✏️ Legal Pad
Sopranos- BigLaw Edition
(Editor’s note: no, I’m not joining the thousands of voices writing about the Murdaugh reversal in SC this week. None of us in the profession were actually surprised by that. Frankly, it would have been more worrisome for the justice system if the convictions were upheld. And, no, he’s not getting out of prison.)
One of the more fascinating legal stories this week involves a sprawling insider-trading investigation centered around elite M&A law firms. Federal prosecutors allege that a lawyer named Nicolo Nourafchan spent years hopping between some of the most prestigious firms in the country, mining confidential merger information and feeding it into a network of traders around the world.
And not small deals either.
According to prosecutors, the alleged scheme touched transactions involving Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Burger King, Tim Hortons, and iRobot, among others. The allegations read less like a white-collar prosecution and more like the plot of a mediocre Netflix series written by someone who just discovered the phrase “shell company.”
But what struck me reading the article wasn’t really the scope of the scheme. It was the people involved.
Yale Law graduates. BigLaw associates. Attorneys at firms where the clients are multinational corporations and the hourly rates resemble mortgage payments. These are not desperate people. These are people who need only do their actual jobs to make big money. Which is what makes the story so interesting to me.
The article repeatedly notes how sophisticated the participants believed they were- using coded language, middlemen, family members, foreign traders, even a hair stylist to distance themselves from the actual trades. At one point, they referred to insider trades as “construction jobs” and discussed finding a new “construction crew.” Which is exactly the kind of thing people say right before the FBI starts recording their phone calls. B-squad Sopranos characters.
There’s also something uniquely damaging about lawyers being involved in this sort of conduct. Lawyers sit in rooms where extraordinarily sensitive information lives. Billion-dollar acquisitions. Trade secrets. Criminal investigations. Personal tragedies. The entire system depends on trust that the people with access to that information won’t weaponize it for themselves.
That trust is the profession. And once it’s gone, no amount of prestige can buy it back. The ramifications for the firms implicated in this is far from over. Which only goes to further solidify the notion that pedigree does not equate to character.
💡 Sidebar
Trial Tip #8: The Golden Rule of Court Staff
This isn’t so much a tip as it is common sense and human decency. I can sum up the entire character of a person in about six seconds just by watching how they interact with anyone in the service industry. My favorite example of this is watching how someone treats a waiter (because I used to be one).
The legal profession equivalent of this is watching how lawyers treat court staff. Here’s the tip: treat every single member of courthouse staff like royalty. Bailiffs. Clerks. Court reporters. Judicial assistants. Deputies. Security officers. The people wheeling carts full of exhibits through the hallway. Every single one of them.
First, because they deserve it. Most of them are overworked, underpaid, and dealing with god-complexed lawyers all day, which should qualify them for combat pay.
Second, and more important from a practical standpoint, they are the gatekeepers of your daily existence. I can’t begin to count the number of times in my career that a jury coordinator, clerk, or court reporter saved me from looking like an idiot for no other reason than simple kindness. But kindness is reciprocal.
Court staff can make your life remarkably easy or unbelievably difficult. They know where the judge is. They know how things actually work. They know whether your hearing is about to get bumped, whether your exhibit setup is a disaster, and whether you’re about to violate some unwritten courtroom rule nobody bothered to tell you about.
Lawyers across the age spectrum often think getting the judge or jury to agree with their points of view is the single most important interaction that takes place in the courthouse. It’s not.
The smartest lawyers understand that professionalism is horizontal, not vertical. You don’t reserve respect for the person in the robe. You show it to everyone in the building.
The keyboard warrior lawyer who sends an acerbic email at the clerk for overscheduling is usually the same lawyer later begging that clerk for help. That’s not strategy. That’s stupidity.
Learn their names. Find out what sports their kids play. Talk to them about vacation plans. In an increasingly isolated society, that human connection can’t be overvalued.
⚖️ Closing Arguments
This weekend, my little sister is getting married at Sunset Beach, and my daughter has been entrusted with a position of enormous importance and absolutely zero accountability: flower girl.
Which means our family is currently preparing for the trial of Flower Girl v. Distraction.
The main issue before the Court: whether a three-year-old can successfully walk down an aisle while remaining focused on the assigned objective.
The preliminary landscape indicates a strong possibility of a defense verdict.
Potential distractions include:
- a single grain of sand that “looked important,”
- the discovery that flower petals are throwable and collectible,
- seeing someone take a picture of her and demanding to view it,
- an aggressive fascination with her own shoes,
- attempting to unionize the other children present,
- deciding midway down the aisle that this is the perfect time to break into a spirited rendition of “Defying Gravity,”
- seagulls operating within visual range,
- a rogue bubble drifting through the air like a tactical flashbang,
- realizing that there is cake somewhere,
- finding a stick,
- stopping to conduct a full quality-control inspection of each flower petal before deployment,
- becoming emotionally attached to the basket and refusing to relinquish custody,
- and the increasingly likely possibility that she simply wanders off toward the water like a tiny drunk pirate.
There is also meaningful concern that the flower petals themselves may become the entertainment rather than the assignment. To be clear, I have zero expectation that this operation runs cleanly. Some cases need tried even though failure is forgone conclusion.
Weddings are one of the few places left where perfection is overrated. Nobody remembers whether the timing was exact or whether every detail went according to plan. They remember the unscripted moments. The laughter. The slight chaos. The things nobody could have planned if they tried.
And if my daughter ends up sitting cross-legged halfway down the aisle inspecting a flower petal like its archaeological evidence, I suspect that’ll become part of the story too.
There’s something special about seeing different generations of a family collide in one place- my sister beginning her marriage while my daughter is still at an age where literally everything in the world can pull her attention in a new direction.
Congratulations and best wishes to Emily and Ben.
Court is in recess- see you next Friday.
