but it will mean that folks living paycheck to paycheck will have to change their bill paying tactics. No more check floating - writing a check and sending it with the knowledge (or hope) that the funds will be in the account prior to the check being processed. Soon, the funds will be deducted from the account instantaneously, or at the very least, within hours.

This raises an issue - if banks can process even out-of-state checks within minutes, what are they going to do about the abominable hold times on deposits. Now under federal law, banks must make funds available on local checks in two days, and five days on out-of-town checks.

As a bank executive notes in the article:

“Consumers are now getting a sense that checks will clear faster… and on the deposit side they’re going to be asking, ‘Well, if you’re getting it faster, how come you’re not going to give it to me faster?’ and I think that’s something that banks are going to have to grapple with. This may cause banks to reconsider availability policies.”

I have race on the mind. My 2L summer position search is winding down. As I reflect on the process, some things stand out.

I am used to being the only black man (and sometimes black person) in the room. But the state of the legal profession is shocking to the conscience. As I write this post, I have decided to name names. Please understand, I am not singling out these firms. I believe this is an industry wide problem, but my point will be watered down if I don’t get specific.

Some Questions and Answers…

Q. Who has more black partners in their NY office? Weil Gotshal or Debevoise?

A. Weil has 3. Debevoise doesn’t have any.

Q. Firm-wide, does Gibson Dunn have more partners that are Native American or Black?

A. Firm-wide, Gibson Dunn has exactly one black partner and one Native American partner.

Q. When was Wachtell’s first ever black Partner elected to the partnership?

A. 2003

And some facts:

Wilmer Cutler’s DC office has more black partners than the Vault top 5 combined (Wachtell, Cravath, Sullivan, Skadden, and Davis Polk). So does Hogan & Hartson.

Clifford Chance has no black partners in NY.

Not only does Willkie Faar not have a black partner in NY, it doesn’t have a single minority partner in DC (i.e. no asians or hispanics or native-americans or blacks).

And Dewey Ballantine… They don’t have a black partner in NY and their pipeline is drying up. 4 of the 10 black associates left last year.

I’ll post some thoughts on this in a moment, but I needed to get those numbers out of my brain.

I wouldn’t mind having his job…