A news article in the New York Times notes the departure to the law firm WIlmerHale of the head of "an elite Wall Street task force" in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York:
Mr. Sahni is the latest Wall Street prosecutor to switch sides. Over the last year, nine prosecutors have departed the Wall Street task force at the United States attorney's office, most joining big law firms. Marc P. Berger, the former chief of the Wall Street unit, landed at Ropes & Gray.
The job-hopping reflects the natural flow of the so-called revolving door, the metaphorical portal that turns prosecutors into defense lawyers and vice versa. It is a cycle playing out around the legal world, as the demand for white-collar specialists grows from Wall Street banks facing an ever-growing amount of government scrutiny.(Emphasis added.)
You don't have to be a cynic to see a kind of parallel between the actions of the former prosecutors and the accusations they are making against those they are prosecuting. One group is making money by trading on their insider knowledge and unique relationships. And the other group...
Another case for the Glenn Reynolds anti-revolving door tax of "A 50% surtax on anything earned within five years after leaving the federal government, above whatever the federal salary was." Or better yet, for laws sufficiently clear, and law-enforcement sufficiently predictable and not arbitrary, that there's no big extra value in, or need for, hiring a former U.S. attorney on the defense side.
I'd love to see the Times (or someone else) do an info-graphic with photographs of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's nine prosecutors who have left the Wall Street task force, along with the firms they have left for, the annual profits per partner at those firms, and the names of some of their new clients. Maybe we'll try it here.
