Partners
High-Profile Skadden Litigator Goofs, Sends Private E-mail to Reporters
Posted Feb 21, 2008, 08:03 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Updated: Well-known litigator Sheila Birnbaum of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom believed Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood used a press release and newspaper column to mischaracterize a recent confidential settlement with her client State Farm, and she said so.
Her opinion was intended to circulate in an internal e-mail, but instead she sent it to more than a dozen reporters, the Associated Press reports.
“This is so over the top,” she wrote in the e-mail. “Can we ask that he be held in contempt of court for misrepresenting a settlement agreement and order of the court?”
The settled suit involved allegations that Hood had violated an agreement to drop his criminal investigation of the insurer’s handling of claims involving Hurricane Katrina. Terms of the settlement earlier this month were not disclosed. But Hood recently said in a newspaper column that State Farm’s allegations “were shown to be false” and then made the same assertion in a press release.
Birnbaum told AP she was embarrassed by the goof. “I’m embarrassed that I pressed the wrong button,” she said. “That e-mail shouldn’t have gone out.”
Lawyers, you may want to consider deleting reporters' names from your e-mail address book. Birnbaum's misdirected e-mail is the second by a lawyer to make headlines this month. A lawyer at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia reportedly sent an e-mail referencing settlement negotiations that apparently involved Eli Lilly & Co. to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. The message was intended to reach co-counsel Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin.
A hat tip to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, which posted the story.
Updated at 7:45 a.m. to include a reference to the Pepper Hamilton misdirected e-mail incident.
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Comments
Posted by MSG - 2 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 8 hours, 58 minutes ago
You know this is more than “pressing the wrong button.” If you are that high profile of a lawyer, one presumes that you have some brains and common sense that got you to that level, but obviously that could not be the case because to make such a stupid mistake which is so embarrasing to your firm is inexcusable. It shows that your work is sloppy and there should be more oversight on your work. Perhaps a demotion is in order here?
Posted by Dan - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 16 hours, 7 minutes ago
I guess that’s what kind of service you can expect for $1000 an hour.
The arrogant culture of these huge firms is ruining the profession.
Posted by Odysseus Rex - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 14 hours, 26 minutes ago
Big firms. Overpaid rookie associates. OBSCENELY overpaid partners. Brain-dead goofs like this. HEY, CLIENTS! WAKE UP! Are YOU and more importantly, your SHAREHOLDERS, putting up with this? At that partner’s hourly rate?
(I do like to read this sort of thing about arrogant big firm partners...makes me glad I’m in IRAQ, and no longer in that rat race...!)
Posted by Skaddenite - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 10 hours ago
Sheila is a preeminent lawyer and widely recognized as the best torts lawyer in the country with significant wins in the US Supreme Court. A matter of fact, outside of the one sitting woman supreme court justice, Sheila is certainly the most powerful woman attorney in the United States. I think her clients will still come a knocking. She made a mistake and she ownned up to it and that’s it. Mistakes, even dumb ones, will happen. It should just serve as a lesson to all of us.
Posted by Crystal Springs - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 8 hours, 3 minutes ago
Regardless of how much you’re paying the lawyer $1000/hr or $150/hr, mistakes happen. Especially with emails where the fields self-populate. Granted she should have been a lot more careful about checking the addressees before hitting the send button, but it is what it is - a mistake! No need to crucify her for it - the client will do that if it wants to (and it probably has or will in the near future).
Posted by Josh - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 38 minutes ago
Please, that wasn’t a mistake. She wanted to embarrass the Mississippi AG.
Posted by David Hendricks - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 33 minutes ago
Exactly, Josh. This was certainly no mistake. Sad how gullible people are. Exactly how does this “goof” hurt the lawyer or her client? It doesn’t. She merely gets away with perpetrating the same contempt which upset her so much.
Posted by KJ - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 5 hours, 45 minutes ago
It’s a tactic. She tried to do to him what he had done to her. If she took him on directly, there would be a claim they were taking the details to public arena, nulling confidentiality which might have exposed them to malpractice claim by State Farm. Press leaks are part of the art of high profile cases. And they needed sympathy, not to mention settlement, for their very unsympathetic client.
Posted by Flom - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 4 hours, 1 minute ago
How exactly does one button cause 15 reporters to be emailed instead of multiple partners? Funny how “the goof” turned into dumb luck by furthering her client’s objective and its desired message to the public. Shame on ABA for printing this without questioning the logic behind the item. In my opinion, which is protected from defamation allegations, this was obviously intentional. Had an attorney tried to straight out say an opposing counsel was in contempt not only would that person likely violate settlement terms, the statement likely would violate ethic rules. But no such negative ramifications when it was a “goof” that happened because of one wrong pressed button. With one wrong pressed button the client’s message get out plus people are far more likely to read the sexy headline “Big Firm Goofs” than one that reads “Defense Counsel Unhappy With Outcome of Insurance Case.”
Posted by GY - 2 months, 1 week, 6 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes ago
The author writes: “Lawyers, you may want to consider deleting reporters’ names from your e-mail address book. “ Ah, lawyers, maybe instead we communicate through email only when it would be ok for anyone in the world to read the email contents. Toward that end, common sense being not so common, maybe firms or other employers could program a prompt that the sender would have to authenticate as assuming the risk of unintended receipt and subsequent redistribution in order to enable the send button.