Tag Archives: Joel Sanders

A FOOL FOR A CLIENT

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Abraham Lincoln often gets credit for the line, but in 1814 clergyman Henry Kett’s collection of proverbs in The Flowers of Wit included, “I hesitate not to pronounce that every man who is his own lawyer has a fool for client.”

More than two centuries later, it’s still true. But don’t tell Stephen DiCarmine, former executive director of the now-defunct Dewey & LeBoeuf. He doesn’t believe it. Recently, he appeared before Acting Justice Robert Stolz and explained that he wants to fire his attorney and represent himself.

Last year, three weeks of deliberation following a three-month trial produced a defense verdict on some counts and a deadlocked jury on the remaining charges against DiCarmine, former firm chairman Steven Davis, and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders. Davis then entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and Justice Stolz dismissed additional counts. Retrial on the remaining charges against DiCarmine and Sanders is set for September.

Judicial Skepticism

“The consequences are very severe in this case,” Justice Stolz told DiCarmine. “You could go to state prison if convicted.”

DiCarmine thinks he knows better. A graduate of California Western School of Law in 1983, he told the judge that he had discussed the issue with several lawyer friends. Their reactions: “Bad idea.”

But DiCarmine heard what he wanted to hear. At least, that’s what he told the judge: “They said if anyone can do it, you can do it.”

The truth is that when incarceration is a potential outcome, no one can do it. And no one should try. Gideon v. Wainwright’s guarantee of a right to counsel in criminal cases exists for a reason. And it doesn’t matter if the defendant is a lawyer.

Justice Stolz warned DiCarmine that he might think he knows what the case is all about because he’s been through it once. “But I assure you,” he urged, “it will be a different jury. It will be a different presentation from the People.”

An Unfortunate Moment

DiCarmine’s current lawyer, Austin Campriello, did a masterful job at the first trial. For good reason, he’s among the most highly respected criminal defense lawyers in New York. Campriello told the court that although his client’s finances were a factor, the motivating reason for DiCarmine’s request related to defense strategy.

DiCarmine then offered an unfortunate comment that unfairly tarred other big firms.

“I’ve run a law firm,” DiCarmine said. “When the client is not paying the bill, the services that are being rendered are not necessarily the same as if he were being paid.”

Nonsense. He displayed a remarkable ignorance of what the lawyers in his firm were actually doing while he was “running” it. Directly, he insulted all former Dewey & LeBoeuf attorneys who worked on pro bono matters. Indirectly, he put a cloud over the noble efforts of big firm lawyers who provide millions of dollars in free legal services to clients every year. Implicit in his remarks are widespread violations of ethical rules to advocate on behalf of all clients with the same seal. Those rules apply to all lawyers.

Natural Consequences

Justice Stolz properly put DiCarmine in his place, saying that Campriello would work to the best of his professional capacity, regardless of DiCarmine’s financial situation. He also told DiCarmine to think long and hard about his pro se request before the next hearing on May 27.

DiCarmine seeks to jettison a great lawyer for someone who, apparently, has been in a courtroom only as a witness or a defendant — that is, himself. It reminds me of the joke that one of my mentors told about the importance of using experienced trial lawyers in important cases.

“A patient goes to a doctor with a serious medical condition for which there is an elaborate surgical cure,” the joke begins. “The doctor describes in great detail how the procedure will go — start to finish. The patient is impressed, but has one more question: ‘How many of these operations have you performed?’ the patient asks. ‘Oh, none,’ says the doctor, ‘But I’ve watch a lot of them.'”

Revise the scenario slightly so that the doctor has observed the procedure only once — and is going to perform it on himself. Now you have a sense of DiCarmine’s plan.

DEWEY, THE D.A., AND SECRETS

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“There aren’t too many secrets in this case,” said Judge Robert Stoltz on December 5. He was referring to the Dewey & LeBoeuf trial over which he presided. The multi-year effort to convict Steven Davis, Stephen DiCarmine, and Joel Sanders produced a raft of acquittals on many charges and a hung jury on the more serious offenses.

Actually, there are two big secrets in the case, but no one is talking about them.

Secret #1: Why Zachary Warren?

Former Dewey chairman Steven H. Davis won’t face a retrial. Assistant DA Peirce Moser has offered him a deferred prosecution agreement. As reported, he will not have to admit guilt and can continue practicing law. When my kids were young, they would have called this a “do-over.”

Judge Stoltz’s reference to secrets was in response to Moser’s suggestion that the retrial of executive director DiCarmine and finance director Sanders should precede the first trial of former low-level staffer Zachary Warren. The longer Warren dangled in a world of uncertainty, the more leverage it would give Moser in his relentless pursuit of someone who never should have been indicted in the first place. Appropriately, the judge denied Moser’s request.

That leads to secret number one: Why is the Manhattan DA’s office squandering its scarce resources to pursue Zachary Warren at all?

I’ve written extensively about Warren’s plight. At age 24, he worked at Dewey & LeBoeuf for about a year from mid-2008 to mid-2009 as a client relations specialist. His principal job was to pester Dewey & LeBoeuf partners into making sure clients paid their bills.

Apparently, his mistake of a lifetime came on December 30, 2008. That’s when he accepted an invitation to join 29-year-old finance director Frank Canellas and 53-year-old chief financial officer Sanders for dinner at Del Frisco’s steakhouse. There he allegedly witnessed the creation of what the DA’s office called a master plan of accounting fraud. As his price for that free dinner, Warren would get indicted five years later.

When Zachary Warren left Dewey & LeBoeuf in June 2009, did anyone in the world think that the firm was unlikely to repay its bills, much less collapse — ever? No.

In 2010, was Warren even at the firm as others worked on the bond offering at the center of the DA’s case? No, he was a one-L at Georgetown.

Even if obtained, would a conviction of Warren result in anything positive for anyone inside or outside our justice system? No.

Warren’s indictment was a travesty. The jury’s rejection of the DA’s case against his superiors is reason alone to drop the effort to prosecute him.

Unsatisfying Answers

So why is Moser so determined to try Zach Warren? One possibility is that the same phenomena contributing to Dewey & LeBoeuf’s downfall infects the DA’s office: hubris, ego, lack of accountability for mistakes, and an unwillingness to admit errors that would prompt thoughtful individuals to change course. Maybe it’s a lawyer personality thing.

Another possibility is the public servant manifestation of greed: the DA wants to put a Dewey & Le Boeuf notch — any Dewey & LeBoeuf notch — on its convictions holster. After Cyrus Vance, Jr. personally announced the indictments in a circus-like press conference on March 6, 2014, Moser suffered unambiguous defeat. In fact, even the plea agreements that the DA’s office squeezed from former firm staffers who later testified at trial now look silly. Unfortunately, the resulting penalties aren’t silly for those who are stuck with them.

To put the DA’s pursuit of Zachary Warren in context consider this. According to published reports, assistant DA Peirce Moser has offered him a plea deal, too. But it is more onerous than the DA’s deferred prosecution agreement with Davis.

There is no just world in which that makes any sense.

Secret #2: Where is the Money?

Prosecutors told the jury that it would not see a “smoking gun.” That’s because the DA didn’t know how to look for or describe it. But the gun was there. It was pervasive, insidious, and hiding in plain sight. It was the environment that caused staffers to fear for their jobs if powerful partners weren’t happy. That meant making sure they received millions more than the firm had available to distribute, even if it came from bank credit lines and outside investors in the firm’s 2010 bond offering.

That leads to secret number two: Why didn’t the DA follow the money?

The public could have reasonably expected Vance to direct the power of his office toward the most egregious offenders and offenses. That didn’t happen. Sure, Davis had a major responsibility for the strategy that brought the firm down. But the executive committee consisted of top partners who were supposed to be fiduciaries in running the firm for the benefit of all partners and the institution. Likewise, as most of the firm’s so-called leaders walked away with millions — far more than Davis, DiCarimine, Sanders, or Warren received — bankruptcy creditors got between five and fifteen cents for every dollar the firm owed them.

In a November 2012 bankruptcy court filing, Davis himself teed up what should have been the central issue in any attempt to assign blame for the firm’s problems:

“While ‘greed’ is a theme…, the litigation that eventually ensues will address the question of whose greed.”

The DA’s office never pursued that question.

Just Rewards

Shortly after Vance’s March 2014 press conference, assistant district attorney Peirce Moser received a promotion. He became chief of the tax crimes unit. The DA’s office announced that Moser’s new position would not preclude him from continuing to run the Dewey & LeBoeuf case. Based on his prominence at the most recent court hearing, it’s still Moser’s case.

If no good deed goes unpunished, sometimes it seems that no bad deed goes unrewarded.

THE DEWEY TRIAL: TRUTH, JUSTICE, OR NEITHER?

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[NOTE: My recent post, “Cravath Gets It Right, Again,” was a BigLaw Pick of the Week.]

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“Not all the evidence that you hear and see will be riveting,” said Steve Pilnyak last Tuesday as he opened the prosecution’s case against three former leaders of the now-defunct Dewey & LeBoeuf. The judge warned jurors that they will probably be there past Labor Day. The antagonists will present dueling views of what the New York Times called “arcane accounting treatments and year-end adjustments” three years before Dewey’s collapse. As you read between the yawns, watch to see if the trial leaves the most important questions about the final days of a storied firm unanswered.

Victims?

The prosecution’s case requires victims. It settled on insurance companies who bought the firm’s bonds in 2010 and big banks that lent the firm money for years. We’ll see how that plays, but it’s difficult to imagine aggrieved parties that would generate less juror sympathy than insurers and Wall Street bankers. Then again, rich lawyers aren’t exactly the most desirable defendants, either.

The prosecution’s cooperating witnesses will take the stand to explain what it calls a “Master Plan” of accounting adjustments that are the centerpiece of the case. The battle of experts over those adjustments is more likely to induce sleep than courtroom fireworks.

Villains?

If you think former firm chairman Steven Davis and his two co-defendants, Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders, are the only villains in this saga, you’re allowing the trees to obscure a view of the forest. In that respect, the trial will fail at its most fundamental level if it doesn’t address a central question in the search for justice among Dewey’s ruins: Who actually received — and kept — the hundreds of millions of dollars that entered the firm’s coffers as a result of the allegedly fraudulent bond offering and bank loans?

As the firm collapsed in early 2012, it drew down tens of millions of dollars from bank credit lines while simultaneously distributing millions to Dewey partners. As I’ve reported previously, during the five months from January to May 2012 alone, a mere 25 Dewey partners received a combined $21 million. Are they all defendants in the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case? Nope. Will we learn the identity of those 25 partners, as well was the others who received all of that borrowed money? I hope so.

Shortly after those 2012 distributions, Wall Street Journal reporters asked former Dewey partner Martin Bienenstock whether the firm used those bank loans to fund partner distributions. Bienenstock replied, “Look, money is fungible.”

It sounds like his answer to the question was yes.

Unwitting Accomplices?

With respect to the proceeds from Dewey’s $150 million bond offering, the picture is murkier, thanks to protective cover from the bankruptcy court. When Judge Martin Glenn approved a Partner Contribution Plan, he capped each participating partner’s potential financial obligation to Dewey’s creditors at a level so low that unsecured creditors had a likely a recovery of only 15 cents for every dollar the firm owed them. That was a pretty good deal for Dewey’s partners.

But here’s the more important point. As it approved that deal, the court did not require the firm to reveal who among Dewey’s partners received the $150 million bond money. In calculating each partner’s required contribution to the PCP, only distributions after January 1, 2011 counted. The PCP excluded consideration of any amounts that partners received in 2010, including the bond money. That meant they could keep all of it.

In light of the bankruptcy code‘s two-year “look back” period, that seemed to be a peculiar outcome. Under the “look back” rule, a debtor’s asset transfers to others within two years of its bankruptcy filing are subject to special scrutiny that is supposed to protect against fraudulent transfers.

Dewey filed for bankruptcy on May 28, 2012. The “look back” period would have extended all the way to May 28, 2010 — thereby including distributions of the bond proceeds to partners. Which partners received that money and how much did they get? We don’t know.

Connecting Dots

As the firm’s death spiral became apparent, a four-man office of the chairman — one of whom was Bienenstock — took the leadership reins from Steven Davis in March 2012. A month later, it fired him. In an October 12, 2012 Wall Street Journal interview, Bienenstock described himself as part of a team that, even before the firm filed for bankruptcy, came up with the idea that became the PCP. He called it an “insurance policy” for partners.

Taking Bienenstock’s “money is fungible” and “insurance policy” comments together leads to an intriguing hypothetical. Suppose that a major management objective during the firm’s final months was to protect distributions that top partners had received from the 2010 bond offering. Suppose further that in early 2012 some of those partners also received distributions that the firm’s bank loans made possible. Finally, suppose that those partners used their bank loan-funded distributions to make their contributions to the PCP — the “insurance policy” that absolved them of Dewey’s obligations to creditors.

When the complete story of Dewey gets told, the end game could be its climax. It could reveal that a relatively few partners at the top of the firm won; far more partners, associates, staff, and creditors lost.

Or maybe I’m wrong and the only villains in this sad saga are the three defendants currently on trial. But I don’t think so.

DEWEY & LEBOEUF: CONNECTING MORE DOTS

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[NOTE: August 8, 2014 at 5:00 pm EDT is the deadline for nominations to the ABA’s annual list of the “100 best websites by lawyers, for lawyers.” To nominate The Belly of the Beast, please click here.]

Two years ago, Dewey & LeBeouf filed for bankruptcy. Intriguing aspects of the firm’s unraveling are still emerging.

Recently, three of the firm’s former leaders, chairman Steven Davis, executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and chief financial officer Joel Sanders, filed an omnibus motion to dismiss the criminal charges against them. Such filings are not unusual. But their joint memorandum in support, along with DiCarmine’s separate supplemental brief, contain fascinating insights into the firm’s collapse. As the dots get added, it’s becoming easier to connect some of them.

Beyond the Scapegoats

Back in November 2012, former Dewey chairman Steven Davis hinted at the flaws in any narrative suggesting that he alone took the firm down. His filing in the Dewey bankruptcy proceeding promised another perspective:

“While ‘greed’ is a theme…, the litigation that eventually ensues will address the question of whose greed.” (Docket #654; emphasis in original)

The three co-defendants’ joint memorandum returns to that theme. It argues that the firm’s distress resulted from, among other things, “the voracious greed of some of the firm’s partners.” DiCarmine’s supplemental brief describes the greed of some former partners as “insatiable.”

The 2010 Bond Offering and 2012 Partner Contribution Plan

Some former Dewey partners might find the defendants’ recent filings uncomfortable. For example, much of the government’s case turns on the firm’s 2010 bond offering that brought in $150 million from outside investors. DiCarmine’s supplemental brief asks why, except for Davis, “the Executive Committee members who approved and authorized it have not been charged with any wrongdoing.”

Later, as the firm collapsed during the first five months of 2012, it drew down millions from bank credit lines while simultaneously distributing millions to Dewey partners. As I’ve reported previously, from January to May 2012, 25 Dewey partners received a combined $21 million.

The joint memorandum suggests that “if the grand jury presentation was fair and thorough, it demonstrates that drawdowns the firm made in 2012, prior to filing for bankruptcy, were made at the direction of several partners on the firm’s Operations Committee, and against the advice of Mr. Sanders, and despite the concerns of Mr. Davis and objections raised by Mr. DiCarmine.”

Shortly after those 2012 distributions occurred, Wall Street Journal reporters asked former Dewey partner Martin Bienenstock whether the firm used those bank credit lines to fund partner distributions. Bienenstock replied, “Look, money is fungible.”

He’s right. But that raises another question: Did some partners then use those eleventh-hour distributions of fungible dollars for their subsequent payments to the bankruptcy court-approved Partner Contribution Plan? The answer matters because the PCP capped each participating partner’s potential financial obligation to the Dewey estate. Unsecured creditors will recover an estimated 15 cents for every dollar the firm owed them.

There’s another twist. Dewey made its way through the bankruptcy proceeding without disclosing how partners shared those 2010 bond proceeds. In calculating each partner’s required contribution to the PCP, only partner distributions after January 1, 2011 counted. The PCP excluded consideration of any amounts that partners received in 2010.

Remember Zachary Warren?

The joint memorandum also counters the Manhattan District Attorney’s characterization of the accounting issues in the case as open and shut: “lf the grand jury had been properly instructed on these [accounting] standards, it would have concluded that the accounting methods were permissible,….”

Which takes us back to the curious case against Zachary Warren, a subject of several earlier posts. The charges against the former low-level Dewey staffer are predicated on an underlying violation of those accounting standards, too.

Warren has sought to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants, Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders. Warren argues that plea agreements from witnesses who are cooperating with the government, notably Frank Canellas, demonstrate how thin the case against him is.

The Manhattan District Attorney responds that statements in the plea agreements are just the beginning: “[T]he purpose of the allocutions was to set forth facts implicating the witnesses in the crimes they committed; any part of them that inculpates the defendant is merely incidental.” (District Attorney’s letter to Hon. Robert Stolz, July 3, 2014) (App. I of Defendants Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders Omnibus Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss))

Really? Some career prosecutors might find it surprising to learn that when they get a defendant to “flip” and provide statements fingering a different target, the flipper’s statements are “merely incidental” insofar as they inculpate that target.

But the best line in the District Attorney’s surreply tries to connect Warren’s alleged December 2008 activities to Dewey’s collapse more than three years later: “[H]e was there to light the spark that fueled the scheme until its implosion in 2012.” (p. 6)

At least with respect to Zachary Warren, methinks the government doth protest too much. Meanwhile, his co-defendants are focusing on questions that cry out for answers.

 

 

A DEWEY “FOOT SOLDIER”?

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Back in March, I wrote about Zachary Warren. In 2007, his first job out of college was client relations coordinator at Dewey & LeBoeuf. In July 2009, he left the firm to attend law school. Unfortunately, his brief tenure was sufficient, years later, for the Manhattan District Attorney to name him as one of four undifferentiated “Schemers” in a 106-count criminal indictment.

When he joined the firm, Warren was a generation younger than his fellow alleged “Schemers”: former chairman Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders. Understandably, Warren would prefer not to be tried with his co-defendants, so he has moved to sever his trial.

Timing is Everything

In its latest filing, the Manhattan District Attorney acknowledges that Warren “was not the mastermind of the Dewey fraud scheme.” However, the government’s objection to Warren’s motion adds, “[H]e certainly was a willing foot soldier.” We learn some other things from the filing, too.

For example, it turns out that Warren was the first “Schemer” to be indicted. In December 2013, the grand jury charged him alone with six counts of “Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.” But Warren first learned of the charges two months later, when a broader indictment named him along with Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders.

Presumably, the timing of Warren’s indictment related to the five-year statute of limitations governing the claims against him. The government relies heavily on a handful of December 2008 events to make the case.

December 2008

According to the District Attorney, on December 30, 2008, Warren had dinner with two of his superiors, Joel Sanders and then-Dewey finance director Frank Canellas. To satisfy its year-end bank loan covenants, Dewey needed another $50 million by the end of the following day. Allegedly, Sanders and Canellas had developed a contingency plan of potential financial adjustments that Warren helped to implement.

The District Attorney emphasizes Warren’s supposed sophistication regarding accounting issues. But that’s a far cry from proving his competence to challenge directives from superiors holding CPAs and MBAs. In fact, the propriety of whatever transpired on December 31, 2008 with respect to Dewey & LeBoeuf’s financial statements is likely to become the subject of battling expert accounting witnesses at trial. Dive into those weeds at your peril.

Motive?

As for the aftermath of the alleged New Year’s Eve scheme, the Manhattan District Attorney cites Warren’s “$115,000 in bonus compensation in 2009” as evidence of something sinister. The government claims that the amount exceeded bonuses paid to all but five other Dewey employees. At best, that argument is disingenuous.

Warren received his $75,000 bonus for 2008 in early 2009, as expected. When he left Dewey in July 2009, Sanders promised Warren a $40,000 bonus for his half-year of service, payable in the fall.

Three months later, Warren was at Georgetown Law and still waiting for his final bonus. He left messages for Sanders, who eventually wrote, “If you’re wondering about your bonus, I have you down to receive $40k right after our year end close.”

Warren replied, “I didn’t take out any student loans this semester because I was anticipating the bonus to be paid in the fall as we discussed before I left.” (For unknown reasons, the District Attorney’s brief italicizes for emphasis the last phrase — “as we discussed before I left.”) When Warren still hadn’t received the bonus In November, he tried again and, shortly thereafter, the firm sent him $20,000 — almost the entire net amount. He received the final installment of $1,400 in April 2010.

For the District Attorney, Warren’s requests of his former employer are proof of his ongoing involvement in the original scheme: “In September 2009, he began chasing down the additional bonus that defendant Sanders had promised him.”

Seriously?

 The Continuing Mystery

A fundamental question still begs for an answer: How does whatever happened in the presence of Zach Warren during December 2008 relate to the demise of a storied law firm in May 2012?

So far, it doesn’t. Unless the prosecution develops that connection, something will remain terribly wrong with this picture — and with the effort to put Zachary Warren in prison.

DEWEY – PROSECUTING THE VICTIMS

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[NOTE: On Friday, April 11 at 9:00 am (PDT), I’ll be delivering the plenary address at the Annual NALP Education Conference in Seattle.

On Wednesday, April 16 at 5:00 pm (CDT), I’ll be discussing The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis as part of the Chicago Bar Association Young Lawyers Section year-long focus on “The Future of the Legal Profession.”]

The trip from victim to perpetrator can be surprisingly short. Just ask some former Dewey & LeBoeuf employees who pled guilty for their roles in what the Manhattan District Attorney calls a massive financial fraud. Anyone as puzzled as I was by 29-year-old Zachary Warren’s perp walk last month will find recently unsealed guilty plea agreements in the case positively mind-boggling. In some ways, those agreements are also deeply disturbing, but not for the reasons you might think.

Warren, you may recall, was a 24-year-old former Dewey staffer when he allegedly had the misfortune of attending a New Year’s Eve day meeting in 2008 with two of his superiors. According to the grand jury indictment, they were among the “schemers” who developed a “Master Plan” of accounting fraud that persisted for years.

When Warren left Dewey in 2009 to attend law school, the firm was making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, many individual partners enjoyed seven-figure paychecks, and no one foresaw the firm’s total collapse three years later. Nevertheless, last month Warren was indicted with three others who had held positions of responsibility right up to the firm’s ignominious end: former chairman Steven H. Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders.

A fateful New Year’s Eve meeting

The indictment alleges that CFO Sanders was one of two people with Warren at their December 31 meeting. Now we’ve learned the identity of the other: Frank Canellas.

Canellas’ ascent in the firm had been meteoric. While finishing his bachelor’s degree at Pace University, he joined LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in 2000 as a part-time accounting intern. Only seven years later, he became — at the tender age of 28 — director of finance for the newly formed Dewey & LeBoeuf. Thereafter, his compensation increased dramatically, rising to more than $600,000 annually by 2011.

In February 2014, Canellas copped a plea. He agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and plead guilty to a felony charge of grand larceny for his role in allegedly cooking Dewey’s books. In exchange, the DA will recommend a light sentence – only two-to-six years of jail time compared to the 15-year maximum penalty for the offense.

Using the boss to get underlings?

Presumably, one reason that the Manhattan DA squeezed Canellas was to help prove culpability at higher levels of the defunct firm, particularly CFO Sanders. But there is something more troubling here than the use of that standard prosecutorial tactic to get at the higher-ups. In his plea agreement statement, Canellas also implicates downstream employees who, he says, implemented the accounting adjustments that he and his bosses developed.

Ironically, in 2012, the people whom Canellas now fingers were among the hundreds of non-lawyers who suffered the most in the wake of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s spectacular implosion. When that was happening, observers properly regarded the firm’s low-level staffers generally as helpless victims. Now, for some of them, guilty pleas in exchange for recommendations of leniency give new meaning to the phrase “adding insult to injury.”

What’s the point?

Why go after the underlings at all? Does it really take a criminal prosecution coupled with the promise of a plea deal to assure the truthful testimony of pawns in a much larger game? With Canellas on the hook, wouldn’t a trial subpoena do the trick for those working under him?

The policy ramifications are even more profound. What message does the Manhattan DA send by flipping a cooperating superior to nail underlings for doing what the superior asked them to do? What does this approach mean for employees far down the food chain in a big law firm or any other organization? Even if you don’t have an accounting degree, should you now second-guess the bookkeeping directives that you receive from people who do? Then what? Complain to your local district attorney that you have concerns about your instructions? And why draw the line at accounting issues?

For any employee now worried about becoming the target of a subsequent criminal proceeding, other options make even less practical sense. As the economy crashed in 2008 and 2009, was it the low-level staffer’s duty to refuse a directive relating to the firm’s accounting procedures or any other issue that caused the staffer concern? To quit or get fired from a decent job and enter a collapsing labor market? To apply for work elsewhere, only to have a prospective new employer solicit a prior job reference and learn that the would-be hire is not a “team player”?

Losing sight of the mission

Unlike many senior partners at Dewey & LeBoeuf, the six relatively low-level staffers who did as Canellas directed (and have now pled guilty to resulting crimes) did not walk away with millions of dollars. Other than the jobs they held until the firm disintegrated, none benefitted financially from the alleged financial fraud.

The situation brings to mind a November 2012 court filing on behalf of Dewey’s former chairman, Steven H. Davis. Responding to the motion of the Dewey & LeBoeuf Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors for permission to sue Davis personally, Davis’s brief concluded: “While ‘greed’ is a theme of the Committee’s Motion, the litigation that eventually ensues will address the question of whose greed.” (Docket #654; emphasis in original)

The Manhattan DA’s investigative efforts could center on that question, too. So far, as indictments and plea deals get unsealed, the situation looks more like an unrestrained effort to secure notches on a conviction belt.

Perhaps it’s just too early to tell where the prosecution is headed. Then again, maybe vulnerable scapegoats make easier targets than the wealthy, high-powered lawyers who created and benefitted from the culture in which those scapegoats did their jobs.

DEWEY & LE BOEUF: MORE COLLATERAL DAMAGE

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Does 29-year-old Zachary Warren hold the key to understanding the demise of the storied white-shoe law firm, Dewey & LeBoeuf’? Apparently, New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. thinks so.

Zachary Who?

In 2006, Warren graduated from Stanford University with a degree in international relations. In 2008, he went to work for Dewey & LeBoeuf as a client relations manager; it was his first job out of college. His work at Dewey, Am Law Daily’s Sara Randazzo reports, was “to pester partners to make sure clients paid their bills, according to two former Dewey employees.” That, by the way, is an annual ritual at every big firm, and it’s no fun.

When Warren started at Dewey, he was 24 years old. After spending his “gap year” there, he attended Georgetown Law where he served on the law review. After graduation, he took a federal district court clerkship in Maryland. Then he accepted another clerkship that he still has for Judge Julia Smith Gibbons on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Having left Dewey three years before its demise, Warren must have found it odd when Vance’s office called to discuss the firm’s failure. Most people who once worked at the firm would have been surprised, too. They’d never heard of Zachary Warren until last week, when he was indicted, along with three more familiar Dewey names — Steven Davis, Stephen DiCarmine, and Joel Sanders, respectively, the firm’s last chairman, executive director, and chief financial officer.

An Observer’s Perilous Plight

What did Warren do to merit inclusion with such a powerful and notorious threesome, thereby creating a foursome that the indictment identifies collectively as the “Schemers”? Based on the allegations of the 106-count indictment, not much.

On or about December 30, 2008 — the end of the first full calendar year of operation following the blockbuster merger of Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf Lamb — Warren’s boss, CFO Joel Sanders, allegedly told him that he would receive his full bonus “if the Firm satisfied its bank covenants.” The indictment doesn’t say whether Warren knew what that phrase meant.

The following day, the indictment alleges, Warren sat in a meeting with Sanders and an unnamed “Employee C” while Sanders and Employee C discussed “financial adjustments.” That evening — New Year’s Eve at 7:24 pm, to be precise — Employee C wrote to Warren: “Great job, dude. We kicked ass! Time to get paid.”

Twelve minutes later, Warren responded, “Hey man, I don’t know where you come up with some of this stuff, but you saved the day. It’s been a rough year but it’s been damn good. Nice work dude. Let’s get paid!”

Finally, two months after that, on February 24, 2009, Warren supposedly responded falsely to a message from a Dewey employee about an allegedly inappropriate financial adjustment in 2008.

Only one of the 106 counts against the “Schemers” includes Warren. It is #106 and is a bit confusing: “CONSPIRACY IN THE FIFTH DEGREE… as follows: The defendants…during the period from on or about November 3, 2008, to on or about March 7, 2012, with intent that conduct constituting the crime of SCHEME TO DEFRAUD IN THE FIRST DEGREE be performed, such crime being a felony, agreed with one and more persons to engage in and cause the performance of such conduct.” I’m not sure where to put the “[sic].”

Warren has another distinction: He is also the subject of his own, separate indictment, alleging six counts of falsifying business records.

The Awesome Power of Government

To understand what is happening to Zachary Warren — a millennial whose first dream job has turned into a nightmare — look no farther than prosectuor Vance’s press conference. He announced that seven former employees who worked in Dewey & LeBoeuf’s accounting department have already pled guilty “for their individual roles in the scheme.”

That’s how these things work. Government investigators start at the bottom of an organization, identify low-level employees who might know something, apply pressure, and acquire guilty pleas that create cooperating witnesses who can testify against the real targets. Indicting a low-level person can also have an in terrorem effect, demonstrating to others the government’s seriousness.

I’ve never met or communicated with Zachary Warren. But as with any attorney, a plea deal poses special problems that don’t affect non-lawyers. Reportedly, Warren passed the bar last July. Among other things, a guilty plea could end forever his ability to practice law. That would be a tough way to close out an investment of five years (law school plus two clerkships) and $150,000 in tuition.

Abandoning Common Sense

Warren’s co-defendants may have something to say about whether any crime occurred at all. The presumption of innocence has not yet lost all meaning. Still, some aspects of the case against Zachary Warren, seem particularly peculiar.

“Pestering partners at year-end to get clients to pay outstanding bills” is not exactly a policy-making position. How can anyone who worked in the bureaucratic bowels of a big firm for less than a year bear responsibility for what went wrong three years later? Should low-ranking administrative staff members everywhere start asking questions about what superiors want them to do and why? How should they assess the answers? When should they resign in protest?

Likewise, when Warren left Dewey in 2009, the partnership collectively was making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At the time, no one in the profession could have foreseen the firm’s disastrous demise in 2012. And before making too much of the juicy emails allegedly attributed to Zachary Warren, please pause, add a little context, and consider how all of us sometimes fire off quick, mindless responses to emails and text messages.

Most importantly, think about how you’d feel if someone you knew found himself in Zachary Warren’s position. Twenty-four years old and only months into his first job after college, he participated in an end-of-the-year revenue collection meeting with superiors. More than five years later, that meeting led to a “perp walk” with three codefendants, any of whom could have made or broken his career at Dewey & LeBoeuf.

Then think about the government’s awesome power to turn lives upside down in a pursuit that Warren’s lawyer called a “travesty.” You might conclude that he has a point. Anyone truly interested in what went wrong at Dewey & LeBoeuf should take a look at Chapter 8 of The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis. Then you’ll really wonder why Zachary Warren is part of this mess.