Legal News

Focus on Federal Judge (and Stern Taskmaster) William Pauley

By Nathan Koppel

New York federal judge William Pauley III is one of the hottest jurists of the moment — the Northern Iowa of the judiciary.

Why? Last week, as we noted here, he took on the SEC and some of the nation's biggest banks.

The SEC sued various Wall Street firms in 2003 alleging that their analysts had issued trumped-up stock research in an effort to appease the firms' investment bankers. To settle the case, the banks agreed to establish a firewall that would prohibit analysts from speaking to their investment-banking colleagues about market trends unless a member of a firm's compliance department was present.

The SEC and the banks, however, petitioned Pauley to remove the firewall on the grounds that it was no longer needed to preserve analysts' independence. No dice, according to Pauley, who ruled last week that the firewall should remain.

Here's a WSJ profile of the man behind the bold ruling, which includes a glimpse at Pauley’s softer side.

A Clinton appointee, Pauley, 57, according to lawyers who have appeared before him, can be a bit of a taskmaster: stern and prone to throwing hard-hitting questions at advocates

He told the Journal that he likes to run a tight ship. “A courtroom is a formal place,” he said. “Serious things happen there. That was my view as lawyer and as a judge.”

But outside the courtroom, the father of three boys is known to show his softer side, on occasion. “He was so much of a lawyer and such a hard worker that when he did relax it was out of character,” says Franklyn Snitow, a New York lawyer who ran a law firm with the judge.

Snitow recalls that an associate at the firm fainted during a trip on the Long Island Railroad. She was revived but Judge Pauley was visibly shaken and started to cry, Snitow says. “He is a stern person,” he says “but that revealed an aspect of his soul that might not have been apparent.”

The judge, an avid sports fan and follower of Duke University’s basketball team, lives on Long Island. “I live the life of anyone in the suburbs, which is shepherding my children and other peoples’ children to and from,” he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).