More Dirt On Pa. Democrat Attorney General Kathleen Kane: A Damning Letter

12/7/2014

Heyl: Staff full of lawyers can't help Attorney General's Office?

By Eric Heyl

To: Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane

From: Heyl Consultants, LLC

Re: Staffing issues

Ms. Kane:

Lawyers shouldn't be so difficult to locate in your office.

They should be as plentiful as puppies at a pet store. They should be highly visible, racing to retrieve the latest legal brief you've tossed across the office and then eagerly awaiting a tasty biscuit as their reward.

That's what makes the revelation of your expensive habit of hiring outside counsel for your office so confounding.

Since taking office in January 2013, you've spent nearly $1.5 million on lawyers who don't directly work for you. What's that, something like 200 billable hours for most attorneys?

We realize you've had some recent distractions. It can't be easy dealing with a grand jury investigating possible illegal leaks by your office, or an office pornographic email exchange scandal that recently required you to discipline more than 60 staffers.

But your inability or unwillingness to monitor mounting outside attorney fees does not enhance your flagging reputation. In fact, it reinforces the growing notion that you're as competent at your job as Clairol once was at successfully marketing its Touch of Yogurt shampoo.

Yes, there really was such a product. To the surprise of no one but the executives who signed off on the shampoo, the time Touch of Yogurt spent jockeying for shelf space with the likes of Prell and Head & Shoulders was extremely brief.

We're digressing, we know.

Overreliance on outside attorneys is bad, and not just because it creates the perception that you're willingly wasting money as the state grapples with a potential $2 billion shortfall.

It's bad because successfully convincing the public of a pressing need to supplement a staff full of lawyers with additional lawyers is virtually impossible.

It's bad because it creates a public lack of confidence in your employees.

Think of the reaction if the Office of the Budget hired a number of outside accountants to fully determine the extent of the state's financial crisis. People instantly would howl, “You mean the budget office doesn't have an in-house accountant capable of fully staring down into the abyss?”

We recommend you immediately curb the retention of outside counsel. As an alternative, we suggest that next time the Attorney General's Office needs an attorney, you poke your head out of your office and shout down the hall, “Hey, Ed! Can you come here for a minute?”

It doesn't have to be Ed, of course. That was just an example. It can be Carl, or Mack, or even Stan (once he returns from his email-related unpaid suspension).

It could be any of the 180 attorneys you have on staff. Certainly, most of them can handle virtually any legal task you give them.

If they can't, we recommend immediately revisiting their presence on your payroll.

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