I have no idea what to title this post...

This week's Neighbors section in the Miami Herald profiled a local lawyer, Carolyn Kellman, AKA CK (pictured at left, from the Herald article). She works at Adorno & Yoss. From the article:

Passions du jour: I love accessories because they make an outfit. They don't have to be expensive but it should be coup de coeur (love at first sight). Fabulous stiletto shoes and soft, smooshy, large leather bags. I love black clothes, which I think has to do with being a New Yorker. You can take the girl out of New York but you can't take New York out of the girl.

Look: I like to mix high and low with new and old. Sophisticated, yet fun. I want to stand out for my unique fashion flare.

Here's her bio on A&Y. Her experience: Collections, Landlord/Tenant disputes, and workouts.

More: "Carolyn Kellman is a Partner in the Firm's Miami office and member of the Collections Department. Ms. Kellman focuses her practice in large-scale commercial collections with an emphasis on stipulated settlement workouts and landlord tenant workout and lease issues. She represents numerous national collection agencies, assisting them with resolutions with South Florida debtors. She also acts as a "lawyer-liaison" for clients who want their countrywide collections administered by a sole source."

Rumpole has been saying that I'm stealing his stuff, so I've moved away from his state court coverage to this piece, which is more like, say, AboveTheLaw..... I guess I'll go back to Padilla tomorrow. Hope everyone had a nice Father's Day weekend.

You can't make this stuff up...

Pot smoking judge resigns.

Judge of 50 years resigns for sexual comments.

Lawyer really really really sorry for happy meal comments to judge. (previous coverage here).

And police officers arrest man for asking them for warrant before cutting down his tree during the citrus canker days.* Then they make him watch the cutting down of said tree before throwing him in the slammer for 18 hours. Happy ending -- After a trial before Judge Lenard, a jury awards man some money.

Keep laughing Mr. Lat!!

*The cutting down of our fruit trees was perhaps the dumbest policy decision ever in this State. Is everyone still enjoying their $50 giftcards? (But I'm biased: See Markus v. Department of Agriculture, 785 So.2d 595 (3rd DCA 2001)).

News and Notes

1. There's a bunch of reaction in the comments and in articles this morning to the life sentence recommended by the jury in the Kenneth Wilk case. Here's the Herald article and the Sun-Sentinel article. Both mention that the majority of jurors were against the death penalty. I'm not sure what that means because the jury had to be "death qualified." I think Wilk's jury consultant will be getting a bunch of calls soon.

2. Julie Kay covers an interesting case where a NYSE company asked that its directors' addresses be removed from an animal rights' website. Judge Hurley denied the motion. So, you can get these addresses from websites, but we still can't get plea agreements online. Explain! (And to be clear, I'm not saying that I disagree with Judge Hurley's decision. What I really cannot understand is our District's policy of keeping public documents offline.)

3. Rumpole has been following the strange circumstances surrounding Judge Gerald Klein's recent resignation in state court. The DBR has lots of coverage today, including the resignation letter.

Big firm salaries in Miami

Above the law covers Miami salaries here.

From an April DBR article:

Playing its hand in the South Florida associate pay stakes, Greenberg Traurig raised the starting base salaries of its rookie lawyers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale to $135,000 and their total compensation packages to more than $150,000....
The base salary of Greenberg’s first-year lawyers now will match that of White & Case, which in February announced that it had raised first-year salaries to $135,000 in Miami.
Holland & Knight, Hogan & Hartson and Akerman Senterfitt recently raised salaries for rookie lawyers to $130,000 in South Florida.
Hunton & Williams has raised its first-year salaries to $145,000 in Miami. Two New York-based firms, Weil Gotshal & Manges and Boies Schiller & Flexner, pay first-years $160,000 in their South Florida offices.


Any thoughts?

Kenneth Wilk sentenced to life

Most people that I spoke to thought that he was going to get death, but as I said earlier, the federal death penalty is very difficult to achieve:

The death penalty phase is coming up. Although many death penalty advocates will point to this case as the prototypical case for death (the admitted shooting of a cop), I'd be surprised if Wilk gets sentenced to death. The federal death penalty is an almost extinct dinosaur. The standards for being qualified to do a federal death penalty case are so high that the lawyering is always at a very high level, as it was in this case.

Any reaction to the life sentence?