aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, August 28, 2006

Shocking and unconscionable

That’s how Kenneth R. Feinberg, the special master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, described the contingency fee collected by one of the lawyers. The propriety of the fee is now in the courts, and that’s the gist of the article on law.com.

Indeed the fee is highly questionable to those of us taxpayers not privy to the ways of the bar.  But buried down deep in the article (and highlighted by Ted Frank at Overlawyered) there’s this unfortunate turn of phrase:

Joseph P. Awad, the incoming president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and a partner in Garden City, N.Y.’s Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, was one of the lawyers who participated in TLC. He said the group was holding a dinner on the fifth anniversary of the [September 11] terrorist attacks to celebrate “the largest pro bono project in history.”

If I were Awad I just might sue.