HeckleGate - Seasoned Lawyers Don't Blurt and More

Today is November 14th. That's a whole week after the November 7th New York bar association event celebrating three advocates for justice. 

So, that means it's been seven days after keynote speaker - Brad Karp, chair of law firm Paul, Weiss - had his speech "heckled" by law firm Dunnington Bartholow partner Raymond J. Dowd. Outside the building had been the usual signs protesting Paul, Weiss' negotiations with the Trump administration. 

Yet, those developments are still being covered in legacy media. Soon enough the tabloids are likely to have another run at it. What should have been not much of a story has become a big story. 

And here we have HeckleGate. The sustainability of that saga is yet one more sign of the surging interest in the collapse of practicing law as a profession. It's a business. Right now, it's the one to be in for Profits Per Equity Partner.

Going fast, for instance, is professional decorum. 

Dowd contends the heckle wasn't premeditated. It just blurted out. 

Seasoned lawyers don't blurt. They are trained to embed verbal muzzles. A blurt in a deposition or court room could result in sanctions or much worse. 

But, what the hell, the event at the bar association was really just another business thing, wasn't it. Those being recognized will have brand enhancement - and a shot at increased compensation and perks. Just like in old Hollywood. No good reason the business folks in attendance can't let it rip. And Dowd did just that. 

Another breach of traditional decorum was that Karp's address wasn't primarily about saluting those being honored and the principles manifested. It focused on yet another explanation of Paul, Weiss' decision to cut a deal with the administration and its pro bono outreach. 

In a larger framework, decorum is certainly falling off at the US Supreme Court. What about the most junior member Justice Ketanji Jackson's blow-out with less junior member Justice Amy Barrett? In addition, Justice Jackson violates traditional norms by the amount of time she takes to make a point at the Court and going on to make those points directly to the public. Her profile in media had been high. Too high.

Professionalism has also been surrendered to the profit motive. 

David Enrich documents that shift in "Servants of the Damned." 

In a 2021 interview with Bloomberg Law Karp himself hammered the importance of money. Lots of it. Law firms, he went on the record saying, which didn't have the funds to recruit and retain star legal talent could go out of business. No ambiguity: Law firms have to chase the money. You bet, the rules of business override the tradition of what had been a noble profession. With that goes the right of any law firm to claim to be a special institution, such as religious and some non-profit organizations, in our society.

So, it was predictable that business per se would try to move in for a piece of the lucrative earnings of large law firms. Right now the attention is on if McDermott Will will let in investors. A possibility is for PE to oversee back-office operations. Could that mean that those well-paid staff jobs, which Karp saved by lifting the Executive Order which could have shuttered the firm, will eventually be wiped out throughout the practice of law? The door to non-lawyer ownership of law firm is getting opened wider.

No question: HeckleGate gives us a look at the practice of law in 2025. 

Meanwhile, the Smithsonian magazine features this month legal giant Robert H. Jackson. A self-taught lawyer he was the U.S. chief prosecutor for the US at the Nuremberg trials. 

It wasn't until I attended that premium trade school for lawyers - Harvard Law - that I discovered that wasn't what practicing law was about, at least not for the defense bar. I left. Perhaps never should that line of work have been positioned and packaged as a profession. It might have been with some idealists in another time. But that could be not so likely in 2025.

UPDATE:

As I predicted, a tabloid - AbovetheLaw - also ran with the HeckleGate story today. 

Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction.

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