Legal News

Spotlight on Sarah Palin?s New Lawyer: Anchorage?s Thomas Van Flein

By Ashby Jones

Sarah Palin isn’t a lawyer, and she hasn’t yet found herself at the center of a gigantic legal firestorm. Still, little legal threads involving John McCain’s veep pick keep bubbling to the surface.

Which brings us to Thomas Van Flein. For all those who have been focused on the announcement concerning her daughter’s pregnancy, there’s other news out today on Palin: that she’s lawyered up in an investigation into whether she acted ethically in dismissing Alaska’s public safety commissioner. That lawyer is Van Flein. Van Flein told an Anchorage news station that he was hired by the Department of Law because Attorney General Talis Colberg has a conflict of interest prohibiting him from representing Palin.

We don’t know too much about Van Flein, but according to this story from the Anchorage Daily News, he works at Anchorage’s Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness, his work started on August 21, and he’s being paid $185 an hour. He got his BA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (Go Nanooks!) and his JD from Arizona. (Click here for a cached link to Van Flein’s page on the firm’s Web site.)

Already, the kerfuffle has gotten heated. In a recent letter to the special counsel hired to handle the investigation for the Alaska state legislature, Van Flein argued that the investigation should be handled by the state’s Personnel Review Board, not the legislature. In a response, state senator Hollis French gave that request a firm no.

What else do we know about Van Flein? He appears to know more about the Alaska Constitution than you do. Click here and here for his published scholarly work.

Law Blog Alaska News of the Day: The only association between Alaska and Duke University that we knew about was that former Duke shooting guard Trajan Langdon hailed from the 49th State. Here’s another: the Duke University Law School publishes the journal known as the Alaska Law Review. Why Duke? According to the ALR Web site:

The Alaska Bar Association recognizes a need for a scholarly publication devoted specifically to issues affecting Alaska. Alaska does not, however, have a state law school so the Alaska Bar selected Duke University School of Law to publish the Alaska Law Review.

Photo: AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 02, 2008 (boomark / email).