{"id":17890,"date":"2019-09-12T01:38:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T01:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17890"},"modified":"2019-09-25T04:50:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T04:50:49","slug":"weinstein-may-be-a-monster-but-the-lawyers-who-enabled-him-are-the-real-villains-in-metoo-takedown-she-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/weinstein-may-be-a-monster-but-the-lawyers-who-enabled-him-are-the-real-villains-in-metoo-takedown-she-said\/","title":{"rendered":"Weinstein may be a monster, but the lawyers who enabled him are the real villains in #MeToo takedown ‘She Said’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth C. Tippett<\/a>, University of Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the greater arc of the #MeToo movement<\/a>, lawyers have lurked in the shadows, unnamed scribes formalizing agreements meant to stay secret.<\/p>\n

But in \u201cShe Said<\/a>,\u201d the behind-the-scenes story of how Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey brought down Harvey Weinstein<\/a>, the lawyers finally come into view. And it\u2019s not a pretty picture.<\/p>\n

As a professor and employment lawyer<\/a> who has followed the #MeToo movement since Kantor and Twohey\u2019s award-winning<\/a> expose in 2017, I expected their book to relay the stories of the women who publicly accused Weinstein. Of course, there\u2019s plenty of that.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect \u2013 but perhaps should have \u2013 was how central lawyers would be to their story.<\/p>\n

Unrepentant and irredeemable<\/h2>\n

The book portrays Weinstein as a monster.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPenguin Press<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is a predator who traps female employees and actresses in an impossible maze where every path ends in unwanted touching, indecent exposure or assault. He is a beast who punches his brother in the face at the office as other executives watch impassively. He is a bully, looming over Kantor in the lobby of the Times building. He tells her he didn\u2019t do \u201cthe terrible things that women were accusing him of.\u201d Then he added, \u201cI\u2019m worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weinstein is unrepentant and irredeemable, which in a way limits his agency over his actions. Once a monster, always a monster.<\/p>\n

The true condemnation in Kantor and Twohey\u2019s book \u2013 if you can call it that, since they tell the story in the third person with some journalistic reserve \u2013 is leveled at the lawyers complicit in the cover-up. For they chose to help Weinstein instead of the women he victimized.<\/p>\n

Legal enablers<\/h2>\n

There is Lisa Bloom<\/a>, whom the book describes as \u201ca celebrity feminist lawyer and the daughter of famed women\u2019s rights attorney Gloria Allred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloom foolishly thinks she can lecture Weinstein into changing his ways. Instead, the book suggests that Weinstein has the upper hand, by cutting a deal to produce a miniseries based on her book, \u201cSuspicion Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is Weinstein\u2019s longtime lawyer, David Boies<\/a>, who was also entangled in business dealings with Weinstein. In 2002, Boies persuaded the New Yorker to scrap an article on Weinstein claiming the \u201cwomen were lying in order to milk Weinstein for money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lawyer David Boies represented Weinstein and entangled himself in business dealings with the mogul.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Bebeto Matthews<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then in 2017, Boies negotiated a secret deal with an Israeli investigation firm to \u201cstop publication\u201d of the Times story, in exchange for a US$300,000 bonus from Weinstein. However, Boies was also representing the Times in unrelated litigation, which promptly fired him when it learned of the conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

And there is the hapless Lanny Davis<\/a>, a lawyer turned crisis counselor. Davis prodded the journalists for information on their investigation, claiming it would help him \u201canswer your questions and make sure they\u2019re true.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was also an apologist for Weinstein, explaining that \u201cpowerful men of an older generation were changing their understanding of the meaning of the word consensual.\u201d But Davis would inadvertently provide a key piece of information to the journalists, admitting that Weinstein had entered into \u201ceight to 12\u201d legal settlements.<\/p>\n

Secret settlements<\/h2>\n

Kantor and Twohey do not spare plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers from scrutiny either.<\/p>\n

Most notably, they reference the secret settlements Gloria Allred<\/a> and her firm negotiated in explosive cases over the years \u2013 including one involving Weinstein. The book also implicates the many other unnamed lawyers who pushed their clients to accept secret settlements in the $100,000 range.<\/p>\n

While standing in his driveway, the unknowing husband of one Weinstein victim points to the modest house behind him, insisting, \u201cDo I look like a man whose wife got a settlement?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Attorney Gloria Allred leaves a hearing involving Weinstein in New York.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Richard Drew<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The morality of lawyers<\/h2>\n

The only lawyer spared from judgment is The New York Times\u2019 own in-house lawyer, David McCraw<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He responds to a blustery cease-and-desist letter from Weinstein with the assurance that \u201cany article we do will meet our customary standards for accuracy and fairness.\u201d Kantor and Twohey\u2019s article runs the next day.<\/p>\n

The book raises important questions about the extent to which the legal profession was complicit in concealing conduct like Weinstein\u2019s over the years. While the lawyers in the book are caricatures, their more banal counterparts \u2013 lawyers like me who once routinely inserted confidentiality provisions<\/a> into settlement agreements \u2013 are no less complicit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jodi Kantor, left, and Megan Twohey broke the Weinstein story, which eventually brought him to account.<\/span>
\n(Photo by Evan Agostini\/Invision\/AP<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike journalistic ethics, which is steeped in tradition and reinvigorated when applied, legal ethics rules are codified in state law<\/a>. As a result, lawyers need not agree upon, or even examine, the moral component of what they do.<\/p>\n

A lawyer\u2019s general duty of loyalty as applied to a bad client like Weinstein can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. You might use the David Boies strategy of plowing forward despite the facts, or try Lanny Davis\u2019 approach of limiting the fallout. Lisa Bloom\u2019s attempts to lecture her client can sometimes work, though it becomes a form of rationalization once it\u2019s clear your client won\u2019t change. The last option is to just fire your client, which other Weinstein lawyers might very well have done.<\/p>\n

Lost in the reflexive shuffle of legal moves is the broader question that Kantor and Twohey ask again and again: why \u201cno one had ever stopped this man.\u201d In the end it would be journalists, not lawyers, who would hold him to account.<\/p>\n

[ Like what you\u2019ve read? Want more?<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s daily newsletter<\/a>. ]\"The<\/p>\n

Elizabeth C. Tippett<\/a>, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth C. Tippett, University of Oregon In the greater arc of the #MeToo movement, lawyers have lurked in the shadows, unnamed scribes formalizing agreements meant to stay secret. But in \u201cShe Said,\u201d the behind-the-scenes story of how Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey brought down Harvey Weinstein, the lawyers finally come into view. And it\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":17886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[3473,5982,6923,5189,196,3349,6924,3194],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18022,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890\/revisions\/18022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}