With all the secrecy surrounding the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, it is no surprise that lawyers representing detainees are seeing shadows - or at least worrying about the Government eavesdropping on their conversations with clients at the prison. Now the detainees' lawyers say the spectre of wiretapping means they cannot promise confidentiality to their non-Guantanamo clients either. These highly sensitive lawyers are also worried about their colleagues, with whom they share phone and computer networks.

Twenty-four Guantanamo lawyers sued the National Security Agency (NSA) and the US Department of Justice last year in federal court in Manhattan, after the Government largely rebuffed a Freedom of Information Act request for records of any surveillance of their communications. The plaintiffs include lawyers from Dorsey & Whitney, Holland & Hart and Schiff Hardin.

In May, in response to the Government's refusal to confirm or deny whether they are being monitored, the lawyers filed declarations detailing their concerns. The evidence they submitted was light on specifics. Lead plaintiff Thomas Wilner, a partner at Shearman & Sterling, wrote that US officials privately tipped him off about possible surveillance, but otherwise the lawyers reported no voices breaking into routine conversations, no use of details gleaned from private phone calls in Government cases - nothing.

But the lack of evidence has not slowed their suspicions. Department of Justice officials have confirmed that overseas communications with suspected terrorists and their affiliates, including between lawyers and their clients, are subject to warrantless wiretapping.

Paranoid or not, the lawyers say they just cannot take the uncertainty. "The Government's refusal to confirm or deny whether it has engaged in surveillance of my communications infringes on my ability to represent my clients and comply with my ethical obligations to them," writes Pepper Hamilton partner Charles Carpenter in his court declaration. The NSA calls the declarations "irrelevant and speculative."

With the Government refusing to put their worries to rest, many of the lawyers have come up with counter-measures. One partner at an international firm, who asked to remain anonymous, said his colleagues will contact foreign clients about sensitive matters. John Chandler, a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, says he had his office in Atlanta screened for wiretaps (he didn't find any).

For other Guantanamo lawyers, it is business as usual. Several plaintiffs say the possibility that the Government is listening has little practical effect on their regular dealings with clients. Many said their conversations are simply too dull to be of interest to anybody. "The fact is, I'm too boring," admits Carpenter.

By David Bario

Semi-final/final day 26th June 2008

9am

Beverley:We knew this would be a long day, whatever happened, as the semi-final and the final of this prestigious mooting competition were to be held on the same day. The semi-final was due to start at 10am at ESU’s London headquarters, Dartmouth House in Mayfair, while the final, to which unsuccessful semi-finalists were invited, was to be held at the Royal Courts of Justice at 6pm. This was to be followed by a reception at Essex Court Chambers at 8pm.

Still unable to quite believe we were in the semi-final, we - Daniel Berger, first-year LLB student and Beverley Cottrell, CPE student at the University of Hertfordshire – made our way to the beautiful listed building, one of the finest in Mayfair, in which the semi-final was to be held. Climbing the grand French marble staircase leading to the first floor, to the two drawing rooms where the semi-finals would be taking place simultaneously, passing the large bust of Sir Winston Churchill, one of the first Chairmen of the English Speaking Union, was a slightly surreal experience and I couldn’t quite believe that I was actually meant to be there.

For our semi-final, we were judged by Mr Bernard Eder QC and Mr Jern-Fei Ng.  We began our submissions, but it wasn’t long before our judges started firing pertinent questions at us. We addressed them as well as we could but did not feel we had acquitted ourselves particularly well. I was grilled to such an extent that I was unable even to start my second submission before seeing the time keeper raise his “time elapsed” sheet.

Daniel: Beverley and I had battled our way through four previous rounds of the ESU-Essex Court Chambers National Mooting Competition, to appear in the semi-finals at Dartmouth House in Green Park, London, the headquarters of the English Speaking Union, and were determined just to enjoy our day.

We certainly felt that we had a very strong case for our semi against University of Glasgow, and although full of confidence, felt that looking further on into the competition to potentially an evening final would, in some way, interfere with the thrill of competing in the semi-final.

The semi-final fixture commenced at 10am, eagerly watched by some 15 supporters from our University, including eight lecturers, and various others - presumably supporting Glasgow. The case we were to argue was a fictional one: Spicey Ltd v SAS Ltd, based on a claim for damages in both common law and equity.

Being a first-year undergraduate law student, this scenario had previously filled me with dread. After all, I had only studied the basics of contract law for a year and will wait for a further two years before attending my very first equity lecture! However, after hundreds of hours of reading, not only textbooks and cases, but also legal journal articles and academic analysis, I felt ready to answer pretty much anything the judges had to throw at me. Thankfully, having a partner like Beverley, with a cool head and a fastidious working philosophy, meant that I had never once ever had to worry whether she had put in enough studying time.

As lead counsel, I was to commence proceedings, which after a reasonable start (by my reckoning), seemed to culminate in a running verbal battle with the lead judge, Mr Bernard Eder QC. I was fairly concerned, and very grateful to sit down after my twenty minutes and allow Glasgow’s representatives to present their case, safe in the knowledge that I would have my five-minute right-to-reply to placate the judges.

After both of our two opponents had spoken, it was the turn of my partner Beverley to make her case. To my horror, it seemed that Mr Eder was subjecting her to a similar baptism of fire and she too was grateful for her seat at the end of her fifteen minutes.

11am

Beverley: We left the judges to their deliberations, retiring to the walnut-panelled Churchill Room, rather subdued.  Our supporters were trying to be positive but we did not hold out any hope. We were genuinely stunned to hear Mr Bernard Eder QC announce that by a narrow margin, the judges had decided to award the moot to the University of Hertfordshire.

City University had won the other semi-final, beating former winners the University of Bristol. On the toss of a coin, it was decided that each team would have to present the opposite side of the argument for the final. While we had put some time into preparing the opposite side, most of our energies had gone into our semi-final submissions and we felt ill-prepared.  Essex Court had kindly made a room available to each side for the afternoon, where we could finalise our preparations for the evening.  We tried to eat some of the delicious lunch provided for us by the ESU but were almost too nervous to eat. Our supporters, however, made up for our lack of appetite!

Daniel: Having had a ten-minute recess, the judges reconvened the court for the verdict. We had won! Perhaps something in the way that Beverley and I had stuck to our guns under heavy fire pleased the judges and we were informed that we would face City University in the final at the Royal Courts of Justice at 6pm. (City University having won their concurrently-run semi-final in the adjacent room by beating University of Bristol.)

After the coin-toss, we were to argue the other (respondents’) side of the case in the final, to that which we had argued in the semi. The same could be said of City, who had won their case as respondents, but would now be appellants.

After a five-hour break, in order to brush up our arguments at Essex Court Chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields (the sponsors of the competition), we took the short walk to the Royal Courts of Justice to be informed that, alongside Richard Millet QC and Dr Martin Lau of Essex Court, the final would be judged by the Right Honourable Lord Steyn. Oh dear. Lord Steyn had sat on the judging panel at the House of Lords in the case of Farley v Skinner [2001] – the main case I was about to use to support the first submission of my argument! I sincerely hoped that my analysis of the case was spot-on or we would be severely hampered.

6pm

Beverley: After a welcome by the ESU and Essex Court, the three judges came in and seated themselves at the bench, which seemed very far away.  Our colleagues, as counsel for the appellants, began the moot.  The performance of lead counsel was polished, confident and impressive.  I relaxed a little, thinking that it would be impossible for us to top that performance, that all I could do would be to acquit myself as well as possible and then happily accept the Scarman shield when it was all over.

The judges retired for a short time, before returning to deliver their verdicts on who had won the law. Lord Steyn, after congratulating us all, spoke briefly about advocacy in general, giving us some very pertinent advice and stressing above all the importance of politeness and good manners. As his Lordship started to announce the result, I heard him say Dan’s name – then the courtroom erupted into cheering and clapping, while Dan and I sat in stunned silence.  We had actually won!

Daniel: After a tense final, I felt that both teams had given a fairly good account of themselves. I, myself, and Beverley had received a much easier time of it from the judges, compared to the grilling we had both received in the semi, and Lord Steyn hadn’t rebutted anything I had recited from the Farley case.

After a fifteen-minute recess to allow the judges to consider their verdicts, my heart was in my mouth. I hoped for the best, but wasn’t sure if the lack of intervention from the judges signified that they were happy with our team’s performance, or dumbfounded by what they considered to be our lack of good legal reasoning!

Lord Steyn delivered two judgments. One on the law, and one on the mooting prowess of the teams. Winning the law certainly does not mean you have won the moot. In fact, a lot of the time, a successful mooting team will show flair and creativity in knowing the law is against them. However, in the case of our final, we had won both.

8pm

Beverley: After being photographed with the judges and the silver mace, we left the Royal Courts and walked, trance-like, back to Essex Court Chambers to enjoy the reception they had laid on.  We had worked very hard on all the moot problems throughout the competition, and knew we could not have tried harder than we did, but we had never in our wildest dreams imagined that we would emerge as winners. 

It had been a long day but it was undoubtedly one of the most exciting and satisfying days we had ever experienced.  We had been on a steep learning curve since joining the mooting team as complete novices at the University of Hertfordshire, the previous September.  Had we been told at that point that we would be the winners of the most prestigious mooting competition in the country nine months later we would have thought it a ridiculous suggestion. 

Thanks are due to all our supporters, staff and students, at the University of Hertfordshire Law School, to our competitors along the way, from whom we have learnt a huge amount, and of course to ESU and Essex Court for organising the competition and generously providing the substantial prize money.    

Daniel: The exhilaration of knowing we were the ESU-Essex Court Chambers National Mooting Champions for 2008, meant that the presentation ceremony, photographs, and in particular, shaking Lord Steyn’s hand passed in a whirlwind of excitement to be replayed in my mind numerous times once I was safely home, much, much later that night! The prizes given to us at the evening reception at Essex Court Chambers, included £1,000 prize money each, to both Beverley and myself, and the offer of a mini-pupillage each at Essex Court. The ceremonial silver mace (formerly known as The Observer Mace), was presented to us by Lord Steyn earlier on at the Royal Courts of Justice.

I was particularly happy that we had won the competition in front of our loyal group of supporters, who at this stage had grown considerably in numbers, once work commitments had released them for the evening final, and now included many senior members of the University faculty.

I now look forward to studying for the rest of my law degree with the knowledge that the skills I have picked up from my attendance at our regular Monday night mooting team meetings and the incredible experience I have garnered from competing on a national level will stand me in good stead for a future career at the Bar.

  Daniel Berger and Beverley Cottrell

But the recent story of Morgan is less glowing. Its partner headcount has dropped from 31 last year to 21 now. Overall headcount is down 24% in its flagship New York office and San Francisco and Washington DC branches.

"That's the wave of the future, where few, if any, IP boutiques are around," says John Gallagher, who left Morgan in late April to join Dickstein Shapiro.

General practice firms are hovering over Morgan like vultures circling a wounded antelope. Since last fall, Dickstein has taken four Morgan lawyers, and Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft has taken seven. Covington & Burling, Goodwin Procter and Crowell & Moring have also feasted on choice morsels.

A merger with such a general practice firm typically marks the end of an IP boutique these days. But Morgan has resisted a combination, largely to preserve its tight-knit culture and IP focus. "We constantly get offers," says senior partner James Gould. "We have thought about it, but we like what we are."

Gould admits, though, that that feeling was not shared by some partners who left. For example, Christopher Hughes, one of the firm's most important rainmakers, left for Cadwalader in August. Gould says that Hughes wanted Morgan to consider a merger.

At least one of the firm's clients probably would have preferred a merger as well. Gallagher says that clients' desire for 'one-stop shopping' encouraged his group to jump to Dickstein. That desire became clear when EI du Pont de Nemours and Company, which for years had turned to both Dickstein and Morgan for IP work, took the unusual step of being quoted in the press release announcing Gallagher's move.

Morgan pays competitively, Gould says, but when it comes to laterals, money is always an issue. Kenneth Sonnenfeld had been at Morgan for 16 years. But following what he calls an 'expensive' divorce in 2005, Sonnenfeld says he needed more financial stability than Morgan offered. He found it at King & Spalding, then got into a dispute with Morgan about the return of capital after he left (The case settled a month later for an undisclosed amount). "For a long time, Morgan was a great firm," Sonnenfeld says. "But things change."

Gould says the firm is interviewing several potential new laterals. "The numbers are down, but we are trying to bring them up again," he says. For his firm's sake, they'd better hurry.

"One of the best actors I'd ever seen," is how Michael Souveroff, a juror and a veteran of All My Children and Unsolved Mysteries, described the prosecutor. "When we got to the jury room, there were people who said, 'I don't like that defense attorney. He never looked at us. I don't think his client can be innocent.' "

The jury eventually convicted but Souveroff says the verdict was based on the facts, not a spell cast by the prosecutor.

A month ago, Souveroff was drawing from that experience as he stood in front of a group of lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, leading an acting workshop designed to make more effective advocates. The workshop was organised by Fordham University law professor James Cohen.

In the five-year-old programme, actors play witnesses in a corporate lawsuit - either a breach of contract or a shareholder dispute - while associates, usually second to fifth-years, question them in simulated trials and depositions. Afterward, the actors critique the young attorneys. Lawyers from Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and Ropes & Gray have also taken part.

"I had a lot of anxiety going into it, but it was a really positive experience," says Marisa Sarig, a Simpson Thacher associate. "They gave us little tips that could make a big difference in our performance."

Sarig was advised to speak more slowly and to vary the inflection in her voice - her nervousness had resulted in a rapid-fire monotone. Other attorneys were told to stand with equal weight on both feet, to not put their hands in their pockets and to make eye contact with the jury.

"We don't ask them to talk with an accent or walk around like pirates," says Souveroff.

But they are expected to perform. Sarig cross-examined Barbara McCrane, who has appeared on One Life To Live. McCrane played a tough, steamrolling executive.

"There was no intimidation factor with her," says Sarig. "If you asked a question the wrong way, she wouldn't let it slide."

Afterward, McCrane gave the attorneys feedback while remaining in character. This kind of feedback is hard for attorneys to get, says professor Cohen, who also handles criminal cases in New York's Southern District.

"As a profession, we don't get a lot of critique beyond the verdict," he says. "I try a lot of criminal cases and the jury usually votes guilty. If I took that as a complete comment on my performance, I would have gotten out of this business a long time ago."

Actors provide a level of realism that an assistant flipping through a case file can't offer. McCrane, for example, often adjusts her performance to the skill level of the associate.

"If a [very talented] attorney asks a question I perceive as slightly insulting, I'll stare the person down or say, 'Do you have credentials in this? Where did you get your MBA?' If someone is struggling with their skills, I'll go a little easier," she says.

Since the programme began, Cohen and his troop say they have worked with six East Coast firms, whose professional development departments found them through word-of-mouth and listservs (Cohen doesn't advertise). The cost varies with the length of the workshop and the number of instructors and actors but generally it starts at about $15,000 for a two-day workshop with one instructor and two actors.

Cohen has been holding simulated trial and deposition programs since the mid-1980s, with assistants or paralegals playing the witnesses. In 2000 and 2001, Shearman & Sterling and Paul Weiss started using actors instead, mostly because they are less expensive than paralegals. But Cohen quickly found that the attorneys responded well to the different perspective and vocabulary of the actor.

"The lawyers look at me as a law professor," says Cohen. "What do I know about breathing and hand gestures? But when an actor says it, they sit up and listen."

By Sarah Eckel. A version of this article first appeared in The American Lawyer.

The following report was written by Till Schöppe and Diana Luczak from SSQ’s German office and Nicola Morris from the UK branch. For part two of their report, click here.

What still needs to be done? Well, frankly quite a lot. There is the need to finish the clearing effort. The first house needs to be finished (estimated by the summer). Two more houses are also supposed to follow. There is the need to build a wall around the property - not purely for security reasons but also to prevent the neighbours roaming through the property and eventually to keep the planned cows and goats from leaving the property.

Outlook
In our opinion, SKI makes a big difference! Not to the world, not to Tanzania and not even to Dar es Salaam, but makes a significant difference for 20+ children. Thanks to the efforts and work of Daniel, his helpers and the donors, these 20 children and others that will be part of the SKI family in Tanzania truly have a future and a chance to make a difference to their city and country.

It is a slow process but a very worthwhile cause! We saw the look in the children’s eyes. They are very grateful for everything. Thanks to Daniel, these orphans are very privileged. They have food, shelter, medical supplies, education and a fair chance in life.

SKI will never be a big organisation with a huge administrative overhead. Nevertheless, this organisation gets things done on a small but realistic scale showing a lot of care and sincerity for what it stands for.

The following report was written by Till Schöppe and Diana Luczak from SSQ’s German office and Nicola Morris from the UK branch. For part one of their report, click here.

SKI currently occupies two buildings in different parts of Dar es Salaam. Both are rented and this is part of the motivation for Daniel to build his own orphanages on one site. It is expensive renting the housing and the landlords have the ability to end the tenancy at short notice. The accommodation is much better than we had imagined. The buildings are clean and surrounded by high walls. The floors are concrete and the children share bunk beds. The 'bathroom' has a sunken toilet and shower head. It is extremely basic. There is a 'house mama' (and in one of the houses, her husband) that cooks and provides pastoral care and a western volunteer that acts as Daniel’s 'eyes' for him when he is not there.

Daniel has many contacts/networks in Tanzania and he has quite strict criteria for selecting children. The children do not have any immediate living family and do not have HIV. When they arrive they go through an intensive process of de-worming, antibiotic/yellow fever treatment to ensure they have no bugs.

Great importance is placed on education. They know that their only way out in life is through education and the children are all extremely well behaved. Daniel explained to us that in many ways they are privileged as they have three meals per day, have a bed to sleep in and clean water. They attend normal schools but apparently do get teased about being orphans. The children are also disciplined. The children’s days are long and very structured. They all speak English competently. They understand what Daniel does for them and call him “papa” despite the fact he is not there a lot. They are very religious and attend church every week. They all partake in house chores.

SKI’s work is impressive because it is a relatively small organization. It is focused on a small number of children, which means that the orphanages seem more like houses than a big, faceless hospital building. Daniel is an IT consultant, which means that the SKI project has developed out of a desire to help these children, not to make himself wealthy. All money is given back to the children and Daniel spends a lot of his own savings on the children.

The other positive of this is that he has flexibility in terms of how the money is spent. For example, in one of the houses there is no older male presence so Daniel has entrusted 'man of the house' responsibilities to a boy named Joshua. He recently gave Joshua his old mobile phone and provides pocket money as a sign of responsibility.

This is really stage one for Daniel and he is relaxed about what will happen as the children grow up and the first ones attend university. It is thought of much more as a family than an orphanage and Daniel wants them to feel that they can always come “home”.

The new compound
SKI has been saving money for a long time to buy its own piece of property near Mwandege, south of Dar es Salaam. The new plot is not far from good schools and the Multipurpose Education Center (MEC) that SKI has built with its local co-operation partner, Youth With A Mission, the owner of a more than 5 km² large development area on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. The MEC is a training and production centre with capacity for training approximately 130 orphans in Tanzania until 2010.

Why own land? Well, for a start there is the question of security. Not only for the children (they are well protected now as well) but with regard to being dependent on the goodwill of the landlord (contracts may not always be easily enforced in Africa). Furthermore, it seems a waste of money and time to keep developing houses that do not belong to the organisation.

What has been done with the new property so far? Almost 80% of the new property has been cleared of bush grass, weeds and other non-required vegetation. One could now ask why only 80% and how long can it possibly take to clear the land? This is the red line that goes through this report. Lack of money and machinery is one thing. The work is being carried out by one person who is not only the 'gardener' but also the guard of the property. He gets paid and earns €30 (£24) a month. That equals 59,537.9 Tanzanian Shillings. A decent wage. (In comparison, the ferry crossing from Dar es Salaam across the bay to avoid a painful hour-and-a-half car ride, or an even longer ride on the Dala Dala's, costs 0.100 Tanzannia Schillings).

The first house is almost completed as you can see on the pictures. Work goes slowly in Africa and can only go forward when there is enough money.

The SSQ contribution
With SSQ’s contribution and a little top-up from other donations (83% SSQ and 17% others), the water supply and septic system for the new property and the neighbours has been secured for years. Most of the work can’t be seen from the outside but is in hole 76m deep. This is how far you have to go down to get drinking water.

On top of that well is an electrical pump that, when running, fills up a 5,000-litre water tank that rests on a solid-steel construction 5 metres off the ground. It sits up high so the velocity of the fall forces the water through pipes that are buried in the ground to the various spots on the property.

Next to the tank, a little house made out of stone and concrete has been built to host and guard the generator, which is needed to get power to the pump sitting on top of the well. This house is used as a storage hut and the sleeping place for the property’s guard.

Finally, next to the generator house a trickle pool or 'soakaway' has been built. For those who are not aware of the importance of this, a little explanation: some method of washwater and excrement disposal is important wherever water is used inside or near a dwelling for bathing, washing, going to the toilet or cooking. Simple disposal methods confine washwater to a sump, pit or trench and allow it to soak safely into the ground. This reduces the chance of contaminating water supplies and prevents mosquitoes from breeding by eliminating surface pools.

All of these methods are inexpensive, easy to build and can be made from locally available materials. The pit-type is a hole 5m deep dug in permeable soil, lined with concrete blocks and covered with a concrete and wood lid to keep out flies and mosquitoes and to prevent children from falling in.

All this will secure a complete water supply and takes care of human waste for years. Once the wall has been built around the property, a little water tap will be placed on the outside for neighbours to get fresh water. SKI has always believed that a friendly relationship with neighbours is the best protection for the children.

Much of what I have read and heard focuses on the size of the bill. I am not sure enough is said about the value legal services bring to organisations. I think it’s time to switch the emphasis from the bill’s narrative to the value provided.

I will take a simplistic view but it goes something like this. Law firms sell time and legal skills. From the perspective of in-house counsel, we buy legal outcomes. There is a huge difference between process and end result. Until we start talking the same language, I see that this debate about fees is going to remain and its intensity will only increase. This is where the hourly rate is limited, because the hourly rate is process and it implies that it operates independent of outcome.

How do we reconcile process and outcome? By talking, understanding and creating value. As in-house counsel become ever smarter buyers, law firms must now tackle the challenge of clearly articulating the value their services bring. It’s good to talk about getting closer to a client’s business, to offer a menu of billing practices and structures and to provide value-add activities, such as secondees and training. This makes a lot of sense and does represent best practice, if done in a bespoke and well thought-through way.

But, the step-change that is needed is to be able to articulate value contribution to an organisation’s activities. Create a culture where you can measure and articulate it and a law firm has its USP. For in-house counsel, the same allows us to operate at the heart of the business and be accepted as helping to drive the business forward.

There is no easy solution to the value challenge. There must, however, be a vision for where we need to get to. In-house and private practice should challenge ourselves to really understand what creating value means. Meeting this challenge will be a hallmark of whether we can respond to change.

The project involved the development of a reliable water supply to an orphanage through the installation of a pump, piping, generator and water tanks. In addition to making a donation towards development costs, three members of staff from SSQ’s London and Frankfurt offices travelled to Tanzania in April to work on the project.

The following report was written by Till Schöppe and Diana Luczak from SSQ’s German office and Nicola Morris from the UK branch.

Karibu is Kisuaheli and means 'welcome'!

After a nine-hour flight from Heathrow we landed in Tanzania at 7am, having seen a beautiful sunrise when flying over Kilimanjaro.

When you think of Africa, you think of desert, heat and drought. In the plane we had already noticed that this view of Africa is (partly) wrong. From the plane we saw rich green plains with a lot of water.

During the first 24 hours of our stay it was continuously raining heavily - which is typical for the middle of the rainy season - and we wondered why we were supporting the construction of a well. However, the other half of the year is indeed hot and dry and water is extremely limited, so there is an urgent need for a reliable supply of clean water.

Tanzania (officially the United Republic of Tanzania) is a country in east Africa and one of the poorest countries in the world. The largest city is Dar es Salaam. It is bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north; Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. To the east it borders the Indian Ocean and the island of Zanzibar.

Tanzania has dozens of beautiful national parks, like the world famous Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which generate income with a large tourism sector that plays a vital part in the economy. Besides tourism, the economy is mostly based on agriculture.

Life expectancy at birth is around 50 years. As in many other African countries, there is an excess mortality due to AIDS, which results in a lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and higher death rates. Approximately 9% of the adult population - that's 1.2 million people - are living with HIV or AIDS.

According to a study conducted by UNICEF, half of all Tanzanian children are malnourished. The most common illnesses are malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory diseases. Only 55% of the population has access to free medical care. More than half of the population has no reliable access to potable water.

Streetkids International (SKI) is a small children’s help organisation which is a registered non-profit association headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. It was founded in 1999 by Daniel Preuß, a 43-year-old German who wanted to share his success as an IT manager with the underprivileged and wanted to give something back to community.

SKI, which is active across cultural boundaries and is politically independent, relies on financial contributions from companies and individuals. The members of SKI receive no compensation from the association. The administrative costs are less than 10%.

SKI seeks to improve the living conditions of orphans in Tanzania through altruistic, charitable means and helps them to lead normal lives.

The association’s primary purpose is to build and to provide financial support for children’s homes in Tanzania, to operate orphanages and to provide homes for socially disadvantaged children. SKI accepts orphans exclusively in these homes. The target is to support children and young people until they are independent. They want to help people to help themselves in the long run and support their autonomy. The children receive a primary education to get them off to a good start in their professional lives.

The next post will look at SKI's work in Tanzania to date.

The memo was signed by former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on 2 December, 2002. It was written by William "Jim" Haynes II, the former general counsel of the US Department of Defense. Haynes released the memo in 2004.

According to Sands, Haynes has said in his public statements that the push for extreme interrogation procedures came from low-level military officers at Guantánamo. In particular, Haynes has maintained that the request to use the aggressive techniques came from Major General Mike Dunlavey, a judge and Army reserve officer who was then in charge of the interrogation unit at Guantánamo. For legal support, Haynes has said that he relied on an opinion written by Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, the military lawyer assigned to Dunlavey's unit.

Sands doesn't buy this bottom-up narrative. Instead, he claims that senior Government officials in Washington DC were the ones who wanted interrogators to get tougher. But when Guantánamo began to hit the headlines, Sands says that the people at the top tried to put the blame on the people at the bottom.

The following is an edited version of Sands's conversation with AmericanLawyer.com. The first part of the interview appears here.

American Lawyer: What do you think John Le Carré saw in your book?

Phillipe Sands: He thinks it's a great thriller. He sent me a lengthy handwritten note - said he was gripped by it, couldn't put it down, read it all the way through cover to cover.

AL: You make two key claims in Torture Team. One is that top government lawyers signed off on something they shouldn't have. The other is that they tried to pass the buck.

PS: Yes. To put it another way, it's a book about a crime and a cover-up. The crime is the authorisation of interrogation techniques that violate international laws against torture. And the cover-up is the attempt to pass the buck.

AL: You repeatedly refer to a 25 September, 2002, visit to Guantánamo by David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, John Rizzo and Jim Haynes. It seems that no-one realised the significance of the lawyers' trip until now.

[Note: Addington was then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, Gonzales was counsel to President George Bush, Rizzo was deputy general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency and Haynes was the Pentagon's general counsel.]

PS: That's absolutely right. And I hadn't fully appreciated the significance of that trip when it was first mentioned to me. I was alerted to the trip by Mike Dunlavey and Diane Beaver, who were at Guantánamo at the time. They both gave pretty consistent accounts of what happened. The visitors were led by David Addington and they discussed a range of issues. In particular, they wanted to know what the Guantánamo interrogators were doing to get information out of Mohammed al-Qahtani [the alleged "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 plot].

I've put myself in Diane Beaver's position and Mike Dunlavey's position and it is pretty scary. Some of the most powerful lawyers in the US Government descend on Guantánamo. These are busy men. Why are they coming down together? Even if nothing was said, certain signals were sent: "We're keeping an eye out on you. This is an important issue to us."

The significance of this trip is that, according to the administration's narrative, there's no connection between the memo written by Yoo and Bybee on 1 August, 2002, and the memo that Jim Haynes wrote for Donald Rumsfeld four months later.

[Note: The Yoo/Bybee opinion, which was later rescinded by the Justice Department, became known as the "torture memo" after it was publicly released. It said that the only interrogation prodecures which were illegal were those that caused pain equivalent to organ failure or death. The Justice Department withdrew the opinion in 2004.]

AL: I want to ask one thing. The 1 August memo was supposed to cover interrogations by the CIA, not by military officials--

PS: It doesn't say that.

AL: That's always been my understanding.

PS: I know - because they've spun that understanding, because the narrative has always been that the initiative for the military interrogation procedures came from the bottom up. But if you read the memo, it's not limited to the CIA.

And the crucial issue is what knowledge Jim Haynes would have had of the 1 August memo. That memo is addressed to Alberto Gonzales. It was reportedly influenced by the views of David Addington. A second memo written by Yoo and Bybee on 1 August, 2002, covered CIA interrogation techniques and was addressed to John Rizzo. So when the lawyers made their trip down to Guantánamo in September 2002, Rizzo had his memo. Gonzales had his memo. Addington was apparently involved with both. Are we honestly to believe that Jim Haynes was the only one in that group who didn't know anything about those two memos?

Once I made that connection, everything else fell into place. The opinion that Diane Beaver wrote for Jim Haynes was irrelevant. It didn't matter what she said because a memo from the Justice Department is binding on all of the US Government. So why did Haynes bother getting the memo from Diane Beaver? He got a memo from Diane Beaver because it was convenient to pass the buck.

[Note: Sands says that he conducted two extensive interviews with Haynes for his book but that Haynes declined to comment on the record.]

AL: You've said that you were in New York on 9/11.

PS: I was teaching at NYU. My class started at 8:40 in the morning. My wife had gone back to London the previous day with our two older children and left me with our youngest kid, who was one. I dropped her off with the nanny in Washington Square at 8:30 and went to teach. Normally I take a break in class. But that day I didn't and when we came out of class at 10:30, it was complete mayhem.

AL: You were in a bubble on 9/11?

PS: We were in a bubble on 9/11. It was weird, really weird. And what also happened was that the first plane had flown straight down the island and so Ruth, our nanny, fainted.

AL: Your nanny saw the first plane crash?

PS: Yes. She collapsed, she was so shocked. Our little girl wandered off and some NYU students found her. I've been attacked in Britain for being too sympathetic to some of the people in my book. But I recognise what happened in this country. I understand that an attack like that has a profound effect on a country and a country is entitled to be cut some slack in dealing with an issue like that. It has meant that there is less of a hard edge to this book than there otherwise would be because I myself lived through the trauma of that day.

But that doesn't excuse blaming others for what happened. That really got me. If the guys at the top had said to me, "Those were the circumstances then. We did what we thought was right. With the benefit of hindsight, we realise that we fell into error and we made a mistake. We take responsibility for that, now let's move on and get it right" - there wouldn't be a book here. But they're not willing to do that.

Since the publication of her memoirs Speaking For Myself, it has not been possible to pick up a newspaper without seeing a picture of Cherie Blair or read a story about her greed. Last week we had The Evening Standard putting the boot in to Cherie in her guise as Cherie Booth QC - or rather, we had retired judge Gerald Butler QC and an anonymous shadowy figure putting the boot in.

THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION
'Judge Cherie must resign over diaries' screamed the headline. Cherie Booth QC is a recorder. She is a member of Matrix Chambers in London.

The Evening Standard puts the case for the prosecution and puts former Judge Gerald Butler on the witness stand first:

'Gerald Butler QC, who was the senior judge at Southwark Crown Court for 13 years, said: "What she has done is not appropriate for somebody who sits as a recorder. I don't think she should continue to sit as a recorder. If she wants to tread this path of making money by ourtrageous comments that is up to her, but I don't think this is a job for a judge. It shows a complete lack of any kind of decency. It is the kind of conduct which demeans the legal profession. It is altogether disgraceful but nothing less than I would expect from her. I would have thought there is no chance of her becoming a senior judge."'

Leaving aside the legal profession's standing in the eyes of the public for making vast piles of money, the Standard article did not reveal what was in Butler's mind in relation to "what she has done" so we are none the wiser, in relation to the 'it' - in terms of (a) 'It shows a complete lack of decency' and (b) 'It... is altogether disgraceful'.

One can only surmise that 'it' is in relation to her memoirs, which may or may not have been read in full by Butler. This is by no means clear from the context in the article. I'm just an 'ever so humble' reader and have perhaps misread it, misconstrued the intent? I accept, given I have no desire to aspire to papal office, that I am fallible.

Upon reflection, I have come to the view that many people, faced with the prospect of making millions in the latter part of their careers through biography and other press writing, may well find the attractions of a judicial appointment unappealing. It is fortunate, for the future of our legal system that (a) there cannot be many men and women in a position to write memoirs after being the wife/husband/'consort' of a prime minister and able to profit by writing memoirs and (b) be in the frame for an appointment as a 'senior' judge or otherwise.

A view (unofficial?) from the Bar Council: the Standard then calls John Cooper, a senior criminal barrister who sits on the Bar Council. It reports that Cooper did not want to comment on the claims against Mrs Blair but added: "One of the important factors in being a judge is being able to exercise judgement and part of that judgement is being trusted with confidential material. One has to be very careful, in my view, about what one exposes to the public gaze."

(Indeed, after all that trouble last year about a judge - who was acquitted - being brought to account for exposing matters to the public gaze - it is imperative that nothing inappropriate should be so exposed...)

There follows a statement that no High Court judge has published memoirs before retiring and another statement "the most important thing about judges is they must prove to be people who can exercise judgement."

(As a mere teacher of laws, part-time commentator and, a recent activity, reviewer of restaurants, I could not agree more with this aspirational statement. It has, however, been my experience, reading judgments over the past 30 years, that judgement, judgments, justice and common sense are not always in bed together - if you forgive this rather 21st century metaphor.)

Although the Standard is careful to note that Cooper was not prepared to comment on Mrs Blair, the fact is this statement was printed in an article pillorying her in the capacity of Cherie Booth QC.

The Standard expresses the view that judges can be removed by the Lord Chief Justice "if their conduct is seen to be putting a the reputation of the judiciary at risk". Constitutional lawyers may be able to shed some light on the technical accuracy of this last statement. I don't happen to have the latest edition of Halsbury to hand... althought Halsbury's Laws is never far from my fondest thoughts.

The third witness for the prosecution is a shadowy, unnamed figure who is, however, a "senior lawyer and Opposition politician".

The shadowy figure entertains the baying crowd in the pit by asserting that he did not believe Mrs Blair should resign as a judge - unless the book contained "revelations about the judiciary". This, of course, predicates that the shadowy figure has not, in fact, read Mrs Blair's book. I gather the book is actually available to the public on Friday, 16 May.

However, as the baying crowd fell silent - that awful silence where the crowd may turn at any moment against the speaker - the source continues: "There was a stage when she was thought of as a future High Court judge but in terms of character I think she blew her chances a long time ago. This book is an act of political revenge. It has nothing to do with her work as a barrister or recorder."

Maybe Shadowy figure has read the book after all. Neither he nor the Standard appear to be absolutely sure given the statements made extracted above.

THE CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
A spokesman for the Bar Standards Board, which regulates barristers' conduct, said: "This issue has not been raised with us."

The Standard did, to be fair, report: "A source at the Bar Council said that while Mr Blair was Prime Minister, complaints about her had been received on a regular basis but were all groundless, and no disciplinary case was ever brought against her."

JUDGMENT
Informed judgment may well follow. But for the present at least, until the press finds another fish bleeding in the water, it is open season on Mrs Blair. This may well be fair given her political apostasy, her apparent greed, her behaviour in the past - but it hardly seems fair for her reputation as a lawyer to be impugned by a leading metropolitan newspaper in this way and, frankly, unless Butler - however good a judge he was - has read the book, is prepared to take the matter up with the Bar Standards Board and is able to support his statements as reported by the Standard, he may have been better served in his retirement not raising this in quite so public a way.

However, I also take the view that Cherie - wife of Tony Blair and now writer - can hardly complain about press attention. She has brought that on herself by her past escapades and by publishing her memoirs - indeed, rushing them out to add to the pressure on the beleaguered current tenant of Number 10, Gordon Brown.

I declare at once that I have not read Mrs Blair's biography. I shall borrow Sir Maurice Bowra's aphorism, which I reel out at such times: "I shall lose no time at all in doing so."

The author also blogs as Charon QC

Sands, an English lawyer who has done some work on behalf of UK detainees at Guantánamo Bay, makes his case in his just-published book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. The memo in question, which authorised a range of aggressive interrogation techniques, was signed by the former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on 2 December, 2002. It was retracted two months later.

William Haynes, then-general counsel of the Defense department, authored the memo. According to Sands, four other Government lawyers played a key role in its development: Douglas Feith, then an undersecretary of Defense; Jay Bybee and John Yoo, former Justice officials who co-authored a controversial August 2002 opinion on interrogation procedures; and David Addington, then-counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Sands takes violations of international law seriously - the field is his specialty both as a lawyer and as an academic. A founding member of Matrix Chambers, one of London's best-known barristers chambers, he also taught at New York University School of Law for 12 years. He visited the US last week to talk about Torture Team to several audiences - the most prominent being the House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating the Government's interrogation policy.

Sands also found time to talk to AmericanLawyer.com. The following is an edited version of their conversation.

American Lawyer: This book's focus is very narrow - it's literally just about a single memo.

Philipe Sands: A single, one-page memo that authorises 15 techniques of interrogation and leaves open the possibility of using three others, including waterboarding. I traced back every single person who'd been involved in the decision-making process. And I interviewed, face to face, as many of them as I could, to get the story of where that memo had emanated from.

AL: Is there any one individual in particular you think bears the most responsibility?

PS: The person who comes out as the leader is David Addington. I've got a lot of people talking about his role and his fingerprints are all over this. But Haynes was most directly involved. It was he who crafted the memorandum that was put in front of Rumsfeld.

AL: You write that these interrogation procedures were used primarily on Mohammed al-Qahtani and a second detainee at Guantánamo.

(Note: The Government claims that al-Qahtani is the '20th hijacker' and one of the masterminds of the 9-11 attacks. Al-Qahtani, who has been held at Guantánamo for more than six years, was charged with murder and war crimes in February. Those charges were dismissed late last week: a report appears in The Am Law Daily.)

PS: I don't think they were used on anyone else - although they are the same techniques that have been used by the CIA in extraordinary rendition proceedings and they have also been used at Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan. But I haven't focused on that. I don't believe there has been systematic torture at Guantánamo. I think Guantánamo is not a good place; I think Guantánamo is lawless in many respects; but I don't think there has been systematic torture.

AL: Let's pull back for a moment, for people who may not be keeping up with the torture debate. Why did the administration's lawyers have to weigh in on the interrogation policy in the first place?

PS: Because US law and international law define torture reasonably clearly and establish an unambiguous prohibition against torture from which there is no exception, under any circumstance. Faced with this, the Bush administration recognised that if it was to act lawfully, it had to find a way to get around those definitions and those constraints. The lawyers were invoked to provide that necessary service.

AL: Do lawyers have the capability to define torture?

PS: Not on their own. I don't think a lawyer can determine whether someone has been tortured without technical assistance. I found a clinical psychiatrist who's probably one of the leading experts in the UK on torture - Abigail Seltzer, who's treated torture victims from Iran and Egypt. I gave her the interrogation log for al-Qahtani and I asked her, "Does this match torture?"

(Note: The log describes the response of al-Qahtani to the interrogation procedures - including extreme sleep deprivation, aggravating noise and humiliation techniques- that were used on him during a 51-day period in late 2002 and early 2003.)

She was very careful in what she said. In her view, there isn't a medical definition of torture. Ultimately, it's a legal definition. She was looking for "indicators of distress" to determine whether al-Qahtani had suffered severe mental pain and suffering. And she concluded that he had. From a medical perspective, there were indicators of distress that would allow the conclusion to be made by another person - a lawyer or a judge - that he had been tortured.

AL: A lot of sincere people disagree about what constitutes torture. Some will allow procedures that others find abhorrent. Is there an objective way to determine what crosses the line and what doesn't?

PS: There's no more an objective way of making that determination than other determinations that judges and lawyers have to make every day: is a defendant insane? Is he mentally fit to stand trial? We have to make judgement-calls every day on these kinds of issues and this issue is no different.

AL: So you think there's a good case to be made that the lawyers who contributed to the Haynes memo violated international laws against torture?

PS: There's definitely a good case to be made and if the US doesn't sort this out through some appropriate factual inquiry or other means, that will signficantly increase the likelihood of investigation and possible prosecution abroad. I fall short of issuing a call for any sort of prosecution. I rely on a conversation I had with a European judge and prosecutor who were pretty astonished when they saw all of my material. And they formed a pretty clear view: "We don't care if it's just the torture of one person, if that's what it was. One person is sufficient to impose upon us a responsibility to investigate."

Part two of this interview will appear later this week on Legal Village and AmerianLawyer.com.

We figured the firm would be happy to talk about the new hire and share some details on Johnston's charge going forward. When we reached presiding partner Evan Chesler by phone, he dismissed our interest in the comings and goings of what he calls “administrative people”. Johnston is "a very nice guy", says Chesler, though he didn't recall his new strategist's title.

"This is just a support job to help us out in our work," says Chesler, who explained that a group of nine Cravath partners, which he chairs, will continue to formulate firm strategy. "The strategy is entirely set by the partners of the firm," he insists.

Johnston, reached at his new office, declined to comment. His immediate boss at Cravath, executive director Steven Speiss, did not respond to phone calls.

So what does Cravath need with a director of strategic planning, anyway? After all, the famed 'Cravath system' has kept profits so high and its partner gene-pool so pure that the rare lateral hire sets legal heads clucking nationwide. The firm’s partnership inspires fear in opposing counsel and associates alike and its profits per partner have been among the highest in the nation since The American Lawyer began its rankings nearly 25 years ago.

"[Johnston will be] gathering information, doing the staff work, the kind of stuff that any committee would have a person doing the staff work for," says Chesler. "We have a very busy administrative staff [and] people were simply overburdened by trying to do that in their spare time."

Despite the addition, Chesler says Cravath's strategy is the same as it has always been: to remain the country's best law firm.

"That was the strategy, by the way, when I got here 33 years ago," Chesler adds. "So I don’t want to see a headline that says that we just came up with that idea."

Bill Johnston, we imagine, has already been briefed.

By David Bario, The Am Law Daily

Some of you may think I am blunt and cut-throat and not 'nice'. Yet the workplace is not a 'nice' place - harden up, softies! Who gives a toss whether you are nice or not? As long as you perform, that's all that matters. Performance - and not how nice you are - is rewarded by respect. If anything, being nice is a sign of weakness. With that out of the way, let's turn to the subject matter of this blog entry: misguided trainees.

There was a thread posted by a prospective trainee solicitor that wanted to choose seats that offered good client contact and work life balance. I'm sorry but this is just the wrong attitude. This is all graduate recruitment-speak and we all know that anyone working in graduate recruitment/HR are either cop-outs or couldn't hack it in law (or elsewhere) so whatever they have to say shouldn't be relied on. Stop being delusional; the real world doesn't work this way.

Incidentally, it just makes me cringe to see GR/HR devise all these nonsensical questions/exercises to justify their pay-cheque, using ridiculous questions on applications to assess potential candidates, and it makes me depressed when I see trainees actually buying into that. Check out the video profiles on the graduate recruitment website of Wragge & Co for a few examples.

In my opinion, using your connections and/or the Slaughters way is still the best. The last time I checked, Slaughters just tell people to send in their CV - that to me speaks more about a candidate than their ability to recall 'the last time they made a difference to a team project'. Laughable junk, really.

Anyway, back to the topic. At the end of the day, what fee earners are looking for in trainees is a willingness to do the work they don't want to do. Sure, it's crap work, but you weren't hired to advise a senior partner how to do his/her work. Trainees need to just go with the flow and stop being so concerned with client contact or work-life balance. To answer the former, it will come in due time, and as for the latter, now is the time to work your pants off, not to leave work on time to catch Deal Or No Deal.

Any law firm offering client contact and a work-life balance to trainees should raise alarm bells for an ambitious lawyer. I spent my entire traineeship proof-reading and doing V-notes, which was a sign I was at a proper law firm. In the end I quit my law firm because I believed I was bigger than the law firm and all the individuals in it, but that's a blog for next time. Nowadays, at the bank the only occasions I speak to trainees over the phone is when they need to confirm the address to send documents to (or if I have met them over client drinks and she was attractive, to check her availability for that evening).

I have never dealt with a lawyer below three years' PQE on legal/commercial points (then again, I can only speak for my current employer as a global investment bank and the law firms that we use, which are magic circle/top 10 firms, but the principle is universal).

So my message to junior lawyers: know your place in the law firm and the sooner you realise you are no more important to the law firm than the messenger, the quicker you'll become a fine lawyer.

There were trumpeters, a loving cup and we were clapped in (and clapped out!) to music. David Lewis, the Lord Mayor, is also the Company’s junior warden. The Egyptian Hall looked magical as the daylight faded and the chandeliers glowed. Our principal guest, Sir David Clementi, said: "If this is the Junior Warden’s house I would like to see the house of the Senior Warden."

I spoke about 50 years of peace and the immense expansion it had brought to the City profession; the Lord Mayor wondered why we made things so difficult for ourselves with non-dom taxation and the restrictions on foreign lawyers; and Sir David cautioned us against rapid structural change. The trumpeters trumpeted and the guests enjoyed themselves. The dress code was white tie and decorations and the wife of the director-general of the CBI wore her bronze life-saving star.

My sister in law, who lives in New York, asked me subsequently what I wore. "Fur robes and a chain," says I. "Very ghetto," says she.

It was a success. We had to throw the remaining guests out when the Mansion House closed for the night. One of the former senior partners said to me afterwards that there are not many slap-up occasions to celebrate our profession. I am very glad I had the honour of presiding over one of them.

Waiting around for something to happen (or not happen) in Iraq can be incredibly frustrating, but I’ve also found it's a great opportunity to strike up chance conversations with those stuck in the same boat. Last night, for example, while waiting for the bus to take me to the airport, I talked with a Navy SEAL who was retiring after 22 years in the service. He had spent the past nine months training Iraqi army forces.

I’ve heard no shortage of complaining about everything since I’ve been here but I’ve also noticed that most people, after venting, end on a positive note. The most popular analogy floating around today is that American freedom wasn’t won easily, either — see wars Revolutionary and Civil — and that we shouldn’t expect miracles overnight. Or even after five years. The Navy officer was different.

“This was a war about oil,” he bluntly stated. “And now it’s all about money.” He pointed to the KBR private security people who run the shuttle to the airport and so much else in Iraq.

I had read about the outsourcing of functions once handled by the Army (from cooking to convoy security) but I never appreciated to what extent the military is reliant on independent contractors until I got here. KBR, in particular, seems like a fifth branch of the armed services.

KBR workers are everywhere, and they make far more (in some cases) than their military counterparts. A convoy driver, I’m told, is paid between $6,000 and $8,000 a month. The officer told me the SEALs had to dramatically boost their re-enlistment bonus to staunch defections to the private side.

At the other end of the spectrum, a Peruvian guard, also employed by KBR, told me he makes about $1,200 a month. The guard told me he is leaving soon, after two years in Baghdad.

“Baghdad, too much muerte,” he told me, pantomiming a rocket flying into the Green Zone. Iraqi army soldiers are also paid far less than senior KBR and US military personnel. My conclusion: there is an inverse relationship here between a guard/soldier’s exposure to danger and his salary.

On my last afternoon in Baghdad, another reporter and I tried to get into the monument to the fallen soldier. Two lonely Iraqi army soldiers at the gate apologised and said it was closed. Then they asked for water. I told the Navy SEAL about this and he said Iraqi soldiers are issued one bottle a day, never mind that it was easily 95 degrees. (Our escort, a National Guard soldier from the media unit, bought the two Iraqis some water.)

Tonight is my last one in military custody. Tomorrow I’m picking up my passport and heading to Kuwait City for a night in a hotel before flying back to New York on Thursday. Some final thoughts before I resign my post as editor in chief and senior correspondent of The American Lawyer’s Baghdad bureau.

• I had hoped to do more blogging about rule of law issues while I was here. This is my first experience blogging while reporting a story at the same time — my first time blogging, in fact — and I didn’t appreciate that the two aims of reporting and blogging can be at odds. I chose to withhold most of what I learned about rule of law here for the simple reason that I didn’t want to undermine my own story. I tried to make up for the lack of reporting substance with regular personal hygiene updates. Speaking of which...
• I’m not saying I need to wash my clothes, but my socks just created their own rudimentary digestive system.
• If you were supposed to manage my fantasy baseball team while I was away and for some bizarre reason failed to start Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte on what would be his best day of the season, and this contributed to my crushing defeat, you are dead to me.
• Buying one of those U-shaped neck pillows at JFK before I left was one of the best decisions I made on the entire trip. Another good buy: a Skype plug-in headset at the PX in Baghdad, which allowed me to make cheap calls over the internet. And, of course, one needs a good book. I finished Den of Thieves by James Stewart on the plane today. I know I’m nearly 20 years late to this book but I was surprised at how relevant the subject matter is to today’s market. The story, essentially, is that of the invention of the mortgage-backed security market in the US by a group of larger-than-life bond traders at Salomon Brothers. If you want to know more about collateralised loan obligations (and who doesn’t?), add this to your reading list.
• Finally, I want to thank friends, family and colleagues who wrote to offer their support. Your emails were great.

Thanks for reading.