Does your corporation need a new general counsel? Don’t get Human Resources involved in the search. Don’t even ask the CEO who he wants.
The best way to obtain a new top lawyer is to have an election. Let the shareholders vote.
The credentials of the candidates? Their grasp of law and regulation? Can the CEO stand to be in the same room with the winning candidate? Who cares? Democracy is refreshing. Let the people decide.
If the scenario seems peculiar, consider the method by which most states select their attorneys general. In most states, including Connecticut, the governor doesn’t have a say in the matter — nor does the state legislature. The states’ “top lawyer” (the duties vary, depending on the state) is chosen in most states by popular vote.
If you are an elected attorney general with a good sense of marketing, you are in charge of one of the happiest law firms in the country. Your ‘clients’ (the governor and various state agency heads) are powerless to control or dismiss you; you are relatively free to litigate up a storm, whether or not a ‘client’ has asked you for help. In many states, if you are forced to defend the state or an agency on an embarrassing issue, you can often hire pals from an outside law firm to do the dirty work. Also, of course, if you come upon a juicy civil action that could bring in big bucks, you can often hire out the chore to your trial lawyer pals, who will get a piece of the settlement action.
The intersection of law and politics is inevitable. When Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal menacingly growled at AT&T for layoffs planned in Connecticut, was he defending a grand legal principle, or was he playing nice with the Communications Workers of America union, in preparation for his U.S. Senate run?
It was Blumenthal who led the way in a weird, weak legal challenge to the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind federal education law — a legal action of little interest to anyone in the state, except for teachers’ unions and accountability-averse school administrators. It was Blumenthal who led the charge against Microsoft in an antitrust case that bordered on the irrelevant and immaterial. It’s all part of the fun.
To be sure, Blumenthal has been wildly popular for years, with his talent for making sexy a job that for decades was considered low-profile and sleepy. What remains murky is the proper role for a chief legal counsel.
Blumenthal’s war against ‘zone pricing’ of gasoline was silly, irrelevant stuff — more appropriate for a low-key legislative committee to snore its way through.
In Connecticut, as in many states, the creation of an ‘attorney general’ goes back decades — intended to curb the expense of farming out legal work from every little state bureaucracy. There are foot soldiers in the AG’s offices that do the nuts-and-bolts business of the people, but the top dog has few incentives to be a quiet, low-key legal counsel.
In Arizona, the governor and the attorney general can’t stand each other and the governor doesn’t want her chief lawyer defending the state’s immigration law. The governor wants counsel of her own choosing.
On the other hand, in Tennessee, the legislature is considering a change to direct election of the attorney general, who is currently appointed by the state Supreme Court. In Maine, the legislature appoints the attorney general. Most states go the general election route.
Newspapers are lucky. To pick a great columnist, the boss simply chooses someone handsome and wise.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
