Not to love on Adam Liptak too much today (see previous BLT post on diversity) but in Sunday’s New York Times he wrote a piece about the top candidates running for president. And, lo and behold, the lot of them have law degrees—Clinton, Giuliani, Obama, Thompson, Romney, and Edwards. It’s the whole legal pantheon from commercial law to hard-edged prosecutors, from civil rights law to plaintiffs litigation.
And, according to Liptak, you can tell a lot about the candidate by his or her take on the practice of law. Hillary’s first case involved portions of a rat found in a can of baked beans. Her client was the cannery, and she argued that no real harm occurred because the plaintiff didn’t actually consume the sauce-soaked rodent. The jury agreed.
Obama wondered what the law was really fit for, describing it as "a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power." Edwards chose his cases carefully. Giuliani was a tenacious prosecutor. And Thompson was torn over whether or not to go after moonshiners.
But as Liptak points out, the real question is – would you hire one of them to represent you?
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