Even the biggest law firms may be anachronistically inefficient. They are run by lawyers, not professional managers, insist on charging by the “billable hour” rather than by results and use little technology more advanced than e-mail.
.. the Big Four accounting networks (Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC), whose combined annual revenues of $120 billion exceed the $89 billion generated by the 100 largest law firms combined.
.. the Big Four are “the biggest underestimated threat to the legal profession today”.
.. Unfortunately for them, much of their business is high-volume, repetitive tasks—just the sort of work that the Big Four excel at standardising and automating.
Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations
According to Garrett, “in about two thirds of the cases involving deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreements and public corporations, the company was punished but no employees were prosecuted.” This suggests that the Department of Justice has been persuaded by its own rhetoric that the main point of these agreements is to change corporate culture, so that company employees of all levels will be dissuaded in the future from committing company-related crimes.
.. Garrett describes with considerable insight the many factors that lead the government to prefer a deferred prosecution over an actual one (and that give rise to his title Too Big to Jail). These include legitimate concerns, such as avoiding the collateral consequences to employees and shareholders, as well conserving scarce prosecutorial resources, both at the investigative stage (by relying on the internal investigation that a company will undertake in the hope of receiving a deferred prosecution) and at the compliance stage (by increased self-policing within the company).
However, the preference for deferred prosecutions also reflects some less laudable motives, such as the political advantages of a settlement that makes for a good press release, the avoidance of unpredictable courtroom battles with skilled, highly paid adversaries, and even the dubious benefit to the Department of Justice and the defendant of crafting a settlement that limits, or eliminates entirely, judicial oversight of implementation of the agreement.
Taliban Justice Gains Favor as Official Afghan Courts Fail
While few Afghans recall the Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 with any fondness, the lack of corruption in justice then was seen by some as a strong suit. Bribes were uncommon. The power of litigants and their extended clans mattered less. The implementation of Islamic law, or at least the rural Afghan version of it, was standard.
Scalia’s Sarcasm
[Question:] While your opinions are delectable to read, I’m wondering:
Do you ever regret their tone? Specifically, that your tone might have
cost you a majority?
[Justice Scalia:] No. It never cost me a majority. And you ought to be
reluctant to think that any justice of the Supreme Court would make a case
come out the other way just to spite Scalia. Nobody would do that. You’re
dealing with significant national issues. You’re dealing with real litigants—
no. My tone is sometimes sharp. But I think sharpness is sometimes needed
to demonstrate how much of a departure I believe the thing is. Especially in
my dissents. Who do you think I write my dissents for?[Question:] Law students.
[Justice Scalia:] Exactly. And they will read dissents that are breezy and
have some thrust to them. That’s who I write for.14
Dean Chemerinsky is skeptical about Justice Scalia’s approach. “No doubt,
[Justice Scalia’s sarcasm] makes his opinions among the most entertaining to read.
He has a great flair for language and does not mince words when he disagrees with
a position. But I think this sends exactly the wrong message to law students and
attorneys about what type of discourse is appropriate in a formal legal setting and
what is acceptable in speaking to one another.”15 And Dean Kathleen Sullivan
noted that some observers “have speculated that Justice Scalia’s blistering sarcasm”
aimed at the opinions of Justices O’Connor and Kennedy “may have driven them
toward the center.”16