The Merits Of Being A Little Reckless: How An Arts Lawyer Took On The Sackler Family

Episode Notes

Transcript

Todd Berger:

The practice of law can take you in a million different directions, but we’re often told how important it is to specialize. The general thought is that becoming the best at some small slice of the law is what’s going to make you the most effective and successful, but for many of us, the decision to focus on a niche can feel limiting. After all, we’re curious people who’ve never shied away from a challenge. Today we explore adaptability by talking with a lawyer who stepped out of his comfort zone, embraced the challenge of learning on the go, and did whatever it took to help his clients. This is the ABA Law Student Podcast. Hey, Leah. Hey, Chay. Today’s episode is got a bunch of different pieces to it that are really cool, but one of the key pieces I think is important for our law students who listen to this. I know we get this question a decent amount. What do I want to do with my career? How do I choose an area of law that’ll be fulfilling and impactful? So a really interesting guess, interesting story. Leah, who are we going to hear from today? Tell us a little bit about it.

Leah Haberman:

Yeah, we’re going to be hearing from Mike Quinn, who is a arts lawyer at a small firm here in New York. And I started out wanting to do this interview in a pretty wonky and specific way of, I’ve been following the Sackler Purdue Pharma opioid crisis issues ever since I read the book, empire of Pain. There’s the show, dope Sick. It’s just in a lot of my podcasts and media. And also just knowing people who’ve been impacted by the opioid crisis. I started out this episode knowing I wanted to do something around that, but then I was like, I don’t really know how to go about that. And so I just went to Google and I was just like, who are the lawyers that are involved in holding the Sacklers accountable, which is a pretty hyper specific Google search. And Mike Quinn was the first person to come up.

Todd Berger:

So from art law to America’s opioid crisis to deciding what you want to do as a lawyer, let’s get into it.

Leah Haberman:

Can you help connect for our listeners? How is it that your name was the first to come up in that Google search?

Michael Quinn:

I represented an artist named Nan Golden who in 2018 after overcoming opioid dependency issue, read an article in the New Yorker by Patrick Radden Keefe about the family behind the Purdue Pharma opioid empire. And the family was called the Sacklers. Their names are plastered above every museum doorway throughout world, and she thought, how do I get the world to know that these people that we hold in such high esteem in the arts and cultural and education world are actually behind the opioid crisis? And as an attorney, I didn’t have much experience in activism, let alone pharmaceuticals, but I’m very close to Ann. I just thought, well, how can I help? One of the lessons I learned early on in my career was I want to work with people and so what my clients want, I try to help them with it. And it launched into this whole very intense lawsuit, which I had no experience in bankruptcy, but sort of the principles of law apply in every different venue or forum, and I did the best I could.

Leah Haberman:

Definitely. And I think there’s always that fine line with lawyering where sometimes you have to punch above your weight. You have to dig in and find new strategies, what you owe to your clients, but then there’s the risk of running into some of the ethical concerns of practicing areas of law that you are really maybe shouldn’t be, not in the sense that you are not allowed, but you’re not an expert at, and maybe there’s a lawyer you should refer someone to that could do this better, to more adequately get what your clients, what they’re asking for. Was there ever a time when in the back of your mind you’re like, I need to tap someone else in. This is maybe outside of my comfort zone.

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, so it’s so great you asked that because initially there was an attorney associated with my firm who was a bankruptcy expert, and so naturally I asked him for help, but I was doing this case pro bono and we went through one objection to a motion by Purdue, and two things came to my mind. One, why was I so afraid I could go onto the court and argue these things? I’m writing the briefs, and two, I don’t want to waste his resources. I was doing this case entirely pro bono. He’s a busy person, and so I didn’t want to over ask him for support. The other thing is during the case, throughout the case, I got advice from a lot of various practitioners and professors who would answer my nascent questions. And so it really helped me. There were people that helped me guide me along the way or just engage in conversation about the case in a way that I could pick up on things. Now I think the case started in 2019 and we’re in 2024 now. So when do you become an expert in a field? I still feel like I don’t know anything about bankruptcy, but it’s been five years. So

Leah Haberman:

No, definitely, and I’m sure it’s one of those things when you’re in the trenches, there’s no one who kind of knows the ins and outs of it as much as the person who’s rolled up their sleeves and gotten in there admit, I have not taken bankruptcy. It seems like a very, maybe not my speed class. And so for our listeners who are just maybe a little bit less familiar with what’s going on with the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, if you can kind of give them a sense of when you dove into that work, what it was looking like. And like you said, it’s been five years now. What is it looking like now?

Michael Quinn:

Sure. So there’s sort of two bookends to bankruptcy. There’s consumer bankruptcy, which is like, oh, I racked up a bunch of credit card debt or I lost my job and I don’t have any money, and I’ve creditors. So there’s individual bankruptcy, which we all know about, and then there’s also corporate bankruptcy. The interesting thing about the Purdue case is the corporate entity, Purdue went into bankruptcy. The individual Sacklers did not declare bankruptcy, but they engineered this process in which they could tried to piggyback onto the corporate bankruptcy for they themselves to be discharged of liability. And that’s sort of the crux of the issue that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Should individual corporate owners and officers be able to be discharged of their liability without themselves availing them as individuals to the bankruptcy process? And that’s what they call non debtor releases. So the individuals got releases even more greater than if they declared individual bankruptcy, but they did it through what they call mega bankruptcy Chapter 11 case.

Leah Haberman:

And I’m glad that you brought up the Supreme Court case that’s ongoing right now and was heard during this most recent term. For those who may be unfamiliar that are listeners, can you give a sense of what is the tension right now in front of the Supreme Court as it relates to your clients and others?

Michael Quinn:

The way that Purdue and proponents of the bankruptcy plan has bringed it is we have this settlement on the table, don’t disrupt it. Individuals want their money. States want their money. Municipalities, hospitals, we’ve negotiated this thing, we’ve spent a billion dollars of legal fees. We are where we are. It’s the best deal you’re going to get. Don’t disrupt the apple cart. From our perspective, it’s a real attack on the Article III Litigation process itself. So you have co-defendants, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers who sat on one side of an adversarial Litigation in the Article II court go into the bankruptcy and suddenly sort of shift their position so that Purdue was acting as if it was adversarial to the Sacklers, trying to beat them into a settlement. My clients, including Ellen Isaac, a mother who lost her son to opioid overdose, didn’t agree with that. She thought that this should be an adversarial process, not one about just settling and splitting up the pie. So it’s a real ideological fight in a way. It’s about how should the courts be used, and it’s about a fight against law and economic style efficiency over constitutional protections, things like that.

Leah Haberman:

And to that point, there’s so many larger questions here. I mean, I feel like this is a lot of Fed Courts professors exam questions in the next semester, this idea of what should the Article three courts be doing? Can bankruptcy do this? And these seem a lot of procedural, but like you mentioned, one of your clients is a mother who lost her child because of the opioid crisis. There has to be a ton of feelings of just anger and the ideas of justice and that justice will not be found in the bankruptcy court. And so how do you as the attorney navigate your clients’ desires for these things that an individual core personal level, knowing that a lot of the focus is on these procedural elements of the role of the courts and just kind of bankruptcy courts are about settlement, sometimes creditors don’t get their due. How do you navigate those different desires?

Michael Quinn:

I think the tension is this case should have never been in bankruptcy. So if it’s hard once you force it into a venue that it shouldn’t be in, I don’t think these parents were ever going to agree with any settlement that it came up with. I just think they were firmly opposed to it. They felt that if it was in an adversarial proceeding like a normal Litigation, it would serve them much better. And that just whether the settlement was the same number or not, there would be fact finding. There would be information that would come out about the Sacklers liability here. There was never any information about the Sacklers liability. It was just let’s come up with a number to satisfy the most creditors that we can. The same thing happened in Mallinckrodt, which is another opioid manufacturer in Mallinckrodt. The individual victims got, they settled, they got a certain amount of money, the liability was discharged into these jailing injunctions, and then Mallinckrodt declared bankruptcy again and said, geez, we don’t even have enough money to pay these unsecured creditors, these individual victims, so we’re going to keep the discharge, but we’re going to renegotiate an even lower amount of money.

So there’s a lot of funny business going on in this process, and I think my clients, mothers and family members instinctively knew what the Sacklers did and what Purdue did to them, and this country was bad enough, let’s not let them run the system anymore. And so I fought as hard as I could to at least show the public this is not a good thing. We can’t let them control their own destiny. They’re criminals and they deserve justice.

Leah Haberman:

I’m really glad you brought up the point about the public because one of the first episodes we did on this podcast was the relationship between being a lawyer and being a storyteller, and that you have to always know your audience and more and more so being a legal professional, your audience is often the public because of podcasts, social media, et cetera. As you started getting into this work and navigating all these new players and things, how did you figure out how to use the public as a leveraged tool? Like you mentioned earlier, there’s all these state attorney generals involved, there’s just a lot of cooks in the kitchen. So how did you make sure your relationship with the media and the public was best serving your clients?

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, I mean, again, I didn’t understand bankruptcy and I think neither did the media and neither did the public. And people were sort of like, well, the sers are bankrupt. Not everybody’s going to get what they want. And but it was for me to educate myself and then to educate the media on our position within the case. And I think it was an incredible situation because a lot of the media, not all of it, heard our story out. So I represented in the lower case in the bankruptcy five individuals, yet eight out of 10 media stories showed our side of the story. And I kind of saw it too that the bankruptcy, especially in chapter 11 mega cases, it’s kind of a boys club. It’s a small closed community. So I saw we weren’t getting much traction within the Courtroom, but in the public square in the media, there was plenty of traction. It didn’t just stay there. There was hearings in Congress that we worked on. There was fictionalized television shows, there was documentaries, there was books written. There was a lot of work to try to get our side of the story told.

Leah Haberman:

Do you feel like in conversations with your clients that that’s helped them feel like they’re getting the justice they’ve asked for because there’s no guarantee within our legal system that they’re going to get the outcome of no settlement? We’re going to Article iii. You’re going to get your time to litigate this in court.

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, I mean there was, when Patrick Radden, Keith’s book, empire Pain came out, it was like a celebratory time because it was early on in the case and suddenly all these truths were revealed about exactly how the Sacklers contributed to this opioid crisis. Or then the Beth Macy and Danny Strong’s TV show, dope Sick came out. This was all happening during the case, or there was a congressional hearing or there was an act proposed in Congress called the Sackler Act. So there were these minor victories along the way that kept my clients feeling like they had a chance to serve justice or that their children didn’t die in vain.

Todd Berger:

We will be right back.

So Leo, one thing that I thought was really interesting about the first part of your interview with Mike was the use of storytelling in a lot of ways, sort of telling the story of what his clients were going through, but in many respects, the stories that were being told were not being told using the traditional tools that lawyers have. I know Merrick Garland, the attorney General, he says the Department of Justice in political cases, we tell our story in court through our filings. We don’t otherwise tell our story outside of court. This was sort of a contrast to that. I know you have a background before you came to law school in communications, what did you think of how Mike was telling stories outside of the Litigation context that had an impact positively on their clients?

Leah Haberman:

I think for a low resource like pro bono case, you have to kind of use what’s at your disposal. And I think especially earned media, not media that you pay for is an incredible tool to shape the narrative. I think there’s always the flip side, especially in defense work of not exploiting your client’s story, not ever portraying something that could harm them later. So I think there’s limits to it, but I think in this case there was so much mystery of you have a family that’s behind a company. A lot of people might know about Oxycontin, they might not know about Perdue Pharma, and even behind that, they might not know about the Sackler family. And so when you’ve got layers and layers to this story, you kind of have to go to the press and tell it for yourself or else the people with all the money are going to definitely tell it for themselves.

Todd Berger:

It really sort of emphasizes two strands of, I think what we’ve talked about before. One, the importance of storytelling in the law and also the importance of being creative in how you lawyer. And this was a way in which to creatively have clients stories in their lives be told in a way that mattered to them. And so like you said, you work with what you have when you’re a lawyer, and if you don’t have all the resources in the world or you’re up against some legal doctrine, that’s going to be hard to move around. You try and find ways to be creative. And it sounds like here, this wasn’t just about being creative in the service of the win, however we may define that legally this was being creative in service of your clients, which I guess is the ultimate win in many respects too.

Leah Haberman:

Absolutely. And I think that part of that creativity that we’re really going to kind of hear more about in the second part came once he had the foundation of what’s going on. And something that really struck me when I was talking to him is that he asked for help when he was learning about bankruptcy law. There was another lawyer on his team that was his collaborator, and I think oftentimes law can feel a little bit like a Solo thing. It’s usually you and your client in the room, it’s you communicating before the judge, but this is a team sport. I really kind of resonated with the fact that he had to set his foundation first in asking for help, and then he was able to get fun and creative and use his own unique skillset in a new context.

Todd Berger:

Absolutely. Excited for the second part of your interview.

Leah Haberman:

Let’s get to it.

Michael Quinn:

All I did in the case, I mean it wasn’t all I did, but there was probably about 20 or 30 objections I filed to motions that Purdue would bring, and nine out of 10 of ’em I lost. But I was able to present information that made it very uncomfortable for the procedure to keep moving along. It was also for me, practically speaking, the objections are cheaper to file than motions. I didn’t have to do proper service. I didn’t have to pay for the motion. So some of it was just an invention out of necessity. Filing an objection was a low bar compared to filing motions or other pleadings.

Leah Haberman:

And I know we’ve talked about bankruptcy being a new area of substantive law for you, but you’re talking about just even the knowledge to be like, okay, I’m going to file these objections. This is a good workaround to get my points made without having to do formal motions. I think a lot of first second year folks are so by the book that they don’t even think about those kind of things. And so what about your previous work? Did you feel like helped equipped you to have the mindset to bring into that Courtroom?

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, had this stated in an Article III court, I never would’ve participated, right? Because what I was able to do was file something called a verification pleading where you just said, okay, there’s five individuals out of a hundred thousand creditors who have these common interests, and we have to tell the court that these people have a common interest. Their common interest was they wanted more than just a pecuniary settlement. They were interested in accountability, they were interested in a proper procedure, they were interested in the court not cutting corners. And so it was really a creative way to get into the case. I think I work with creatives so they don’t see the guardrails that other people see, and maybe it’s rubbed off a little bit on me. They were also like, they put some faith in me to figure this out, so there was a certain amount of pressure.

How can I get their voices heard within the kegs? And then third, like I said, there wasn’t a lot of money. I wasn’t getting paid to do this, so I had to come up with one of the variables was keep this cheap and filing a verification, pleading costs, I had to log onto Pacer and it was very reasonable to get involved. And I also think if this case goes through and the Supreme Court upholds it, I’ve created a way for other activists and individuals to get involved in these mass tour cases or these big mass chapter 11 cases. Another lawyer could go in with a group of parents or whenever it is a group of victims and gum up the case.

Leah Haberman:

I guess to that point of people you said gumming it up, there’s definitely been arguments that there are a lot of people similarly situated to your clients who do want the settlement, they need the money, they want the money, and they’re like, no one’s going to be happy with everything, but what does accountability even look like with our justice system? And so what have you said in response to that argument?

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, I mean, first I think the individual parents and victims of Purdue form deserve much more money. The settlement for individuals came out before the Department of Justice even announced a criminal plea deal with Purdue. So it’s very suspicious to me that if you’re talking about how much money should somebody get from bad behavior, that liability should have been calculated after we knew there was criminal activity, not before there was criminal activity. Also, this whole process of non debtor releases, it’s something we’d been arguing about since the beginning of the bankruptcy saying that this is going to slow up the case. You need to work around this. You can’t use these things because in the end, if you use them, the case is going to get overturned. And so we were arguing early on, this is going to delay, just don’t use them. And then third Purdue itself and those supporting the plan appealed the case.

So it went from the bankruptcy court to the district court. The district court said, no, you can’t use these releases. And then Purdue and plan proponents were the ones that appealed, so they’re appealing too. They wasted a whole year trying to cram through these non debtor releases instead of coming up with some kind of alternative. And the reason I think they did that is because this is what the Sacklers wanted. The Sacklers sort of their interest guided the entire case. This entire case was predicated on the Sacklers getting universal releases. Whereas what they could have said is, okay, a bunch of people want to settle, let them settle. And if you have a few people out there, especially, they’re not even states, all the states settle, you’re just talking about some individuals like my client, Ellen Isaacs, who want to bring lawsuits against the Sackler. Well, the Sackler still have plenty of money to fight those lawsuits. They could have those lawsuits, they could maybe they wouldn’t pass a motion to dismiss, maybe they would lose on liability. Let’s give the Sacklers just what everybody else has, which is a little bit of uncertainty.

Leah Haberman:

I guess that really reinforces something you said earlier is that the Sacklers have been able to run the show. They’ve been able to say, what court do I want to be in practically? What judge do I want to be in front of? There’s a lot of picking and choosing, and that’s a constant refrain about the American justice system is that if you’re wealthy enough, you can DIY, your own legal system. As someone navigating this, as an advocate, as an activist lawyer, what has been kind of the shocking aspects of this, because I think a lot of people are almost resigned to that truth of wealth gets to construct the legal system. And so what have been for you, the infuriating points and for law students listening, what are the things that they should be like, no, don’t resign yourself to this. These are the things we can really push on.

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, I think as far as infuriating, the first thing was there was a criminal settlement for a medical records company called Practice Fusion in which the Department of Justice settled with them and said, there’s a co-conspirator that paid you a bunch of money to mess with people’s diagnostic software so that when the doctor came into the patient’s room, the software would keep doing these dropdown menus saying, how much pain are you in? You should take oxy cuff, you should take these. And so they were messing around with the doctor patient relationship. When the DOJ came out with that settlement, they failed to say who was paying the bribes, which pharmaceutical company was paying the bribe? And it really infuriated me. It was so clear that it was Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma was a criminal company that was engaged in a civil bankruptcy without being called criminals.

And so that was the first really infuriating point, and it’s really what motivated me to represent these individuals in the bankruptcy. The second thing that came out that was really infuriating was before the bankruptcy was filed just over six months before it was filed, they changed their service address to White Plains New York. And that’s really creepy because clearly they were picking the judge that they wanted to file in front of Purdue didn’t exist in White Plains. They existed in Stanford, Connecticut, which is just as close to Bridgeport, Connecticut where there’s a bankruptcy court. But they knew there was a judge that would protect the Sacklers during the case so that there could be a settlement. And that also believed in these non debtor releases, which were very controversial. There were plenty of federal bankruptcy judges that didn’t believe in these releases. Then the third thing that was really infuriating to me is that Purdue and the Sacklers signed a contract called a joint defense agreement before they went into bankruptcy.

So a common interest agreement and joint defense agreement is that the Sacklers lawyers represent the Sacklers. Purdue’s lawyers represent Purdue, but they have a contract that they can share defense strategies, they can share information, and they’ll keep it all confidential. So Purdue’s lawyers don’t represent the Sackler and the SFAs lawyers don’t represent Purdue, but they’re contractually obligated to share the same interests through this contract. And to me, that’s really perverse when you look at the bankruptcy scheme where the debtors Purdue are going after the non debtors, the Sacklers, but they have this sort of secret agreement in their back pocket. And so to me, that disrupted the whole system in my mind. You have these co-conspirators or co-defendants who are pretending in the public to be acting as adversaries, and that to me was just didn’t smell right. And it was something that my clients, when I brought it to them, they were just furious.

Again, looking at my limitations, I didn’t file a motion to say, okay, they have a joint defense agreement. Debtors should drop out, and this should go back to article three. What I did was just write a strongly worded letter to the court saying, Hey, there’s this joint defense agreement. This seems wrong in the bankruptcy structure. And I didn’t hear much about it, like the Wall Street Journal talked about it. And then six months later there was a settlement with the Department of Justice with those law firms saying that they failed to disclose that secret agreement. And so it didn’t stop the case, but it certainly put everybody on notice. This is a really bad thing.

Leah Haberman:

I know for me when I was reading an Empire of Pain and all these things, you get incredibly aggravated that this was allowed to happen and that there’s still been very little besides, I guess their reputations have been soiled. But other than that, it feels very frustrating that not much has happened. And so I guess to a frustrated listener who maybe is learning a lot about it right now or kind of came in already knowing a lot about what’s going on with this, what are the things that make you feel optimistic enough to continue doing this work?

Michael Quinn:

Yeah, I mean, I think our system still allows people to do this kind of work to go into open court and object, and I don’t think that’s happening everywhere else in the world. So for one, we still are able to participate in the legal process and the government process. Two, if you look at where the money goes in law, it goes to people like Purdue. The Sacklers in Purdue have admitted many millionaire lawyers protecting them in their interests. Many, many, many of the big law firms represent their interests and have continued to represent their interests for 20 years. So it’s no surprise that they have really good legal defenses and legal tactics, but a guy like me who practices art law can still walk into court and say, this is wrong. This is unconstitutional. The constitution doesn’t allow this, or this isn’t the way the court system should work.

And I was able to voice those arguments and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. The other thing that gave me hope is on our side that we’re against the plan. The Department of Justice joined us. So it’s like we had the best law firm in the world on our side suddenly, and while we filed separate briefs and argued simply, it was nice to know that the United States government had kind of come around and started fighting these things. I give the US trustees office a ton of credit for sticking their neck out and fighting against this. I was really grateful that they stepped up.

Leah Haberman:

I think the way the needle has moved from, I’m sure when you got involved in this case to where we’re at now is tremendous. For me, what has resonated the most during our conversation has been you have kept saying you are this arts lawyer who is able to have your voice heard and make sure your clients who were not necessarily the name Sackler, that was getting all the attention, were able to have their piece heard through your objections, through you working with media and educating the media on these issues. And again, all of this happened without you. I’m sure there was never a moment in law school and you’re like, I’m going to be a bankruptcy guy, specifically around the opioid crisis. And so to kind of close out our interview, what would you say to a law student who has a lot of different interests and they wanted to listen to this episode, like, oh, maybe this will make me feel like I can do it all, or whatever. How do you make sure that you get these kind of opportunities to diversify and not be caged in by one specialty? What would you say to them?

Michael Quinn:

It’s so hard when you’re a lawyer, like you want certainty in what your future is. I think if you can dispel some of that and just be excited about the uncertainty of what the future holds, it’ll open up so many opportunities that you didn’t know were there. So I guess my advice would be live a little recklessly.

Todd Berger:

We will be back after the break.

Chay Rodriguez:

Leah, honestly, I’m blown away by so many different pieces of this interview. What really got me was that the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma each had their own legal team that was then contractually obligated to share strategies with each other. And because I have not followed the case so closely, I didn’t realize that that was happening. And it really just put imagery in my mind of Mike all on his lonesome by himself, and then this team of 30 attorneys huddling in a corner plotting against him. Was that something that you already knew prior to this interview or what was your initial reaction to hearing that and finding that out? When Mike kind of explained that,

Leah Haberman:

I knew a little bit about it just from reading all the content on it. And I think it’s this wild thing that in so many ways we are treating the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma as one, their legal team is almost being treated as one. Their resources were one. I mean, there was members of the Sackler family is in charge of the boards. It was so intertwined, and then all of a sudden we’re like jk, they’re different enough that when one goes bankrupt, it’s not really the other one. And I think it just really reinforced that you can write the rules the way you want to when you have enough wealth. And the fact that our rules are already written this way reinforces that the wealthy of past generations also set it up this way. Everything’s intentional. It’s all part of the plot. Something I asked Mike was like, how do you stay kind of motivated when you almost kind of know how the story ends? Not every story is David and Goliath. Sometimes it’s Goliath wins because of course he does. So it’s shocking. But then I’m never shocked because I’m so cynical about the system, and then it’s almost like I have to remind myself that the trope is David and Goliath for a reason, because David has to win sometimes. Right?

Chay Rodriguez:

Right. And I just thinking of strategy in general, even when he said that Purdue changed their service address to White Plains, New York, if I had a table that I could flip as I was listening, I would have flipped it. And I genuinely started to write my civil procedure professor and be like, I feel like we didn’t cover this, and you need to run back how this is possible when there’s no headquarters there. They’re not incorporated there. They’re close to Connecticut. Make this make sense. And I think that highlights and underscores what you just said, right? If you have the money, if you have the funds, there are some things that you can do to work the system in your favor in a way that we might not think is so fair. And I mean in general, look how this has all played out with the opioid crisis and the people who are addicted to opioids being framed as victims vice another war on drugs that this country has dealt with, and those people not being labeled the same. So I think in totality, it just keeps, in every instance you turn kind of getting that same reminder over and over again. And I hope you’re right. I hope that David does win sometimes. In this case, I hope that David does win,

Leah Haberman:

And I think to not be a only eat the rich perspective, I think that when you talk about these resources and how they’re instrumental to the law, Mike Quinn was doing this pro bono, he had his own private firm he works in normally, he’s a partner there. And I see this every day. My fiance works at a law firm in New York, and she does amazing pro bono work. She’s been able to work on immigration and veterans work, and for folks listening who are like, yeah, it’s really inspiring to see these kind of once in a lifetime cases, but due to dead, due to whatever other reasons. I’m going to corporate law. I’m going to wherever their path takes them, how can I be as reckless as Mike Quinn wants me to be? And I think there’s just a huge thing to be said for the variety and the ability to dive into pro bono work. If you’re going to be within the Goliath framework, you can give a little bit of the Goliath to David every once in a while.

Chay Rodriguez:

And when Mike said, be reckless towards the end while I, Leah, you’re about to be done, I have a year left. I think it’s different when you’re on the other side and you’ve passed theBar and you could literally walk through those little lines and literally passes theBar for you to say that. But I know a lot of us as students are type A, so he says, be a little reckless and we roll our eyes. So I just wanted to let the audience know that I rolled my eyes too, but he might be right in some former facet of let go of the plan a little bit. Don’t hold onto it so tightly that you would miss an opportunity like this.

Leah Haberman:

And I think there’s earlier when we talked about how are we going to define success, then that can be different. I’m like, I think some versions of reckless and my version of reckless is a very different, he’s saying, oh, be reckless and take on a pro bono case. That’s a little different than I think a lot of people’s definition of going wild and going reckless, and I think it’s within our world of rules. You still have to follow the rules. He was filing objections. He wasn’t jumping on the table going bananas. I’m taking it away as a synonym for be creative of don’t let the formality of how it’s always done be what you continue to do. If it’s always been done that way and you always lose, then you’re just going to keep losing.

Todd Berger:

So let me put this question to you guys because this was something I was thinking about after I listened to your interview, Leah. So we talk about creative lawyering and choosing your own path. It makes sense to say to people, well, if you’re going to go to big law, think about doing something out of your comfort zone to help other people and things like that. But obviously, there are people who chose to be a part of, I think what Mike references is like the billions of dollars of money that have been spent on lawyers for the Sacklers, and they’ve been engaged in creative lawyering too much to Shea Egrin, right? They managed to switch the address to White Plains so they could choose the one judge, which was probably a version of really strategic lawyering when I heard that, oh, they have this joint defense agreement, and then they go ahead and bankruptcy court and they’re adversarial to each other.

I thought, okay, these are people who are kind of working the system. And there was a part of me, I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me because I think it was very easy to just, obviously we know who the bad guys in this story are, but there was a part of me, and maybe I say this as a former criminal defense attorney who saw really creative lawyering on behalf of the people who were getting paid the money to do that by the Sacklers. And I kind of thought, those people are good lawyers too, really good lawyers. And I thought to myself, was there something about maybe going into that area of law that people would find challenging? And so does it make it wrong? If you’re out there and you’re listening to this and you think to yourself, well, I’m going to go represent people like the Sacklers because I can really engage in interesting lawyering on their behalf, and I find that really interesting. Is it wrong to do that? The Sacklers wrong to pay billions of dollars and get the best representation possible? Is everybody entitled to a defense? Because obviously, some of our listeners are going to have to make a choice about who they’re going to represent, and so is there anything wrong with what their lawyers did? Should we even admire them to a little bit because they learned this stuff somewhere and they ended up using it pretty well?

Leah Haberman:

I mean, I think it’s like, I just don’t feel, for me, it’s a place to judge other people’s motives and the path they’ve had to take in their career. I think that’s something I’ve learned in law school because I think people go to law school with completely different backgrounds, and the jobs afterwards necessitate very different things based on their obligations, their circumstances. I think if you’re super passionate about defending corporations from paying their dues, maybe let’s have coffee and chat about that. But I think, I don’t necessarily, I really believe in public defense. I think everyone has a right to defense. I admire creative L when I see it. Do I want to go do that? Personally? It’s not for me, but I also just think that the legal profession is a Toolkit, and you started off this conversation today with of you can use your law degree for good or evil, or whatever the framing was. I don’t think that’s necessarily evil. We have an adversarial process. You kind of want good lawyers on both sides. I just want to make sure that there’s really, really, really good empowered lawyers for the people who don’t have the money. So I don’t think it’s bad to go for the places with the money. I just want to make sure it’s not where only the good lawyers go.

Todd Berger:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that was a great answer to my question. I hadn’t thought about that, and I think that’s terrific. I feel better now, right? It’s like I don’t think they did anything wrong, but at the same time, I think it makes sense to say that the profession’s better off with more Mike Quinn’s, and maybe there’s some more Mike Quinn’s out there listening to this podcast. Before we go, if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Be sure to share our podcast with your friends and fellow students. We want to hear from you, so send us your thoughts about the show or issues you’d like to hear about in your review. We at the ABA Law Student Podcast would like to express our thanks to our production team at the Legal Talk Network and the professionals at the ABA Law Student Division.

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