Legal AF by MeidasTouch - SCOTUS Season, Historic Candidates and Pernicious Politicians
Episode Date: April 8, 2021On Episode 3 of our new weekly law and politics podcast, Legal AF, hosts MT founder and civil rights lawyer Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and commentator, Michael Popok, interview two histori...c candidates, Lucy Lang, candidate to replace Cyrus Vance, and be the first woman to ever lead the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in its 220 year history, and Hydee Feldstein Soto, who is running to be the LA City Attorney, the chief municipal legal office, and its first woman to hold that office in its more than 150 year history. Then, Ben and Michael, applying their “Analytic Friends” superpowers, tackle the current US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) term and recent oral arguments and decisions, including giving our followers what they crave: more analysis of due process and personal jurisdiction(!) by taking a look at Ford losing its efforts to only be sued in its backyard and avoid being sued in the states where its cars injure people. Next up, Ben and Popok try to read the tea leaves of SCOTUS’s recent “hot bench” concerning the antitrust case against the NCAA and its refusal to pay athletes for their work, and whether SCOTUS will expand warrantless searches of homes under the 4th Amendment by creating a new “community caretaker” exception. Finally, they take on the ongoing “Water-Gaetz “ saga with Matt Gaetz being investigated for sex trafficking crimes, and the recent successful prosecution of former Trump HUD official (and Eric Trump wedding planner), Lynne Patton for violating the Hatch Act’s prohibition against “pernicious political activity” by civil servants, for video recording NYC public housing residents without telling them that the clips would be used at the RNC’s presidential convention to promote Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF Your Legal Analysis Friends.
Sorry we were not here last week.
One of the problems about running a Legal AF podcast when you're actually a real lawyer
is you have cases and trials and depositions. And unfortunately, I had like 10 depositions last week.
I'm exaggerating.
I had three, but I had a lot of court appearances.
And it was just a crazy, crazy week.
So I apologize.
That's Ben's fault, not Popox fault, but Popox.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good.
You left out.
You also had a worry about canceling your Rolling Stone subscription.
So that had to cancel my Rolling Stone.
Who knew that the Rolling Stone rock magazine,
that we all used to love from the 60s and the 70s
and I was in the 80s.
They're owned by Saudi Arabia. They're owned by the Saudis.
Who knew such a thing?
Those are things.
I mean, that's more tragic. Look, people on a right mean stories about me.
Go ahead, right? Freaking mean stories about me.
But the tragedy of discovering that, own by Saudi Arabia just kills me.
Yeah, I remember what I said to you, you know, and everybody knows who follows us because
they're also following Midas Touch and my Twitter feeds.
Everybody knows we were sort of tied up last week as well with a season to cis letters
to Rolling Stone and their reporter Seth Att, and everything that came off of that.
But who knew that once by this touch,
did its own proper investigative reporting
and contrast to what Seth Attana was doing?
You found and unearthed all of these connected links
and dots that connect through the Penske family,
this connectivity with Saudi Arabia and money
and all of that.
And so that is real investigative reporting
at its finest, which I think you guys
have been at the forefront of developing.
And that's as a part of somebody going after
might as touch with really no facts in place.
I mean, it's just the most bizarre experience of my life.
Here's an organization that I work out, that I work at for free.
We're entirely grassroots-funded.
We post all of our donations online.
We hold like monthly meetings with our donors about where the money's going, where no questions
off limits. Anything we do as
any expenditure that has any level of significance, we post the photo of what it is and describe all
of the exact details. And they're coming after that and they're freaking out by Saudi Arabia with
$200 million. It was the most bizarre. Given the brothers are just too transparent. That's the problem.
Too, too transparent. There come their say, you were not efficient enough in your
Georgia canvassing effort. So now you're too efficient. You were too efficient.
You just charged $5 per door. I mean, look, we paid for full PPE. We paid a living wage.
And then we on earth that rolling stones doesn't pay its people a living wage. So of course they'd be coming after us for not paying a living wage and then we on earth that rolling stones doesn't pay its people a living wage
So of course they'd be coming after us for not paying a living wage
Then I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage.
I'm not a living wage. I'm not a living wage. I'm not a living wage. I did it become a problem? It's only a problem in the Republican world
where we have too many people voting.
I've never heard of this concept.
We have too many people voting.
We need less people voting, spend less,
do less, have less people voting.
That's what America's all about.
I missed that chapter in high school.
I really wanted one of the honest experiences. Now, digging into the legal issues of the week, the legal AF legal issues of the week. Popok is what's been a major headline, Matt Gates, Gate. Matt Gates is under federal investigation
for sex trafficking of a minor. It seems that the QAnon who are all talking about pedophile rings,
it seems that the GQP are the pedophile ring. Am I wrong?
We are the pedophile ring, am I wrong? No, I mean, can I just start with my first expression,
Yuck.
We always thought that Gates was sort of Yuck.
But, you know, look, we thought it was weird when a couple of years ago, he was the only
member of the House of Representatives who voted against Trump's human trafficking
bill to stop human trafficking.
But we didn't know what the time was. against Trump's human trafficking bill to stop human trafficking.
But we didn't know what the time was.
He was probably participating in human trafficking
for his dating life, which was bizarre.
But now it's sort of makes sense.
The one guy that was against human trafficking
is the one person that probably had a relationship,
appropriate relationship with a 17 year old
across state lines.
Sure.
So how this investigation reached this point,
the federal authorities were investigating the,
are investigating the sector trafficking violations of gates
out of a probe that emerged from the prosecution
of another Floridian, a tax collector, Joel Greenberg,
out there, and when they were analyzing Joel's
bone, they then saw the gates messages and the conversations that they were having together.
What is going on in Florida?
Well, as a part time Floridian, I don't know. Let me let's frame it for the followers. You've got two laws
that are implicated by the investigation. One, you have something that's been on the books
for a long, long time called the Man, M-A-N-N Act, which is against what then was, you know,
white prostitution rings bringing young women across state lines for illicit purposes,
but the law is still on the books, and it's used for just that.
If you are bringing a person, usually a woman, across state lines and interstate commerce,
for any illicit purpose whatsoever, including in this case having sex with her underage,
you have violated the man act.
You've also violated
the sex trafficking laws that have been on the books in the last 10 years. And as you noted, Ben,
they stumbled into the gats of fair, water gats, whatever the people are calling it,
because they were investigating another elected official, this case the tax
assessor in Seminole County, Florida, for him, and they got him dead to rights,
they already convicted him, he's already pled guilty, that he was using websites
and other parts of the dark web to have illicit relationships or rape is the
better way to put it with underage women for money, for gifts.
And he got, looks like he got Matt involved with this.
And then there's a beautiful picture on the internet of Greenberg, Chad, Matt, and Stone,
which is such a crazy combination. But yeah, he's gonna go down hard for violation
I believe of the man acts and human trafficking law because you know all of these things that he said in his opt-ed piece
That he published yesterday because he's trying to put he's got a girlfriend. He's about the Mary who's 28
He's worried about that the reality, the text messages and emails alone
and the photos they have found are enough to connect to.
Oh, he is in a lot of trouble.
And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg
with these GQP, you know, all, it's not just gates.
I mean, I think as we see other people
who are supporting gates, who are guilty of their own
criminal conduct, I'm not saying it's this specific type of conduct, but all they do is project,
project, project. And during the Trump years, the biggest project, not projection in the way I'm
using it before, but everything that they would do is violate the Hatch Act
that seemed under the Trump administration.
So can you just tell us what the Hatch Act is generally?
And I want to then talk about what the Trump administration was doing, which was basically
every day violating the Hatch Act.
And whether there will be meaningful repercussions.
Yeah, good.
So in 1939, the U.S. Congress passed the law,
named after a then-centered Hatch,
which is referred to in the Business as the Hatch Act.
But let me tell you the subtitle for it.
And this will describe it all to our followers.
It is the prevent, per pernicious political activity act.
And what it says is if you're in the executive branch
as a civil servant,
if you've been given your job as a civil servant,
you are not to be political.
While you hold your job, you are not to campaign
or do anything that is anything other than being
an agnostic civil servant.
And so as we saw throughout the Trump administration,
everyone used their offices,
whether it was Kellyanne Conway or anyone else
to politic and campaign on behalf of Trump
at the same time, they were in the executive branch.
So one, it's one of many prosecutions, but the one prosecution
that just came down with a settlement as of yesterday is the, is the, is, is Lynn Patterson
who, who is at the time she committed the hatch violation and will go over what she exactly
did. But at the time she committed the hacked violation, she was like the number two person in the Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD for the New York region.
And what was her qualifications to get that job through Trump? You might be
asking, she was the wedding planner for Eric Trump. That was her claim to fame.
That's how she ended up being like the number two or number three job in all of
HUD managing the public housing affairs
for the state of New York. But what she did, Ben, you know what she did, right?
Yeah, so Lynn Patton, she recruited people living in New York to participate in a video that was
shown at the Republican National Convention. So what she did was using her position,
in national convention. So what she did was using her position, her government position, she basically got individuals to act like they supported Trump for a political video that
was used at the Republican convention. And by the way, Trump did that a few times at the
Republican convention. I mean, number one, he did it at the White House, which is the
self as a violation of the hack, the biggest violation of the HAC, the biggest violation of the HAC was doing it
at the White House number one.
But then did any also swear in immigrants
for citizenship and didn't tell them
that that was actually going to be used
at the Republican National Convention as well?
The pertinent he did.
And the perniciousness that go back to the HAC's main title,
the perniciousness that go back to the Hatch Acts, main title, the perniciousness that I don't want to gloss over
in using people as human props for political campaigning
is that they didn't even, in the case of Patterson,
they didn't even know that they were being used as props
and they weren't just citizens of the state of New York,
they were residents of public housing
who she went with a video crew
and did not tell them that she was asking them questions
because she was going to cut and splice it
into a pro-Trump video at the RNC convention.
She started throwing just loaded,
you know, person on the street questions.
The goal was to try to convince people
that the Republicans have done amazing things
for public housing,
which we know is false, by getting and misleading these people into signing waivers.
Don't worry, we're just doing an internal promotional video.
And they end up being on 50 by 50 screen at the RNC.
I mean, they're supporting Trump, you know, and it's specifically designed,
you know, towards black and brown communities also to try to peel away those votes from
Democrats. So going back to the perniciousness, there's nothing more pernicious than that.
I mean, look, at the end of the day, she was fined $1,000. She's barred from federal employment
for four years. I think the penalties need to be stiffer than that, because, I mean, to me, that's a very,
very serious crime.
It's deceptive at every level.
But there are some repercussions.
It'll be interesting to see Pope Pachin.
I don't know what you think if other Trump officials will be similarly fined or have
these penalties.
My prediction is this is the floodgates are going to open.
And this is the first of many they got her.
She pled guilty.
You know, we say the $1,000 in a few years barring from federal offices not much.
Frankly, it's more than our than the former president got for inciting an insurrection
in the nation's capital.
He's he wasn't even barred from future federal office. So I think this is not a one and done. I think there will be more
Hatch Act prosecutions and the prosecutors under Biden will now be emboldened because they
just got the conviction off of her. And so Popeyes, switching gears for a second though, it's
still dealing with a Trump issue. The night's first amendment issue,
there was that the case that was a major,
important case in our litigation that you and I did
on behalf of Midas Touch against Marjorie, Taylor Green.
The Supreme Court was going to hear
that case about whether Trump was permitted
or not permitted to block people.
All of the lower courts that held that Trump was not permitted to block people and use
his public accounts to block people.
Now this was the case was dismissed, but was dismissed as moot.
What does that mean?
Yeah, let's talk about that.
So there was a very good precedent, a case decision from the lower court that you and I
used in our case with Marjorie Taylor Green as you described, which basically said that
an elected official, especially the President of the United States or other elected officials
who used Twitter for their public proclamations, can't bar the public from participating in the public forum
and block them from seeing or following them on Twitter.
And the Knights First Amendment Institute, VTrump.
Absolutely. The Knight Foundation at Columbia brought a number of these suits and thank God that they did.
And we use those suits.
It went up on appeal all the way up to the supreme's. However, because Twitter decided to ban
Trump, it seems to be indefinitely because he's still banned. He's still issuing like
memographed memos in his basement in lieu of Twitter, but he's banned.
And because which by the way, by the way, this infuriated me too, that rolling stones
was like one of the only online digital spaces with 6.2 million followers that tweeted
Trump's ridiculous Easter statement calling the calling lefties crazy and all that like they posted his message
Which I think is itself a violation of putter toss
Like like it's like it's news right they put it on their Twitter feed exactly
So it wishes everybody on the left, you know, you know tell them that they're all crazies. It's like why are you posting that?
Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, that's all right, but back to the case so if Twitter had not banned
Trump the case would have presented a live controversy and the way that the courts were especially
the Supreme Court they are not a court giving advisory opinions there has to be a live controversy
between two parties where a decision can affect the result and And if you have a, in this case, a Twitter having banned Trump, the Supreme Court of the
United States had an out, and the out they had was, there is no live controversy because
Trump is no longer on Twitter.
We don't give advisory opinions.
That's not our role.
We try to conserve our judicial authority, and
we are going to find the case is move, but it's actually a little bit worse than you set it up then.
They actually vacated the lower decision. So when lawyers like you and I are going to, we're going
to be able to use the lower court decision in the future, but we're going to have to put a whole
lower court decision in the future, but we're gonna have to put a whole set of texts
that are brief, that's gonna say vacated on other grounds.
They didn't vacate the underlying principles
that were established by the lower court
in favor of the First Amendment
and against blocking on Twitter,
but they vacated on other grounds
because the controversy was moved.
So they went a little bit further than I would have liked because now you and I are going
to have to deal with that precedent in the future.
And lawyers who are Republican driven are going to say, oh, that was vacated.
You know, that's a Supreme Court rule, but they really didn't.
There's a nuance here that will have to continue to convince trial courts of in the ruling.
So that's the result.
And one of the reasons that they did that
is you have a number of people who are on the right,
people like Justice Thomas, who want to make a statement
that this is somehow big tech suppressing speech
when this has nothing to do with that.
They don't know how the algorithms work
and what a free flow of information is.
And so I think Thomas basically used this to basically say,
and this is a quote, as Twitter made clear,
the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully
in the hands of private digital platforms.
The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment,
and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified,
raise interesting and important questions, which is...
That's a dog whistle for the right in writing that dissent. This is him staking out the future.
He's basically inviting a future case to come up. And we know
the Republicans will bring a future case to try to test and challenge the next case is going to be
a lawsuit against Twitter brought by Trump or his accolades that they're not allowed to block
because they are a pseudo government and it's a First Amendment violation. We know that case is
coming and and Justice Thomas just gave the
blueprint for how to bring it. And some other Supreme Court cases that have been argued
lately. Just just interesting though, Popak, why we've heard a lot of news of Supreme Court
cases just being argued. Can you tell our listeners out there like, why, why is this going on now?
Are there specific times when the Supreme Court meets like, why are we hearing about these
opinions?
Yeah, the Supreme Court meets during defined times.
They start their term in October.
They hear cases.
They decide at conferences among the, the nine justices of the Supreme Court, which
cases they're actually going to take, it's
up to them. It is a completely discretionary appellate process at that level. If the Supreme
Court declines to take a case, it dies wherever it last was at the highest level of that
region's federal court or even state court in some circumstances. If they decide to take it, and they take a very limited number of cases during the year,
30, 40, 50, 60 cases tops.
And actually, the Roberts Court,
because we call it the Roberts Court,
because it's named after the Chief Justice,
the Roberts Court has taken very few cases
over the last 15 years, much fewer than its predecessor.
So one way to influence our lives through the law
and through decisions is for a court,
a Supreme Court to take less cases,
and when they take cases to take them on policy grounds
that they find interesting.
So they have a conference, they decide which case
is to take, then alert the parties on the other side.
Okay, your case is going to be heard by the Supreme Court.
Start briefing.
So each side gets, one side gets two briefs, the other side gets one brief.
Those briefs then get reviewed and assembled by clerk.
Supreme Court clerks play a very important role in the gatekeeping process.
The Chief Judge then does a little bit of a polling to decide, you know, who's in favor
of which side of the case?
They do oral argument.
So oral argument is throughout the year, a lot of it is in the spring, and then they
start issuing opinions.
And so now we've got a little bit of a hybrid.
They're still hearing.
The Supreme Court is still hearing matters,
like we'll talk about on this podcast,
the NCAA paid athlete issue, just got heard,
issues about the Fourth Amendment search and seizure,
just got heard.
At the same time, they're actually issuing orders
and final decisions in other cases.
So this is Supreme Court season when between oral arguments
and actual written opinions on matters start flying out
between now and the start of the summer,
because once the summer hits,
all the Supreme Court justices are on holiday.
And let's talk about, yeah, they're human beings.
They go on vacation.
I don't like to work a lot. Let's talk about, yeah, they're human beings. They go on vacation. And I like to work a lot.
Let's talk about Supreme Court season.
You mentioned the case, the Supreme Court heard a case
about restrictions on compensation for NCAA
division one athletes.
And the Supreme Court seemed inclined
to strike down restrictions on compensations to division
one athletes and to allow for compensation.
Now, this case specifically, unless I'm wrong, Michael, did not address the overall issue
of paying players or should colleges, should universities be required to pay full-fledged salaries to players?
That was not the scope of this, but the indication amongst the justices are, they are willing
in fact to go there.
So tell me about this case and what the implications are more broadly.
Yeah, I found it fascinating.
And sometimes just for the followers, sometimes when you hear oral argument,, sometimes you can read the
tea leaves about questions being asked, we litigators and trial lawyers like Ben and I fall at a hot
bench. It's when there's lots of questions coming rapid fire from all nine. Usually they're asked
in a seniority position, whoever the most senior justice goes first, they go down the line.
Some just don't ask any questions. I mean, you know, just for our followers.
Justice Thomas was put on the bench for pushing 30 years.
I think has asked a total in 30 years of three questions, and I'm not making that up,
whereas others are very active.
So sometimes you can get the feeling of how a case is going to be decided based
on rural argument. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes you're misled. You're like, well,
rural argument, they seem to be going one way, but when the opinion came out, they weigh
completely the other. I don't think that's the case here. From what I can hear, and I
listen to the rural argument also, from what I can hear, they are going to strike down the NCAA's rules
against paying athletes, at least in some way,
as a improper price fixing under our antitrust laws,
because if all of the colleges, especially Division I,
are getting together and they are deciding as a group,
not to do something related to paying, in this case,
their workers, if you will, their student athletes, that can be, and it looks like the judges
are leading that way, an antitrust violation, because you're not allowed to get together
with your competitors and decide to all do the same thing.
Okay, guys, let's all not pay the athletes.
Yeah, let's do that.
That sounds great if you're the
colleges, but it is an antitrust violation, if you're covered by antitrust law. And I thought the
most interesting comment that was made, I think it was a response to Justice Surtuboyar, was they
asked the NCAA's lead lawyer arguing. So what are you saying? Are you saying that the consumer,
the viewer of sports, the person
sitting home on their couch watching television enjoys watching unpaid athletes as amateur
more than they would enjoy if those same athletes doing the same thing were somehow paid?
And that person, that lawyer had to say, yes, that's what we're saying. We're saying that the viewers actually care whether the athlete is given a stipend paid
for, given a transportation, paid for their meals.
I mean, they didn't laugh out loud on the panel, but you could tell there was a real
jaundice view.
And the NCAA's position got a lot of headwinds because the justices realized the athletes
were already getting paid in some way, shape or form.
They're getting scholarships, they're getting stipends.
They're doing, I don't want to call them no show jobs,
but they're getting the job in the library.
That's paying them whatever.
That question was asked to the lawyer for the NCAA.
And the NCAA said that the consumer actually prefers them not getting paid.
That consumer enjoys that more to see unpaid people versus paid.
I like watching the point that the NCAA basically made is I like watching slaves play sports
more than I would if they got paid.
Now that's it's absurd.
By the way, I think that it is a travesty that players are not paid.
I think all student athletes should be paid for name and
likeness rights.
They should be paid.
Whatever the market will allow them to be paid.
I'll tell you though, what I do think to play devil's advocate
for a second, what the best argument of all of them was
cheap justice, Robert, who didn't necessarily say which side
he was going gonna rule for.
He was appointed by George W. Bush,
who seemed to be the most sympathetic to the NCAA's argument,
but he likened the situation to a game of Jenga,
where each block is one of the restrictions.
And he said, yeah, this may be a stupid rule.
Let's pull that stupid rule out.
This may be a dumb rule, let's pull that stupid rule out. This may be a dumb rule.
Let's pull that dumb rule out.
This may be it fine.
You pull one out and everything's fine.
But if you continue to overturn all of these,
you may not have an NCAA.
And so the answer to the question
that I think the NCAA lawyer should say is absolutely not,
whether someone's compensated or it's not compensator, does
not impact the consumers' enjoyment.
But let's be clear, if you push this to a certain limit, we just may have to rethink the
very existence of the NCAA.
It just may not exist anymore.
Now, that's not to say that there won't be something that replaces it, that's better.
Maybe there should be something that's better, but we may not exist. And it is existential. And that's probably the better argument,
is, okay, let's change the whole system, let's extinguish the NCAA, get rid of it. But then what do we
have? And do we have a pathway of education to the pros in a meaningful way. And again, I don't side that way,
but I at least think that that's the stronger argument
than the way the NCAA are alloying.
I think you laid out the strongest argument
that they can't make.
The problem is there's just so much billions,
almost trillions of dollars that pump through the NCAA
on the backs of these unpaid athletes,
whether it's the deal with Nike or Converse or the scoreboards,
or look at the money that the athletes are amateur,
but the coaches are pro because look at the money the coaches get,
$3,5 million, $20 million contracts,
both from the university and from the Nikes
of the world.
Yeah, and that was one of the things that the justices continued to point out how over
over the past 20, 30 years, when the Supreme Court had previously ruled on this in the
mid 1980s, the Supreme Court just basically said, now look, it's just a whole different
landscape now.
Like, we have to evolve our doctrines because y'all exploited the shit out of it.
It's like it'll knock about a word.
Like that's what they said.
Like y'all could have been fucking fair about the situation and no one would have raised
red flags.
But like now you start paying your coaches fucking $10, $15 million, you know, a year. And people are going to start saying,
wait a minute, how could you pay that guy? $15 million end to start athlete get $0. And so,
and so this wasn't said, no one used the curses like the way I did or any boy, but that's basically
cutting through all the legalies. The message is is like, y'all screwed up, you screwed this up.
You didn't have to be this way, but this is where your
greed got you. So that was that case. And I think we hit all the points there. Moving on to another
Supreme Court, this time a Supreme Court ruling, we talked about this issue on our last podcast,
because we know our podcast listeners love to talk about venue, our love to talk about venue or talk about jurisdiction. But look, we are educating them on these facts
that are important legal issues. And so there was a US Supreme Court ruling that was handed out
in the past week that ruled against Ford in a product liability, then you dispute. Can you tell us
a little bit about this case, Paul? Yeah, I have to tell you, I graduated law school 30 years ago.
You graduated law school slightly less than that or less than that.
I thought this decision, I thought this doctrine had already been really resolved 100 years
ago or at least 40 years ago with cases that I learned in law school.
We all remember international shoe.
International shoe case.
Helicopteros.
Now we're really in five baseball.
Volkswagen, the Volkswagen case.
Yeah, we learned all of these cases.
And those cases stood for the proposition that if you angle your activities towards a jurisdiction,
even if it wasn't necessarily your intent, and somebody got injured in that jurisdiction,
you're going to get sued in that jurisdiction. You're gonna get sued in that jurisdiction
and you're gonna have to defend yourself.
And you're not gonna be able to say,
but I made the thing, I made the product in Ohio,
just sue me in Ohio,
even though the person was injured in Montana
or in this case, Minnesota.
I thought this was fairly resolved,
but apparently there was a slight loophole
in the jurisprudence, which has now been plugged.
And just for our listeners,
it is very difficult to get this Supreme Court,
which is split Republican and Democratic appointees
to agree on anything.
They agreed eight zero,
Coney Barron had to sit this one out.
They agreed eight zero against Ford Motor Company.
Now, Ford Motor Company argued in a tire explosion case,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
An unfortunate circumstance where tire exploded
leading to a rollover of a vehicle on the death
of the passenger.
They argued, we made the car in Detroit, in Michigan.
It got sold and resold as a used car over the next 30 years.
But we're not responsible for what happened in Montana when it got sold as a four-time
used car because you got to come sue me in Michigan.
And it's not even the argument, you don't have a right to sue me at all.
That is for our followers. It's not their arguing, you know, stature limitations. There's too
much time pass. I'm not responsible for the tire 40 years later, 30 years later. They're
arguing sue me, but you got to sue me in my hometown. And the Supreme Court said, no.
And Kagan, Justice Kagan, I think brought her home best in her questioning or in her decision making,
when she said, look, you spent an inordinate amount
of advertising dollars at marketing dollars
pointed at Montana and at Minnesota
and every other state in 50 states
to try to get consumers to buy your product.
Okay, you now, you wanna live by the sword,
you die by the sword.
So if somebody gets injured, driving
your vehicle, even if they didn't buy it and pick it up from the
factory in Michigan, because who does that? Who goes to the factory
and picks up their car? Okay, they bought it in Montana. It's a
Ford. It says Ford on the back. They're responsible for
defending themselves. And it's okay under what we call due
process, which
is what personal jurisdiction is all about.
Is it fair to bring the person into court where the injury happened?
Spring courts finally shut the door once and for all and said in the context of especially
in product's liability, you can be sued where the person is injured end of story.
And to bring this though into some human terms though, is that a tire exploded.
Okay.
Somebody was probably horribly injured in Montana.
They were injured in Minnesota.
They may have, someone may have died.
They may have lost an arm or a leg or they lost the the family members lives. And for the past 10 years or so,
they've been fighting with Ford
over whether or not the case should be heard
in Montana and Minnesota
or whether it should be heard in Michigan.
So for these human beings who are injured,
a large corporation like Ford
who wanted to have the case heard in their home court stadium.
It's your business.
Right.
Yeah, and in their home court stadium in front of jurors who probably either work for them,
or a family members who work for them, this company has created many, many, many years.
I don't know if it's a decade, it could be longer, it could be shorter.
But now the family basically just gets to begin the process of litigating their case,
which still may take another three to five, ten years. And then on those issues, the company
like Ford can appeal those issues. And so this was just one sliver of a pie. Assume a pie in the sense
of litigation as a hundred parts. And jurisdiction is one of 100 parts. A company like Ford
can bring one of those 100 parts to the Supreme Court, all of those times. And if they want
to and granted it will cost them tens of millions of dollars to do this, if they have the resources. But this is why sometimes justice is denied to people
who have to go through this process. Sometimes if family is like, you know what, I don't
want to deal with this shit. I want to go in front of the speed guard. I don't want to deal with,
I want to get my life back. I want to bury my family member. I want to go on with my life.
And that's why these large corporations do that. But that's why I have such a great deal of respect for lawyers,
though, who fight these cases for five, 10, 15, 20 years because that lawyer who was on the side of
the family or the injured party, they're not getting paid hourly to do that. I'll tell you that much.
They're not making money litigating this case
to the Supreme Court.
The Ford lawyers, they probably made Ford's legal bills
on this, probably easily over 20, 30, 40 million dollars
on this case, maybe more.
They should have just paid the family.
Look, you just hit the nail on the head
and to be callous for a moment,
their fore strategy, business strategy worked. They stretched this family out. They did it for a number, their fore strategy, business strategy worked.
They stretched this family out.
They did it for a number of reasons.
One, I guess they really believed in this legal theory
that they had, which got slammed down to 80 by the Supreme Court,
but they stretched this family out.
So that sends a signal to the rest of the world
that if you're catastrophically injured by a forward product,
we are going to fight you tooth and nail for a decade on the most procedural of issues.
You will not even get your day in court until we exhaust you financially and emotionally
in every way, shape and form.
And then, okay, we'll try the
case.
And what we say isn't hyperbole. Mike and I are in mediations all the time, you know, where
that is a argument that is used by the corporation of why you as the plaintiff should settle.
Not we were wrong, we injured your client. It's like, look, you should settle this now or
else we're going to drag this out forever. And it's a legitimate issue that we have to explain
to our clients. We all look, they could drag this out for 20 or 30 years or you can get guaranteed
money today. What do you want to do? And so that is a major, major consideration. Going to our last
issue, though, of the day, Michael, you referenced this also earlier. Is this issue of warrantless searches,
whether that's a violation of the fourth amendment requiring warrants and war, you know,
and but there are exceptions to the rule of warrants. There are some exceptions where you don't need
a warrant. Can you tell us about the recent oral argument and whether that you think is going to impact the way
warrantless searches are conducted? Yeah, I think the Supreme Court led by the Republican
appointees on it are moving quickly based on the oral argument to allow for another
warrantless entry into your home. For our followers and listeners, the US Constitution under the Fourth Amendment prevents warrantless entry into your home,
which means that law enforcement has to go to a judge and get a warrant on probable cause before they can enter your house and search and seize things within it, property. So if they don't, let's play it out.
If they don't have a warrant and they needed one,
it was required to have one under the Constitution.
And they entered your house and they saw something illegal
or illicit in their view, a gun, paraphernalia,
something else.
That material that they have now seized will be thrown out
of court because there's been a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
And that's the way that works. There are some exceptions to when the Fourth Amendment in there for a reason that there would be very limited
warrantless searches and
There are a few exceptions it looks like we're gonna have a new one if the oral argument is any indication of how the
Supremes are got a rule and the and the exception is what's called the community caretaking exception.
So let me put some flesh on the bone.
If a police officer, it has to be a police officer, law enforcement, is doing a wellness check
on some elderly person or someone that a family member or friend suspects is suicidal or has
issues. I haven't heard from Bill in a while,
and can the police run over there and take a look for me
and make sure everything's okay.
That's called the community caretaking exception.
So if they knock on the door and they look in
or the door is open and they walk in
or the person there lets them in,
the question is if they see something that's illicit,
or a gun on a table in this case, or two guns on a table
in this case, can they seize that, or will it be thrown
at a court as a warrantless, unconstitutional search
and seizure?
In the case that's before the panel, the Supreme Court, they did a check on somebody
that a friend thought was suicidal.
And so they knocked on the door to make sure the person was okay.
So far so good.
We're not in the world of search and seizure yet.
That person who they were checking on actually opened the door and let them in.
Now, he didn't give them permission to search
They could have asked for permission
They could have said would you mind if we come in and look around and that person can say not without a warrant
Go away, which that they would have had to constitutionally
Turned on their heels and walked out of the door or the they could you know
They could have said sure come on in and then you know then there's no warrant you know, you can, you can freely search the place because you've got permission.
This falls in a gray area. The person that was being checked on for possible suicide
let them in, but he did not give them overt permission to search. They saw in the room a couple
of guns and they seize those guns.
So the Supreme Court, which is, let's be honest,
is a lot of older people.
It's, I mean, there's some new just says
that got added recently in their 50s,
but there's a couple of them that are in their 70s
and 80s, like Breyer.
And, you know, from the oral argument,
it looked like some of them were like,
yeah, I want somebody to check on me
if I've fallen and I can't get up.
And maybe while they're there,
if they see something illegal,
we're gonna let them take it without a warrant.
But, you know, our followers should understand,
every time you chip away at the fourth amendment,
you're giving another excuse to law enforcement
to raid your house without permission or a warrant,
and take what's in there and use it against you
in a court of law and our followers should be up in arms about it.
I think there's a broader issue here too
that deals with, you know, in theory,
you can say, well, look, in this case,
the man's wife called the police,
said the man was suicidal,
and therefore there is an emergency that the police, said the man was suicidal, and therefore there is an emergency
that the police needs to investigate.
I think there's a broader conversation though here too,
which is the police represent kind of government force
at its most extreme.
And even in a situation like that,
a police officer with guns, with a man
who's suffering from a mental health crisis, like legitimately, what are they going to do for
that man? And a lot of times, and a lot of my actual cases, the police end up killing the guy
who may with with proper training or women, where the police have they had proper training or if it was
a mental health professional who was intervening could have actually saved the life. So the very
nature of the call and the war list exception actually aided and abetted the death. And I think a lot of those questioning Mike that you reference comes
though from a incorrect perception of the police of what the police do. And in
those situations, sometimes when you're having a mental health crisis, the police
are the last people who can actually be the ones to help and the right type of people to call
in that are mental health counselors
and other people.
And so when we hear this language off
and a, you know, defund the police,
you know, a lot of that language
is centered around these interactions
where the police are getting hundreds
of millions of dollars for tanks
and high armor and all of this artillery
But at the end of the day that does nothing to solve this problem taking it back to this specific case
You're now opening the door for people who are heavily armed who have this armor to walk into your home
And to actually create problems that you want to avoid.
We want to be very protective of our private spaces
because we know historically the government
and the police are known to abuse those private spaces.
That's why it's so important.
You, that is, I had not thought of it that way,
but as you were describing it, you are so correct. Let's think of it this way. If you had sent over a fire department or paramedics to check on the person, I don't know exactly what would have happened, but I could tell you it would not have led it would not lead to death. Okay, if a fire department person,
you know, we're all fine with them getting cats out of trees, but if you put them in that
position to go and check on somebody, they're trained differently than the police heavily
armed, paramilitary police are trained. So you're right, the question is not, should
we have a caretaker exception, a community caretaker exception,
the question is should we be using the police to go to mental health challenge situations,
to be the person trying to solve the problem?
And you're right, I don't think we should.
Exactly.
So switching gears here, this is going to be a new segment of the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast
where Michael and I are going to interview
two individuals embedded in the area of law
from coast to coast, each of these individuals
is running historic candidacies
to be the first woman to hold these various positions.
We have Lucy Lang, who will be running
for the district attorney
of Manhattan to replace Sive Vance who is currently investigating Donald Trump. So that is an
incredibly high profile position. And then we also have from the West Coast, the best coast,
Heidi Feldstein who is running for the City Attorney of Los Angeles.
She would be the first women's City Attorney of Los Angeles.
Heidi Feldstein, so-to.
So after these breaks, we're going to talk to them, and then we'll be right back after
these messages. Welcome back to Midas Touch Legal AF Ben Myceles, Michael Popak joined by Lucy Lang candidate
for Manhattan DA, Heidi Feldstein, Sohto candidate for L.A. City Attorney, both historic candidacies. This could be the first time,
and which I can't believe it's the first time,
that we have women in these positions,
which we need that more than ever.
Welcome to Midas Touch, legal AFTU,
both as we do this coast to coast power addition.
Thank you, Ben. About that intro. how about that intro for legal, AF.
So what's hard hitting stuff? Lucy, for those out there who don't know, though,
what a DA is, you know, these are different positions you're're running for, and what Heidi's running for in L-A,
you're running for in Manhattan.
Can you explain to me what the D-A does,
and then Heidi, what the city attorney does,
just so our listeners know what it is that you're running for?
Thank you so much for having me, Ben and Michael.
I'm so glad to be here and glad to be here
with Heidi in particular.
It is a really exciting election season in New York City, but it's particularly exciting
because the district attorney's race is on the ballot.
And as you all know, the district attorney is a uniquely American phenomenon.
We are the only country in the world that elects our district attorney, which means that
it's the voters who determine who oversees all of the criminal matters in any given local jurisdiction.
So a district attorney in New York is a county-wide designation, and the position I'm running for
Manhattan DA means jurisdiction over the county of Manhattan or New York County. And that includes
jurisdiction over the violations, misdemeanors, and felonies that occur within
the boundaries of this island.
And the district attorney has historically tremendous discretion in the United States,
makes the decision about what to charge, whether to charge, how to charge, and then what sentences
to recommend.
So it really is an incredibly impactful role, especially in this moment of emphasis on long overdue criminal justice reform
here and nationally. And especially in this moment right now, too, where we have some very
serious things going on in Manhattan, all, you know, in all areas. And particularly, though, with
respect to, I think a lot of people are looking at this
race because they know what's going on with sidevants. That is the position for those
out there that you're running for is is sidevants is position who's currently involved in
an investigation of the former guy Donald Trump. And so that that is a huge position you're
going to be you're running for.
One of the distinguishing factors between this District Attorney's Office and so many others, of course, is jurisdiction over Wall Street. And it's a reason why the Manhattan District Attorney
has historically had a major profile that includes investigations into serious white collar crimes.
And is a reason that my campaign has emphasized and rolled out a plan around how we're going to better
leverage resources to ensure appropriate accountability
and instances of economic crime that victimize
ordinary New Yorkers up to high-level bank and tax fraud.
Heidi Felsteen, so to tell us a little bit about
what it is the city attorney does.
I understand there is not a city attorney style even position in Manhattan,
but why do we even have this in LA and what is it that you're running for?
Thanks Ben, the city attorney is one of only three city wide elected officials within the city limits.
We have the mayor, the controller and the city limits. We have the mayor, the controller, and the city attorney. So in addition to every to being an independent elected official, the role as
described in the charter really consists of two major components. One is you're
the managing partner of the largest or one of the largest public law firms in
the country. So as the managing partner of that municipal law firm, the city
attorney oversees lawyers from criminal
misdemeanor systems, which some have called the misdemeanor machine in Los Angeles, to civil
litigation, some of which involves consumer protection and consumer fraud, to a lot of transactional
work. So the city attorney writes the municipal laws, the city attorney writes the ballot measures
and the summaries of those measures.
I will tell you that I will write them clearly
so that the ordinary voter understand
exactly what they're voting for.
And the city attorney is in charge
of the fiscal documents that govern our city.
So the municipal bonds and all of the commercial contracts
that deal with vendors.
In addition to that, as an independent elected official,
the city attorney takes an oath to the charter.
And so the city attorney has the obligation
to defend the charter against intrusion
and to municipal affairs from our state,
which sometimes tries to reach down
into our city government or from any other source,
and to protect the residents of the city directly
for those rights that are included in the charter
or in the U.S. or state constitutions.
The role is both civil and to the extent of Mr. Meanor
criminal and it is elected.
So no, I don't think there is an equivalent in Manhattan.
This seems to be a uniquely perhaps California, but at least
Western position. So Michael and I are coast to coast. Michael is based in New York. I'm out here
in Los Angeles. And so we're speaking to two people who really impact issues that affect our,
you know, day to day lives, the corruption that we see in the cities,
the violence that we see in the cities,
crimes that we see in the cities,
issues affecting small businesses that we see in the cities.
I'm gonna let Michael direct his question
as a New Yorker to his fellow New Yorker, Lucy Lang, and then
after Michael's question, I'm going to direct it to Heidi, a fellow Los Angeles resident,
and I'm going to ask those questions about something I think impacting our community.
Michael?
I've got one shout out for Heidi.
In my prior life, my law firm was the city attorney for 23 cities cities in Florida in an outsourced way.
So I get what you do and what you want to do in that position.
And I'm impressed that it's the largest municipal law firm, if you will, in the country that you're looking to run.
And I know you're supremely well qualified for that.
I'd love to see you in that role.
But back to my fellow native fellow native New Yorker there,
she has a, for those that can see the video,
she's got a beautiful map of Manhattan right behind her head,
which is gonna be her territory,
which she wins this election.
And for our followers, just to make life imitate art or vice versa,
the office that Lucy is running for
is the model
for every law and order episode ever created.
It was modeled after Morgan Thaw is running of that office.
If you want to go back to season one,
that was basically just Morgan Thaw being betrayed
by an actor.
And I think if I did my math right, Lucy,
did you have a year overlap where you were with Morgan Thaw
before Sy V Dance took over?
My first three years I served under Mr. Morgan Thal
and was honored to have been hired by him.
And an interesting other claim to fame
is that I had the unique honor of co-authoring
with Mr. Morgan Thal, who was known as the boss
in the office and in many circles in Manhattan.
Co-authoring his last op-ed before he passed away two summers ago.
And it was an op-ed in which we called for the end
of immigration raids on courthouses,
which ultimately after he passed was codified and lost.
So that's something I'm very proud of.
And I'll tell you that when I proposed to him
at, I believe, 98 years old that we co-author this op-ed together on a subject
We're both passionate about that it been in the news. I didn't expect him to red line edit it to the extent that he did
But he really was a great collaborator right up until the end
Yeah, I think I remember that I mean look the the courthouse is a court system is a scary enough place
But to also think that if you have an immigration status issue that you could be scooped up,
having crossed the threshold where Lady Justice is supposed to do her bidding, that was great.
And I love the fact that you've got that legacy of having worked with the, I tightened the
legendary Robert Bargain FFaw, and then also, under side.
And now, of course, making the office your own
when you get elected.
I think the fact that you have that legacy
of having been brought up there,
I'll give a compliment to the folks like you
that grew up there as a prosecutor
when I built an in-house trial team
for a Wall Street firm that Ben and I
know well.
I, when I recruited, I told the people that I was recruiting that the model for me was
to build an elite squad of litigators and trial lawyers modeled after Morgan Thaw in
that office.
So I, you already come with a tremendous wind at your sale, anything that you,
anything we can do to help you get that position. Of course, I'm going to try to find out
your your campaign headquarters is a block for my apartment. So I'll certainly be stopping
it after this broadcast. But.
Babels are great at campaign headquarters. Well, thank you so much for that, Michael. I
have served under two district attorneys and I have my own vision for the district attorney's
office because we know so much more about what works
and really what it doesn't work in criminal justice.
And Manhattan Knights are calling for transformative reform.
That addresses mass incarceration and racial injustice
while at the same time prioritizing public safety.
And we can accomplish all of that through collaborative leadership
that prizes safety, equity, and the dignity of all New Yorkers.
And that's what the breadth of my experience as a former assistant district attorney and as a National Criminal Justice Reform Leader,
as Director of the Institute for Innovation and Prostecution has led me to create alongside community partners,
and that has led me to run for this position. And can you and have you taken a position
about the continuation of the Trump prosecutions
that the office is leading?
I think the worst thing that the next district attorney
could do would be to say something on the campaign trail
that would suggest anything other than a complete ability
to be impartial and objective in pursuing all cases.
What I will say is that I am the person in this race
who is best suited to take on every investigation
pending before that office,
to prioritize criminal justice reform,
but to make sure that the critically important work
of investigating and prosecuting serious crimes
continues. Heidi, what was the tipping point for you out here in L.A.? You worked for a large law firm.
A city attorney is often a thankless job in L.A. Often know, often comes under a lot of fire and gets very little credit,
you know, just being honest with the idea. I mean, the DA is a high profile position and the
city attorney is a little less high profile, but has a huge portfolio of stuff that they have to do
in L.A. And so what makes you say,
hey, I got to really get into this right now with everything that's going on when you could enjoy
the rest of your life and not have to deal with the craziness that's about to come your way.
I think there's three components to that. The first is I live in LA. I live here. I walk outside my door. I experience
the cracks in our fabric and the problems facing our city. And I've done that for several years. I've
been in service on my neighborhood council. I've been trying hard to deal with some of the issues
that affect our neighborhood and our city overall. And our government, at least at the level of the city of LA needs to get back to basics.
I mean, we need to actually do things.
We need to build shelters and build housing, not simply commission another study or another
report about what sites might be appropriate.
We need to provide reliable utility and emergency services.
We need to pick up the trash.
We need to educate our kids and we need to pick up the trash, we need to educate our kids, and we need to protect
our neighborhoods. And all too often we have elected officials who are running for their
next office and focused on chasing the latest viral hashtag. I can promise you that every
community in the city of Los Angeles, and in fact experts all over the country will have
a seat at the table because some of the
problems we face from people experiencing homelessness to how we administer misdemeanors
versus diversion programs for first-time offenders are nationwide issues.
So I want to approach this from the perspective of getting things done, getting things fixed,
and doing this job without a view to next office.
There is no next office for me.
I have no desire to go to Sacramento or DC or run for higher office.
I want to do this job well.
The tipping point, as you put it, is that my dad passed away last year.
And without going into a long speech about my father,
he was a remarkable man, an absolute lion and a titan
who lived a life full of good works.
And so in looking at his obituary or news reports
on his death, I suddenly thought to myself,
okay,
it's nice that my tombstone could say
I closed a lot of deals,
but ultimately that's not much of a legacy.
I want to do something in the way of public service.
I come to this as the kind of person
that I and my friends always say we want to vote for.
We want someone who's gonna come to this office
who's going to do this job, take their turn at the wheel of public service and go home. And
that's what I am proposing to do. My skill set, both in managing other lawyers, which,
by the way, is a little bit like hurting cats, but that's okay. And in serving as a general
outside and inside council for various companies across industries,
I think makes me uniquely qualified among the candidates in the field.
And I feel a calling to come and try to help the city that's been my adopted home for 40
years.
My joke with Popock is I said, you're going to love Heidi because she's such a taskmaster.
Yeah.
So in my relationship with
Popo, can we do a lot of cases together? Popo, so is the one said, Ben, we have a count,
be there at the 1130 meeting. And I'm always like, all right. You know, and so that's our
relationship where I'm the, I like to think that I'm, I got the creative genes and the idea
of people, the idea guy. And Popo keeps it on track and no misdeed lines,
which is why we get along. Why we get along. So, Heidi, Ben is my cat.
I will tell you that when I was starting out as a young lawyer, one of my best clients and my
mentors who gave me many breaks was a man by the name of Sanford Sigiloff. And Sandy Sigiloff was infamous for
running his deals and his companies with what he called a master calendar. And the master calendar
had a date, time, place, deliverable, and responsibility. And if your name was on that last column for
responsibility, you better have met the rest of the columns fairly quickly. And that's how I was trained.
I think that's what I still do it this way, which is probably not the best.
I just showed my agenda of handwritten notes.
I don't even use the count.
Going back finally to conclude, I want to talk about where we began this interview,
that these are historic candidacies.
And I wanted to specifically talk about the importance of diversity in law,
something that I see as a lawyer in law schools, in big law firms, and in public positions,
that it's very frequently occupied by men, and particularly white men, and the policies
that often originate are not reflective of views and values and inclusivity
that's needed in the law. So Lucy, as you're running for this position and as I mentioned that
you would be the first woman to hold this position, how does that make you feel and what's your overall
view about diversity in the office and in the practice of law and then Heidi gonna be the same question for you after?
I think about a case over many, many months.
Ultimately, we built a circumstantial case against the gunmen, identified them, they were
indicted and brought to trial. I tried it over the course of many weeks, became close to the mother
of the young man who'd been killed, and the jury returned to verdicts of guilty. The morning
after the guilty verdict, I called the mother of the young man who'd been killed,
who now was working around the clock
and raising her grandson and dealing with the grief
of having lost a son to gun violence.
And when I asked her how she felt, she said,
I slept all night for the first time since my son was killed.
But when I woke up, all I could think about
were the moms of those two boys,
referring to the two men who had just been convicted of murdering her son. I
was a new mother myself at the time and
was overwhelmed with her generosity of spirit and
it prompted me to create a first of its kind college and prison program to bring assisted district attorneys inside New York State
prisons and work on justice reform issues
alongside incarcerated New Yorkers so that the people who were running the system had to understand
the experiences of the people most impacted by it. It is that model of leadership that I intend
to bring to the district attorney's office and have brought to all of the policies that I have
developed over the course of this campaign and intend to implement as district attorney.
And I'm actually proud to announce officially that as of tomorrow, I will be putting out
a policy book that is a roadmap for Manhattan and lays out 27 plans so far about how I intend
to implement change in the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
And all of those plans have been built alongside community members most impacted, including
sex crimes planned built alongside survivors of sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein.
A plan for police accountability built along women who have endorsed me, who lost their loved ones
to police violence. And including plans built in collaboration with progressive
prosecutors across the country who have endorsed my candidacy related to racial justice, economic
justice, tenants rights, workers rights, and all of the things that fall under the purview
of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
So it would be thrilled for folks to follow me on social media at Lucy Lang NYC
and check out my forthcoming policy book,
A Roadmap for Justice in Manhattan,
Big Nity Equity and Safety,
coming out first thing tomorrow.
And Lucy, when's the election?
The election is June 22nd.
Don't miss it if you're a Manhattan night.
Heidi?
Lucy said something very important, which is that she started with community members and building inclusivity from the ground up.
I truly think that is the true definition of inclusivity.
You don't get the variety of perspectives and the insights that you need to run a job
if what you're doing is sitting in a
nivory tower and dictating programs from the top on how inclusiveness is going
to be affected in office. And I think Lucy has done an effective job in her
area in inclusiveness. I go back to my own history. I was a Puerto Rican, Jewish, female, and proud of both,
standing in some of the most elite law firms in the country.
Earlier in my career, I was a woman in an area where,
trust me, there weren't very many women.
I think I blessed the ones that existed every day,
but they were a few bright spots.
And I was very fortunate to have male mentors.
That means that I took my responsibility for inclusiveness seriously when I became a partner,
and I was in a position to help others.
Of the folks that I sponsored to the partnership, I think that all but two were women,
and each team in the law firms where I practice law of the
associates and the partners I worked with was heavily diverse. There was a
usually a majority of women and my team always attracted associates and lawyers
and paralegals and secretaries of color and of diverse experiences. Law firms by definition are stratified environments.
You need a license to move from being a secretary or a paralegal to being a lawyer and then
you need a vote of the partnership to move to being a partner. So when I practice, I strive
to make the team include everybody from every layer in the firm. So that our meetings, our staff meetings,
and our parties and the ways in which we interacted
with one another really included all of the voices
at the law firm so that we formed a team to succeed.
What I think I would bring to the city attorney's office
is that same kind of listening ear to build diversity
from the ground up, to try to recruit neighborhood prosecutors,
for example, from the neighborhoods in which they're expected to work.
So that if you have a young lawyer in the city attorney's office who's supposed to be resolving
problems in one part of LA, hopefully somebody who either lives there now or who has grown
up in the neighborhood and has some connection to it. I'm very proud of the fact that I was voted by associates
across the state of California as one of the 10 best partners
to work for in 2010.
And I would hope that part of law firm management really
is coming into an office softly, sitting down
with the experts and the professionals and the folks
who are there, and listening to them as to what's working with their office and not working
as well as listening to the communities.
That to me is true inclusion, a leader who listens.
Heidi Felsteen, Soto, Lucy Lang, Lucy's running for Manhattan DA, Heidi's running for L.A.
City Attorney.
Thank you, Bold, for coming on Midas Touch.
Legal AF.
We will be right back after these messages.
Welcome back to Midas Touch Podcast.
Legal AF.
Great interview with Lucy Lang and Heidi Feldstein, Soto, all of
those listening out there, let Popock and myself know, should we do more interviews like
that? Should we do less interviews like that? We're, you know, this is an evolving format.
We just take our cues from you at the end of the day. Ain't that right, Popock?
You ain't kidding.
the choices more interviews
more pop-up more
venture chain bench
and you know, these are the
issues of the day. Of course
issues like my beard, what
and then we deal with lesser issues
like Supreme Court and incredible decisions from other courts and district courts across
the country. But as always, thank you so much for listening to Midas Touch Legal AF podcast.
We'll see you same time, same place next week as my dogs barking. Shout out to you and say
goodbye. Thank you, Popeye. Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
shout out to you and say goodbye. Thank you Popeye Capricede.
You're welcome.