Doc Review R.I.P.?

Can NYC doc review finally be pronounced dead? It's been months since any large projects have gone up on Posse List or craigslist, and the few projects we do hear about seem to pay abysmal rates ($25-$30/hr) with no chance for any OT.

Is anyone working out there? If so, post agency, rate, and expected duration below in the comments.

LA Times: No More Room on the Bench

Wow, wow, and just WOW!. Perhaps the hardest-hitting mainstream Op-Ed yet on the dismal state of the legal "job market." From todays Los Angeles Times:

The American Bar Assn. allows unneeded new law schools to open and refuses to regulate them. The government should consider taking steps to stop the flow of attorneys into a saturated marketplace.

By Mark Greenbaum

Remember the old joke about 20,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea being "a good start"? Well, in an interesting twist, thousands of lawyers now find themselves drowning in the unemployment line as the legal sector is being badly saturated with attorneys.

Part of the problem can be traced to the American Bar Assn., which continues to allow unneeded new schools to open and refuses to properly regulate the schools, many of which release numbers that paint an overly rosy picture of employment prospects for their recent graduates. There is a finite number of jobs for lawyers, and this continual flood of graduates only suppresses wages. Because the ABA has repeatedly signaled its unwillingness to adapt to this changing reality, the federal government should consider taking steps to stop the rapid flow of attorneys into a marketplace that cannot sustain them.

From 2004 through 2008, the field grew less than 1% per year on average, going from 735,000 people making a living as attorneys to just 760,000, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics postulating that the field will grow at the same rate through 2016. Taking into account retirements, deaths and that the bureau's data is pre-recession, the number of new positions is likely to be fewer than 30,000 per year. That is far fewer than what's needed to accommodate the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year.

This jobs gap is even more problematic given the rising cost of tuition. In 2008, the median tuition at state schools for nonresidents was $26,000 a year, and $34,000 for private schools -- and much higher in some states, such as California. Students racked up an average loan debt in 2007-08 of $59,000 for students from public law schools and $92,000 for those from private schools, according to the ABA, and a recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement found that nearly one-third of respondents said they would owe about $120,000.

Such debt would be manageable if a world of lucrative jobs awaited the newly minted attorneys, but this is not the case. A recent working paper by Herwig Schlunk of Vanderbilt Law School contends that with the exception of some of those at the best schools, going for a law degree is a bad investment and that most students will be "unlikely ever to dig themselves out from" under their debt. This problem is exacerbated by the existing law school system.


Despite the tough job market, new schools continue to sprout like weeds. Today there are 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the U.S., with more on the way, as many have been awarded provisional accreditation. In California alone, there are 21 law schools that are either accredited or provisionally accredited, including the new one at UC Irvine.


The ABA cites antitrust concerns in refusing to block new schools, taking a weak approach to regulation. For example, in 2008 the ABA created an accreditation task force to study the need for changes, but saddled it with a narrow charter. In the end, it proposed only cosmetic changes and rejected out of hand the possibility of giving up control over accreditation, calling the idea not viable and "draconian."


The task force also raised the possibility that if the ABA gave up its accreditation authority, the Federalist Society, a conservative-leaning interest group, could take over that job. This is an intellectually dishonest red herring, likely injected to divert attention from the idea's merits. The Federalist Society would have no reason to do this because the technical, expensive accrediting process does not gibe with its mission, nor would the Department of Education be likely to give it such authority.

The ABA has also refused to create and oversee an independent method of reporting graduate data. Postgraduate employment information generally provides the most useful facts for prospective students to study in deciding whether to go to law school.


In many cases, the data that schools now furnish are based on self-reported information, skewing the results because unemployed and low-paying grads are less likely to report back. Law schools do this because they want the rosiest picture possible for the influential rankings given by U.S. News & World Report. Despite its ample resources, the ABA has rebuffed calls to monitor the schools to get more accurate data, calling the existing framework an effective "honor system."


Based on what happened with the accreditation task force, the ABA is not likely to force change; it is too intertwined with the law schools. ABA groups -- such as the task force, which was chaired by a former dean -- are stacked with school officials who have no incentive to change the status quo. This is why the ABA should get out of the accreditation business completely.



Unlike other professional fields such as medicine and public health, whose preeminent professional organizations do not have control over the accreditation of schools and programs, the ABA exercises unfettered power over the accreditation of law schools.


The American Dental Assn., the nation's leading dental group, offers a model for the ABA to follow. It accredits schools but assiduously guards the profession and has allowed respected dental schools such as the ones at Emory, Georgetown and Northwestern to close for economic reasons and to prevent market saturation. Such a move by the bar association would be unprecedented. Dental schools go even further to protect the profession's integrity by collectively boycotting the U.S. News rankings.


The U.S. Department of Education should strip the ABA of its accreditor status and give the authority to an organization that is free of conflicts of interest, such as the Assn. of American Law Schools or a new group. Although the AALS is made up of law schools, it is an independent, nonprofit, academic -- not professional -- group, which could be expected to maintain the viability and status of the profession, properly regulate law schools, curtail the opening of new programs and perhaps even shut down unneeded schools. The AALS has cast a very skeptical eye on for-profit schools, compared with the ABA's weak hands-off accreditation policies.


Although these would be unprecedented moves, they are necessary. The legal profession must be saved from itself.

Link to original here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-greenbaum8-2010jan08,0,4457698.story?track=rss

A Year-End Snapshot of the job market

From "Adjunct Law Prof Blog"

Student loan debt is up and job expectations are down according to a year-end, informal snapshot of several sources. The online ABA Journal is reporting today that almost a third of all law students expect to graduate with more than $120k in loan debt. Over at Above the Law, editor Elie Mystal describes, in a column called "Debt: the Silent Killer," the effect $150k in law school debt has had on him since he graduated from Harvard Law in 2003. Since he decided he didn't like the practice of law after all, he calls the experience "a very expensive vacation that debt financed." The ABA president is urging Congress to offer law students debt relief.

On the employment side of the equation, the year that just concluded represents the worst period ever in BigLaw lay-offs with more than 12,000 jobs lost. The picture is brighter for more nimble, mid-size firms although even 65% of those surveyed still expect to reduce associate salaries in the coming year. And then there's this: "Associate Pay Cuts Here to Stay."

Perhaps for that reason, law students have changed their expectations about working in the private sector with more indicating a desire for (lower paying) public interest work according to the most recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement (and here).

This year's survey found that the percentage of law students who expected to work in private law firms dropped to 50 percent, down from about 58 percent in each of the previous three years. The percentage of law students who anticipated finding work in the public-interest sector rose to 33 percent, from about 29 percent in each of the past three years.

The findings "may indicate that law students are reframing their career expectations in response to changes in the economic climate that have affected hiring at many law firms," said Lindsay Watkins, the survey's project manager.

How will it all end? This article reminds us that we've been through a severe legal recession before and survived just fine - some even thrived. Whether circumstances exist now that didn't then (more law schools, more law grads, outsourcing, etc.) is still the big unknown.

Full link here:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adjunctprofs/2010/01/a-yearend-snapshot-of-the-job-market-for-law-grads.html

L4L

*REMINDER: All racist/anti-Nigerian/anti-Semitic comments will be removed. Comments are being moderated before publication. So don’t waste your time- no one will see/read your racist gutter ranting. Get the picture? Thank you.
L4L

Let's give temping the "Frontline" Treatment

Frontline, the award-winning PBS documentary series, has recently run feature programs on the Madoff scandal, the financial/derivatives market meltdown, and other infamous swindles of late.

Yet it seems they’ve overlooked one of the biggest scams of all: the law school/student lending cartel. This festering cesspool is just begging to be pumped out. We have Dick Matasar of NYLS steering lemmings to a notorious student lender “loan shark” whose board he chairs, the obvious salary/employment fraud broadcast by the schools and the NALP, the total lack of jobs for new grads, tuitions increasing at 5 X the rate of inflation, and of course the ABA’s infamous 08-451 outsourcing opinion. Plenty of grist here for the Frontline scambusting mill.

Here’s the link to email Frontline your story idea:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/contact/

Make sure to forward this link to all your struggling friends. Just imagine the squirming TTT deans being confronted on national television with hordes of their pissed-off grads and held to answer for their patently bogus salary/employment brochures. Talk about must-see TV.

*NOTE to COMMENT POSTERS:

All racist/anti-Nigerian/anti-Semitic comments will be deleted, so don't waste your time. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

Skadden Stiffs Bomb Scare Victims

Rumor has it that Skadden Arps has decided to screw over victims of the recent Times Square bomb scare incident. As you've probably heard, a building doorman reported a suspicious looking van without license plates to the NYPD, who quickly called in the bomb detail and evacuated all high-rise buildings in the area including Skadden Arps headquarters at 4 Times Square the day before New Year's Eve.

Skadden has apparently informed the coders that they will not be paid for the time they were out of the building due to the evacuation. This doesn't surprise us here at T the T, since Skadden is a notoriously cheap crew of shysters. They suffer from a major prestige defecit due to their "McBiglaw" reputation, and recently axed scores of long-time staff attorneys and paras without a moment's notice or a dime of severance. In these turbulent times, it's comforting to know that scumbags like Skadden haven't changed their tune.

Senator John Sampson Joins a Law Firm as "Counsel"

Sampson playing a law-firm Shel game
By BRENDAN SCOTT Post Correspondent, January 4, 2010
LINK

ALBANY -- Move over, Sheldon Silver!

Senate boss John Sampson has borrowed a page from the powerful Assembly speaker and become the second big-time Democrat to join a law firm with ties to the state's powerful trial-lawyers lobby, The Post has learned.

Sampson, the state Senate Democratic leader, quietly accepted a job last month as "counsel" to Belluck & Fox, a politically connected Manhattan law firm that specializes in asbestos litigation and that claims to have won $220 million in judgments.

The new gig, which comes just six months after Senate Democrats elected Sampson to run the legislative chamber, bears striking similarity to the oft-criticized side job held by Silver (D-Manhattan).

Like Silver, Sampson won't say how much his job pays. And, as is the case with Silver's firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, a founding partner of Sampson's firm, Joseph W. Belluck, sits on the board of the state Trial Lawyers Association.

The potent advocacy group spends about $2 million a year on campaign contributions and lobbying expenses. Silver has repeatedly come under fire for aiding its decades-long winning streak in the Assembly.

The group's new ties to the Senate leader are sure to draw similar concern, especially from those who back reforming the state's medical-malpractice laws.

"The trial lawyers are now covered in both houses," one veteran Capitol lobbyist said. "They have Shelly in one prominent firm, and they have the Senate leader in another firm that has a seat on their board of directors."

"You can't do any better than that that."

Sampson controls day-to-day decisions in the Senate in addition to leading its Judiciary and Ethics committees. The "part-time" Brooklyn lawmaker earns $88,500 annually, including a $9,000 leadership stipend.

Sampson spokesman Austin Shafran refused to disclose the senator's outside income, but insisted the job would not compromise his official duties.

"Senator Sampson's outside work has never been and never will be in conflict with his official duties," Shafran said.

The career move comes as Democratic lawmakers negotiate ethics-reform legislation in response to several recent embarrassments, including the corruption conviction of former Republican Senate leader Joseph Bruno.

During Bruno's trial, an Albany businessman testified that he started paying Bruno consulting fees after the senator complained about the money Silver was getting "from the trial lawyers." Bruno denied the remark.

brendan.scott@nypost.com

Manhattan Surrogate's Court Judge Kristen Booth Glen

Do Not Vote for Judge Kristin Booth Glen !!!
LINK

I am shocked to learn just two days before the election that Judge Kristin Booth Glen is up for election two days from today for New York Surrogate. Nineteen years ago in a moment of illegal and wrongful misconduct, Judge Glen destroyed my family in ways which adversely affect me and my children to this day.

I have just learned that Judge Glen got on the ballot by surviving a close and hard-fought primary contest in which she narrowly defeated her opponent by just a few votes. Several other persons made charges of misconduct against Judge Glen at that time, but they were apparently ignored by the voters.

I will be filing a formal complaint against Judge Glen tomorrow for her misconduct in 1986, in the hope that this matter be heard and that she be disbarred from the practice of law before she can take office in January.

The date was September 3, 1986, a date I remember well because of the events which changed the lives of my family and especially my children on that date.

On that date a final hearing had been scheduled for the custody of my two children, Peter and Mary, in the New York Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street. My ex-wife Anda had been refusing for more than a year to comply with a court order giving me two hours of weekly visitation with my children, ever since she had remarried. I had filed several petitions for habeas corpus with respect to these children. In violation of CPLR 7003, Judge Glen had refused to sign these petitions. She had postponed the matter several times over a period of months. She had ordered me and my ex-wife to submit to examination by a psychologist, Dr. Bennett, who had charged us each $1000. Dr. Bennett was supposed to have his report ready in time for the hearing, which was scheduled for September 3, 1986.

I brought my mother, Dr. Marjorie Sloan, with me to the hearing. When the case was called, the attorney for Anda, Walter Anderocci, stated and indeed insisted that he needed urgently to speak in private to the judge.

Judge Glen refused to agree to this. When Anderocci persisted, Judge Glen told him that she found his conduct objectionable.

At about that time, the clerk informed the judge that she had received a telephone call. Judge Glen went back into chambers to receive the call. When she returned some time later, she stated that she had received a call from "Judge Larry Janow" in Virginia. Judge Janow had stated that he was the judge in the case of the custody of another of my children, Shamema, aged 4. Charles and Shelby Roberts, who were unrelated to the child, had filed a petition for the custody of the child. Judge Janow wanted the child returned to Virginia. Judge Glen had stated that she had seen me with a four year old child when I had come to her courtroom to check on the status of the case the previous day. Judge Glen had concluded that this was the same child that Judge Janow wanted. Therefore, Judge Glen had called the police and ordered my arrest. As a result, she was disqualifying herself from the case.

As Judge Glen was explaining all this, I turned around and found several New York City Police Officers standing behind me. Walter Anderocci stated that he had arranged for my mother to be transported to my brother, Creighton's, house in North Carolina. My mother replied sharply that she wanted nothing to do with Creighton. She preferred to go to jail with me, she said. With that, the New York City Police Officers carted us off to the Police Station on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown and locked us up in jail.

Only about two hours later, however, the police unlocked the doors to the jail cells and let us out. They stated that they had been on the phone with the Commonwealth Attorney in Amherst County, Virginia and had learned that there was no warrant for our arrest and that Charles and Shelby Roberts did not have legal custody of my daughter. They also said that the silly assed judge had no right to order us arrested and her order meant nothing. Therefore, they were letting us go. They specifically referred to Judge Kristin Booth Glen as a "silly assed judge". That was their exact words.

My mother and I immediately went back to the same courtroom where we had been arrested a few hours earlier. It was not yet 4:00 PM and I was still hoping to get the hearing that had been delayed for nearly a year for custody or visitation with my two children, Peter and Mary Sloan. However, Judge Kirstin Booth Glen had left the courthouse. The courtroom was empty.

The following day I went to the clerks office to check the case file. There was an order in the case file signed by Judge Glen stating that she had disqualified herself from the case because I had been arrested in her courtroom. The clerk informed me that the case was over. I would have to file a new petition for habeas corpus and start a new case from square one to get the matter back into court.

The case is Sloan vs. Sloan, Index No. 36654/1980. I have just been to the clerk's office at 60 Center Street and learned that the original case file has been sent to Philadelphia for microfilming. The clerk informed me that it will take about two weeks to get the file back. When the file comes back I intend to obtain a copy of Judge Glen's order stating that I was arrested in her courtroom and present this document to the Appellate Division to have Judge Glen disbarred from the practice of law so that she cannot take office as New York Surrogate in January.

What Judge Glen did was plainly illegal. Because of what Judge Glen did, I realized that the situation was unsafe for me, my mother and my daughter. Judge Janow had not told Judge Glen that Charles and Shelby Roberts had only filed for custody on August 27, 1986, one week earlier. No hearing had been held on the matter. There was no jurisdiction in Virginia because neither the child nor either of the parents of the child had been in Virginia since the time of filing. The mother of the child was in Pakistan and I, the father of the child, was in New York. In any event, the courts of Virginia had no jurisdiction because the custody of the child had already been decided by Judge Anthony Mercorella of the Bronx Supreme Court in Sloan vs. Awadallah, 17815/1981. Virginia had no jurisdiction to modify this award.

Had I been allowed to speak, I could have addressed these issues and demonstrated that what I was saying was factually correct. However, Judge Kristin Booth Glen had given me no opportunity to say anything. Based on nothing more than a telephone call from a person she did not know, she had called the police and ordered my arrest. She had also cancelled the custody hearing which had been pending for nearly a year.

Realizing that both Judge Glen and Judge Janow were acting crazy,. It was clear that my family was in imminent danger. Therefore, my mother decided that she had no choice but to flee the country. I agreed to go with her, as I had already been scheduled to go to Argentina as the trainer and manager for the Polgar Sisters. My mother had never had a passport in her life, because she had been born in a rural area of Iowa in 1910 and no birth certificate had ever been issued for her. Nevertheless, she managed to convince the US Passport Office in Rockefeller Center to issue her a passport and off we went to Rio Gallegos, Argentina.

Soon thereafter, we discovered that my brother Creighton had frozen all the bank accounts of our mother and had cancelled her credit cards, so she had no funds to travel on or to live on. I soon figured out what should have been obvious all along that Creighton was the mastermind of this entire plot. Creighton had known both Anda and Charles and Shelby Roberts and had introduced them to each other. That is how Judge Janow in Virginia had known that a custody hearing had been scheduled with respect to my other children in New York in September 3, 1986.

We soon became aware that Charles and Shelby Roberts were feverously trying to kidnap my daughter Shamema and Creighton was trying to kidnap his own mother. My mother, my daughter and I became vagabonds traveling from place to place without funds. Eventually, we reached Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I got a job working as a journalist for a newspaper, the Gulf News. We were able to survive until I was able to open a computer business there.

Exactly four years later, on September 3, 1990 Creighton finally succeeded in having his mother kidnapped and brought back to America, where he had her locked up until she died 12 years later, in 2002. Shamema was kidnapped on October 7, 1990 and was held prisoner by the Roberts for ten years until she became of legal age, joined the Marines, and went to fight in Iraq.

My children, Peter and Mary Sloan, who were the subject of the custody proceeding that was supposed to have been heard on September 3, 1986, never got to see their father again. My daughter Mary, who is now 26, refuses to see me because she believes that I abandoned her when she was a child. She thinks that I just stopped coming to see her. She does not realize that her mother cancelled all visitation when she remarried and that I went to court more than 50 times and filed three habeas corpus petitions and two family court proceedings all in a fruitless attempt to see her.

My son Peter recently established contact with me because he has become a chess master and sees me at chess tournaments. At the same time, he had no contact with his father at all from 1982 until he became an adult, except for a few visits that were allowed in 1985.

My children have suffered problems because of having no father. In spite of bring bright and talented, scoring in the 99 percentile on standardized tests, they have a history of failure and near failure in school and being left back. They both have serious problems which they might not have had it not been for the actions of Judge Kristin Booth Glen.

The actions of Judge Glen were illegal. If there were valid grounds for having me arrested, Judge Janow could simply have contacted the police in Virginia where he was a judge and the police could then have contacted the New York City Police who would then have come to the courtroom and arrested me. This is obvious. Accordingly, Judge Glen should have realized that the call was bogus. Judge Glen simply had no right to call the police and have me and my mother arrested.

CPLR 7003 c provides for penalties for this violation.

�� 7003. (c) Penalty for violation. For a violation of this section in refusing to issue the writ, a judge, or, if the petition was made to a court, each member of the court who assents to the violation, forfeits to the person detained one thousand dollars, to be recovered by an action in his name or in the name of the petitioner to his use.

The actions of Judge Kristin Booth Glen on September 3, 1986 have had a devastating impact on my life and the lives of my children and they were illegal. Accordingly, you should not vote for Judge Glen on November 8, 2005. Judge Glen should be disbarred from the practice of law and not be allowed to take office as New York Surrogate in January, 2006.

Sam Sloan
1664 Davidson Avenue, Apt. 1B
Bronx NY 10453

samsloan@samsloan.com
http://www.samsloan.com/notoglen.htm

917-507-7226
347-869-2465

# Complaint against Judge Kristin Booth Glen
# Order of Judge Kristin Booth Glen (PDF Format)
# Motion to the South Carolina Court of Appeals (HTML Format)
# Motion to the South Carolina Court of Appeals (PDF Format)
# Petition for Rehearing from Order Dismissing Appeal
# Transcript of Hearing on February 4, 2004
# Hearing on Sloan Estate Appeal in Aiken set for Tuesday, April 6 at 11:30 AM
# Transcript of Hearing on April 6, 2004
# Grounds for Appeal in Re: Helen Marjorie Sloan
# Complaint to Judge Little, Aiken County Probate Court
# Opposition to motion by Creighton Sloan to dismiss appeal
# Affidavit in Opposition to Appointment of Creighton Sloan as Personal Representative
# Letter to Creighton's Lawyer
# Creighton won the court case !!!!
# Demand that South Carolina Judge Recuse Herself
# Complaint to the Supreme Court of South Carolina
# Who is Sam?
# South Carolina Supreme Court
# Justice Jean Hoefer Toal biography
# Judge Jean H. Toal another biography
# Lynchburg Circuit Court
# Will of Dr. Marjorie Sloan
# My mother, Dr. Marjorie Jacobson Sloan, 92, has died
# Obituary of Dr. Marjorie Jacobson Sloan
# Transcript of Proceedings to Sell My Mothers House at 917 Old Trent's Ferry Road in Lynchburg, Virginia
# Order appointing Frank G. Davidson as Guardian ad litem for Helen Marjorie Sloan
# Is Sam Sloan the "Black Sheep" of his family
# My mother's lawsuit to lift the freeze on her bank account and to recover her stolen funds
# Letter from his mother, Dr. Marjorie Sloan, about this
# At the Acropolis in Athens, Greece
# With Shamema Honzagool Sloan in Abu Dhabi
# With an elephant on the Street in Sri Lanka
# With a Snake Charmer in Colombo, Sri Lanka
# Shamema Sloan and Dr. Helen Marjorie Sloan in Sri Lanka, 1987
# News Clipping of my mother, Dr. Marjorie Sloan, in 1966
# Birthday Party for Dr. Helen Marjorie Sloan at age 80, March 17, 1990
# At the Crocodile Farm in Thailand
# My mother, Dr. Helen Marjorie Sloan, in 1988
# My mother, Dr. Marjorie Jacobson, in 1937

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Manhattan Surrogate's Court

Know about something you don't see here? Let us know at campaign05@gothamgazette.com

Election Results ...
General Election Results

Kristen Booth Glen
Primary Results

Kristen Booth Glen

Candidates...

The Incumbent:
There is no Incumbent posted for this race.

General Election Challenger(s):
Kristin Booth Glen

Primary Election Challenger(s):
Kristin Booth Glen
Eve Rachel Markewich

(Candidate Biographies below)

Feature Articles ...

Surrogate's Court And Why It Should Go

July 4, 2005

The removal of Brooklyn Surrogate's Court Judge Michael Feinberg does not end a system that allows judges, lawyers and politicians to loot money from widows and orphans.
Read article

Candidate Bios ...

The Incumbent:

There is no Incumbent posted for this race.

Challenger(s):

Kristin Booth Glen | Dem | WFP |
Kristin Booth Glen served as Dean of CUNY School of Law from 1995 until 2005. She was elected to the Civil Court of the City of New York in 1980, and in 1986 she was elected Justice of the New York Supreme Court. In 1992 she was appointed to the Appellate Term where she heard appeals from the Civil Court and the Criminal Court.

Eve Rachel Markewich | Dem |
Eve Rachel Markewich is a partner at Blank Rome LLP. From 1997 to 2005, she was a Democratic district leader for the 67th Assembly District.

Campaign Trail ...

Below are the latest Campaign Trail items for the Manhattan Surrogate's Court race. For the full Campaign Trail archive, go here

Amsterdam News Endorses Markewich

September 8, 2005
Ms. Markewich has been rated most highly qualified by the New York County Independent Judicial Screening Panel. Herself disabled, Ms. Markewich has written extensively on civil and corporate law as it pertains to minors and the disabled.
She is particularly interested in the legal problems of disabled persons, children, same sex couples and the elderly.
We believe, strongly, that she should be the Manhattan Surrogate. (Amsterdam News)

Two Candidates Fight for Judicial Seat

September 5, 2005
It's a litte-known race that will end up bestowing a great deal of power: Manhattan voters will elect a new Surrogate Court judge this year. The court has jurisdiction over wills and estates - and with 14-year terms, the two judges who oversee it wield significant pull over the fate of many heirs and many millions of dollars. The court also handles adoptions. In the Democratic primary on Sept. 13, lawyer Eve Rachel Markewich is opposed by former state Supreme Court Justice Kristin Booth Glen. (Daily News)

Daily News Endorses Glen For Manhattan Surrogate

September 4, 2005
Democratic primary voters in Brooklyn and Manhattan have a rare opportunity to elect surrogates, the judges who oversee the estates of the dead - a mother lode of patronage spoils. The Daily News endorses Margarita Lopez Torres in Brooklyn and Kristen Booth Glen in Manhattan because they appear most likely to remain above cronyism.
...In Manhattan, the decisive factor is also independence from the party. On that score, Glen, dean of the CUNY law school who has served on both the Civil and Supreme courts, tops Eve Rachel Markewich, a private estates lawyer. Until recently, Markewich was a Democratic district leader, and she is backed by party bosses.

Glen promises to bar from appointment all elected party leaders, district leaders, county committee members and club presidents. She should add judicial nominating convention delegates to the list, and, if victorious on Sept. 13, she and Lopez Torres must follow through on aggressive reforms.

Full Manhattan Surrogate's Court Campaign Trail Archive

Manhattan Surrogate's Court Campaign Trail in RSS format.