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Last week in Texas with Michael Smith | Episode 5
The $700,000 law clerk? Taking a closer look at Judge Albright's technical advisor.
Is it fair to say that Judge Albright is privatizing the role of judicial clerk by forcing litigants to hire his former clerk as a technical advisor? What value are litigants getting from the process? And what can litigants expect in the future?
Texas is home to over 40% of all patent litigation. And with that many on-going cases, important changes happen weekly. To keep you updated, Michael Smith, author of the award winning edtexweblog.com, shares both his research and his local perspective about what's happening around the entire state.
SPEAKERS
Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith
Wayne Stacy 00:00
Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Last Week in Texas podcast. This is Wayne Stacy, the Executive Director for BCLT. And we're here again with Michael Smith, the leading expert for Texas, not just the Eastern District of Texas. So Michael, we'll just start with what happened in Texas last week.
Michael Smith 00:24
Well, Wayne, the principal story last week in Texas is we had a article come out that I know a lot of the law.com Publications picked up about the role that a former law clerk of Judge Alan Albright's in Waco was playing as a court appointed technical adviser. The headline was that the former law clerk had already billed over $700,000 in fees this year for his work as Judge Albright as a court appointed technical advisor after he clerked at the court.
Wayne Stacy 00:58
Yeah, I mean, the 700,000 number got a lot of a lot of headlines and a lot of chatter around on the boards. But there's a lot more behind this story. So I think it's fair to probably start by telling us who is this technical advisor and then what are the qualifications?
Michael Smith 01:14
Well, you're absolutely right about that. Let me let me explain who the technical adviser is. The article was talking about two people. First of all, Judge Albright uses Dr. Joshua Yi, as a court appointed technical advisor. Now, Josh was a law clerk for Judge Albright for a year and a half before, I think he finished up December of last year. And I remember talking to Judge Albright and how excited he was that Dr. Yi was going to be coming to work for him as a law clerk. So let me tell you about his background. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. And he worked as an engineer at Freescale Semiconductor in Austin before he got his law degree. And then he was an IP litigation associate in Austin law firm for seven years before he started his clerkship. Now, it of course, is not unusual for some of the law clerks for these patent judges to have had a few years as a associate doing patent litigation. It's not unusual for them to have experience as an engineer before they went to law school. We've even had law clerks that have doctorates. There was one that Judge Gillstrap had that had a doctorate from Stanford, and we still teased her that she was the least qualified law clerk he had, because she had not actually yet worked as a litigation associate. But I have never in any of the cases I've ever seen, I've never seen anyone that has all three. And again, Dr. Yi has more than just a couple of years working as a patent litigation associate. So he is an extraordinarily qualified person in terms of his background. And then he's also got a year and a half in the belly of the beast, as it were working in Waco and working on the types of cases that he later became a technical adviser on after the beginning of this year.
Wayne Stacy 03:07
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By Kelly TorresThe $700,000 law clerk? Taking a closer look at Judge Albright's technical advisor.
Is it fair to say that Judge Albright is privatizing the role of judicial clerk by forcing litigants to hire his former clerk as a technical advisor? What value are litigants getting from the process? And what can litigants expect in the future?
Texas is home to over 40% of all patent litigation. And with that many on-going cases, important changes happen weekly. To keep you updated, Michael Smith, author of the award winning edtexweblog.com, shares both his research and his local perspective about what's happening around the entire state.
SPEAKERS
Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith
Wayne Stacy 00:00
Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Last Week in Texas podcast. This is Wayne Stacy, the Executive Director for BCLT. And we're here again with Michael Smith, the leading expert for Texas, not just the Eastern District of Texas. So Michael, we'll just start with what happened in Texas last week.
Michael Smith 00:24
Well, Wayne, the principal story last week in Texas is we had a article come out that I know a lot of the law.com Publications picked up about the role that a former law clerk of Judge Alan Albright's in Waco was playing as a court appointed technical adviser. The headline was that the former law clerk had already billed over $700,000 in fees this year for his work as Judge Albright as a court appointed technical advisor after he clerked at the court.
Wayne Stacy 00:58
Yeah, I mean, the 700,000 number got a lot of a lot of headlines and a lot of chatter around on the boards. But there's a lot more behind this story. So I think it's fair to probably start by telling us who is this technical advisor and then what are the qualifications?
Michael Smith 01:14
Well, you're absolutely right about that. Let me let me explain who the technical adviser is. The article was talking about two people. First of all, Judge Albright uses Dr. Joshua Yi, as a court appointed technical advisor. Now, Josh was a law clerk for Judge Albright for a year and a half before, I think he finished up December of last year. And I remember talking to Judge Albright and how excited he was that Dr. Yi was going to be coming to work for him as a law clerk. So let me tell you about his background. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. And he worked as an engineer at Freescale Semiconductor in Austin before he got his law degree. And then he was an IP litigation associate in Austin law firm for seven years before he started his clerkship. Now, it of course, is not unusual for some of the law clerks for these patent judges to have had a few years as a associate doing patent litigation. It's not unusual for them to have experience as an engineer before they went to law school. We've even had law clerks that have doctorates. There was one that Judge Gillstrap had that had a doctorate from Stanford, and we still teased her that she was the least qualified law clerk he had, because she had not actually yet worked as a litigation associate. But I have never in any of the cases I've ever seen, I've never seen anyone that has all three. And again, Dr. Yi has more than just a couple of years working as a patent litigation associate. So he is an extraordinarily qualified person in terms of his background. And then he's also got a year and a half in the belly of the beast, as it were working in Waco and working on the types of cases that he later became a technical adviser on after the beginning of this year.
Wayne Stacy 03:07