I may have gone a little too far last month when I urged criminals to target fresh-off-the-plane American lawyer Mark Herrmann.
But the 'London is so expensive and weird' blog post he wrote for New York-based legal website Above the Law was annoying...
Yesterday, an anonymous junior barrister (whose ID card is pictured below) found himself the talk of the internet, after a seemingly unremarkable post inviting questions about his job as a "wig-wearing court advocate" became the top ranked post in social network Reddit's 'IamA' section.
'IAmA' ('I am a') is an online Q&A session, where users encourage others to 'AMA' ('Ask me anything'). It’s popular among the world-famous, with President Barack Obama, Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson and adventurer Bear Grylls all having taken turns in the IAmA hotseat of late. Obama's thread is here.
Non-celebs regularly feature too, but few of their posts rank very highly (Reddit works by having its users vote submissions "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages).
So it was with some surprise that the barrister found himself barraged with questions as his post became the number one ranked on a site that attracts millions of users per day...
None of the 'serious' legal publications have reported the news that DLA Piper is the third top contributor to Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, so it looks like we’ll have to.
According to Obama’s Fox News campaign page, DLA (of dubious journalism awards fame discussed below) has given the president $314,977 (£200,000) – more than Google but less than Microsoft. US outfits Skadden, Sidely Austin, Kirkland & Ellis (also a contributor to Mitt Romney's campaign) and Wilmer Hale are the other law firms in the top 40 Obama donors, coming in at numbers 5, 10, 19 and 20 respectively on Ranker.com's list.
The campaign page also reveals that in total "lawyers & lobbyists" (an odd pair to group together) have contributed a grand total of $14,059,717 (£8,883,940) to the Obama campaign so far.
“What, no Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers?!” I bellowed after scanning Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
“No Sir Nicolas Bratza either, or Baroness Hale of Richmond, or even David Allen Green...” I continued, drawing some strange looks from the other men in the barbers’ waiting area, where I’d happened upon the latest issue of Time.
The good news is that Adele made the list, as did fellow Brits Tilda Swinton (?!) and Kate Middleton.
There were, however, foreign lawyers aplenty – especially US ones – with over 10% of Time's 100 most influential people members of the legal profession. Not that all of the chosen few made it on the back of their work as lawyers, with many having since gone onto other careers.
So who are they?
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