Battle of the Up & Comers

Last month Lawyers USA featured a number of Up & Coming Lawyers - folks with impressive, unique and otherwise notable legal careers who are less than a decade out of law school.

Today, two of those young guns went up against each other before the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in the case Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. The petitioner was represented by Jean-Claude Andre, while the government was represented by Kannon Shanmugam, assistant to the solicitor general.

Just because the attorneys are young doesn’t mean they don’t respect tradition. Mr. Shanmugam was dressed in coattails for oral argument, joining Clerk of the Court William K. Suter (who wears coattails every day) as the two formally dressed in the room.

Loss of a legend

Dc Dicta has just learned that a legal giant - the esteemed Harvard, Columbia and Boston University law professor Dr. Clark Byse - passed away earlier this month.

The news has a personal element for me because, like Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter, I had the pleasure of being a law school student of Prof. Byse. Byse’s spry mind, witty sense of humor (he was 83 when I was a 1L in 1995), and genuine caring about his students made Contracts class at Boston University School of Law a highlight of my time there.

The Boston Globe has a nice write up about Byse’s extraordinary life here, although curiously it leaves out the fact that Byse is widely believed to be the inspiration for the character Prof. Charles Kingsfield in the novel and film “The Paper Chase.”

The story does include one of my favorite Clark Byse facts: how getting a mention in the film “Quiz Show” led him to reconnect with an old sweetheart from 50 years before - and then marry her.