Newsmakers of the Year 2007 and 2008

Cover Story

January 2008 Issue
By Siobhan Morrissey

Editor’s Note:

When this article was posted online on December 12, 2007, it was titled “Lawyers of the Year 2007 and 2008.” The article defined that term as the year’s biggest legal newsmaker, identifying former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as the major newsmaker of 2007. The Journal regrets that we did not make this theme clear.

We appreciate the feedback we’ve received, and we’re acting on it. So that there can be no confusion, the term “Lawyers of the Year” has been changed in the headline and story to “Newsmakers of the Year.” The story is otherwise unchanged from its original version.

This article, like all in the Journal, is the work of the magazine’s editorial staff. As is the magazine’s practice, it was not reviewed by the Journal’s volunteer Board of Editors, the ABA’s Board of Governors, or its officers, prior to publication. The Journal will continue to strive to provide high quality news to its readership.

Naming a legal newsmaker of the year for the 12 months that have just ended is easy. Naming the newsmaker of the year for a year that hasn't begun would normally be evidence of hubris or a touch of insanity.

But not this year.

The top legal story of 2007 was unquestionably the unraveling of support for the Bush administration’s expansive view of presidential power during wartime, and with it, the slow-motion destruction of Alberto Gonzales’ reign as U.S. attorney general. Add to that the controversy over whether the administration fired eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons, and no single lawyer made more news in 2007 than Gonzales.

And now, all of those problems have been dumped in the lap of the new AG, former federal judge Michael Mukasey. How he’ll deal with them—in the middle of a presidential campaign, no less—promises to make him the top legal newsmaker of 2008.

What follows is our opinionated look at those two attorneys and the cast of characters—prosecutors and defense lawyers, government lawyers and those in private practice, Republicans and Democrats—who made legal news in 2007, along with our predictions of who will take their places in the headlines of 2008.

The list is meant to spark a lively debate. Tell us who makes your list of the legal newsmakers of the year by dropping us a note at abajournal@abanet.org, or commenting on this story on ABAJournal.com. Let the arguments begin.

2007 NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR

ALBERTO GONZALES

The most talked-about attorney this past year by a mile, Gonzales, 52, rose from being the grandson of illegal immigrants to the first Hispanic attorney general of the United States. George W. Bush appeared to be grooming the man he affectionately calls “Fredo” for the U.S. Supreme Court. But after Gonzales appeared veracity-challenged when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he resigned in August.

Gonzales went from “Latino Lawyer of the Year” in 1999 to become the subject of several investigations involving use of the Justice Department as a political tool.

Before becoming attorney general, Gonzales authored—or at least authorized as White House general counsel—a memo describing the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and presided, at least nominally (see David Addington), over what now appears to have been a stealth campaign to reinstate pre-Watergate presidential authority.

His determination to do so is epitomized in a now-infamous hospital-room meeting with an incapacitated John Ashcroft in an unsuccessful effort to gain approval for a secret wiretapping program. The highlight: Ashcroft’s wife sticking her tongue out at Gonzales and his entourage as they retreated from Ashcroft’s bedside.

2008 NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR

MICHAEL MUKASEY

George W. Bush’s nomination of this former federal prosecutor and judge from New York drew raves, even from Democrats like New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who once championed Mukasey for the U.S. Supreme Court. But Mukasey has his work cut out for him as the nation’s 81st attorney general.

While on the bench Mukasey developed a strong grounding in terrorism cases, having presided over the prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman. But now one of Mukasey’s first tasks will be to review the secret legal opinions upon which the administration has been conducting its war against terrorists. During his confirmation hearings, Mukasey refused to tip his hand, but he could make a dramatic statement by simply making the opinions public.

We won’t try to predict. Mukasey proved himself capable of surprises when he ruled that “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla—an American accused of terrorism-related activities—was entitled to see his lawyers. But he also surprised senators from both parties during his confirmation hearings when he eschewed an opportunity to declare that the controversial technique known as “waterboarding” is, by legal standards, a form of torture.

Mukasey has noted his belief that the current judicial system in this country is ill-equipped to combat Islamist terrorism and Congress should consider creating special courts to resolve the problem. We’ll see where he goes with that. But he can make his mark by simply stemming the exodus of career attorneys in the civil rights and regulatory sections of the department, the bulwark of stability in a system that has suffered some severe problems of trust and credibility in recent years.

2007 RUNNERS-UP:

MICHAEL NIFONG

As recently appointed Durham County, N.C., district attorney, Nifong drew national headlines with the racially charged investigation and indictment of three members of the Duke University lacrosse team in the alleged kidnapping and rape of an exotic dancer during a team party in March 2006. The students were white, the dancer was black.

Nifong, who was up for election, ran, and won, based on the notoriety he gained from the case. Less than a month after the election, however, the case began to unravel, as questions about the forensic evidence and the dancer’s credibility, as well as Nifong’s conduct, brought intervention by the North Carolina attorney general.

The case was dropped in April when it was discovered that Nifong had ordered exculpatory DNA evidence to be withheld from the defense. In June, his license to practice was revoked by the North Carolina State Bar. In September, Nifong spent a brief time behind bars for having lied to the court.

Nifong, now 57, faces a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit from the exonerated lacrosse players. Jim Cooney, an attorney for one of the players, told the Associated Press: “He probably feels like he’s in a lake of fire right now. But if he does, he needs to come to the realization that he set that fire.”

LEWIS “SCOOTER” LIBBY

It took two decades, but Libby, 57, managed the dubious distinction of being the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter of the Iran-Contra scandal. Libby earned his nickname when his father watched him scoot over the bars of his crib; he’s also affectionately known as “Germ Boy” for his insistence upon universal smallpox vaccination.

Libby was one of the administration’s “Vulcans”—a charter member of the neoconservative network of foreign policy analysts that includes Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. In March, a federal jury convicted Libby of perjury and lying to federal officials investigating the leaked identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose ambassador-husband publicly criticized the Bush administration for entering the Iraq war. Bush saw to it that Libby did not serve a day in prison, commuting his 30-month sentence; Libby paid his $250,000 fine. Not since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal did presidential leniency provoke such outrage.

HOWARD K. STERN

He shares the same first and last names of the famed New York shock jock and is no less shocking on his own. Stern, 39, is one of those rare one-client attorneys who made his name and his living representing the larger-than-life (and sometimes big as her bathtub) Vickie Lynn Marshall, aka Anna Nicole Smith.

In his over-the-top representation of the former Playboy Playmate who married rich and old before dying at age 39, Stern first made a splash in 2006 as the man on her arm at the U.S. Supreme Court, where Smith sought reinstatement of an $88 million judgment won in a bankruptcy case. After that, he went into overdrive.

He created a mock marriage with her and proclaimed himself the doting father of her daughter, Dannielynn. When Smith died in February under suspicious circumstances—some five months after her 20-year-old son died—the real father presented DNA to a court in Nassau and won custody of the infant heir. Soon after, everything from the Nassau house where Smith lived to her last resting place became fodder for litigation involving Stern.

Smith’s mother, Virgie Arthur, hit Stern with a defamation suit, slipping in a few choice charges about the lawyer’s “manipulation” of her estranged daughter.

MONICA GOODLING

Bill Clinton had his Monica problem, and so did George W. Bush this year. While Monica Lewinsky’s extracurricular activities led to the impeachment of the leader of the free world, Monica Goodling’s overly zealous and questionably legal actions merely led to her own resignation and renewed debate about the proper role of politics within the Justice Department.

Goodling, 34, served as the director of public affairs for the Justice Department under Ashcroft and senior counsel and White House liaison under Gonzales. A lawyer and Bush appointee, Goodling admitted she “crossed the line” in her job of screening who to hire and who to fire at Justice by doing so on the basis of party affiliation.

Goodling became embroiled in the controversial firing of eight U.S. attorneys that ultimately contributed to the resignation of her boss, Gonzales. When she resigned on April 6, Goodling told Gonzales in a written statement: “May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America.”

At first, Goodling invoked Fifth Amendment protection when subpoenaed to testify before Congress, but later told all when granted limited immunity.

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY

While it’s hard to imagine anyone too liberal to teach law, especially in California, Chemerinsky, 54, became saddled with that description when, in September, he was tapped to become the first dean of the law school scheduled to open at the University of California at Irvine in 2009.

But within weeks of the announcement, the job offer was yanked from Chemerinsky, a highly accomplished constitutional scholar and Supreme Court litigator whose clients include Valerie Plame and a Guantanamo detainee.

Chancellor Michael V. Drake said he came to believe that the Duke University law professor’s commentaries ran contrary to the interests of the state’s first new public law school in four decades. But conservative and liberal legal scholars rallied as one to deride the decision to un-hire, with the media firestorm growing so intense that within days, the decision to drop him was reversed. Chemerinsky is now slated to become founding dean of the Donald Bren School of Law.

DAVID ADDINGTON

Addington, 51, is the kind of man who likes to live dangerously in a dangerous world. Longtime associate and admirer-in-chief of Dick Cheney for more than two decades, Addington replaced Libby as the vice president’s chief of staff and keeps in his office a photo of his boss firing a shotgun. According to those who have dealt with him, Addington shares his boss’s belief that the president should have unlimited powers in time of war—and should have carte blanche in dealing with the thorny issues of torture, secret detention and warrantless eavesdropping. Though never one to play to the cameras, his reputation for determination (or simply “getting his way,” as former colleagues have termed it) has pushed him from the shadows at the top tier of the war on terrorism.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, upon hearing about the Bush administration’s efforts to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, remarked, “It’s Addington. He doesn’t care about the Constitution.”

PATRICK FITZGERALD

Hardworking, humorous, smart as a whip and once included in People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” roundup, what’s not to love about Fitzgerald? Well, the bad guys might not like him too much. Deemed one of the world’s best terrorism prosecutors by the 9/11 Commission, as an assistant U.S. attorney Fitzgerald indicted Osama bin Laden years before the hijackers slammed into the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

Before that, he convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “blind sheik,” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He helped prosecute Mafia figures and put former Illinois Gov. George Ryan behind bars. Now add “Scooter” Libby to his list of conquests.

Going after Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff didn’t do much to endear Fitzgerald to the current administration. Sending out subpoenas to members of the press didn’t make him a hero of liberals, either. He kept then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller cooling her heels for 85 days in stir until she agreed to testify before a grand jury in what became the Libby case.

Fitzgerald, 47, a first-generation American whose parents hail from Ireland’s County Clare, seems to take it all in stride. From humble origins as the son of a Manhattan doorman, Fitzgerald went on to Amherst and then Harvard Law School. He currently serves as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Oh, and the 6-foot-2 former rugby player plans to lose his bachelor status as early as this spring.

“MICHAEL CLAYTON”

He’s no Atticus Finch. In fact, he may be the anti-Atticus, an impeccably groomed BigLaw bagman who specializes in expedient ways to make problems go away. But as played by George Clooney, he comes with enough character flaws to make his choice of “practice area” understandable, if not forgivable. Like many lawyers he’s entrepreneurial, having opened a bar with his alcoholic brother. But like some lawyers, he’s also overextended from the experience. As a successful former prosecutor, Clayton has the very lawyerly ability to see things as they are, and the kind of complicated character to understand the subversive nature of compromise. He knows when and how to turn the tables on the uptight corporate lawyer who bumped off his friend—a suspension of disbelief is required here. But pity the corporate lawyer who sees her job as a life-and-death game and loses.

THE LAWYER-BLOGGER

These days anybody with a penchant for the word can get on the Web and grouse. And we’ve reserved a spot here for those who do just that because 2007 was the year lawyer-bloggers—some call them blawgers—came into their own.

Sure, law blog superstars like David Lat and Tom Goldstein have been churning out content for a while now, but the last year saw a plethora of law blogs begin to insert themselves into the most significant daily news and legal issues debates alongside their counterparts in journalism and academe.

From the Duke lacrosse team fiasco in North Carolina to the high-profile “Family Secrets” Mob trial in Chicago, bloggers made their presence known with a flourish, sometimes to the chagrin of the judges and lawyers involved. But the influence of the lawyer-blogger goes beyond that.

Whether by a single practitioner who wants to share his or her problems and experiences opening an office, or a BigLaw associate who wants to dish the dirt about the practice, the lawyer-bloggers are finding an audience for their work, and we salute them.

2008 RUNNERS-UP:

MELVYN WEISS

This founding partner in what was the nation’s leading plaintiffs securities class-action firm seems like an odd choice for 2008. Milberg Weiss, which claims to have collected $45 billion for cheated investors over four decades, is now under federal indictment for allegedly paying several clients millions of dollars in kickbacks to sign on as lead plaintiffs. So far, three former partners have pleaded guilty.

But the 72-year-old Weiss, who once wielded lawsuits like a weapon as a self-described avenger for investors against corporate greed, pleaded not guilty in October to four federal charges and posted $1.5 million in bail. In his forthcoming trial, prosecutors will allege that in a span of 25 years the firm raked in $250 million on more than 150 cases where it paid kickbacks. All that money—combined with stories of the Picassos and lavish estates in Boca Raton and Oyster Bay—will make him one talked-about lawyer, be it in terms of hubris or High Noon.

YALE GALANTER

He’s the juice behind “The Juice.” A former Miami prosecutor, Galanter has made a cottage industry out of representing O.J. Simpson ever since the former football star fled California for a Miami suburb in 2000.

Galanter defended Simpson in a subsequent road-rage case that could have sent him away for 16 years. Since then, Simpson has provided Galanter with numerous opportunities to speak on his behalf: a federal drug raid on the Simpson home in 2001; a ticket for speeding in a manatee zone in 2002; a domestic violence call in 2003; and on the publishing fiasco that surrounded the abominable book project If I Did It—Simpson’s as-if-it-were-fictional account of how he would have carried out the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman.

In September, Simpson was charged with three other men for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room and holding two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a dispute over items Simpson claims were stolen from him. Galanter will be representing him, and you will be talking about him—in spite of yourself.

CUPCAKE BROWN

Her memoir, A Piece of Cake, has already been well-publicized, but this year San Leandro, Calif., attorney Cupcake Brown (yeah, it’s the name on her law license, but it wasn’t on her birth certificate) is quitting her practice to write a screenplay based on A Piece of Cake, which recounts how she managed to become an attorney at a prestigious law firm following her mother’s death, rape while in foster care, prostitution at age 12, involvement with a gang and abuse of drugs.

The skeptical question the veracity of the tale, but count among her supporters friend and former professor Paul Sutton, who teaches criminal justice at San Diego State University. “Cup is for real. End of story,” Sutton told one reporter. Truth be told, however, much of what Brown says cannot be verified. No records of her foster care, of a gunshot wound she says she suffered, and no rap sheet as a self-proclaimed former member of the Crips.

Still, even if just a third of her tale is true, Brown will be oft-applauded for passing the bar, landing a job at Bingham McCutchen, and then walking away from it all last August to pursue her writing and motivational speaking careers, which is why you’ll be talking about Brown.

BILL NEUKOM

OK, in the pageant of life you can’t go wrong saying you support the rule of law. But as ABA president and partner in the Seattle office of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, Neukom is in a good position to do something about it.

No doubt his connections to Microsoft, where he was chief lawyer for nearly a quarter century, paid off. Last March the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ponied up a $1.75 million grant to help underwrite the ABA’s World Justice Project. Designed to advance the rule of law in the United States and abroad, the project seeks input from government officials, academics and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the nontraditional fields of architecture, the clergy, education, engineering, the environment, labor, the media, medicine and the military.

Yeah, he’s the boss around here, and we know what this looks like. But we think the rule of law is important in ways both big and small. For example, organizations delivering AIDS drugs in Africa can do their job more effectively if laws exist and are followed, free of conflict and corruption.

DANA JILL SIMPSON

As a Republican party activist and attorney, Simpson worked on Alabama Gov. Bob Riley’s gubernatorial campaign, but later shocked her GOP friends by accusing Karl Rove, President Bush’s former top political adviser, of instigating and influencing the prosecution of Riley’s chief Democratic adversary. Simpson’s claim, made under oath, has thus far stayed out of the national media spotlight. But that could well change if Democrats pursue, as threatened, hearings about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Simpson’s allegation links the White House to the corruption case against former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, who is now serving an 88-month sentence.

In a 143-page sworn statement to the House Judiciary Committee, Simpson says she learned of Rove’s involvement during a campaign conference call, and also alleges that Riley helped stack the deck against the former governor by assigning a hanging judge to oversee Siegelman’s case. Riley has denied her allegations, telling Time magazine last fall: “Ms. Simpson’s statements have gone from being not only untrue to absurd and ridiculous.” Whatever the case, Simpson could be telling her story before the white hot lights of a congressional hearing. She will be talked about, whether or not she is believed.

PRESIDENTIAL COUPLES

This election the Democrats have the corner on presidential couples who also share a life in the law. There’s John and Elizabeth Edwards, who met as law students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Everybody knows that John was a hotshot personal injury lawyer. But Elizabeth worked first as a judicial clerk and then at law firms in Nashville and Raleigh, and also gave birth to two children. She retired from the practice of law when their eldest son, Wade, 16, died in a freak car accident in 1996, after which the Edwardses had two more children. Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer while on the campaign trail in 2004, when her husband ran as vice president on John Kerry’s ticket.

Then there is Barack and Michelle Obama. Although both Obamas went to Harvard Law, they didn’t meet until they worked together at the same firm. Michelle mentored her future husband at the Chicago branch of Sidley Austin. Not only did she later go on to work for Chicago’s mayor and the University of Chicago’s hospital system, but she also looked good doing it: Vanity Fair hailed her among “10 of the World’s Best Dressed People.” Barack, on the other hand, has looked good doing just about everything he’s attempted, from becoming the first black president in the Harvard Law Review’s 104-year history to keynoting the 2004 Democratic Convention before winning a bid for the U.S. Senate.

And, of course, the quintessential power couple, Hillary and Bill Clinton. She’s a lawyer and he used to be, until his license was suspended over a matter involving that woman in a blue dress. Hil ’n’ Bill met at Yale Law School, where Hillary became a leading light in a class that was 90 percent male. She went to Washington after graduating in 1973 to join the House Judiciary Committee’s special impeachment inquiry staff during the height of the Watergate scandal. Coincidentally, if not ironically, she helped draft impeachment procedures that were later used against her husband.

The Clintons are hoping to follow in the footsteps of a famous Argentine couple. No, we’re not talking about Little Eva and Juan-boy, but recently elected President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner. They’re both lawyers, too.

J. REED WALTERS

Like Mike Nifong, but perhaps unfairly so, this Louisiana prosecutor of the so-called Jena Six inspired thousands of protesters to converge on LaSalle Parish when he decided to prosecute six black teenagers for their part in beating a white classmate unconscious. The attack occurred in December 2006 as racial tensions in the little Louisiana town soared over an incident in which three nooses were found hanging from a tree on school grounds.

In September, demonstrators led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton peaceably assembled, but accused authorities of unequally applying justice based on race. But in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Walters wrote that the white students who hung the nooses broke no law.

One defendant, Mychal Bell, now 17, had a juvenile rap sheet and was originally charged as an adult with attempted murder in the beating, though the victim was released from the hospital the same day as the attack. Bell was later convicted on a reduced charge of aggravated battery, but a state appellate court ruled he could not be tried as an adult on that charge. Bell was released on bond, then sentenced to 18 months on four prior juvenile convictions.

SECOND CHAIRS

You may not know them by name, but we predict their work will quietly shape the legal news in 2008.

JOHN HENDRICKSON

As regional attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Chicago office, John Hendrickson has been pursuing complaints against law firms that have fired or demoted their own partners because of their age.

In a landmark settlement last October, Sidley Austin agreed to pay $27.5 million to set aside an EEOC age discrimination lawsuit involving 32 former partners, most in their 50s and 60s, who were demoted to counselors in 1999. The EEOC alleged that for nearly 30 years, Sidley had a policy of requiring its partners to retire at age 65, while the firm denied it. It remains to be seen what effect the settlement will have on other law firms, many of which make no bones about putting partners out to pasture.

SHEILA BEDI

As director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi Youth Justice Project, Bedi made it her business that nobody gets away with abusing children in juvenile jail. Toward that end, Bedi, 31, helped the law center sue the state of Mississippi last July on behalf of six teenage girls who claimed physical and sexual abuse at a state prison for girls.

In 2005 Bedi’s lobbying produced passage of legislation designed to prevent previous practices that allowed children to be hog-tied, locked in dark cells, occasionally sprayed with chemicals during mandatory exercise and forced to eat their own vomit.

Bedi recently became executive director of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and we expect to hear more of her.

ELIOT DISNER

A hard-charging antitrust attorney formerly with McGuireWoods, Disner took on BAR/BRI and won. But when his firm settled the case with the nation’s No. 1 bar review provider for $49 million, Disner balked, and did so in open court, maintaining that the settlement should have been 10 times that amount.

Disner, 60, who had been a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office, got the boot last May. (Somehow it just doesn’t look good when you go against your own firm in open court.) Disner acknowledges damaging the firm’s reputation, but says he was acting in the best interest of the 300,000 young lawyers who took the course between 1997 and 2006.

Aside from more money, Disner also wants to see the breakup of BAR/BRI, so that future lawyers will have a choice of study programs when reviewing for the bar.

Disner commands respect from his colleagues, who refer to him as a “bulldog trial lawyer” and an “antitrust guru.” But some also call him an “idiot” for putting his own job on the line.

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO

When Moreno-Ocampo was elected the first prosecutor of the newly created International Criminal Court in 2003, he ran unopposed. It will probably be the only time he won’t find opposition on this job.

He honed his skills as a prosecutor in his native Argentina, where he went after the military officers responsible for the kidnap, torture and disappearance of his countrymen in what is known as Argentina’s “dirty war.” Not since the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II had any country tried any senior commanders for the mass killings of civilians.

Today he has his sights on human rights abuses in Africa: the Democratic Republic of Congo in the wake of the second Congo war; the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel army in Uganda known for abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers; the Darfur conflict in Sudan that has left untold dead from violence and disease since 2003; and, recently, the Central African Republic.

LORI ANDREWS

She’s a lawyer with a literary bent and has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator. A genetics expert of international renown, Andrews teaches at Chicago-Kent College of Law and serves as the director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology. In 1995, she chaired the federal advisory committee looking into the legal, ethical and social implications of the $3 billion Human Genome Project. And her influence in the legal ethics surrounding genetics doesn’t stop at the border.

No less than a dozen countries have asked for her advice on how to proceed with embryo stem-cell research, gene patents and DNA banking. In her spare time, she’s written numerous nonfiction books, three of which led to appearances on Oprah. Then there’s the fiction, Sequence and The Silent Assassin, which mixes mystery and science.

Glamour got it right when they included Andrews in its “Top 10 College Women” back when she was at Yale (where she graduated summa cum laude and later went to law school). She shares the distinction with Martha Stewart, actress JoBeth Williams and Cosmopolitan editor Kate White.

PAUL CLEMENT

His resumé reads like a how-to on getting appointed to the federal bench or maybe even the Supreme Court: summa cum laude from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, a master’s in economics from Cambridge, magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (where he was also Supreme Court editor of the law review).

After joining the DOJ four years ago, Clement wasted little time in vaulting to the top, landing the job as the nation’s 43rd solicitor general. As deputy to former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, he whipped around the country putting out legal fires. He’s argued scores of cases before the Supreme Court and oversaw the handling of high-stakes terrorism cases, including those of Jose Padilla and the second American Taliban, Yaser Esam Hamdi.

Even opponents grudgingly give Clement high marks. Federal public defender Frank Dunham Jr., who represented alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, had this to say of arguing against Clement: “He can make the unreasonable sound reasonable.”

Siobhan Morrissey is a lawyer and freelance writer in Miami.

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Posted by Dave - Dec 12, 2007 01:05 pm CDT

Is this a joke, or did the author just do a google search with the words “lawyer” and “2007” and pick the first 20 names that came up?

I’m looking forward to ABA Journal’s People of the 20th Century:

Tom Jones, Hitler, Marcia Brady, David Beckham, Boo Radley…
Posted by Gil - Dec 12, 2007 03:30 pm CDT

This is hilarious. The tagline for the ABA is “Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice.” I’d go into a diatribe pointing out all the fine points of irony contained in the context of that phrase with your decision to award Fredo Gonzales LoY 2007, but it seems pretty pointless.

I can’t wait to see who wins next year...perhaps the legal mind that can contort a justification of genocide?
Posted by John G - Dec 12, 2007 03:37 pm CDT

So, by your standards, Michael Vick should be named “Quarterback of the Year”. After all, it doesn’t matter whether you’re good or not, it’s all about how much news you generate. You do realize you’re just feeding society’s negative lawyer stereotype, right? You’re doing your profession a great injustice.
Posted by Paul Arons - Dec 12, 2007 03:47 pm CDT

Alberto G. is a disgrace to the legal profession. He was used as a mindless tool of an law-breaking administration. The ABA should be ashamed he has not been disbarred, and should not be doing anything other than condemning his actions.
Posted by Cash - Dec 12, 2007 03:50 pm CDT

Come on is there one scintilla of ethos and fidelity within any of you? To even allow the editor to attemp to justify this abhoration of justice by wordsmithing (the most newsworthy and maybe the best) is similar to the same stretch the truth approach to law and justice that gonzales exercised while he was the AG. Why not make him the most newsworthy candidate and then select an actual LOY? You should be fired!!! This is why no one trusts lawyers.
Posted by Corey Mondello - Dec 12, 2007 04:24 pm CDT

Wow kids.....the next generation is going to be even worse than the one we have now.

Why? you may ask.

Well....it seems the more you can get away with, the more you get pat on the back.

WTF

I hope I don’t have to be alive when a civil war breaks out or America looks like the Middle East.

It disgust me to become aware that America has been slowly falling to pieces since her begining.

Corey Mondello
Boston, Massachusetts
cpmondello@yahoo.com
www.CoreyMondello.com
12-12-07
Posted by sharon - Dec 12, 2007 04:44 pm CDT

Give me a BREAK! What about Genarlow Wilson’s lawyer—B.J. Bernstein! Her name, her defendant, was just as much in the news as the others this year?! She was a fighter to the end—until she got him release. Is her name anywhere on your list for 2008?! She never gave up on her client, yet you “guys” name an @$$hole! I guess defending a black male for an outrageous, RACIST sentence means nothing to you people!
Posted by lisa - Dec 12, 2007 04:52 pm CDT

If I hadn’t torn up my ABA card after the absurdly high ratings given to extremist judicial nominees like Miguell Estrada and Judge Pickering, I would do so now. The ABA has sunk to new lows and is unworthy of the mantle of the nation’s bar association. It is DISGRACEFUL of you to “honor” a man whose ignominious turn as AG marred our legal history and a judge who refused to testify that drowning is torture. The ABA is AWFUL.
Posted by roy konray - Dec 12, 2007 05:12 pm CDT

It’s time to impeach the editor of the ABA journal. If the criterion is the extent of news coverage rather than merit, then the title should be “most notorious lawyer of the year” or with regards to 2007 and 2008, Torture Defender of the Year or Most Dangerous Lawyer of the Year.
Posted by dmhlt - Dec 12, 2007 05:32 pm CDT

I think it would be appropriate and enlightening if you posted exactly what qualifications are used in selecting your “Lawyer of the Year”.

I can only hope it’s a similar rubric that led Time magazine to name Hitler “Man of the Year” for 1938 - otherwise I’m shocked!
Posted by Paul - Dec 12, 2007 06:17 pm CDT

The Journal better come up with a new way to classify these attorneys. The rest of the media are not picking up on the criteria and are treating the LOTY award as some sort of honor—and THAT dishonors the ABA!
Posted by Ken - Dec 12, 2007 06:22 pm CDT

I would think that John McKay and David Iglesius. both fired for political reasons by the Bush DOJ, would find a place on this list ahead of party hacks like Monica Goodling,
Posted by Mike in MA - Dec 12, 2007 06:30 pm CDT

It appears I have yet another reason to ignore your inane, insignificant publication.
Posted by BigTex - Dec 12, 2007 06:47 pm CDT

This is why I RESIGNED from the ABA. No sense in funding these idiots. QUIT THE ABA NOW!
Posted by Stephen Pettit - Dec 12, 2007 07:18 pm CDT

This is disgusting. What a moronic choice. I’d rather see the most venal ambulance-chaser or the most racist DA I know get the nod than the man who has done so much to undermine the rule of law. The person that made this decision should be fired, they clearly don’t have the integrity to resign, nor the sense of morality to realize that a resignation was required.
Posted by russell - Dec 12, 2007 07:35 pm CDT

Far too clever by half. The ABA has only managed to make itself look stupid and craven.
Posted by Melinda - Dec 12, 2007 08:51 pm CDT

Go ahead and name George Bush “King” and Dick Cheney “Wizard” while you are at it. A much stronger message would have been the lawyers that were fired by Fredo. Instead you all reward him. I’m the Adm VP of a large law firm - we will not be renewing our 50+ subscriptions.
Posted by Murray - Dec 12, 2007 09:10 pm CDT

Thanks. Why not take a blow torch to the profession itself because you just burned us all.
Posted by Nick - Dec 12, 2007 09:11 pm CDT

I’m a lawyer in Australia so I can’t pretend to know all the details of your publication and the basis of your decision to name Gonzales as Lawyer of the Year, but I have read a lot about what this turkey has been up to over the past couple of years. From afar, your choice merely adds to the view that America has utterly lost its moral compass. If I were a member of the ABA I’d resign.
Posted by Jason - Dec 12, 2007 09:31 pm CDT

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Sure this is a joke, right?
Posted by Cliff Potter - Dec 12, 2007 09:40 pm CDT

To The ABA:

I am seriously considering dropping the ABA for good because of these absurdly embarrassing, wholly inappropriate choices.

The political nature of these “choices,” the failure to choose someone worthy of the choice from the numerous lawyers who have been lawfully supporting and promoting the rule of and respect for the law despite obvious risks, and the disgusting certainty that these choices will be promoted as our choices for the best lawyers of 2007 and 2008 make these choices abhorrent to everything the ABA used to stand for.

Who chose these people, at least one of whom is a convicted felon who is hopefully not a lawyer any more as far as I know? These are the ABA’s choices?

What is even worse is that this type of article must have been approved by the ABA itself.

What excuse could conceivably be given for doing this, other than perhaps the political party of those in power within the ABA?

Sincerely,

Cliff Potter
ABA Member since 1974
Posted by Elena - Dec 12, 2007 11:22 pm CDT

By nominating Alberto Gonzales for his “newsworthiness,” the ABA has clearly sunk to the standards of a tabloid magazine. What’s next? ...Oh, that’s right...a nomination for a man who can’t say that waterboarding is torture. What happened to standing for principles of justice? The ABA has a tarnished name.
Posted by Colleen O'Brien - Dec 13, 2007 12:55 am CDT

This is embarrassing to me as a citizen and an attorney. Gonzales and Libby and their cohorts are not a joke. They are a disgrace to our profession. Shame on you ABA.
Posted by Daniel Schrader - Dec 13, 2007 01:22 am CDT

Idiots
Posted by J Carvalko - Dec 13, 2007 07:58 am CDT

Attorney Gonzales played a key role in the government’s wiretapping of American citizens without a court order; and as such he abetted a violation of the time honored right to the attorney-client privilege. As a lawyer I thought that either receiving or making telephone calls to my clients was information protected from the government through the Constitution and state and federal law. Now I cannot be sure because the government can wiretap without justification. For this he deserves ABA Man of the Year? How about Scoundrel of the Year? I am incensed over the ABA’s squandering of an opportunity to honor someone for contribituting to the betterment of the world, not its deterioration! Look for my resignation from the ABA!
Posted by BC - Dec 13, 2007 09:09 am CDT

I protest - where is Ann Coulter? Surely she comes up a lot on Google and she is a lawyer. In fact, she is a “Constitutional Lawyer”! And to all you lawyer types - I think the reason Gonzales is Lawyer of the Year is because he is the Gold Standard for lying and lying with no obvious discomfort. Go thou and do likewise.
Posted by Ewan Mee - Dec 13, 2007 09:38 am CDT

Constitution?
We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution!
Posted by Elias Fogel - Dec 13, 2007 10:18 am CDT

This is beyond embarrassing.
Posted by Robert Purcell - Dec 13, 2007 10:29 am CDT

Alberto Gonzales has harmed the profession and the nation. The ABA article makes a bad situation worse. The ABA Journal needs to remember that without the broad support of the legal profession, you become irrelevant.
Posted by Collyn Peddie - Dec 13, 2007 11:42 am CDT

With respect for the legal profession at all time lows, can you really justify naming as “Lawyer of the Year” someone who has done his level best to disgrace the profession and destroy everything this organization is supposed to stand for? The ABA Journal is hardly TIME Magazine and no one is going to take the time to read the justification for Gonzalez’ selection. Instead, we get headlines on FOX , the impression that he is somehow being honored, and another black eye. If you wanted to make news and a real statement about what this organization represents, you should have revoked his membership.
Posted by christine grant - Dec 13, 2007 11:42 am CDT

The ABA Journal has now sunk below relevance and has embarrassed us ABA dues paying members.It’s a wasteful use of resources to feature a poorly written koser lawyer list,linking a now shamed former AG and Bill Neukom in print.What journalistic wannabe thought this had value or was or funny?
Posted by Daniel P. Paradis - Dec 13, 2007 11:45 am CDT

Glad I haven’t renewed my ABA membership yet, and likely won’t until the ABA apologizes to its members who value honesty and integrity and strive to maintain professionalism and ethics in the law. This is beyond disgraceful.

Dan Paradis
Boston, MA
Posted by King - Dec 13, 2007 12:35 pm CDT

I completely agree with Dan and the others who have said they will quit/non-renew their ABA memberships over this. And let’s be clear about one thing: the ABA Journal knew exactly what it was doing here; it took the damage to the profession over the intentionally caused outrage as an acceptable price to create some buzz for their publication. That is totally unaaceptable to me and, I suspect, the majority of the readership. Indeed, calling it “Lawyer of the Year” but then explaining that it’s not meant to be an honor is, in and of itself, a disgraceful example of what everybody hates about lawyers. But don’t be fooled: there was no unintentional confusion here. It was a premeditated magazine sales strategy at the expense of all the lawyers who are trying to create a positive message about the profession.
Posted by Jymn - Dec 13, 2007 12:51 pm CDT

I commend the ABA for choosing Gonzo. It has brought renewed attention to this criminal and further diminished his credibility (not that there was much left.) Hopefully ABA’s joke nomination will make its way into the MSM and encourage colleges (like the one in Pomona) into not booking this creep for speeches.
Posted by lawlessone - Dec 13, 2007 01:45 pm CDT

You’ve got to be kidding. “Lawyer of the Year”??? Pick some other title.

Gonzales deserves a cover story or editorial alright, but it should be for his disgrace and disbarment. Frankly, his law school should be revoking his diploma since it sure looks like he never attended a Constitutional Law class. Certainly, his oath of office seems to have meant nothing to him.

It is embarrassing enough at times to be a licensed lawyer with the likes of Gonzales and his cronies claiming the title. To have the primary collective voice for our profession naming him “Lawyer of the Year” is disgusting.
Posted by ckennedy - Dec 13, 2007 02:17 pm CDT

Please cancel my ABA membership.

Gonzalez, and now the ABA Journal, is a disgrace to the legal profession. We are in the midst of the most serious threats to our Justice Department, judicial system and constituional legal protections in my 30 years of practice and we get Junior Achievement journalism from the ABA. Shame on the ABA, its President and editors for this rediculous, unprofessional and absurd approach to “honoring” members of the legal profession. An apology from Neukom and some rolling heads would be in order.
Posted by Bokonon - Dec 13, 2007 02:26 pm CDT

Infamy, incompetence and disgrace should not serve as a yardstick for granting someone the title “Lawyer of the Year.” Those are the gutter standards of fame used by the tabloids.

This is a disgrace. And as a lawyer, I am genuinely embarassed at the ABA’s poor judgement. Whatever rationale and excuses you may offer for this choice, the ABA serves as the public face as our profession—and selecting this man as “Lawyer of the Year” looks like an official acclamation. That reflects poorly on all of us.
Posted by Daniel Pye - Dec 13, 2007 02:59 pm CDT

Your display of hubris and contempt for the Rule of Law in giving a nod to the man who most personifies the utter debasement of the Republic surely merits your own award: “Most Pathetic Professional Organization of the Year”.
Posted by CC - Dec 13, 2007 03:14 pm CDT

As a new attorney (one year), I do not understand how such infamy is justifed by such recognition. I viamently believe in the principles taught to me by a former federal judge in Professional Responsibility. Judge Wagner (FL) had us watch “The Firm” as a review of the professional responsibility rules before our final. During the movie we were to identify the Rules violated. This ABA list reads like a terrific PR or Constitutional law exam question. As a political science junkie, I am appauled. It is bad enough that the public perception of attorneys is privileged, eliteist and dishonest. As a civil engineer, I can not fathium how this article was sanctioned by the ABA as appropriate. I may be legally nieave, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth and should chill all attorneys – regardless of their political position.
Posted by Joe Sullivan - Dec 13, 2007 04:09 pm CDT

It is no wonder the legal profession is held in such low regard. What is the staff of the magazine smoking. I feel tarnished just being associated through membership with the ABA. It is clearly time to rethink such membership. Shame, shame, shame!
Posted by K.L. - Dec 13, 2007 05:38 pm CDT

Hey Post 39: You spelled “vehemently” wrong.
Posted by KL - Dec 13, 2007 05:44 pm CDT

Oh, and “appalled”, “elitist”, and “naive”. You must have gone to law school at Souther Montana Community College.
Posted by F - Dec 13, 2007 05:49 pm CDT

If those who are responsible were to step forward and apologize for this fiasco, we might be able to save some of ABA’s now-tarnished reputation.
Posted by JT - Dec 13, 2007 08:27 pm CDT

Thank jeebus for the pacific ocean.

It seperates Australia from the joke which is you.
Posted by Christopher Lee - Dec 13, 2007 11:29 pm CDT

You have got to be kidding me! What will the ABA do next, call for Hitler to be praised?

This is the end of the ABA’s “Biggest Association” status. The staff and leadership of the ABA have really screwed the pooch on this one. We want equal justice and rights for others and yet we honor those who are clearly against that.

The leadership of the ABA Journal should be fired for this stupid attempt to sell magazines and get clicks! I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Executive Director had his hand in this stupidity! He’s a piece of work as it is!

The President of the ABA who claims to work toward world justice better bring justice to this situation.
Posted by ADM - Dec 14, 2007 02:24 am CDT

Perhaps the ABA Journal might want to reconsider using the phrase “Lawyer of the Year” , if it ends up that the most controversial and worst lawyers of the year, get the designation.
Posted by Trana Rogne - Dec 14, 2007 05:31 am CDT

good or bad makes no difference, do you guys have any standards. sorry about the retorical quetion, why ask. time for a new bunch of lawer jokes.
Posted by C. Sizemore - Dec 14, 2007 09:15 am CDT

You would think that as a Professional journal who professes to represent the legal community and calls itself the “nation’s most-read and most-respected legal affairs magazine”, that you would make a choice for Lawyer of the Year based upon actual merit and achievement in something SUBSTANTIAL instead of based upon notoriety. Why would you want to have a list of nothing but disgraced lawyers??? Do you really think that is promoting the legal profession? What it does is equate the ABA Journal as nothing more than a tabloid looking for headlines. How does it feel to be in the company of the Enquirer? I hope that someone, somewhere is paying attention to all 46 previous comments as well as mine… it seems at least we are all in consensus with our opinion of your judgment, it stinks! Wake up ABA.
Posted by TS - Dec 14, 2007 09:34 am CDT

"ABA Journal Editors, the tribe has spoken. It’s time for you to go.”
Posted by Rick Box - Dec 14, 2007 11:00 am CDT

Does the ABA understand that the Time/Hitler-Man-of-the-Year analogy doesn’t work, because Time is a news magazine, whereas the ABA is an association of attorneys?

Is a police union going to give Drew Peterson “Cop of the Year” honors?
Posted by Gary Rose - Dec 14, 2007 02:50 pm CDT

Whatever the Journal “really meant,” the article is being cited, at web sites with a big following, such as Raw Story, as if the ABA named Gonzales “Lawyer of the Year” in a favorable way. Like we need that. What as stupid decision, and an equally idiotic justification, that other magazines had named Hitler “Man of the Year.”
Posted by Molly McDonough - Dec 14, 2007 02:51 pm CDT

The comments that appear above were posted before the headline of this article was changed and the editor’s note was added at the top of this story. - Molly McDonough, AME/Online ABA Journal
Posted by lawlessone - Dec 14, 2007 02:52 pm CDT

In Pakistan, the legal community is on the picket lines literally throwing everything including rocks to help oust a dictator. In contrast, in this country, the legal community names our own dictator’s henchman first “Lawyer of the Year” and now apparently “Newsmaker of the Year.”

Too bad America doesn’t have a Constitution of its own which the local lawyers would care enough about to protect.
Posted by JW, Springfield, IL - Dec 14, 2007 03:02 pm CDT

I’m am concerned that when one applies the same measure of success applied to the Lawyer/Newsmaker of the Year, the ABA Journal Editors have hit a home run with their selections. I’m saddened that this is the best that our Nation’s brightest legal minds can come up with.

Your headline should have read, “Our legal professionals measure success at Justice as getting press.”

There are countless other opportunities to advance the discussion surrounding the legal profession. Your decision to spotlight the toady Gonzales leaves me dumbstruck.

I would like to join the others above in suggesting that the ABA Journal Editors may boost the reputation of the ABA and the Journal by stepping away. Stepping down suggests that you might still be involved somehow. Stepping away allows us the hope that you are actually leaving the room.
Posted by ME Baldridge - Dec 14, 2007 04:53 pm CDT

Changing the title of the article does not improve the article one iota. Our constitution has been systematically shredded by Alberto and his boss over the last seven years while the ABA dithers about who is “newsworthy.” The ABA by its lack of action and misplaced priorities as shown by this article have brought shame on all lawyers.
Posted by dennis purtell - Dec 14, 2007 05:01 pm CDT

(Sent yesterday before wisdon prevailed. Still awaiting an apoloyg:)
To the Editor (if still employed)

As a member of the ABA for more than 35 years, I am dismayed at the Lawyer of the Year announcement of yesterday. The ABA Journal owes all of its members both an explanation as to why one needs to defend and explain that which should be obvious with the title of Lawyer of the Year; and after attempting to do so, it should further provide the Membership of the ABA with an apology for abusing the members’ trust. I and others don’t seem to recall that John Mitchell or his ilk ever achieved Lawyer of the Year simply because of the endless number of times his name surfaced in defenseless news articles or headlines.

To think that bar dues, executive time and perhaps worst of all, a small portion of some paper pulp producing forest was wasted on this misadventure is shameful.

Apology please!
Posted by van ellis - Dec 14, 2007 05:13 pm CDT

Wow, I have never read, consecutively at least, so many inane posts by so many radical, far left wing whackos. Do you have to check your common sense, intellegence and sense of balance at the door to the bar?
Posted by lawlessone - Dec 14, 2007 05:30 pm CDT

In Pakistan, the legal community is on the picket lines literally throwing everything including rocks to help oust a dictator. In contrast, in our country, the legal community names our own dictator’s henchman first “Lawyer of the Year” and now apparently “Newsmaker of the Year.”

Too bad America doesn’t have a Constitution of its own which the local lawyers would care enough about to protect.
Posted by wg - Dec 14, 2007 06:21 pm CDT

Well he was “nominated” last Sunday to “Texan of the Year Award” by Dallas News.
link
Posted by wg- - Dec 14, 2007 06:32 pm CDT

Link above bad, trying again

Texan of the Year Award

or simply this:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/120907dnedidreher.821024ab.html
Posted by Jason - Dec 14, 2007 06:55 pm CDT

What do you mean, “The story is otherwise unchanged from its original version”?

There are lots of changes to the text. For example, in the first version you wrote “the most newsworthy and maybe the best.” So don’t pretend we all misinterpreted the story the first go around. You originally implied that the lawyers were “maybe the best” in addition to being the most newsworthy.

This is bullshit.
Posted by Jason - Dec 14, 2007 06:56 pm CDT

And newsworthy is different from newsmakers.

You won’t cover up your bad judgment that easily.
Posted by Gary Rose - Dec 14, 2007 07:19 pm CDT

I listened to long excerpts of the oral argument in the most recent Guantanamo case before the Supreme Court. I have no sympathy for any person who has sought to attack our country, but every such person deserves a fair trial, and access to the courts. Anything else is barbaric. Anything else means innocent men, and even teenagers, may end up receiving years of physical and psychological punishment, isolated from their families, at the hands of a government more interested in making a show of “fighting terror” than doing it competently or fairly. Indeed, to the permanent shame of our country, some, if not many, of the detainees, it turns out, have suffered just such a fate. Gonzales played a pivotal role in this outrage.

In a long career, I don’t think I have ever been as proud or as moved as I have been reading about and listening to the attorneys who have argued for habeas corpus, and procedural due process for (to say the least) the unpopular detainees in Guantanamo, many of whom are working pro bono, at large firms who have taken these cases despite the risk of alienating major corporate clients, and indeed in the face of threats of the loss of business. But in fighting for these ancient and critical rights, these lawyers represent the highest calling of our profession.

These are the “lawyers of the the year.” In the bizarre world we now live in, however, I guess that is no longer the case. Has it become a question of who gets the most hits on Google, or perhaps who best advances the neo-con agenda?

Your excuse for creating a headline, that the Right will exploit as vindication of Gonzales’ conduct, that other magazines had put Hitler on their covers, is evidence we truly live in bizarre times.

After nearly 24 years of membership, which included active and rewarding participation in TIPS, I cannot continue to support an ABA that, whatever the article allegedly says, has impliedly given its approval to the cynical and damaging attack on our most basic and critical structures of the law, as represented by the career of Mr. Gonzales.
Posted by Jason - Dec 14, 2007 07:20 pm CDT

This is what editor and publisher Edward A. Adams told the AP just two days ago:

“Think about Time magazine’s Person of the Year,” Adams said in an interview. “In years past they’ve named people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin. So we’re not suggesting by these awards that these are the best lawyers in any sense of the word. We are saying they are the most newsworthy — and perhaps also the best.”

Clearly, he understood “Lawyer of the Year” to be honorific. He can’t pretend otherwise two days later.

It would be better simply to fess up the mistake and print an honest correction. Pretending it was all just a misunderstanding is laughable.
Posted by Melinda - Dec 14, 2007 09:48 pm CDT

I realize that the ABA changed the title and I appreciate the time they took to reconsider and come up with something else. However, once the toothpaste comes out, its kinda hard to put it back in. What we need from the ABA is help in restoring our Justice System.

Given that the Rule of Law is not followed by this current administration, how can the ABA expect people to not react? The Bush Administration has no regard for The Constitution and their newest AG is obviously going to be another “yes” man, just as Fredo was.

On your website, you have a link regarding the “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act,” but yet the man and the Administration that systematically destroyed that, is going to be your LOTY?! That’s just rich.

Personally, Patrick Fitzgerald and/or the DOJ Attys that were fired should have been your cover. Or even better, The Constitution should be your cover. There you could go into all the sordid details about how it has been trashed since Bush and Cheney (Addington) have been in office. The damage, the contempt and the duplicitous nature that the Bush & Cheney White House have shown towards The Constitution and the Civil Rights of individuals is devastating and unconscionable.

If we don’t stop the politicization now, what is going to keep another Administration from doing the same thing until it just becomes the status quo??
Posted by Chuck - Dec 15, 2007 05:02 pm CDT

I don’t know which is more disgraceful - selecting Gonzales as “Laywer of the Year” or trying to get around a really stupid decision by changing the title to “Newsmaker of the Year.” Sounds like something Gonzales did when he opined that the Geneva Conventions were “quaint.”
Posted by jacob - Dec 15, 2007 06:11 pm CDT

I don’t know if the ABA has the power to do this (it may be a job for the Texas Bar), but Alberto should be disbarred. That, more than any change of title from “Lawyer” to “Newsmaker” of the Year would be a bigger statement in my opinion.
Posted by Bernard P. Friel - Dec 15, 2007 10:53 pm CDT

Alan Pusey
Managing Editor
ABA Journal

Dear Mr. Pusey,
My delay in responding had to do with the time demands of the season and were not a consequence of any reconsideration.
I thank you for directing me to the article’s content and to the revised titling and introductory comments. I have read the article in its entirety, as well as the posted Comments through # 43.Frankly I found little in the Comments to disagree with. They articulated at length the views I expressed to you as well as a number that had not yet surfaced in the heat of my anger, shame and disgust.
While the change in titling may help to blunt and reduce criticism the damage has been done. Furthermore the disclaimer in the new introductory comments apparently designed to protect the volunteer Board of Editors, and the ABA’s Board of Governors and officers was reminiscent of the dancing done by the executives at Enron. If indeed those individuals are as removed from the Journal and its content as you suggest they too have done a disservice to the membership of the ABA and if they seriously retreat behind that disclaimer they will only bring more shame to the ABA organization and its membership. To do otherwise would only be to emulate the conduct of your Newsmaker of the Year.
It’s time for those at the highest levels of the ABA to step forward take responsibility and apologize. It appears there may be a lot of memberships awaiting such a response and after over 50 years as a member mine is one of them.

Bernard P. Friel
Posted by Robert Ellis - Dec 17, 2007 01:09 pm CDT

The change of characterization only makes the situation worse. Those who put Gonzales on the cover should apologize and resign, and the ABA Journal should choose a worthy person as newsmaker of the year (e.g. Gonzales’s 50 law school classmates who purchased a big ad in the Washington Post decrying his “failure to stand for the rule of law"), to enable the Journal to serve some useful purpose. What a pansy response to the overwhelming and deserved anger at the ABA. “Newsmakers” of the year for 2007 AND 2008? 2008 hasn’t even arrived yet. What idiocy.
Posted by Todd Michael Krim - Dec 17, 2007 02:34 pm CDT

Is this some kind of joke?!

In his role as White House counsel and U.S. Attorney, Mr. Gonzalez demonstrated a complete and utter disregard for the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, and was probably the worst U.S. Attorney this country has ever had. Mr. Mukasey, besides being sworn in less than a month ago, provided very evasive and disconcerting testimony relating to torture and “waterboarding” during his Senate confirmation hearing that raises serious questions regarding his own respect for the rule of law and the Geneva Convention in particular. To add insult to injury, the ABA Journal also named Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a convicted felon, as a Runner-Up to the top honor.

If I didn’t read your press release myself I would not have believed the press reports. How in the world can an organization with 400,000+ members that claims to want to “improve the administration of justice” and “build public understanding of the importance of the rule of law” name the above individuals as “Lawyers of the Year” and even suggest that they are among the country’s best lawyers?! Is the ABA that desperate for media attention that they had to stoop this low.

As a former member of the ABA , I am embarrassed and ashamed for your organization. I was actually considering renewing my ABA membership until I read today’s news report and release. I can assure you that unless the ABA reconsiders its action and issues a full repudiation of its decision that I will never again be a member of your organization.

I wish you well and hope you receive the publicity that you so obviously crave.
Posted by W. Mountrey - Dec 17, 2007 04:00 pm CDT

Is it any wonder that so many people hate lawyers when you make stupid choices like this? And your “correction” just makes things worse. It is too bad you didn’t see the errors of your ways. Our former A.G was a FAILURE. He, like those he served under, are criminals. I would have thought FACTS were important to lawyers - but obviously, I was wrong.
Posted by Ward Brown - Dec 18, 2007 12:43 pm CDT

I’m gone--31 years. I hope other media picks up a report of a mass exodus from membership, because that is the only way I will hear about it. There are plenty of other ways to support good causes and good people. The harm done by this action cannot be measured; it cannot be explained away.
Posted by Alfred T. Khoabane - Dec 19, 2007 01:39 am CDT

I have been charged $25+ Thounsand dolloars bymy Immigration Layer. My question is, could this be a real and reasonable amount to charge for someone looking into getting herself/himself into straitghting out his Immigratation and legal stature? Please reply. My Chicago Lawyer is already garnishing my salary.
Posted by Ed Lazowska - Dec 31, 2007 11:59 pm CDT

Thanks to Mad Magazine for bringing this list to my attention!

As someone who is not a lawyer, I find the list absolutely hysterical. How embarrassing must it be to those in the profession that the majority of the legal newsmakers are miscreants!
Posted by David C. Moody - Jan 3, 2008 10:25 am CDT

In light of the Gonzales disaster, either fire the editor and publisher or cancel my subscription. This gaffe brings disgrace and ridicule upon the profession.
Posted by Mary Calkins - Jan 27, 2008 03:52 pm CDT

As a lawyer and ABA member, I am shocked, saddened and personally disgusted that you would feature Alberto Gonzales on your cover, even if it’s only as “Newsmaker of the Year”. To me the real “newsmakers” are those who blow the whistle on him and his ilk. How can an organization that on the one hand sponsors marches against human rights abuses in Pakistan turn around and put such a terrible, vile example of the worst lows of our profession on the cover? If you continue in this vein I will have to seriously consider severing my ties with your organization. I agree with the others who have said this is a disgrace and brings ridicule upon us all.