The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Q&A: Holland & Knight's Paul Kiernan

Paul Kiernan has been the executive partner of Holland & Knight's Washington office for nearly five years. During that time, the firm has made a high-profile move to a new building and grown headcount to about 135 attorneys. Washington is the firm's largest office.

Kiernan, who has been with the firm for almost 20 years, is a trial attorney focused on appellate work, government contract litigation, real estate matters and commercial litigation.

Legal Times sat down with Kiernan recently to talk about what's keeping him busy these days, the changing legal market and the decline of the billable hour.

Former D.C. Public Defender Featured in Gideon Film

"Gideon's Army," a documentary about the struggles facing public defenders in the South, is set to make its national television debut July 1 on HBO. One the lawyers at the heart of the film, Jonathan Rapping, spent the first decade of his legal career as a public defender in Washington and said the experience played a major part in informing the work he does today supporting defenders nationwide.

The film, which screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, follows the lives of three young public defenders and features the work of Gideon's Promise, an Atlanta-based organization founded by Rapping that supports public defender offices across the South. In a phone interview today, Rapping said Gideon's Promise was a product of his desire to transfer the successful model of the D.C. public defender office to offices elsewhere in the United States.

Rapping spent 10 years with the public defender office in Washington, first as a staff attorney and later as the training director. He said he took for granted the fact that he was in "an environment where excellent representation of poor people was expected."

D.C. Circuit Rejects Judicial Independence Case

Updated at 2:48 p.m.

An administrative law judge for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs can't sue the agency for alleged violations of his judicial independence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today.

J. Jeremiah Mahoney, the acting chief administrative law judge for the department, sued the department in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming his supervisor violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act by interfering with this independence. Today, a three-judge appeals panel found the trial court didn't have jurisdiction to hear the case because Mahoney failed to follow the proper procedures for pursuing his claims under the Civil Service Reform Act.

Senior D.C. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for the court, said the Civil Service Reform Act barred Mahoney from suing under the Administrative Procedure Act. The court didn't address the merits of Mahoney's underlying claims.

Obama Picks Housing Agency Lawyer for State Dept. Watchdog

A former senior U.S. Justice Department official who is now the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency's inspector general has secured President Barack Obama's backing to serve as the U.S. State Department's watchdog.

Obama on Thursday nominated Steve Linick to be the State Department's inspector general just hours after the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved a resolution urging the president to quickly pick someone for the post.

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the panel, earlier this month also sent Obama a letter calling on him to make a State Department inspector general nomination soon. The State Department hasn't had a Senate-confirmed inspector general since 2008.

The Morning Wrap

The long game: From the front-page of today's New York Times: "Viewed in isolation, the Supreme Court term that just ended had elements of modesty. The court declined to do away with affirmative action, gave Congress another shot at salvaging the Voting Rights Act and refused to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. But glancing at an end-of term snapshot can be misleading." The Washington Post has this report: "A conservative Supreme Court swerves to avoid easy definition." The Post also reports that Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., who overruled top Justice Department lawyers concerning whether to support the Defense of Marriage Act, feels vindicated after the high court ruling this week.

The 2013 A-List: Check out The American Lawyer's annual assessment of Am Law 200 law firms based on scores that combine each firm's annual survey rank in four areas: financial performance, pro bono, diversity and associate satisfaction. In addition to producing the annual Top 20 ranking, The American Lawyer takes a ten-year look at the A-List. Only four firms have made the list every time since it began in 2003: Davis Polk & Wardwell, Debevoise & Plimpton, Latham & Watkins, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Reassigned: A federal trial judge in Ohio who twice sentenced a man in a child pornography case to a day in prison--despite being overturned after the first time--will not preside over the case when it returns for a new sentencing, a federal appeals court said. “If I have got to send somebody like Mr. [Richard] Bistline to prison, I’m sorry, someone else will have to do it. I’m not going to do it,” the judge said after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the first one-day sentence.

Investigated: The Washington Post reports today: "A retired four-star Marine Corps general who served as the nation’s second-ranking military officer is a target of a Justice Department investigation into a leak of information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program, a senior Obama administration official said."

McGuireWoods Assembles Water Industry Team

McGuireWoods is setting up a new practice focused on water-related issues, and the firm is bolstering it with a pair of former government attorneys.

Partner Bernadette Rappold and senior advisor Russell Sullivan are two recent hires in the new practice group, which is focused on regulation and finance issues associated with water projects.

Rappold, who joined the firm in February, formerly worked in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Sullivan, who starts July 1, is a former Democratic staffer in the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

D.C. Ethics Board Adds Veteran Attorney

The D.C. government's ethics board has picked up a veteran attorney from the D.C. Office of the Attorney General for its legal team, the panel announced this week.

John "Jack" Grimaldi has joined the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability as a senior attorney after more than a decade at the Office of the Attorney General. He was an assistant attorney general in the office's legal counsel division.

At the board, Grimaldi will help with ethics advice. The panel gives ethics guidance and training to D.C. officials. It also probes alleged ethics law infractions and handles lobbyist filings and officials' financial disclosure reports.

Obama Criticizes Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling

President Barack Obama today criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to void a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, saying the justices failed to recognize the degree to which voter suppression is still a problem around the country.

"I might not be here as President had it not been for those who courageously helped to pass the Voting Rights Act," Obama said Thursday during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Dakar, Senegal. "I think that the Supreme Court made a mistake in its ruling, but that decision is now here."

It was his first public comments since the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The section that spells out the formula used to determine which jurisdictions warrant special scrutiny when they propose changes in their election processes. Without it, the U.S. Department of Justice is unable use Section 5, which requires jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get preclearance for voting changes.

The Morning Wrap

SCOTUS: Wednesday was a landmark day at the Supreme Court, with the justices striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California with the Proposition 8 ruling. Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle report.

Lone Star: Less than 24 hours after the Texas senate failed to pass strict anti-abortion law, Governor Rick Perry has called a second special session. The bill was derailed in part by a Democratic filibuster and civil disobedience on the part of the Texas public. Among the items on the agenda are anti-abortion legislation, transportation funding and juvenile life sentencing guidelines. The Texas Tribune reports.

Immigration: Meanwhile the U.S. Senate added $46 billion in border security measures to a bipartisan immigration bill. Reuters reports that House republicans are opposed to the bill.

Murder: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged with murder Wednesday in the death of a semipro football player. Hernandez was taken into custory by authorities and arraigned. The Washington Post reports.

Justice Ginsburg Celebrates ABA's New D.C. Office

Hours after sitting on the bench for the announcement of decisions in two of the biggest U.S. Supreme Court cases of the term, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made an appearance at a decidedly lower key event this afternoon: the dedication ceremony for the American Bar Association's new D.C. office.

Ginsburg joined ABA President Laurel Bellows and other officials to unveil the association's new location in downtown Washington. The association sold the 175,000-square foot building it had owned since 1994 in Washington for a little over $69 million in late 2011. The group signed a lease for new office space in a building near Farragut Square in early 2012, but had to wait until this summer to move in.

Ginsburg didn't reference this morning's excitement at the high court. She spoke about her long history with the ABA and her appreciation for its role in pushing for equality for women in the law. "May the association thrive...in its pursuit of justice, equal and accessible to all," she said.