Best Lawyer in America

The best lawyer in America in our opinion is David Boeis. For those of you who are old enough to remember the Recount saga of 2000's President Elections and Bush v. Gore would know the name. He is more famous however in the business world for his role on behalf of the US Department of Justice against Microsoft in the Microsoft anti-trust case.

Here is an excerpt from an interview from Wired about the Napster case in which he represented Napster.

The first issue is: Are Napster's users engaged in copyright infringement? If they are not, that's the end of the matter, because nobody alleges that Napster directly infringes any copyright. Napster's only alleged liability is for contributory or vicarious infringement. You cannot have contributory or vicarious infringement without having some underlying infringement. So when Napster's users engage in noncommercial sharing of music - noncommercial copying of music - is that activity copyright infringement?

Adam Liptak - the Journalist-Lawyer

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

For those of you who scour the pages of the New York Times may be familiar with Adam Liptak. His reporting on US Law and the US Supreme Court is extraordinary. I came across an insightful interview on Scotusblog.com with Mr. Liptak which made me google him to check his credentials. For example I had no idea he was a lawyer in addition to being a law journalist.  Apparently the Journalist Lawyer is now a new sub-field in this profession. More and more newspapers want the reporting on law to be done by professional lawyers like Mr. Liptak.

Yasser Latif Hamdani's interview with The Analyst World of Mumbai

What is your idea of Pakistan as lay man? And as a Member of the Bar and a Law Man?

YLH : I have tried but I cannot distinguish between my idea of Pakistan as a layman and as a member of the bar. As I understand it the idea of Pakistan arose out and as a result of the following:

• The inability of British Indians to evolve a common nationality and this itself has three factors:  a. The insecurity of Muslims – having taken to modern education and British rule much later than the Hindu Majority (a gap of 80 years almost b/w Ram Mohan Roy and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan) b. The unwillingness of the Hindu majority to meet the Muslims half way and allay their fears and c. the role of the British rulers i.e. making Hindu-Muslim settlement a sine qua non and a condition precedent for responsible government in British India.

Jinnah as a lawyer

From http://mylaw.net

This is a wonderful two part series by an Indian law network website on the life and career of Mahomed Ali Jinnah.
Part 1: "No man is more adroit in presenting his case"
Part 2: "A brilliant advocate, man of unimpeachable integrity"

Mohammad Ali Jinnah evokes strong responses in South Asia, and has been cast in a multitude of roles depending on which side of the political line he is viewed from - a master negotiator, a charismatic leader, a cunning politician, a secular liberal, and a conservative reactionary. Few, however, see him as a lawyer, his primary professional training that helped launch his career in public life and shaped both, his political career, and his ideological vision.

Lawyers of course, overwhelmingly dominate the galaxy of political leaders in colonial India. This was partly structural. Professional and middle classes have always played a significant role in republican movements. In British India, law, unlike medicine or engineering, was the only profession that could be practiced without being employed by the colonial government. Jinnah is unique in being amongst the handful of lawyers who became equally successful in both their fields.

Legal Minds of Pakistan

Book recommendation: Before Memory Fades - An Autobiography


By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Any legal scholar picking up jurisprudence in Pakistan would be under the impression that Pakistan and India never separated. The reliance Pakistani jurists, judges and lawyers place on Indian judgements and case law is phenomenal. Indian precedents are not just persuasive – as in the case of English judgements and some American ones – but are given the status of near-law. This is hardly surprising, of course, given that most of the laws in Pakistan and India predate independence and very few, if any, have been updated in Pakistan. What is definite, however, is that Indian jurists and lawyers are certainly far superior as a whole when it comes to expounding law.