Lawyers

Don't you love lawyers? You don't? I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked and dismayed. I know lots of lawyers. I've had good lawyers and bad lawyers. In fact I had one of the worst lawyers in the world. That lawyer is no longer a lawyer in fact. More about that at a later time.

Lawyers are paid for their time and knowledge. It's all they have to sell. Their expertise and the time they spend providing it. Lots of professions do this. Consultants, doctors, financial planners, investment analysts, etc. Because of the nature of the profession ethics are important. Not that they aren't important elsewhere, but doctors and lawyers, especially, need good ethics. They have strong codes they are supposed to follow, like confidentiality and conflicts of interest.

I suppose this is one of the lines separating good lawyers from the ones you hear the jokes about. We all have lawyer jokes and lawyer stories. Feel free to tell yours in the comments.

Getting back to what lawyers do, though, I've never known any who give gobs of their time and expertise away free. Pro bono (meaning providing free work) to poor people seems to be an alien concept to many of them. Therefore it gets my attention when a lawyer uses gobs of time and resources for free. It makes me wonder what their real agenda is.

When I'm not sure where or why someone is doing something suspicious I always look to understand what their agenda is. Once you know that you know what motivates their work. I have an agenda. It's to help progressive issues and candidates. It's clearly stated above.

Recently I watched as a well known lawyer spent gobs and gobs of time advocating online for a candidate. This man was a senior staffer for Joe Hoeffel. He practices election law. He condemns other bloggers for not disclosing when they're being paid by campaigns. He is a hypocrite.

He's a hypocrite because he was getting paid by his law firm to advocate on blogs for his candidate. He never disclosed this. He used corporate time and resources for many, many hours of public advocacy for Bob Casey. He quoted law in numerous instances while advocating. He used his experience and expertise to advocate for Bob Casey. His law firm wasn't compensated for his professional services by the Casey campaign.

I was curious about the ethics and legalities involved. I know, for example, if a professional photographer does pictures for a candidate that has to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. If a realtor provides free space for a campaign office that also must be reported at fair market value. These are called "in-kind" services and must be reported. My question was when do a lawyer's services on behalf of a campaign have to be reported, assuming he wasn't paid by the campaign? I sent an email to the law firm of Cozen and O'Connor to get an answer.

I received my answer last evening. Their lawyer Adam Bonin, the subject of my attention, had me banned from the blog DailyKos for asking those questions. Adam is also the personal lawyer for Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the owner of DailyKos. Can you say conflict of interest? Whose interest is Mr. Bonin really looking out for here, his or Kos'?

Both men have publicly supported Bob Casey for the U.S. Senate. I have consistently supported one of his opponents Chuck Pennacchio. One week before the election they decided to silence me at DailyKos. They claim my questions amounted to an attempt to get Mr. Bonin fired from his law firm. I had no such intention. I merely wanted answers to some important questions. I thought, and continue to think, this is an important issue.

Several lawyers had already tended their opinions that what Adam was doing was illegal (corporate contributions are illegal). Before I wrote an article about this I wanted their opinion on the subject and any statement they might want to make. Their statement is that Adam is free to do whatever he pleases on company time. That's fine. If they want to possibly break the law that's their problem not mine. I do wonder if his other clients know how much free work he does. I'd be a bit angry to discover I was paying dearly for his time and expertise while he was giving it freely to Bob Casey.

This case does raise numerous issues. At what point does volunteer advocacy cross the line and become an in-kind contribution? How much company time can an employee ethically devote to blogging and personal internet activity before it constitutes a theft of service from his/her employer? Can you use company resources like computers to extensively advocate with the netroots for a candidate or campaign? The FEC says companies cannot contribute to candidates and campaigns.

Ironically the FEC has held hearings about the internet, netroots and blogs recently to determine what some of these parameters might be. There are a lot of issues and a lot at stake. Adam Bonin was the chief representative, advocate, and lawyer for bloggers at these hearings. He wrote extensively about these issues at the very same time he was using his corporate time, expertise, and resources to log hour after hour for Bob Casey for Senate.

I thought this was an issue and a story. If I'd wanted to get Adam fired I'd have run the story on DailyKos. I didn't. I brought it up yesterday in someone else's story briefly. I was banned for doing so. So I began my own blog and here's the story.

It's really about ethics.