Isaac Laquedem

The Laquedem Plan to Improve Continuing Legal Education and Honor a Legal Leader

The Oregon State Bar requires active lawyers to take a certain amount of coursework, called "continuing legal education" or "CLE," to renew their licenses.  Members report their education every three years.  New members must take nine hours of courses on practical skills, including at least four hours on Oregon practice and procedure.  After their first reporting period, Oregon lawyers must take 45 hours of accredited CLE every three years, including at least five hours on ethics, one hour on mandatory reporting of child abuse and elder abuse, and one hour on mental health and substance abuse.  In alternate reporting periods, Oregon lawyers must also take at least three hours on programs accredited for "access to justice."  The Bar's rules define "Access to justice" education as activities that are "designed to educate attorneys to identify and eliminate from the legal profession, from the provision of legal services, and from the practice of law barriers to access to justice arising from biases against persons because of age, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender and gender identity or expression, geographic location, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, immigration status, and socioeconomic status."

Recent news stories have given Isaac the idea that the Oregon State Bar should require providers of CLE to meld practical skills with access to justice, resulting in the Laquedem Plan to Improve Continuing Legal Education and Honor a Legal Leader.  Educators could teach lawyers how to organize luxurious hunting trips, expensive vacations, and cruises on private yachts, and then how to invite judges to be their guests.  Other material would cover how to establish political organizations under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code to funnel unreported money to a judge's spouse.  And somewhere in the mix would be how to ship rare wine across state lines to judicial incumbents.

The name of this hybrid CLE credit would honor one of its most ardent practitioners.  I suggest calling it "Access to Justice Thomas."

Shemia Fagan's resignation: the lettuce wins again

The recent scandal that ended the political career of Oregon's soon-to-be-former secretary of state Shemia Fagan and her lucrative consulting contract with a financially struggling leader in the cannabis industry, La Mota, is notable for its celerity. On April 27, Willamette Week published Sophie Peel's story that broke the news that Secretary Fagan was receiving $10,000/month - 55% more than her state salary - from La Mota for providing then-undescribed consulting services.  On April 28 the rest of the Democratic establishment moved quickly to distance themselves from Ms. Fagan, exemplified by Governor Kotek's pithy response to a reporter's question on April 29: "I don't have outside employment.  I only have one job."  On May 2, only five days after the story broke, Ms. Fagan announced her resignation.

Five days is unusually fast for a public official's scandal to go from unveiling to unspooling.  Liz Truss served only 44 days as Britain's prime minister, but she did survive in office for six days after the Daily Star set up a webcam on a head of lettuce to see whether the lettuce or the prime minister would wilt first. [The lettuce won.]

The speed with which Shemia Fagan was expelled from the machine reminds Isaac of the famous scene in A Night At The Opera, in which Otis P. Driftwood (played by Groucho Marx) is welcomed into the offices of the New York Opera, promptly fired, and then kicked down four flights of stairs and thrown out the door.