You’ve probably heard, by now, of this Joseph Rakofsky kid. You know the one — the newly-licensed lawyer who took on a murder trial without any trial experience, who is alleged to have told his investigator to “trick” an eyewitness into denying having seen anything, and whose performance was so bad that the judge had to declare a mistrial. You know the one — the guy who, after causing that mistrial and getting reprimanded by the judge, went online and bragged about the mistrial like it was some kind of success. You know the one — the one who quickly became a laughingstock, as soon as the story got picked up by the ABA Journal, the Washington Post, and half the blawgosphere.
Well, you’d think he’d have wised up. You know, let it all blow over. Take the time to rebuild his reputation with hard work and diligence. Memories are short. Old news gets buried even on the seemingly permanent internet. It was already happening — it’s only been a month or so since the brouhaha, and he’d already dropped off the radar. It could have all been forgotten — even perhaps forgiven, if he’d manned up, admitted his error, and moved on.
But no.
Instead of doing the smart thing, this Rakofsky kid demonstrated once again some amazingly poor judgment, and filed a lawsuit. Against the ABA Journal, the Washington Post, and half the blawgosphere. In other words, everyone who covered or commented on his doings.
Brilliant.
So now, everyone who’s already demonstrated a willingness to write about his conduct, now has yet another thing to write about. And you’d better believe they’re gonna. We expect to be sipping our coffee in the morning and chuckling ruefully at responses by some of the numerous defendants. As they’re some of the most heavily-read blawgs out there, we expect that by this time tomorrow, the name “Rakofsky” will have attained the same tragic/comedic status as “Santorum.” Yet another shining example of the Streisand Effect. Well done.
And of course we’re nowhere to be seen on the complaint. Lucky us, we were on trial and not posting too much, and it blew over pretty fast. But now being on that complaint is going to be something of a badge of pride. And we’re not there. Dammit. Maybe he’ll amend his complaint to include us now, or maybe one of the defendants can do one of those… uh, civil procedure thingies… where you bring someone else into a case? Whatever.
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For those who want to read the complaint (and we can’t advise it — it’s so badly written it’s actually painful to read) you can find it on Scribd here, under the delightful title “Rakofsky v Internet.” Sure to become an instant classic, never to be forgotten.
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UPDATE: It seems there already is a badge of honor, compliments of Amy Derby. Link.
My dad was an old school newspaper man, who said, “Never get in an argument with a newspaper which buys ink by the ton.” It is still good advice, even if it needs to be modernized in this digital medium.
It’s a bummer when you are not in the prestigious clique of bloggers to get sued by this bumbling fool. But you can still sit back and enjoy the show. Although Turkewitz has given up with his blow-by-blow descriptins of the case since he is now counsel of record for many of the Defendants, I’m sure the information is widely available.
The sad thing is, thanks to people like this, any ounce of pride you may have ever had at Graduating Law school/passing the bar is nullified by the realization that this dolt was apparently able to do the same thing