Better Luck Next Time, courtesy World Records
After flunking out of medical school, Loren Elliotte Friedman went to the University of Chicago law school and on to an apparently successful career in bankruptcy law. Unfortunately, it was based on a series of misrepresentations, beginning with his law school application. The Illinois bar has somehow seen fit to recommend that Loren Elliotte Friedman only be suspended for three years for an epic series of lies and deception involving, among many other things, changing the grades on his transcript.
The best part is how he got caught. He summered at Sidley, then clerked, then went to Skadden and ended up at Curtis Mallet-Prevost & Mosle in New York. He decided he wanted to get back to Illinois so he had a headhunter send around his materials. Stupidly, he sends around a real transcript. Not surprisingly, it ends up back at Sidley where partner Michael Sweeney wondered how this guy with this awful transcript had been accepted to his firm’s summer program five years earlier. Sweeney confronts Friedman, who apologizes and agrees to turn himself in.
Read on to learn the secrets of a master liar and apologist. And, most importantly, his last CV from CM-P.
First (at least according to the stipulated facts – I suspect there were many, many other previous transgressions) Friedman failed to disclose on his law school application that he had been kicked out of the University of Illinois medical school. When the dean found out, Friedman apologized and nothing further happened.
He starts at University of Chicago law in 2000 and bombs most of his classes. He then pulled a trick that I thought hadn’t worked since high school: he got out the white out and changed pretty much every grade on his transcript from a C to a B or better. He got the job and summered at Sidley.
Meanwhile, ABA Journal reports that he was also caught plagiarizing while in law school:
While still in law school, according to stipulated evidence discussed in the IARDC report, Friedman represented about seven paragraphs of another author’s work as his own in a paper submitted for a Law, Science and Medicine class in 2001. Friedman said it was a careless mistake and, believing it to be an isolated incident that didn’t rise to the level of intentional plagiarism, the law school dean did not convene a disciplinary committee. That’s the same dean, apparently, to whom he also apologized about the whole not-admitting-to-getting-kicked-out-of-med-school thing.
Then you wrap all of those lies and omissions into the certification on the character and fitness application and end up with a slew of offenses. The leniency of the three-year suspension isn’t even the most-surprising part. Pick from these gems:
- he’s attending the University of Illinois business school – yes, that’s the same place that kicked him out of the medical school;
- he didn’t disclose the medical school failure or the pending bar hearings on his B school application (although he did contact a dean to “outline the general allegations”); and
- the B school dean didn’t care because they’re only concerned with “matters of a criminal nature.”
Here’s our little contribution to the story. Thanks to the magic of the wayback machine, we’ve tracked down his CM-P bio in all its duplicitous glory (circa October 2007).
Practice
Mr. Friedman joined the Firm’s Bankruptcy and Creditors’ Rights department as an associate in 2006. His practice is focused on the representation of public and privately-held companies in out-of-court restructurings and Chapter 11 reorganizations. He has also aided the advising of officers and directors of public companies involved in debt restructurings on matters related to corporate governance and fiduciary duty.
Before joining the Firm, Mr. Friedman was a Corporate Restructuring associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and from 2003–2004 served as the law clerk to the Honorable Robert D. Martin, Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Mr. Friedman is admitted to practice in the State of New York and the State of Illinois.
Education
- J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 2003- Assistant Managing Editor, University of Chicago Journal of Law & Economics- Illinois Judicial Council Scholar
- University of Chicago Law School Merit Scholar
- Edith J. Lowenstein Scholar
- B.S., Biology, Emory University, 1998- Phi Sigma (Biology Honor Society)- Howard Hughes Research Fellowship Award Recipient
- Alpha Kappa Delta (Sociology Honor Society)
Associations
- American Bankruptcy Institute
- American Bar Association
- Hispanic National Bar Association
- New York State Bar Association
- Illinois State Bar Association
- Turnaround Management Association
- Delaware Bankruptcy American Inn of Court
Publications
- Contributing Editor, Ginsberg & Martin on Bankruptcy (Aspen Publishers, 4th Ed., 2004)
- “7th Circuit Review,” Norton Bankruptcy Law Advisor (May 2004)
A few observations. He either didn’t win, or has since been removed from the list of winners, of the “Edith J. Lowenstein Scholar” award, given by the American Immigration Lawyers Association “for excellence in advancing the practice of immigration law.” Oh, and there’s no immigration law course on his transcript (we’re assuming he only doctored the grades not the classes). And for what it’s worth, Google doesn’t turn up any other person claiming the title of “assistant manging editor” at the Journal of Law and Economics.
Can you just imagine the holiday dinners in this guy’s house? His mother screaming, “You’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a banker goddammit!” Ugh.
