I was just on the Silvio Canto Blog Talk Radio Show, and towards the end of our discussion, when I was talking about how Elizabeth Warren has worked on at least 22 court litigations since joining Harvard earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, it dawned on me:
In all of my searches and all of Warren’s disclosures of legal work, there isn’t a single court case in which Warren engaged in pro bono work for indigent clients.
We don’t know how much she got paid in all the litigations, and maybe, for example, she didn’t charge one of these large corporations. It’s also possible that Warren rendered legal services for free which were not part of a court case, but she has refused to disclose her non-court legal work.
We will, of course, keep searching. And we invite the Warren campaign to make a full disclosure of the pro bono legal work she has been doing from her Massachusetts office.
But as of now, we have at least 22 court cases for major corporations, including chemical, coal and insurance companies, but not a single court case in which Warren offered her services pro bono for an indigent client, or even for a middle class client who has been hammered.
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Why should she? Poor and middle class people can’t do anything for her.
(Yes, I do about Bar requirements for pro bono work.)
Besides, the government gives “charity” for us.
Professor, please list your own pro bono work to show Lizzie how it’s done by a real law professor who actually cares about people!!!
I see this has already been discussed below. I’m disappointed that the Professor isn’t proud enough of his pro bono work to describe it. I’m going to have to take what I read on this site with a much bigger grain of salt from here on out.
Democrats as a class believe they have met their personal charitable contributions when they tax the daylights out of other people.
Warren is clearly a Democrat par excellence. What has been revealed about her personal behavior gives real animation to the Democrat motto – no ethics, no morality, no problem.
As people were wont to say of Ted Kennedy, “Ted’s a great guy, and really generous too. He’s more than happy to give to someone else the shirt off your back.”
I alluded to this on Monday.
Upon further consideration, I conjecture that she indeed may have done pro bono work—and she really really really, even in ultraliberal Massachusetts, doesn’t want it known who the clients were.
Your CV doesn’t list any pro bono cases, Professor. And I didn’t find any pro bono cases for you on a Google search.
The professor hasn’t said he shares the same “standards” as EW. Maybe, just maybe, he’s an EVIL capitalist! /sarc
While this reader smiles at our host’s occasional Napoleonic pronouncements related to LI, I don’t think this blog has been cash flow positive so far.
There are some things on Bill’s CV that might or might not be pro bono. He doesn’t strike me as somebody who would make a big deal about such activity.
There is also, from his law school days, Director of Litigation, Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.
I strongly suspect that Mrs. Jacobson would have a lot to add if she were so minded.
Ah-ha: a creep in the midst.
We have found our “thumbs-down” clicker.
I feel the pain of your anus, leftist whiner. I am as ignorant as you of Professor Jacobsen’s practice, which he may or may not deign to defend. I did manage to notice he isn’t running for high public office with his legal record being his only possible qualification besides being too radical to be confirmed by a Democratic Senate with 60 seats.
Professor Jacobson’s pro bono work is this website and CI.
What is the extent of your charitable giving?
He’s doing the MBBO’s job in this instance for free, doesn’t that count? 😉
If I ever run for U.S. Senate on a platform of being the intellectual founder of Occupy Wall Street and give speeches excoriating factory owners who don’t give back enough, then by all means use it against me if you think you can. And during my Senate run I’ll make a full disclosure, unlike Elizabeth Warren, and I guarantee I’ll come out looking better. But I’m not running for Senate based on a campaign of hyprocrisy, she is, and how typical of her supporters that they attack the messenger not the message.
Professor: Isn’t that whole pro bono thing Latin for “working for free”? I think this labor of love called Legal Insurrection counts a whole lot as free work for the betterment of society as a whole. You rock. Keep up the good work, and I would happily drive to whatever state you’re carpet-bagging in and vote for you as often as possible. Or donate to your political campaign. Thank you for what you do.
by giving an idiot a place to vent for free on legal matters, haven’t you then done pro bono work?
Is a lawyer required to do pro bono work?
I ask because if it’s required as a condition of active licensure, then Prof. Warren has a problem.
But if it is NOT required, then I would not make a point of it.
It’s good when lawyers (and doctors, and accountants, etc) help the poor and downtrodden. But I wouldn’t automatically think less of a lawyer who doesn’t take on pro bono cases. It may be that such a lawyer has other ways, even outside the legal profession, of helping out.
I’m not defending Prof. Warren, but I want her stopped the right way. I know that ethic doesn’t matter to the progressive Left, but it should matter to the rest of us.
In Massachusetts, it’s apparently a “should” not a “must”. 25 hours per year.
But she is not an attorney in Massachusetts, she is an attorney in TX and NJ. Most people in her position though would lecture a seminar in continuing education for other lawyers in the jurisdiction. There are always CLEs that always have professors/experts on a subject.
While Warren may not take a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) herself, many actually speak and educate at a CLE. For instance if she lead a seminar or was a guest speaker for bankruptcy lawyers in Massachusetts that represent needy clients, I would place that as pro-bono work.
It is a good question to ask, but for all we know she has given countless hours to educating at a CLE level or something equivalent for free.
California rule:
Under B&PC 6068(h), it is the duty of every lawyer “never to reject, for any consideration personal to himself or herself, the cause of the defenseless or the oppressed.”
The State Bar’s Board of Governors urges all California lawyers to give at least 50 hours of pro bono services annually to the indigent.
The Elizabeth Warren rule: @#$% you!
The question should be, “can we hammer Democrats with this subject?”
The only credible objection is backlash, e.g. will they hammer us with the subject? Since they are guaranteed to if they can, the backlash is irrelevant.
As to whether it’s fair, it seems that voters do care about it, and I think politicians realize this when they elect to be politicians.
The only remaining consideration is whether we’ve got anything *better* to hammer her on. At this stage, it’s good to have another angle to keep the pressure up.
after all her declarations about working for the people no pro bono cases shatters that meme.
think thats the point.
It depends on their platform. If their platform is all about helping the poor, and compassion, and being ur brothers people, then I would indeed expect them to do some helping with their own money or time, and not just other peoples money they get from taxpayers.
“Hammered” – Touche, touche.
LOL, I listened to the radio show and true to your word you had this post out lickety-split. Nice work 🙂
Isn’t the absence of evidence of Warren’s pro bono work 100% consistent with her finger-wagging hypocrisy toward the rich? You built yourself a nice – albeit unlicensed – law practice up there at Harvard Prof Warren. God Bless. Good for you. Keep a big hunk of it.
She built that law practice? Let’s see… got her bar license, then her business licenses… went and found an office… furnished it… bought equipment and supplies… hired a secretary or two… a few associates… went a year or so until the income coming in matched the expenses going out… oh wait…
And she did practice law without a license — all by herself!
Maybe someone can answer this for me.
When Cher sang at Sony’s funeral,
did she do it pro-bono?
In her defense, Warren has a strong preference to do her charity work with YOUR money. You all have much more than she does, so she can do much more good by simply confiscating your money in mass quantities than any piddling good she might do with her own wealth and, besides, she might not be able to that and still keep her wine cellar properly stocked.
Perhaps we ought to force her into a debate with Mitt Romney. How about this? — she gets to be on Obama’s side next debate.
Here we have the sledge hammer calling the tack hammer injurious.
Without a valid law license any pro bono work Warren would have done would have brought more attention to her “invalid” situation. But, of course, she was thinking of the little people and didn’t want to taint them with her pretense of a practice.
[…] Has Elizabeth Warren ever done pro bono litigation? “In all of my searches and all of Warren’s disclosures of legal work, there isn’t a […]
The 99% don’t much care for members of the 99%. Give them a chance, and they want to become one of the 1%. You don’t become a 1%er doing pro bono.
The irony is that, like Obama, Warren takes from the corporations then turns around and trashes them. They are greedy. She is not. She is righteous because she SAYS she cares. With Communists, words and deeds seem to be synonymous.
I propose a name change for Elizabeth Warren… Princes Fakeitall, a descendent of the Freeforall tribe in the Utopia States of Confusion.
Hey, it’s early and I’m generally a late riser..
This would seem like a great opportunity for the Scott Brown campaign to highlight some of the pro bono work he has done over the years. As other people on this blog have noted, compassion for limousine liberals such as Elizabeth Warren consists of spending other people’s money.
Although, I don’t know, maybe the work she did for Dow Chemical was pro bono?
When all of the people who have paid for legal services from a lawyer sue her for a return of their fees because she wasn’t licensed to practice law, she will then have donated her time. Then she can count that work as pro bono.
I don’t which is the best analogy, Junk Yard Dog or Die Hard. When Bill focuses on a story he is Hell on Wheels.
The deeper you dig the sleazier Warren appears.
The hypocrisy and arrogance of the left knows no bounds.
In my experience, law professors are most likely to do pro bono by (1) unpaid legal writing or speaking gigs; or (2) working a clinic with students. No idea if Warren did those things, however. If she didn’t have to report pro bono to the NJ bar and was not active in Texas, she may not have tracked it if she did.
I would make it an issue if Scott Brown has done Pro Bono work.
1. My mantra about Warren is that character issues, all by themselves, are insufficient to knock her out. The case must be made wrt voters’ pocketbooks, i.e. their individual welfare.
Brown should ask what kind of constituent services will be provided by a Senator who has done no pro bono work. (Answer: None, because Warren would start a full-time run for President the moment she won the MA Senate seat.)
2. legacyrepublican | October 5, 2012 at 9:08 am, whether or not Brown has done free legal work, IMHO his National Guard service can be presented as pro bono for practical purposes.
[…] Dear Readers: A big shout-out and thanks to Legal Insurrection’s Bill Jacobson, who kindly joined good friend Silvio Canto and myself on Canto Talk to discuss the first presidential debate and other news (click HERE to listen). True to his word, Professor Jacobson immediately went to his keyboard and highlight the fact he could not identify that class-warrior-princess Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senate candidate, … […]