833 months to life in prison. Life to life. I’ve never seen a scoresheet that high. It hasn’t been a pretty week in toiletlaw. One client just went to prison this morning because he wouldn’t cooperate, and he is so sick he will likely die there, whereas he could have had guarded medical treatment in the real world. Asking the department of corrections to take real good care of a man with diabetes, sleep apnea, pulmonary disease, embolisms, a necrotic leg and oxygen tank needs 24/7 is a joke. The prison system is a deadly joke as it is, but this guy made the conscious choice and the best I can do is make as good a record as possible about his illnesses. See you in 3 years. Then we have sentencing on an infamous case. I saw the scoresheet, so fucking high its life or life. There was no need for trial. We have to pray for departure. The ugly side of criminal defense.

On the other hand I’ve finally cracked 300 pounds for good. 295 and change this morning. My instructor got me to buy a rashguard with the school logo on it. It helps actually draw water off my body when training. It’s tight as a motherfucker and leaves nothing to the imagination. I asked him for an XXL which is my t shirt size. “The largest is XL, dont worry itll fit right.” I put it on. I’ll never wear it outside of jiujitsu. You can see why:

However we’re moving in the right direction weight wise. I have a new suit coming in today. I feel better and look better. The job front is as bleak as ever though. One day this profession will let me move on from this purgatory. Not today though. Back to the shitmines.

I wanted to write a lengthy diatribe venting about how much I despise this particular client. I won’t. I’ll just say you know you practice shitlaw when:

A hearing date gets moved back a week, and you tell your witness a week ahead that it got moved but you didnt tell them immediately when you found out, so:

The client emails you 4 times accusing you of not caring
The client calls you and keeps you on the phone for 15 minutes because he thinks you dont care.
The client’s mother emails you accusing you of being racist and not caring since the client is black.
The client’s witness emails you at 930 calling you unprofessional and begging you to call them even though the opposing party just filed a pleading with the court admitting to the one fact the witness was being used to introduce.
After straightening everything out with the witness at 9 am the next morning, the client’s mother calls to yell at you accusing you of not caring and doing a horrible job on the case because we haven’t won yet, 40 seconds into I just zone out and play tetris while waiting for her to shut up.
After telling the witness that if they can’t make the hearing it’s ok, we will make do without their testimony (which we dont even really need anymore) the witness bitches at me for using the term “make do” and CC’s the client’s mother who bitched at me earlier today.

So, CLIENT NAME REDACTED, you get 5 homer salutes! Fuck You!

So we started last post with a healthy cry of “Death to America” after a trigger happy cop made me throw up in my mouth quite a bit with his gleeful tale of “shoot first, detain later”…

to a post where the Court has stepped back a bit on Miranda, and I won’t cry DTA/Police State (though commenter Greenfield might disagree, and I’m sure he has seen far more police abuses than I will in my next 10 years of criminal practice).

I am referring to This recent 9-0 decision. The kneejerk reaction to this is ZOMG police state. I disagree. Let’s go back to crim pro 101.

The Miranda rule is generally this: The cops must warn you of your right to remain silent and your right to counsel if you are subject to “custodial interrogation.” Custodial interrogation basically means: 1. You are not free to go and 2. The questions are reasonably expected to illicit an incriminating response. Its modified by something called the “Edwards rule” that says they can’t come back and talk to the guy some other day while he’s still in custody. This protects the remand/no bond crowd or the poor who can’t bond out. If you’re stuck in jail awaiting trial, the cops can’t come knocking on your cell door every week to entice you to blab.

If you read this blog you should be able to figure out how this is supposed to work.

But in this situation, the guy is in custody, claims his 5th right, and then gets sent upstate on an unrelated matter. 2 and a half years into his ride, someone comes out, he’s in gen pop, and asks him about a child abuse case, and he freely admits. (Probably because he thinks he’s going to get concurrent time, and he might actually have it, but as we all know cops are allowed to lie out their asses to get you to blab if you choose to do so. I don’t care for that one bit.)

The court came down 9-0 on this one. We normally expect 5-4 jobs on this one where one side will exclaim its “judicial activism” or “police state.” When Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor agree with the ruling and Scalia writes the opinion, it’s safe to say this was a gimme and not some horrible destruction of basic constitutional law. The bill of rights is supposed to restrict the government, but you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, and at some point an assertion of 5th amendment rights has to expire, especially when you’re not under the custody of the interrogating leo’s. Scalia mused that with such a recidivism rate, an infinite 5th amendment application would be ridiculous in the long run.

Hell it’s a friggin miracle if I get a Defendant savvy enough to assert it in the first place. Unfortunately the guys who come into my office who know 5th amendment principles pretty well and know “never talk to cops” are usually the biggest drug dealing scumbags. Oh well thats life in the toilet.

Over at Something Awful they have a subforum named Laissez’s Faire. It’s basically a political shitposting forum filled with internet maoists, communists, radical islamists, morons, idiots, and trolls. They trolled Sarah Palin’s PAC, have a wonderful political comics thread, use the word “literally” like it’s going out of style, and occasionally are funny.

They love to post DTI (Death to Israel) and DTA (Death to America) to be edgy and whatever, usually after posting a link to something Israel did or some sociopolitical malady in the US, be it Republicans, the wealth gap, Tea Partiers, etc. I am a goon, (something awful forum member) but I never post there. In fact I just use their weight loss forum and occasionally very competent poker forum.

However, today I am posting a DTA. For this moment I can see things their way, the teenage socialist vegans with bowlcuts from LF.

I was in court this morning on a large appointed case. It was the first Pretrial Conference for the 40 some odd defendants for a large trafficking conspiracy/RICO gang case. Every single defendant and their lawyer had to come up at the same time so we could all get on the same page about continuing this monstrosity.

If you read this at all, I’m no small guy. I’m a big fat fatso, about 6′2 and 300 pounds. However, I was dwarfed by some of these defendants, who easily topped 6′8 and 350 pounds. Huge intimidating muscular and just jacked up black guys who didn’t say a word and looked straight ahead. When the judge called my name, I had to jump up and down behind them and wave my hands to be seen.

Fast forward to the ride down the elevator to leave. It’s me, a few of these bonded out codefendants, and a 5′5 140 pound city 17 cop. The codef’s get off at the second floor to go to the parking garage, I go to the first floor to my other court for the morning.

“Well that lightened the load a bit” said the cop.
“Oh yeah. I was up in Judge SO and So’s courtroom with them, and I was dwarfed by those guys!”
The cop laughed. Then he said:

“HAHAHA, yeah and you wonder why we shoot so many of them!”

He wasn’t trolling, he wasn’t joking. Not one damn bit. I paused, bit my tongue. This guy laughingly dismissed shooting defendants due to their size, and implied race.

We get off at the first floor and walk down the hallway. He continues with an anecdote:

“That reminds me of one time I had to arrest an ex football player from the Bears on a robbery charge. I went up to him and said ‘I’m scared to death of you, so if you move a muscle I’m going to fucking kill you!’”

He said it with such frivolity, like one would share a bad work story with friends at a fern bar over happy hour beers. He laughed nervously, I exited for the nearest courtroom with a faint smile and a wave. I never felt so repulsed by cops in my life.

I’m a pretty conservative, law and order type guy. I usually give law enforcement credit because most of the time they’re professionals. I’ve never met anyone as revolting as the cop I met today. This guy would have no problem whatsoever putting shells into the head of a large black guy simply because of physical intimidation. At the very least, the notion of taking a life to him seems trivial and inconsequential. And these are the people trusted to “protect and serve.”

This one time, I’m putting on my kaffiyeh and che t shirt and posting it out loud:

DTA.

A recent commenter stated:
“I saw your other post. I guess I practice meconium law then. I may be a shitlawyer, but at least I don’t bite the hand that feeds me. Law school made me the person I am today.”

This commenter openly linked his practice page to his comment, and I dutifully took a look to see who it was. The commenter is a solo practitioner in New York who has enjoyed well deserved success for being a high profile criminal defense attorney. Kudos to him, but I believe he has missed the point largely of why law schools seriously deserve criticism. First, let’s establish his perspective. He graduated cum laude from NYLS in 1982.
In 1982: There were 171 law schools according to an ABA stat sheet from 2008. Currently there are 200 accredited law schools, 7 provisionally approved law schools, and of course the people’s school of law in California which I just fun to throw in there. As many as ten new law schools are in the works according to the National Law Journal in 2008. Google “proposed law schools” and you can go through page after page of every son of a bitch and his sister wanting to open their own law schools. In the 2000’s the ABA accredited 13 new law schools. In the 1990’s, 8. In the 1980’s 7.

Take a gander at this: ABA stats When the commenter graduated, there were 127,312 in law school, and 35598 new JD’s, one of which was said commenter. In 2008 there were 152,033 in law school and 43,588 JD’s earned that year. I’m operating on incomplete stats and I don’t feel like making a chart since I have jiujitsu class in an hour, but look at that enrollment column. Look good and hard at it. We blew through the 120s in about a decade. We blew through the 130’s in about the same time. The 140’s? Didnt stand a chance. 5 years. The 150’s are on target to possibly go faster.

What does this mean? Using the most rudimentary statistics, an average of nearly 140 thousand people went through law school each year between 1982 and 2009. Over 27 years thats 3.78 million. Now I know thats not fair since law school takes 3 years, and not everyone graduates. So let’s just take one third of that figure for the three years and round it down to 1 million. So 1 million people went through law school since you graduated. How much did they pay? How about their debt? I don’t have nearly as much stats but the ABA is helpful here:
Tuition Stats
When you graduated, commenter, for public schools, you were paying less than 2000 a year. One can only imagine the cost of private schools, but for sake of argument, let’s just double that.
In 2008, public school was 16836 a year. Note that each year the tuition increase is roughly 10%, far outstripping inflation.
The median tuition and fees for the 2007-2008 school year, in 2009 dollars, was $14,461 for in-state students at public universities, $27,383 for out-of-state students at public universities, and $33,042 at private universities. Cite

Are you starting to see the picture, Mr. Greenfield? That’s cost. Let’s talk about debt. How much are people being leveraged for these degrees? Meanwhile, the average debt for graduates of private law schools has risen from around $75,000 in 2001-02 to $91,506 in 2007-08 (same article just click that im not so pretentious as to Id. that)

So NYLS, a private law school, for a down and dirty average, cost you maybe 15000 in tuition over 3 years. Nowadays a NYLS student will spend that before they get to Duty Breach Cause Damage. ($34,500 per year). If you borrowed all of your tuition, you probably had it paid off in 5-6 years, easy.

Here’s the rub, commenter. The stats bear it out, enrollment is accelerating. Tuition costs are skyrocketing, and law schools get PAID. Nobody gets to sit in on Palsgraf unless they have their tuition paid. The law school is the bookie, they always get their money up front from the loan providers. Federally guaranteed loans are paid for by the government, so lenders don’t have as much a fear to lend. Some law school deans even own their own lending companies! (See Richard Matasar at Here Student debt is likely 9-10 times as much as it was when you were newly minted, and not every debtor has a JD or bar license! Have starting salaries increased to keep up? Unless you were working for 4 thousand a year, I highly doubt that.

More people going to more law schools that cost more and more money to attend, to get more and more into debt for fewer and fewer jobs that don’t pay enough to allow for a reasonable repayment of that debt, little to none of which is subject do discharge in bankruptcy court. The kids see law school as easy bucks, and the law schools have to know this. It’s constructive notice. They either directly know, are deliberately blind, OR JUST DON’T CARE.

Is this starting to make sense a little? Just a bit? Your law school made you who you are, congratulations. If I went to law school in 1982, I might feel the same. But law school back then might have been an education. Right now it’s whole other animal.

Jacksonville law students gain national respect in courtroom competitions
Florida Coastal School of Law beats Harvard in moot court contest

TTTT beats Harvard, still throat deep in debt with no job hopes

I normally don’t just grab a news link and roll with it, but I wanted to get this up here. TTT and TTTT schools love this moot court shit, because it’s their only chance to shine on the national stage. My TTT loved it, and frequently argued pointless, no-application-in-real-life, moot court competitions on international oil shelf law or some bullshit and did well at it.

But let’s ask a question. After you got done arguing about Madagascar graphite mining rights and beating some Kenendy from Haaahvid at moot court, what have you got? (16 tons what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt.) You get a shittly little trophy, a mention in the alumni newsletter (i drunkenly and vindictively used mine once to wipe my ass when I ran out of toilet paper) and oh yeah a useless TTTT degree, 175000 in debt, and little chance of landing a meaningful job paying more than 40K. Public Defender? State Attorney? Good luck. Those old catchalls for middle of the pack TTT also rans have largely closed up their doors for the perpetual great recession. Fuck, even one or two of those Kennedy Hahvard guys might have a hard time landing that sweet 6 figure gig they believed they were entitled to since they stopped pissing their own bedsheets.

Sorry to sound a little like L4L and the other law school scam guys, but Moot Court TTTT competitions are little more than circlejerks for the law school toilets to gild their brochures and sucker in more lemmings. Sure, some job adverts say “Moot Court and Trial Team Preferred” but they don’t mean the Upstairs El Paso Night Law School Moot Court who won the 7th annual International Arbitration Competition About Useless Bullshit No Corporation In Their Right Mind Will Hire A TTTT Grad To Litigate.

Sure you managed to get hitler off of his crimes against humanity against some bumbling Yalies. But even the most booze soaked, drug addled Yalie will get a fucking job somewhere in daddy’s boutique, secretary blowjob and 3 martini lunch office while you will be hawking the trophy from that competition at a pawn shop to cover ramen noodles another month while you hit ignore on your cell phone for the 14th call from Sallie Mae today, and hit refresh on craigslist jobs ads.

Attorneys can get free marketing, kinda, if they agree to be part of a referral service for prepaid legal services. It’s a type of insurance that employers give employees for modest premiums. The attorneys are put on a list and when the insured needs legal help, they call the insurance company who then picks a name on the list for that area. So the attorneys get clients, usually half a dozen to 10 a year, for free, but they have to agree to reduced rates or flat fees. Sometimes its a payday, sometimes it sure ain’t.

Example 1: We charge 150 for wills, pourover trusts, etc. 250 gets you a will, power of attorney, AMD (advanced medical directive). It’s usually easy as hell. However, the legal insurance pays each document separately, so we make 400 for the three docs total. Last week, a woman comes in (ID lawyer at that) and says she needs to finally get this done. One kid, One husband, not a ton of assets. Pourover trust, AMD, Power of attorney. What about the husband? “Oh he doesn’t have one either. Might as well do his too.” Cut, paste, finish. It’s shitpaper, but we’ll make an extra 300 bucks for another 4 minutes of work thanks to the insurance. For an hour, I can feel like Life At 160 AKA Patrick Bateman (he feels the comparison is SO unfair) charging exorbitant fees for little work.

Example 2: The shitlaw divorce. The clients either have full coverage or partial coverage. It’s funny since the partial coverage pays more. Partial means the first 15 hours are paid for ay 85 an hour, followed by billing the client at 75% of normal fees. We’re working on our second year of litigation of one of those.

Example 3: The Make you want to Kill Yourself Divorce. Oh we got one of these, full coverage. But the insurance company pays in litigation stages, and they pay flat rates. Anything else and you have to submit a “Request for Additional Fees” or RAF. This started as an easy divorce, there are two infant age children, the mom ran off to be a welfare queen, and the husband and wife have like 0 assets. Well, custody has been hell on wheels. The temporary custody motion got cut off by the judge after 30 minutes. The wife ran on and on about my client being a deadbeat with the bills and a permanent fixture at the slot machines. My client and his parents say the wife is a welfare fraudster, and lives with a drug dealer (and cop batterer to boot). The judge orders a custody evaluation and sets it off to be dealt with at a full hearing some other time. In the meantime, he orders rotating custody with the receiver parent picking up the kids. The wife bitches as she’s a welfare queen, my client gloats as he can drive and his parents can see where the kids are, etc. The wife lies to the court about her address.

The insurance company decides that my client’s 15 phone calls for about 3 hours of work plus another dozen emails plus an hour meeting in office plus the hearing time is all pre litigation discovery motion, and says they will only pay 300 bucks. You can see how this is karmic blowback from the will windfall. The full coverage clients really try to squeeze every last bit of blood from this withered turnip. Then they leave human waste in your parking lot.

Every time I hear the acronym for this insurance company though I cringe since we more often than not do not turn a profit on these cases. But in the ever loving world of shitlaw/toiletlaw/clients leave meconium stained newborn premie diapers in your parking lot law, you take what you can get and like it.

This is meconium.

So here’s the skinny. They put out an ad asking for an associate with minimum 5 civil trials. I send them a cover letter saying “Yes I know you want 5 civil trials but I have just as much criminal trial experience, plus I can handle divorces, small commercial matters, auto accidents, etc. I would also help the bottom line as I would work for less than the 5 civil trial guys would ask for since I’m coming from a low cost of living area and would realistically ask for mid fifties to start with my 3 years exp.”

It was a long shot. But it was literally 4 minutes from where I would live in Jurisdiction X, at my old lady’s house. While I was up here they moved the interview to Saturday morning (which was not a real problem as I didnt fly home until well 30 minutes from now on Monday) so I used Thursday night as a chance to ask around at a local fundraiser. A partner at my GF’s firm who is a nice guy (but they avoid all criminal cases so i dont have a possible job there) said to drop his name at the interview, that they all know each other, and it would separate me from anyone else since I’m not a harvard guy. Makes sense. Well it didnt do one fucking lick of good.

I meet the old geez out in front of the firm on Saturday. He rolls up in his beamer, and greets me at the door to let me into the conference room. “I don’t have your resume, but I know you know it, so let’s talk.” I am cordial and affable, I explain to him some of my life’s difficulties (family deaths, etc) and my successes (making it as a lawyer) and my major cases (various Columbian drug lords, rape boy, my dozen or so divorces and various auto accident cases, the appeals I’ve written, etc) and he’s eating it up. But then he drops the hammer “So how many civil trials have you had, we do have some criminal matters but we largely do commercial litigation and civil trials, sex harrassment, discrimination, etc” Well I was honest and said 0 trials in those departments, but I put that in my resume and cover letter, and it’s just a matter of

“Well i gotta be honest with you Toiletlawyer, our senior litigator has been on sick leave for a year and we need someone to help pick up the slack and we’ve interviewed a lot of quality people and without the civil trial experience you’re very weak. I don’t make up my mind at the first interview but i have to be honest with you I dont want you to think you’ve wasted your time but I do wish you luck with your job search.”

In other words you wasted your fucking time. No, you old senile fuck you wasted my time. I at least will fuck my girlfriend, eat a fancy valentine’s day dinner, and piss away a paycheck at the poker tables getting lit up at the same time. You will die an old fucker’s death, your left ventricle collapsing under it’s own tepid weight, fluid choking the life out of you as you slowly fade away into the cold grasp of death, unloved, uncared for, and lonely.

Bitter? Nah. TBH they never should have called me, then I wouldnt have gotten my hopes up. I didnt win at the poker tables, but I did get laid and that aint half bad.

Well that interview was the most soulless waste of my time. Fly all the way up here, get my hopes up, to basically get my experience dismissed since I dont have civil trial experience. I’ll put in more details later. Back to the toilet!

No this isnt weightloss related, though I’ve stalled out with two weekends of partying, not to mention the super bowl.

The big interview is coming, and for some reason I’m both scared and excited. It’s ridiculous though, I’ve worked since I was 14, and I have interviewed countless times. Back when I previously tried the move to Jurisdiction X, I had a half dozen interviews or so in a matter of months, and could have worked for a real mill before i got the good solid offer. An interview became an informal conversation and I felt like I was in charge what with my 7 months experience.

My car is dying slowly. It’s paid off, but the AC died again, I just spend 600 fixing it in September. It’s cold as balls out but summer will be here soon enough, and I have 10K set aside for car replacement, and I started moving without thinking about the price of a replacement car, because hey, I’m going to get this job and clear 60K a year and get married and pull myself up into the mythical land of midlaw.

At some point I drove 2 hours to go see the car I wanted, blowing off a jiu jitsu class. It was an 08 dodge caliber, with literally 1100 miles, for 10.5K. It was all I could think of. Somewhere between point A and B I began to think about what I am doing. I save money religiously, a la Dave Ramsey. This shitlaw job I have could fall through at a moment’s notice. I could be on the street next week with just my dick in my hand and my money in the bank gaining a sweet 1.4 APY. As soon as I got to the dealership I was sweating the whole idea of buying a car. My little mitsubishi may have 130K on it but it still goes, kinda, and it gets me back and forth across the state to the various jails and courthouses. The decision was made for me though, when the motherfucking idiot who was going to sell me the car told me “oops someone didnt tell me they sent it to auction yesterday, but hey lets look at these oth” he didnt finish the sentence when I sullenly said “no thanks” and bailed out. Im not making an impulse buy like I was a 19 year old with a 2000 dollar credit card.

Then I noticed I had missed a job posting right in ground zero of where I’m moving in Jurisdiction X. I’m flying up Thursday for the 10am Friday interview. Surely I can get them to wedge me in, I’m eminently qualified and asking for beans compared to what established Juris X guys want, they’ll gladly make time for me! I dashed off my resume Sunday and made sure to reference my pending job interview, which would make me look more promising. Then Monday morning I called up the office manager who was in charge of rounding up the resumes.

“Hi I’m toiletlawyer, I sent in my resume this weekend, and I don’t normally do this but” and I proceeded to tell him about the wonderful opportunity to interview me Friday and save me a few bucks on flight costs.

The guy sounded as deadpan as Jackie Vernon on quaaludes. He didnt give a flying fuck about me, and thank God I only mentioned my name once as he likely forgot it.

“All the resumes were just printed, I’ll pass along your message.”

I hope to god he didnt. I hope he doesnt know me from Adam and doesn’t write a fucking thing down. At least that way I won’t have completely sunk the possibility of someone calling me. The odds of them calling me are already low, and I dont need someone picking my name out of the hat to throw out as being a pompous ass to think I could finegle an interview so quickly. In 08 I was able to kind of do this thing, but now, in the great recession, I can only imagine I’m just a fucking name, another PDF resume, another shitlawyer praying for the midlaw lifeboat to pull me out of mid 40’s and give me a chance to get ahead in life.

Anyways sorry to sound so down on this one, but I’m trying to even out my karma before this interview. Put in a lot of work hours, do some self flagellation, that kind of thing, in hopes for something to break my way. That I got this interview is such a rarity, I gotta pray hard and mind my cosmic p’s and q’s till friday.