California Wildfire Victims Need Attorneys

Wildfires across the state of California have killed dozens of people and scorched thousands of acres.

Devastating wildfires are currently besieging Southern California, including the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, the Creek Fire in the Sylmar/Kagel Canyon area, and the Rye Fire in Santa Clarita. The fires have displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas. It has been reported that electric company Southern California Edison’s local facilities are currently under investigation in relation to the cause of at least some of the fires.

In October, multiple fires blazed in Northern California, claiming more than 40 lives and destroying thousands of homes.

Lawyers currently represent hundreds of plaintiffs from Tubbs, Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, and Butte Counties who are holding PG&E accountable for their alleged role in causing the fires.

Many people who have lost their homes due to the wildfires are coming to a devastating realization. They thought their homeowner’s insurance policy covered them for their losses – but just the opposite is true.  As you know, many older policies don’t come close to providing the coverage these property owners need in order to pick up the pieces.

If your firm is fighting for the rights of Wildfire victims, you need to stand out from the crowd of other attorneys and attract potential clients with a legitimate claim that need your expertise to wade through the compensation process.

We can connect you with people suffering due to the Wildfires.  We have a flat fee, fixed cost program.  No pay per click or pay per call charges.

The cost is less marketing dollars than finding clients with radio or tv and far less expensive than PPC.

Contact BusinessCreator/ForLawFirmsOnly at 855-943-8736 for more information on how we can help you reach those California Wildfire victims that need your help.

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Facebook As A Marketing Tool For Attorneys

Facebook has emerged as a marketing tool with limitless potential. If you’re a Law firm looking for a lead generation source, you could benefit immensely from tapping into this social media platform. Image Courtesy of TechCrunch   If you’ve never thought of Facebook as more than a social platform, think again... your law firm could get a constant flow of qualified leads through Facebook. Want to find out how? Keep reading. Most businesses including law firms nowadays have a Facebook page, however, most of them don’t put in the effort to garner the benefits. Here are some tips that can help you expand the reach of your firm, using Facebook. Do Likes Matter? :  “Likes” on Facebook are nothing but the number of your audience. The more the merrier. The higher the number, the more people you can promote your business with. But to get likes and have people follow you, an engaging page is required. It’s similar to the quote “as you reap you shall sow”, the more engaging the content on your page the more people will like. You could also run a paid campaign to get your message in front of people outside of your immediate network. Posting Frequency: This is an effective way to stay ahead of the clutter on Facebook. The higher the frequency of your posts, the more of you the audience sees.  The best results have been observed from posting twice a day and maintaining a constant stream of posts. Visual Content: The way the world consumes content is becoming more and more visual. Pictures increase the appeal of your post and leave an impression on your audience.Therefore, incorporating pictures into your posts is highly recommended. Video content is another emerging trend which increases engagement on your FB page. Know your audience better with Facebook Insights: Facebook insight is a feature that helps you gain a deeper understanding of your audience. It offers information regarding the most liked posts, the location of your audience, details like the age group and gender of people that follow your Facebook page. This information will help you understand your target audience and make decisions on the type of content that you should be serving. Keeping the eye on the outcome: It’s a good idea to define the kind of results that you’re looking for from your social campaign. Gaining an organic following, that is without spending money out of your pocket… takes time and effort. If your goal is to have more people visit your website, FB lets you create custom buttons for a specific call to action. You can also promote discounts for first-time clients or a free consultation on your Facebook page. Measuring the results keeping your goals you set out to accomplish, will give you a better idea on areas where you could improve. Keeping these in mind will help your law firm get maximum mileage from their Facebook page. Like any other marketing channel, this isn’t a set it and forget it deal. You’ll have to constantly put in the effort to engage your clients, give out useful information, seek feedback and make them want to return to your Facebook page for more. In time you’ll start seeing the benefits of the diligent effort that you put in. Edward Kundahl, Ph.D., M.B.A. Ed can be reached at (or visit his websites) 855-943-8736 ed@forlawfirmsonly.com www.BusinessCreatorPlus.com www.ForLawFirmsOnly.com

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/?p=4854

Call-Only Google AdWords For Attorneys

SEO or SEM For A Law Firm? 

Many law firm owners struggle with how, when, or if to use search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) to generate leads and grow their firm. While both tactics are beneficial, several factors need to go into the decision-making process—depending on each law firm owner’s goals and budget. SEO works best for law firms first starting out or establishing an online presence for the first time. When designing a website, getting your law firm on local listings, and creating social media pages for your law firm, SEO is the best strategy. It’s important to utilize SEO to show search engines that your firm’s information is consistent and prevalent across multiple platforms. You can also build SEO for your law firm by consistently publishing relevant content that is valuable to your audience. SEM comes into play when your law firm website is ready to “wow” customers and get them to contact you or make a purchase. Many law firms jump the gun too early and do not take the proper time to implement strong website design practices first. SEM uses paid search campaigns such as Google AdWords to show an ad for your firm when certain keywords are used by customers searching for your services. When your website is ready to receive and convert leads, you will want to track which keywords perform best, when is the best time to display your ad, which target audience converts best, and how much you can afford to bid for paid search leads. This can all be a lot to manage, but it’s necessary to succeed with paid search.

AdWords And Phone Calls-Call Only Campaigns

Call extensions let you add phone numbers to your ads, which can significantly increase clickthrough rates. When your call extensions show, people can tap or click a button to call your business directly. That means more customer engagement with your ads, and more chances for you to get and track your conversions. Call extensions are the easiest way to add phone numbers to existing ads. If you attempt to include a phone number elsewhere in your ad text, it may lead to the disapproval of the ad, so if you would like to include a phone number, it is best to use a call extension. You can also create call-only campaigns. The newer call-only campaigns take time to setup properly but can result in a much lower client acquisition cost. To get phone calls to your firm, set up a call-only campaign to encourage clients to call you by clicking or tapping your ad. With call-only campaigns, you bid to drive calls to your law firm instead of clicks to your website. You can set your ads to show only when your firm can take calls, so you won’t miss an opportunity to connect with your potential clients.  With these campaigns, you can use CPC bidding based on the value of a call to your business. You can also add your existing phone information to your new ads and attach select extensions to your call-only campaigns. Ads created in call-only campaigns are fine-tuned to show only on mobile devices that are capable of making calls. Taps on these ads will only generate calls — they won’t link to a website. These ads are very flexible with how they can appear. To optimize for mobile and enhance performance, your ads may not always show every line of text you enter when setting up your campaign. Likewise, select extensions, which are available for call-only campaigns, may also be hidden in order to make the most of the smaller screen space on mobile devices. If you feel that your small law firm is ready for SEM, make sure that you have the time and resources to dedicate to your campaign and your online presence. Your campaign needs to have the right keywords and descriptions, but also effective tracking and analytics so you can monitor performance and conversions. Remember, do not let your social media presence, content marketing, and website suffer at the expense of your ad campaign! One of the most important differences between SEO and SEM is that SEO takes time, whereas SEM provides more immediate results. You may want calls and clicks fast, but you must dedicate work to your online presence to motivate customers who click on your ad to give you their law firm. SEO and SEM work best when used together. When used properly, SEM can help your law firm achieve its lead generation goals. Enlisting the help of a professional can also be a wise investment.  BusinessCreator/ForLawFirmsOnly has a team of SEM Marketing Pros that can create and manage your Google AdWords and Facebook campaigns for you! Edward Kundahl, Ph.D., M.B.A. Ed can be reached at (or visit his websites) 855-943-8736 ed@forlawfirmsonly.com www.BusinessCreatorPlus.com www.ForLawFirmsOnly.com    

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/?p=4796

New RICO Lawsuit Could Target Biglaw Firms — See Also

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The GRE Is Plotting To Take Over Law School Admissions — See Also

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A Firm Actually Goes Over Cravath’s Head On Associate Bonuses — See Also

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5 Stories That Also Didn’t Win Their Conference Championship — See Also

BUD LIGHT AD HAS BROKEN THE FOURTH WALL: Joe explains how to write a C&D that also helps the corporate brand. Dilly, Dilly.

DAVID BOIES IS JUST IN THE BARREL RIGHT NOW: I feel almost like I need to remind people that David Boies, as far as we know, didn’t actually sexually assault anybody — his clients allegedly did. Then again, Boies doesn’t need me to defend him, he got paid quite enough to be the hatchet man for alleged sexual predators. Hope he’s enjoying the fruits of his labors. Kathryn explains the latest accusations here.

THE NEW YORK A.G. IS INVOLVED IN A HUGE PROSECUTION: If you want to get the cops, you have to get the prosecutors enabling them. I explain how NYAG Eric Schneiderman is trying to do just that.

JOHN DOWD CLAIMS HE WROTE THE TWEET WHERE TRUMP ADMITTED TO OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE: Not that I believe him. But the fact that a lawyer would even try to convince us that he purposefully incriminated his client just shows you where we are in this country. Joe explains.

PRE-LAW STUDENT LIVING IN A VAN TO CUT COSTS: No, this isn’t a sketch, it’s real life. But Staci will show you the sketch.

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Write or Fade Away as a Designer

Every week a new article comes out preaching to designers the necessity of learning to code, sales, or . If you don’t learn one of these indispensable skills, your career is bound to crash and burn. Why? Because of the looming AI insurgence or some other whacky theory. While these articles may be accurate (in a very far future), the main reason we spill these warnings and encourage the learning of new skills is either to earn extra cash, feel more secure in our own job, or to avoid a sense of Imposter Syndrome. The real question should be: What skill provides the biggest gains for the least amount of effort? And the answer is: Writing. Don’t believe me? Just read what five top designers had to say about the importance of writing and the effects it’s had on their careers.

Eyal Zuri - Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Serious

Eyal Zuri is best known for Muzli, which was acquired by InVision, partially due to Zuri’s consistent blogging. He publishes around 16 articles a month after looking for new ways to grow Muzli. Zuri quickly realized that creating great content is an easy way to generate more traffic. This article generated a lot of buzz, causing significant growth in all of our channels. It’s funny, lighthearted, and not binding, which are keys to a good article. “I don’t really write. My articles are based on inspiration only,” Zuri said. “It allows me to create a relatively large amount of content that people love to consume.”

Paul Jarvis - Write to Boost Doing What You Love

After 20 years of designing, Veteran Designer Paul Jarvis spends most of his time writing and teaching today. This isn’t surprising, since writing has made him $400,000 in just 18 months. In fact, his most recent course sold out in minutes after writing just one newsletter. Jarvis made excuses for years before deciding to blog. “To be honest, I made every excuse in the book to not write for years. I kept telling myself I wasn’t a writer, so I had no business writing,” Jarvis said. “Then I realized that was a total BS excuse. All it takes to be a writer is to start writing. That’s it. So that’s what I did—starting my first book and a regular writing practice for articles. It snowballed from there, and now I spend as much or more time writing as I do designing.” So how does a designer, who isn’t a writer, become such a damn good one? Jarvis, who still doesn’t consider himself a good writer today, says “Just write for the audience you want to have.” “Help them with the things they struggle with, worry about or wish they knew more about. Don’t write for other designers unless they’re your target audience, and they probably aren’t,” Jarvis advises. According to Jarvis, his posts work because they aren’t specifically selling something. “My articles are entertaining and educational about a specific point, for a specific audience, so that I could paint a picture of what they were struggling with, help them in some small way, and then mention that if they needed further help, my paid courses were available.” Before Jarvis the teacher, Jarvis the designer wrote posts for potential design clients, like this one. “As my job changed to more of a teacher, articles that spoke directly to the pain I was trying to solve with the courses I teach help me sell those course - like this one (used for Chimp Essentials).

Nick Babich - Writing Brings Opportunities

Nick Babich, developer/designer hybrid, usually writes research-packed posts, based on his work experience. Babich tries to publish six articles, between five and seven minutes long, every month. Why between five and seven minutes? Because this way you only need to write the most important details, and also, because you don’t want readers to get bored. Like Jarvis, Babich’s writing has provided him with a multitude of opportunities, such as a speaking gig at Push Conference. “It was such an amazing event! I had a lot of inspiration and new ideas from this experience, and most of them will be in my future posts,” he said.

Matt West - Write About Passions That Outweigh the Fear of Writing

Matt West, author of HTML5 Foundations, tries to publish between two and three articles a month, but sometimes he goes for long periods of time without writing anything, when there just isn’t anything to share. While there are loads of books on how to improve your writing, West simply focuses on reading a lot. “Read the work of writers you admire, and pay attention to their use of language, how they structure sentences and how they present their ideas. You can learn a lot by simply surrounding yourself with great work.” For a while, West lost his passion to write, when writing became more of a chore. It wasn’t until he was presented with the opportunity to author a book on HTML5 that his desire to share his knowledge outweighed his dislike of writing. West recommends writing about topics you’re passionate about; not only will you do your best work, but you’ll also feel like you aren’t doing work at all. “Don’t try to please everyone, be opinionated, and stay focused on your core idea. If you put something out into the world, and nobody disagrees with you, then you’re probably not saying anything worthwhile.”

Andrew Graunke - Director of Design at Toptal

Toptal’s Design Director Andrew Graunke connects the world’s top designers with businesses looking to hire. Graunke’s favorite part of writing is how it allows you to connect with new people. “By proposing a new design for Crunchbase, I was able to open a public dialogue with Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell, who commented ‘…loved your blog post! Lots of good ideas in there - many of which depended on us building the search/list functionality we just launched with Pro. Exciting times ahead!.’” While this may not seem like a huge deal to outsiders, it certainly does to Graunke. “The work I do takes buy-in from all parties, and even the smallest opportunities look like the biggest opportunities to me,” he said. “Will Jager McConnell leverage our Toptal network to build out design and dev teams? This one’s yet to be seen, and the hashtag’s on me.” These are just some of the examples of designers getting great results by writing. I couldn’t interview myself but I got my current job as the Lead Editor of the Design blog @ Toptal by one of the founders of Toptal reading one of my articles on Medium and reaching out to me.

Challenge yourself to write

These are just a few examples of designers reaping great results from writing. Now, it’s your turn. Perhaps you can begin by leaving a thoughtful comment on someone else’s article. From there, challenge yourself to write an article of your own. Then write one more and another and another. You get the picture. The most difficult part is starting, so don’t wait until you find the perfect idea. And don’t edit while you write, or you’ll drive yourself crazy. The more you write, the easier it gets. To get started, ask yourself: What point do I want to make? And just go from there. This post was written by Michael Abehsera, Designer for Toptal.
https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/?p=7707

Celebrate The End Of 2017 With Above The Law

If you haven’t made plans to join us next Thursday for our annual holiday party, then what’s wrong with you? Our parties are always a good time with free drinks, some food to nibble on, and the sympathetic ears of the ATL staff ready to hear all about your upcoming exam schedule or your grueling 2500-hour year.

We spend the whole year talking to you through our keyboards and we’re eager to thank you in person for reading.

This year we’ll be hosting at Axiom’s loft in SoHo, placing us in the happy middle ground between the Midtown and Downtown firms.

Here are all of the details:

When: Thursday, December 7, 2017
Where: Axiom, 295 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012
Time: 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Space is limited, so make sure you RSVP.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abovethelaw/~3/Lg_zqI00is8/

Non-Sequiturs: 12.01.17

* A deep dive into the results of the July 2017 New York bar exam.

* Which lower courts are the major players?

* Should there be an independent investigation into the culture at NBC?

* Work in a male dominated office? How is #metoo changing things?

* How are law schools helping students deal with the stress of finals?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abovethelaw/~3/Vv9LmGLDlmM/

How Is There This Much News ON A FRIDAY? — See Also

SO… MIKE FLYNN FLIPPED: Kathryn collects some of the best tweets here.

IT TURNS OUT, JAMES COMEY’S INSTAGRAM GAME IS STRONG: It appears Comey made an Instagram account just to troll Donald Trump? Kathryn explains.

DAVIS POLK MATCHES CRAVATH: It was unlikely but Davis Polk was the last major New York, white-shoe firm that might legitimately have topped Cravath, but they didn’t.

WHILE WE’RE AT IT, HERE ARE ALL THE BONUSES SO FAR: All the ones we know about, in one handy chart. Read and compare.

GENERAL COUNSEL PAY IS UP: But only for men. Women are making 31% less at bonus time. I express the appropriate outrage here.

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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I Failed The Bar Exam. What Are My Chances Of Passing the Next Bar Exam?

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Disappointing News Alert: According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners 2016 nationwide statistics, bar exam repeaters passed at a significantly lower rate than first timers.

Your chances of passing the next bar exam become much more challenging, but not impossible.

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Ethics opinions have to reflect the present and future—not the past

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2. In-Depth Reporting
3. Ethics opinions have to reflect the present…

Building the 21st-Century Law Firm

By Carolyn Elefant

December 2017

Shutterstock

One of the most enduring purposes behind the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and corresponding state ethics standards is to protect clients and the public from “overreaching, overcharging, underrepresentation and misrepresentation.” (See Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar, 1978.)

More than a century after the 1908 adoption of the association’s first set of guidelines, the ABA Canons of Professional Ethics, the clients whom ethics standards protect and the lawyers governed by them have changed drastically. Yet in substance and form, ethics standards remain stagnant—and the same lofty principles that once inspired the best in lawyers will soon render us irrelevant.

ARCHAIC RULES

In substance, today’s legal ethics standards are so utterly out of sync with the lifestyle, social conventions and technology savvy of today’s consumers that they actually breed mistrust.

Imagine an encounter with an alien that hails from a planet where placing one’s hands around a new acquaintance’s throat is intended as a sign of respect. Yet without this background, you’d understandably feel distrustful and threatened if greeted by a stranger who has a firm vise around your neck. The same is true of ethics standards in the modern world: They require lawyers to act in a manner that is so alien in today’s society as to arouse suspicion. Consider the two following scenarios.

Case 1: Penny Prospect, a mom seeking a divorce, arrives at your office for a consult. You think the meeting went well, but you never hear back. It turns out your instincts weren’t wrong—Penny was leaning toward retaining you—until she viewed your profile on LinkedIn and saw a disclaimer that states: “This profile is attorney advertising.”

In a decade of using LinkedIn (including as recently as that morning when she updated her profile in anticipation of searching for a higher-paying job), she has never seen a disclaimer like this. She knows LinkedIn’s user agreement prohibits advertising. Doesn’t this lawyer understand terms of service?

Penny’s concerns aren’t allayed when she clicks a link to the lawyer’s blog and once again sees “This blog is attorney advertising” underneath the blog caption. Penny doesn’t bother to read the posts; she assumes that if they’re advertising, they won’t be very valuable.

Penny wonders what’s wrong with this dude. He’s so caught up in promoting himself online that he won’t have time to handle her case. Ultimately, Penny heads to LegalZoom, which doesn’t have the same advertising disclaimers, and signs up for the do-it-yourself divorce package that includes attorney review.

Case 2: Noah Newbie is a recent business school graduate seeking to incorporate an online business. After the meeting, you hand him a 15-page retainer agreement and ask him to sign it and send it back with a check.

Noah leaves the office and tosses the retainer agreement into the trash can. He doesn’t understand a word of it. Plus, he’s always paid bills by credit card. He’s not sure that he still has a checkbook.

He decides to search his lawyer’s ratings online, but there’s not a client review or testimonial to be found. Because Noah always checks ratings before making a purchase, he’s disconcerted about why he can’t find any for his lawyer: Were they so bad she paid to have them removed?

Then Noah discovers a site called Avvo Answers, where he can ask questions about incorporating a business for $39. Noah searches for a New York lawyer. When he can’t find one, he discovers that several bars, including New York, have banned lawyers from doing business on Avvo. Apparently, it’s unethical for the site to take a cut of the $39 fee you pay to talk to a lawyer.

Noah doesn’t get it. Isn’t it a common online business model for the platform providing goods or services to take a cut of the sale? That’s how Etsy and Airbnb work—heck, Uber is killing it. Noah can’t believe this rule is really intended to protect clients. It’s probably a way to force clients to have to trek to a stuffy, old lawyer’s office and fork over $1,000.

It looks like his mentor, who heads a successful startup, was right after all: Noah is going to have to start his corporation at Rocket Lawyer by himself. Noah sighs, thinking it was easier to find his fiancée online through a dating site than it is to hire a lawyer.

REAL RULINGS, FALSE FEARS

These aren’t fantasy scenarios; they are based on actual ethics opinions. New York County Lawyers Association Formal Opinion 748 (2015) requires disclaimers in LinkedIn profiles. State Bar of California Formal Opinion 2016-196 treats a blog as advertising that’s subject to advertising rules if the attorney makes known their availability for service. And New York State Bar Association Ethics Opinion 1132 (2017) finds Avvo Answers and similar sites to constitute unethical fee splitting, as did a 2016 advisory opinion from the South Carolina Bar.

As these examples bear out, the parade of horribles that regulators envision—fee splitting with nonlawyers injecting their interest into the attorney-client relationship, testimonials and reviews that might dupe clients into hiring an unqualified lawyer, making objective and useful information online available through a LinkedIn profile or a blog without prominently labeling it as advertising (I’m stumped to figure out what kind of harm that could ever cause)—doesn’t intimidate today’s clients at all.

Most of today’s clients have seamlessly, thoroughly integrated social media and “sharing-economy” platforms, as well as online payments and content-based marketing, as part of their daily lives. They’ve acclimated to the cultures of each online universe they inhabit and grown adept at distinguishing between causal informational websites and biographical profiles, and chatty personal exchanges and paid advertising. So when lawyers can’t conform their conduct to these mores, they’re first viewed with suspicion or annoyance and, ultimately, ignored.

Read more ...

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Carolyn Elefant is an energy and eminent domain attorney based in Washington, D.C. She says blogging at MyShingle “has given me a bird’s-eye view of the changes that have been roaring through the legal profession and an opportunity to chronicle and speak on these trends.”

This article was published in the December 2017 issue of the

ABA Journal with the title "Change the Rules! Ethics opinions have to reflect the present and future—not the past."

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Chicago special prosecutor’s career nearly came to a premature end

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3. Chicago special prosecutor's career nearly…

Magazine Feature

By Erin Gordon

December 2017

Photo of Patricia Brown Holmes by Wayne Slezak

Patricia Brown Holmes was on top of the world. It was 1999, and she was living a dream that most attorneys never come close to experiencing. Less than two years prior, Holmes, at the age of 36, had become the youngest African-American woman to serve as an associate judge on the Circuit Court of Cook County. “Being a judge is considered the top of the profession,” she says. “I wanted to be at the top of the profession. I wanted that ring.”

Then she was told she might have only six months to live.

Diagnosed with lymphoma, her prognosis was grave. She could have drawn on her training as a lawyer to use what was left of her time to get her affairs in order. Instead, she drew on her other lawyerly skills and decided to fight.

“I tend to be tenacious and determined,” Holmes explains when recalling her death-defying recovery. “I’m the person you want to have around in an emergency because I’m not paralyzed. I tend to assess the circumstances quickly and accurately and then take appropriate action. But I’m constantly reassessing, listening and looking for new clues that may require a change in direction. I think those skills helped me survive cancer. I didn’t accept the prognosis. I assessed the situation and found ways to fight.”

Holmes credits her Type A personality and an experimental white blood-cell enhancer with saving her life. Since that challenge, she has served as president of the Chicago Bar Association and helped found the law firm of Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila.

Then, in July 2016, Holmes was appointed special prosecutor to investigate whether Chicago police officers involved with the highly charged 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald lied about another officer’s misconduct.

Colleagues say it’s no surprise that she got such an important and high-profile job. “She has unfailing judgment,” says Ronald Safer, who worked with Holmes at the U.S. attorney’s office and has been her law partner since 2005, first at Schiff Hardin and then at Riley Safer. Holmes is “brilliant,” adds Robert Riley, another partner, “but she also has tremendous common sense. ... Her voice is measured and insightful.”

Some of those directly involved in the McDonald case concur. Locke Bowman, a civil rights lawyer and professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law who petitioned for a special prosecutor in the case, says he was pleased with Holmes’ appointment. “She gets the issues and she’s unafraid to do the right thing. Her performance in office has confirmed our confidence in her.”

Although Holmes herself cannot comment on the McDonald matter, she says her team is moving the investigation forward “as expeditiously as possible, giving it the time, attention and care it deserves.”

“I can say I am approaching this case not as an issue of public policy but as a set of specific facts that need to be discovered, examined and carefully weighed,” she says.

This past summer, Holmes secured indictments for conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice against three police officers and successfully moved to remove the judge initially assigned to the case, whom some considered pro-police in similar excessive-force cases.

“The indictment makes clear that it is unacceptable to obey an unofficial code of silence,” Holmes said at the time. In late August, she added that the grand jury was looking at more individuals and weighing further indictments.

It’s not surprising, but her latest job has some serious detractors. “These charges are, in our minds, baseless. Our officers are being made the scapegoats,” said Kevin Graham, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, in a statement after the indictment. “How the special prosecutor can construe a ‘code of silence’ theory defies belief. How can officers be indicted based upon which witnesses they spoke to and which ones they didn’t?”

SENSITIVE SCRUTINY

Holmes was one of four candidates recommended for the special prosecutor position after a request by community groups and a member of McDonald’s family. That Holmes is getting paid comparatively little for her work on the case is consistent with her values, colleagues say. When asked how much she’s getting, Holmes declines to comment, except to say it is less than what she usually charges.

“There’s no upside for her,” explains Zaldwaynaka “Z” Scott, a Foley & Lardner partner who worked with Holmes at the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. “She’s working at the lowest rate. But this case needed someone who could look at the evidence and work to be fair and honest and not just driven by emotion.”

It’s not the first time Holmes has been charged with leading a sensitive investigation. In 2011, she was appointed trustee of Burr Oak Cemetery, a historic African-American graveyard in the Chicago suburb of Alsip that declared bankruptcy after a scandal involving a grave desecration and reselling scheme.

It was a grim Halloween story: In 2009, the cemetery, the last resting place of jazz great Dinah Washington and civil rights martyr Emmett Till, was found to be reselling burial plots and either interring caskets above those already buried or removing remains to put new bodies in the plots. Prosecutors described a grisly scene where 1,500 bones of 29 people were strewn on cemetery grounds. A cemetery manager and three employees were convicted in the scandal.

But it was more than a job for Holmes. Her father’s grave marker and remains were likely among those removed, Holmes told the Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago newspaper, when reinterment ceremonies were held in May 2016.

She told the newspaper she went to visit her father’s final resting place in Burr Oak, but was unable to find it.

“You figure, well, it has been a couple years—maybe things change. Maybe it looks different,” Holmes said then. She ultimately convinced herself that she had forgotten where her father, Andrew Brown, was buried. Then she heard about the grave-reselling scandal.

“I was like ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t just forget. I was right!”

Read more ...

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Correction

Because of a reporting error, "You Only Live Once,” December, misstated that Patricia Brown Holmes and Zaldwaynaka “Z” Scott worked together on the case of U.S. v. Mohammad. They instead worked together on U.S. v. Emenogha, a multidefendant drug and money-structuring case.

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Erin Gordon, a former lawyer, is a legal journalist based in San Francisco.

This article was published in the December 2017 issue of the

ABA Journal with the title “You Only Live Once: Chicago attorney and special prosecutor Patricia Holmes has done it all in her career—one that nearly came to a premature end.”

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abajournal/topstories/~3/WgQPQLW35Ls/laquan_mcdonald_prosecutor_patricia_holmes