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Sunday, October 08, 2006
Courts - More about Supreme Court practitioner Tom Goldstein
On June 1, 2004 the ILB quoted a story from Tony Mauro, including the following:
Five years ago [Thomas] Goldstein kicked over the ossified applecart of Supreme Court practice by creating a one-man practice devoted exclusively to high court litigation. He aggressively trolled for clients by scrutinizing circuit court conflicts, and undercut the big firms on fees. Eleven oral arguments and dozens of briefs later, Goldstein, 33, has earned the grudging respect of his elders and is billing more than $1 million a year -- still undercutting his top competitors, though not by as much.Goldstein also started the blog, SCOTUSblog.
The Record, billed "the independent newspaper at Harvard Law School", has this article about Goldstein recently, written by Jonathan Cohen. Here is some of what I found interesting:
The American Constitution Society hosted Thomas Goldstein at HLS this past Wednesday. Goldstein, the Head of Supreme Court Litigation for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld and a lecturer at HLS and Stanford Law School, spoke about his path to prominence, recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, and his predictions for the Court going forward.Goldstein's first piece of advice for the roomful of aspiring lawyers was that they can become involved in interesting projects by volunteering their time. Goldstein told how, by agreeing to work for free, he had landed an internship with Nina Totenberg, the legal affairs correspondent at National Public Radio. He returned to the same job for his 2L summer, and confessed that he "fell in love with the Supreme Court" during these internships. He explained how he later used this insight to build his Supreme Court practice - he would identify interesting cases and take them on a pro bono basis.
Goldstein also encouraged students to find a niche for themselves. He explained how he moved from being an unknown to being cited in the press as "Supreme Court commentator, Tom Goldstein." Rather than building a reputation as an expert and soliciting the press on the strength of that reputation, Goldstein began tabulating statistical data on Supreme Court Justices' voting patterns and sending that data to the press months before the information was otherwise available. When reporters cited to his data, they couldn't just list the source as "some guy named Tom," so they christened him "Supreme Court commentator, Tom Goldstein."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 8, 2006 08:40 PM
Posted to General Law Related