An Open Letter to Joseph Rakofsky Re: Rakofsky v. the Internet

Where have I been the last couple of days? I didn't find out until this morning that beleaguered New Jersey attorney Joseph Rakofsy (you might remember my original posts about him here and here) has sued a good portion of the legal blogsphere. This is what I get for associating with the "scamblog" niche.

Lo and Behold, it appears that this blog is a defendant along with 73 others. I have not (and will not) read the full complaint beyond the "parties" section, but you can see it here.

As co-defendant Leah Weaver has noted, this suit is obviously designed to get people to retract their statements, but will likely have a "Streisand" effect of backfiring. As co-defendant Jeff Gamso points out, Rakofsky should really stop digging himself deeper. Another co-defendant views being a defendant along with the Washington Post as a badge of honor. As my regard for the national media is low, I'm not sure I go that far. Co-defendant Carolyn Elefant isn't so gracious, but has pledged to "not be bullied." Finally, co-defendant Antonin Pribetic took the approach of mindful sarcasm after reading the New York long-arm statute:

I will demur in disclosing my position on the merits of the defamation lawsuit, since I haven’t read it yet. Personally, I think that any defamation claim arising from my post is resoundingly [redacted] and I strongly recommend that both the plaintiff and his counsel take my advice and go [redacted].

Finally, co-defendant Scott Greenberg did some digging and found that Rakofsky's attorney is as puffery-inclined as his client. A running list of blogs with commentary can be found here.

For my own part, I though the best approach to this issue would write the supposed plaintiff an open letter outlining my feelings.

Dear Mr. Rakofsky:

The simple and crude response to this frivolous joke of a lawsuit would be "suck my balls," and believe me, I contemplated it. But there are better things to discuss.

In my original entry, my one paragraph summation of your story contained no new factual allegations and merely repeated what I had gained from a good faith reading of all available sources on the subject. Finding the Washington Post and the ABA Journal credible sources, I posted them using quotation marks where appropriate.

The only factual allegations in the second article are repeated statements made by your own client's grandmother that were reported verbatim in the Washington Post.

To both of these factual sets, I added my opinion and interpretation to illustrate the problem of attorney oversupply and a broken law school system. If these factual elements were in error, I will gladly correct them. But I stand by my opinions assuming the validity of those facts, and I hasten to note that as a first-semester 1L I would have understood that you have no real claim for libel in this, Joseph.

Nor, it seems, do you have much common sense. A simple email to the same address you listed in your complaint could have cured whatever issues you have with my previous posts. Although this would have been the straightforward, cost-free, internet gentleman's way of resolving our apparent differences, I never received such an email. Instead, you tacked my name onto a laundry list of other idiot internet bloggers in a really, really stupid lawsuit that will only lead to more mockery and infamy. Not only do you need to find a better lawyer, you need a find a better PR person.

But above all, Joseph, I want you to know that I don't hate you, nor did I have any intent to speak ill of you. I haven't an ounce of malice or spite or ire towards you. If anything, I have complete and utter sympathy for you. Empathy, even.

I'm ultimately your ally, Joseph, because you're a victim, just like most of our generation of law graduates. To make it into and through law school, you obviously have higher than average intelligence. And it's clear that you have an entrepreneurial spirit. You apparently made a series of major mistakes, but honestly, I don't think it's your fault. You entered a system that, sadly, is rigged against people like you and me. You were given an accredited education and a law license and told to "go get 'em." You did that, and now you're being punished because you decided to hang a shingle and do what it was you thought you were trained to do. I think you were foolish, absolutely, but the ultimate blame, I think, goes directly to the system that produced you (and, it appears, your current attorney). Heck, I don't even think you should lose your law license.

But no competent court in this world would let this absurd crockery move forward. If anything, your filing of this hilarious monstrosity proves that you're a naive idiot who has much to learn about the world. And I say that, too, without hatred; my own mother calls me an idiot, as does my significant other, my friends, my siblings, etc. Having one's own foolishness pointed out is a good thing. It helps us learn, and for the last few months, you've had a wellspring of wonderful advice premised on calling out your mistakes.

It's in your best interests to take that advice and stop "digging yourself deeper." Stop bringing attention to these stories. History would counsel you to do such. The money you have spent on this silly lawsuit could have been spent taking out an ad in the New York Times or the Washington Post giving your side of the story. Instead, you've just pissed off/provided humor for a bunch of lawyers and media conglomerates. That's not a good course of action under any circumstances.

In the interest of helping you get your life back on track, I'm going to offer you a "settlement" of sorts without waiving any defense to this meritless garbage: (1) you dismiss this lawsuit in its entirety; (2) I give you an entry on RDTTL, with priority for a twenty-four hour period, where you can tell your life story. Email me at j.dog84@ymail.com if you wish to accept and we can work out the details from there. The non-negotiable offer is good until Friday at midnight, eastern time, and I believe it's by far the most charitable thing you're going to be offered.

My goal with this blog is ultimately to help change the system so that no one is again put in your position, Joseph, feeling pressured to take cases beyond their grasp for low-balled fees because the labor market is so saturated. I apologize if I repeated the ABA Journal or Washington Post's errors, but I will not apologize for my analysis of the situation as my good-faith reading led me to understand it.

If you choose to continue with this high comedy, I will laugh at your expense, defend my words vigorously, and contemplate legal action against you and the two-bit firm that brought this suit.

But as your ally, I hope you take the right path, because if you really want to get your career and life back on track and move beyond this debacle, this ain't going to help. If you can't see that the majority of people who comment on your story really don't hate you, and you continue to press this one-man suicide mission and only make your situation worse, well, then, you can suck my balls, dude.

Sincerely,
J-dog.

News Roundup: Technology and Burnout; Lawyers' Lack of Self-Awareness

This morning I have two sobering stories for your weekend.

The first is from the ABA Journal about a recent report that cited technology and the changing BigLaw model as sources of significant stress and burnout in the legal profession. Kids, if any of you still think the Perry Mason model of legal services is what is common, you need to read this:

“Electronic communication has fueled a culture in which clients want more legal information, answers on the spot, and lawyers who can interpret, rather than simply provide, information,” the report says.The result is more specialization and an emphasis on ability to deliver higher quality services at a lower cost and in less time.
...
“Work settings which do not address stressors of the modern practice of law will continue to produce a significant number of lawyers who are depressed, dissatisfied with the quality of their lives, spend too little time with their families and communities, continue to be isolated and show increased levels of depression and addictive behaviors,” the report says.

While the reaction of many who read this may be "no shit, Sherlock," the real question is whether the professional organizations who are supposed to regulate the attorney profession actually do anything about their industry slipping dangerously close to being the white-collar equivalent of a 19th-century textile mill.

Our second article today may point out why so many lawyers may be "depressed, dissatisfied with the quality of their lives, spend too little time with their families and communities, continue to be isolated and show increased levels of depression and addictive behaviors" and not wish to do a damn thing about it.

In his Sunday Reflection (published on a Friday), attorney Glenn Harlan Reynolds delves into the argument of whether America's problems are in having too many lawyers, or in just plain having too many laws. Although I find that a fascinating question (can you say "yes" to both?), what I found most interesting was his discussion of a new book, which I need to find, called "The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System" by Ben Barton at Tennessee. This is interesting:

[Barton] notes that in America, pretty much all judges (except for a few justices of the Peace and such) are lawyers. And, after examining the work of judges in a number of different areas, he concludes that judges systematically rule in ways that favor lawyers, and that make the legal system more complex. (And legislators, mostly lawyers themselves, aren't much better).

Barton tells me that his thesis gets two very different reactions depending on the audience: Non-lawyers find it painfully obvious, while most lawyers and legal academics find it shocking and offensive.

"Shocking and offensive?"

Are lawyers - at least the type Barton interviewed - really that incapable of self-criticism? As a lawyer, you have to realize that your entire job is dependent on problem-solving being a byzantine endeavor out-of-reach for normal people who have better things to do than learn the intricacies of American law.

It is "painfully obvious" that one of our government's chief accomplishments over the last sixty years is to make law more needlessly complex; even though there's been minor movements to streamline and make uniform certain areas of the law (like the UCC), often the arrogance of each generation wanting to have its own voice has made multiple conflicting editions (why did we need a 3rd restatement of basic Tort law?) and the federal government's ability to (and stupidity in) drafting 2,000-page laws has created entire armies who do nothing but interpret ERISA or the tax code. And our Supreme Court, supposed to be the exemplars of the legal system, has cast aside brevity as a goal and turned the once-pragmatic exercise of jurisprudence into a labyrinthine exhaustion of bombast.

Lawyers find this "shocking and offensive?" What do you think you get paid for, except to untangle the massive knots? Could there be any less self-awareness than by grown professionals who have no idea why their field has more work than their French or Spanish peers? That don't understand why their profession has expanded exponentially over the last fifty years?

This doesn't make lawyer work any less "valuable," unless you take the absurd position that work has to have some innate value.

But self-awareness is the first step in correcting a problem, in being a contented human being at peace with himself and the world. If lawyers can't even recognize the most basic conditions and causes of their profession, how can they be expected to realize when their work lives resemble that of sweatshop workers? Will they continue to convince themselves that their 75-hour workweeks are more of a normative benefit to society than work that only exists because their predecessors made it for them?

Lawyers, like everyone else, are self-interested. They make more work for themselves and others; fundamentally, they're no different than auto mechanics who find new things wrong with every car that comes in. The only difference is that they do it on a much larger, more damaging scale. Until lawyers realize that fundamental truth about themselves and their peers, I don't see how it can ever be entrusted to self-regulate.