Responding to SCOTUS order to show cause, BigLaw partner defends his jargon-filled brief
Foley & Lardner partner Howard Shipley was caught between two competing demands when he filed an “unorthodox” cert petition in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a German tech executive, according to his lawyer.
On the one hand, Shipley owed a duty to his client, who wanted primary control over the substance of the petition, according to a brief filed on Thursday by Shipley’s lawyer, former Solicitor General Paul Clement. On the other hand, Shipley owed a duty to the Supreme Court as a member of its bar.
The Blog of Legal Times has details of the brief, filed in response to a Supreme Court order asking Shipley to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for the jargon-filled cert petition.
Clement said Shipley tried to conform the cert petition to Supreme Court style, but his client would not relinquish control over the substance, according to the Blog of Legal Times account. “The final product was certainly not what Mr. Shipley would have filed if he were representing a more deferential client,” Clement wrote.
If Shipley had withdrawn, Clement argued, the cert petition could not have been filed by a new lawyer by the deadline.
