Lady lawyer Elizabeth Warren made a reasonable income from lady-lawyering, shock

Anti-Kavanaugh protest outside the the United States Supreme Court

It would be stupid to assume the assy men of the media had learned any lessons from the 2016 election. They were a big part of But Her Emails, legitimizing the attacks on Hillary Clinton while largely giving Donald Trump a pass on everything. Something similar is happening in the Democratic primary, as Pete Buttigieg is trying to latch on to something But Her Emails-esque to attack Elizabeth Warren. Nevermind that it’s a deflection from whatever the hell Buttigieg was doing at McKinsey & Co for three years, something he can’t discuss because of an NDA. So, Elizabeth Warren tried to do a document dump on the media this weekend – she released 30 years of information about all of her corporate legal work. The headlines were all written by men who seemed shocked that a lady lawyer could make a nine-digit income… over thirty years. Lots of headlines about “Elizabeth Warren made nearly $2 million from corporate work BUT HER LAW DEGREE.” Weirdly, Fox News – ??? – did an accurate headline: “Elizabeth Warren reveals she made $1.9 million from private legal work over 3 decades.” Here’s the info:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) earned nearly $2 million working as a consultant for corporations and financial firms while she was a law professor at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and other law schools, according to records her campaign abruptly released Sunday evening. Warren’s consulting work often involved companies dealing with bankruptcy, which was her specialty as an academic. Her campaign had been asked repeatedly for the information and had declined to release it multiple times.

Her work for some of the companies doesn’t fit neatly with her current presidential campaign brand as a crusader against corporate interests. For instance, the documents released Sunday show that Warren made about $80,000 from work she did for creditors in the energy company Enron’s bankruptcy and $20,000 as a consultant for Dow Chemical, a company that was trying to limit the liability it faced from silicone breast implants that were made by a connected firm.

Earlier this year, Warren had released a list of about 50 cases that she worked on, but the descriptions of the work were at times misleading and the amount of income and dates for her work were not included. While the cases released by Warren’s campaign stretch over more than three decades, the figures disclosed Sunday show that nearly all of the money was made from cases filed after she got her job at Harvard in 1995. (Warren was elected to the Senate in 2012.)

The income includes about $212,000 for representing Travelers Indemnity Co. in 2009, and $190,000 for what her campaign described as representing a chain of department stores owned by PA Bergner & Co. in the mid-1990s. Warren’s campaign did not release compensation information for all of the cases, reporting in some instances — including a case involving First Commercial Bank — that “the campaign has no compensation records for this case.”

[From WaPo]

For whatever record, if she made $1.9 million over 30 years, that’s about $63K a year. Which is probably pretty low for an expert lawyer in her field. Even if the bulk of the earnings came from 1995 through 2012, that’s 17 years, so she was making around $100K a year through her legal consulting, all while holding down a full-time job at Harvard. I mean… all of this sounds perfectly reasonable for a lawyer and law professor? But, you know, she’s a woman. BUT SHE MADE MONEY AS A LADY LAWYER, BURN HER.

Senator Elizabeth Warren in attendance f...

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red.

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45 Responses to “Lady lawyer Elizabeth Warren made a reasonable income from lady-lawyering, shock”

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  1. Aims says:

    I say good for her. She works hard and should be paid for it.

    • Raina says:

      That’s less than Trump owed on just not paying his workers alone.
      That’s less than we paid for Trumps bankruptcies.
      At least we see her tax returns.
      What her amount says to me is that she is extraordinarily uncorrupted because most people in her position would have made 10× times more.

  2. Darla says:

    I totally agree, as far as all of this goes. However…Buttigieg pressured her to release her tax returns, and this ain’t that. I would really love it if as dems we could insist on the Hillary standard. She released 25 years of tax returns. Or maybe 30, I forget. Also, another caveat here, sorry, but Warren went at him first. She attacked. She attacked him over McKinsey and was all over tv demanding he release all of the info about his clients there. This was his counter attack. So…if you’re gonna hit, you gotta expect it back.

    Also, has anybody noticed Amy is rising the polls lately? What do we think about that? I kind of like her.

    • Sierra says:

      I love Amy, she was my second choice after Kamala.

      • Darla says:

        Yeah I may vote for her in the primary, if she’s still around by then. I also may not vote in the primary at all depending on who’s still in then. Of course I will vote in the general, whoever the nominee is. I may be very unhappy with the nominee, but I’ll zip it during the campaign and I’ll vote for them. I am not trying to tell others to do that though, especially WOC, and especially especially, black women. Just what I’m doing.

    • oui oKi says:

      Amy….dont hate her but prefer Warren Booker or Bernie

    • PPP says:

      I’m really starting to hate Buttigeig. He’s turning into a spoiler. He does not have his finger on the pulse of what this country needs like Warren and Bernie, and he seems incredibly selfish at this point for not dropping out. He has to know there’s no way he’ll win, but he’s staying for the long game for the sake of his career, which he doesn’t deserve as he only knows how to fail the black community and pander to neoliberalism and centrism. And the result makes Bernie or Warren less likely. If Biden gets it, we’ll get a baby step or two forward and it will all be destroyed by the next Republican and God help us if it’s worse than Bush or Trump. As an educator, his takes on public university can go straight into the trash. The reason I have to teach entitled Olivia Jades is because clever, motivated poor students can’t afford to go to school or fancy SAT prep classes, which have an outsize weight in admissions.

      • emmy says:

        He’s turning out to be smart but inexperienced and you can tell his team isn’t great. I guess they’re relying too much on that early enthusiasm instead of doing their jobs? If he wanted the Biden voters, this is not the way to get there.

        I work in a big law firm and my friend works at McKinsey. I BET he cannot talk about it but also, most people who are successful there are ruthless. Not people who are known for their compassion and decency. His saving grace might be that he decided to leave or was told to go. That’s a compliment in that company.

      • Darla says:

        Well, frankly neither warren or bernie have their fingers on the pulse of what I want. So i think this is really relative. And please don’t forget, warren came for pete, he only clapped back. I think we are forgetting that here.

  3. Lala11_7 says:

    I NEVER thought the actions of the DNC would make me turn totally COLD and turn away from the Presidential selection process…when politics has been the fire that has warmed my soul…since 1976…when I was 9 year old…

    But…here we are….Right now…I could care less who is at the top of the ticket…and I give all that glory to the DNC…who is is as inept and as stupid regarding the POTUS election process as the RNC is traitorous and evil…

    So do I care if Warren made $$$ as a lawyer? No I don’t…what I care about is that she supported and voted for a POTUS who denied $$$ to research AND the medical infrastructure so that thousands of people died of AIDS and millions more were affected by that horror….

    And I will deal with THAT score…at my voting booth

    • Darla says:

      Perez is awful, just a complete disaster. Perez needs to be replaced. I am so upset with that dude, and really, from day one when he allowed Bernie to take over way too much.. And it’s only gotten worse. A disaster. I want him gone.

      • adastraperaspera says:

        Totally agree. He is front-facing mega donors only and doing nothing to bring together the party. His management of the debates have been ridiculous–too many candidates up there. His twitter account looks like some out of touch geezer. And letting Bernie run as a Dem again… I have no words I can say in polite company about that.

    • Coji says:

      Jimmy Carter? I was in 4tg grade when I fell in love with him and politics. And, of course, the ERA.

    • Betsy says:

      I was also really disappointed to learn that she was once a Republican, but I have to give her credit for coming around to the correct side of things.

      • Who ARE These People? says:

        Republicans used to be a more moderate party, the party of fiscal responsibility — but that was a long time ago, when she was younger, too. She was not a Newt Gingrich-type Republican.

      • Baby Jane says:

        @WATP – Even Gingrich is moderate compared to the modern incarnation. He is on record bemoaning the war on drugs and criticizing its inherent inconsistencies (manifesting in the victimization of poor/minorities). Not that he’s a good dude, he isn’t, but when HE is making sense relative to his compatriots, shit STANKS.

      • Darla says:

        You gotta look at Reagan’s record, including on civil rights and the aids crisis, and decide if you can ride with someone who voted for him twice. That’s an individual choice. Especially for POC or LGBTQ.

    • Suze says:

      But she didn’t vote for Reagan, she voted for Carter.

  4. LadyLaw says:

    That really doesn’t seem like that much money for an experience lawyer with her resume at all. First year associates (I.e. brand spanking new attorneys) at law firms in major markets make $180-200k/ year. Many partners at large law firms make a year what she made over 20 years.

    In general if you are a lawyer in this country you are either making a lot of money and representing garbage corporations and bad people or doing good and not making top dollar. So doesn’t personally bother me but it truly is not consistent with her current image (although people can certainly change). Also if anyone likes crazy ex girlfriend there’s a hilarious music video “don’t be a lawyer” that basically says the same thing.

    But screw Pete Buttigieg. If any woman ran for the president with his “experience” she would be torn to shreds.

    • adastraperaspera says:

      My partner is a female attorney. Everything you are saying is spot on. Also, my feeling about PB is that he’s hiding the Mckinsey experience because it was just low level analyst stuff typical for most entry level associates. By hiding it he’s hoping we’ll think it was something super high-powered. But I’m sure it would instead underscore that he is unqualified to be an executive in any capacity, corporate or governmental. I don’t think being a mayor of a small city is usually a step to becoming a Fortune 500 CEO.

    • Kate says:

      Yeah when I first read this headline I thought she was making over $1m a year and thought that seemed perfectly reasonable if she was a partner.

      I play “don’t be a lawyer” for any young people who ask me about the job and are considering going to law school. That song is hilarious and just perfect. But I was warned by wiser people too and didn’t listen…

    • TQB says:

      i am a lady lawyer, and I’ve made well over a million dollars in the 15 years since I graduated – and I DON’T have laurels like “Harvard law prof” on my resume! This is a totally reasonable, perhaps even modest amount of fees to have collected for someone with her credentials over that span of time.

      Trust, I am NOT a rich lady, still paying off the loans. I’ve spent some years representing the garbage for big $$, some representing good folks for small $, and have finally settled on representing a mix of relatively alright people for a relatively OK salary.

  5. Livvers says:

    Isn’t it possible that the fact that Warren worked for corporate clients with questionable records (and maybe small contributions – I bet the lawyers actually leading those bankruptcies earned millions, $100,000 for a consulting job is not necessarily a lot of work) actually supports her personal narrative rather than undermine it? “Conservative-ish Oklahoma Republican lawyer sees how bankruptcy is easy for big companies, disadvantages families, turns into advocate for the little guy.”

  6. Livvers says:

    The smoking baguette?

    From the LA Times story: “In his memoir, Buttigieg hints at projects that included studying prices for a Canadian grocer”

    “The Competition Bureau of Canada alleged, in court documents released 31 January 2018, that seven Canadian bread companies committed indictable offences[1] in what Michael Enright later termed “the great Canadian bread price-fixing scandal”

    • Who ARE These People? says:

      Ha ha! Thanks. I’m one of the many Canadians who got some kind of discount coupon as a result of this price-fixing scheme.

  7. Rapunzel says:

    Dear Media morons,

    I just lowered my cholesterol levels back to a normal level after you force fed me butter emails. Do not try to serve me butter income.
    My health can’t take it.

    Thanks,
    Rapunzel

  8. savu says:

    I think they’re trying to point out she helped some of these companies do gross company things under the law. Which was her job and specialty: knowing the law and how to move within it to benefit. That’s what she’s constantly arguing, that these companies can get away with so much. She would know! Idk, I’m not bothered by any of it. Girl’s gotta eat, and after years of expert work, she wanted changes for the better.

  9. LP says:

    I feel a really personal connection to Elizabeth Warren’s story because it’s mine too: white midwestern lady is raised conservative, never engages with politics at all (Privilege), until the day she actually sees how the other half lives/gets educated on issues, then does a compete 180!

  10. Allergy says:

    Warren is amazing. She would be a great president.

    • lucy2 says:

      I think she would be too.
      I’d really love her to select Kamala as VP, but unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get an all female ticket. Unlike Finland!

  11. Betsy says:

    Pete hired this Butter Emails woman. https://mobile.twitter.com/jentaub/status/1203673185943719936

    EVERY thing I hear about this guy makes me like him less. A lot less.

  12. Louisa says:

    I lost all interest in the primary after Kamala dropped out. We’re going to end up with Biden and the general will be 2 old white men comparing “hand” sizes and threatening to beat each other up. And it makes me so angry when I think that we could have had a brilliant, accomplished woman ready to bring back some sanity and repair our country’s reputation.

    • Betsy says:

      I agree with you that Biden seems kind of like a foregone conclusion, but a part of me really thinks it will be Warren. What she does with that, I don’t know but I hope it’s amazing.

    • Darla says:

      I know right? I believe that once Kamala dropped out biden became the nominee. Maybe I will be proved wrong, but I doubt it. The reason being all of the front runners now are white, and out of them, only Biden can attract AA support, so…yeah I keep think about this general. I mean I’m totally voting for Biden, but wow. Are trump and biden going to get into a fistfight? I doubt it but only because I don’t believe trump is going to debate, at all. He’s a coward. He will slime biden’s son from the safety of the oval office. But I do actually think that if he takes the stage, and says the awful things he likes to say, like an actual old man fistfight could break out.

      I could be depressed, but you know, I made a vow that at my age, this could be my last really great decade, and I have vowed to make it the roaring 20’s for me! Just like a century ago. I’m not gonna let these old men bring me down too far.

  13. Other Renee says:

    I’m all for Warren getting the nom. I’m rather disgusted with Pete. Step aside, dude. I’ve been really disappointed with how the Dems have handled campaigning. They’ve been dragging each other through the mud. I naively thought they’d rise above the fray and show everyone that there is a better and more noble way to treat each other. I was wrong.

  14. 10KTurtle says:

    So I guess tomorrow we’ll be reading the article about how much money every other candidate made in their entire life?

  15. Minnie says:

    This has always seemed funny to me, and it shows how ignorant people are about the opposite side politics. I’ve heard right wing friends criticize left wing friends because they go on vacation, drive a car or have an iPhone; and I’ve heard left wing friends assume that the right wing ones have no interest in doing social work. Both are as ridiculous as caring about what a politician made legally and honestly during her private work years.

  16. wtf says:

    I would just like to point out that her work on the Enron case is completely consistent with her politics. She worked on the side of creditors in the Enron bankruptcy. The creditors were everyday people – employees, California energy customers, etc. Having someone like Warren on their side had to be amazing for them. Even if she had worked for the large, institutional creditors, that would still be in line with her politics because they were mostly pension funds and mutual funds. Those are people’s retirements.

    AND – I find this whole line of critique disgusting. She doesn’t have to take a vow of poverty to represent us well. In fact, it I find it even more admirable when people that have money advocate for wealthy people to pay their fair share. They are arguing against their own interests.