Bank Lawyer's Blog

Everybody Gets A Trophy

A few years ago, I featured the face-palming antics of Gen Y job candidates, including those interviewing for jobs with commercial banks. At the time, I asked "How much worse could Gen Y be?" Apparently, much worse. In fact, when it comes to generational cluelessness, Gen Y's joystick is frozen in the forward position and the plane is augering into the frozen tundra at 32 feet-per-second squared.

Just before turning out the office lights and grabbing a (first) Shiner Bock this past Friday evening, I received an email from a client who's a senior level bank executive for a large bank in Texas. Attached to her email was a link to what is obviously intended to be a comedy "training video" that ostensibly seeks to educate Boomer and Gen X employers on the right ways and wrong ways of dealing with the future of the American workforce. My correspondent assured me that, while the laughs are real, she has personally experienced two interactions with a member of The Not-So-Greatest Generation that were almost identical to scenes enacted in the video.

I share it with other bankers (and credit union officers) who might find it both humorous and sadly realistic.

Here's hoping we can stave off crippling the economy and allowing China to take over. At least, until I pop the final aneurysm and finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Après moi le déluge.

B of A Questions New Lawyer Salary Increases

Last week, we made an obscure reference to the fact that some of the nation's largest law firms have opted to raise the starting base salaries of their new associates from $160,000 per year to $180,000 per year. While many law school graduates come roaring out of the chute with a Mt. Everest of debt and an ant-hill's worth of job prospects (the result of what has been, for a number of years, a law school shell game), the nation's largest law firms still fight over the top students from the elite law schools, and for those lucky few, the pickings are rich and the competition is fierce. Apparently, the brain trusts that maneuver our private practice Titanics between the icebergs of fatal hubris and a wised-up corporate clientele decided that the time had come to butter their babies' biscuits with more moolah. Like lemmings, where a few go, the rest will surely follow.

Who would have thought that the initial push-back from clients would have come from a sector of the economy not known for being the first to any "space" but the feeding trough: big banks?

Bank of America Corp.’s top lawyer recently sent an email to a group of law firms calling the increases in associate lawyer pay unjustified, making it clear the bank wouldn’t help firms absorb the cost.

“While we respect the firms’ judgment about what best serves their long-term competitive interests, we are aware of no market-driven basis for such an increase and do not expect to bear the costs of the firms’ decisions,” David Leitch, Bank of America’s global general counsel, wrote in the email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

The linked article from The Wall Street Journal discussed other aspects of standard big law firm business practices that have annoyed clients. Among those is training inexperienced lawyers on the client's tab by billing them at rates that give clients sticker shock.

The chief litigation officer for a Fortune 100 company said $180,000 for a first-year isn’t justified, pointing by way of comparison to a lawyer in the company’s litigation department with 20 years of experience who doesn’t make that much money. “Why would we ever think a first-year associate is worth that?” the lawyer said, adding that they recently denied a firm’s request to charge $400 an hour for a first-year.

In the normal course of a lawyer's career, she or he should become much more efficient as she or he becomes more experienced. In addition to paying an hourly rate that seems excessive, the clients may also pay for more hours that it will take the "newbie" to complete the task. Apparently, the "chief litigation officer" who was cited thinks that it's the law firm's job to bear the cost of training the new lawyers until such time as their experience level permits them to deliver "value" for the buck(s) charged. If the firm wants to pay a new lawyer 15 grand a month, that's its business. If the firm expects to pass that cost along to the client, it appears that Bank of America and other large purchasers of Big Law legal services are saying "fuggedaboutit.!"

The article also discusses ways in which big banks and other businesses have been working in recent years to staunch the bleeding of outside legal costs. This discussion might be of interest to community and regional banks, as well. In addition to trimming the number of firms used, the clients have explored alternatives to traditional hourly billing.

Historically, law firms charged their clients in only one way: by the hour. While many in-house lawyers grumbled about the arrangements, saying they encouraged inefficiency and led to eye-popping bills, they mostly paid them.

But within the last decade or so, companies have pushed back. They now routinely demand “flat-fee” arrangements for a single piece of work, like a lawsuit or a transaction. And many have stopped paying for photocopies and legal research, items that were once rubber-stamped.

In-house lawyers have also ramped-up their resistance to paying for the most junior lawyers, often saying they won’t pay for first- and second-year lawyers even if they are staffed on assignments. Such lawyers, the thinking goes, are too often billed out at hundreds an hour to perform relatively menial tasks, like reviewing documents.

As another large corporate general counsel puts it, what ultimately matters is the "value" delivered by the lawyer to the client. Is the result and/or the advice worth what the client pays for it? Regardless of a lawyer's hourly rate or law firm compensation, when the client gets the monthly bill, does he or she think they have been "well served" by that lawyer? Obviously, that's a business judgment call; however, if the sentiments expressed in the linked article are any indication, many business clients are going to be appraising the "value" of inexperienced, but highly paid, lawyers with a critical eye, especially regarding first year lawyers who may be billing at an hourly rate commensurate with that of a lawyer in a smaller firm with, literally, decades more experience in the subject matter.

Ex Post Facto Expertise

Several years ago, I expressed some amusement (in a "gallows humor" sense, I admit) about the fact that the CFPB was sending attorneys to classes to obtain basic knowledge about bank law after they were hired. Ideological purity, I assume, was the primary job qualification. Therefore, I take it as a perversely encouraging sign that the Adjustment Bureau's former General Counsel and Acting Deputy Director (a different position than "In Real Life Deputy Director") last week announced that she was quitting the agency and jumping feet first into the dung heap of the financial services business.

Meredith Fuchs, who recently stepped down as acting deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is joining Capital One as the bank’s senior vice president and chief counsel on regulatory issues, according to a report from TheHill.com.

Fuchs served as general counsel at the CFPB before she was named acting deputy director in July 2015 after Steve Antonakes stepped down as deputy director.

The revolving door between the regulator and the regulated is so common in the fever-ridden Potomac Tidal Basin that it hardly raises an eyebrow in a cesspool that might soon be ruled by a man possessed of aeronautically engineered hair and the debonair demeanor Al Bundy. Still, there is something just a bit askew when the resume of the person who was the General Counsel and then Acting Deputy Director of an agency with such extensive power and authority over financial services lists a single job in the financial services industry after she leaves that agency. Perhaps you can find such a job there.

I'm sure that Capital One is looking for "insight" into the attitudes and workings of the CFPB and, when ethical waiting periods have expired, access and even credibility, when necessary, to perhaps lessen the impact of the next blow from the CFPB's cudgel. I'm sure that Ms. Fuchs will provide it. Her resume marks her as an extremely bright and talented lawyer. Let's hope  that when the door swings back to the regulatory side and she re-enters government service, she has a lot more hands-on experience with the financial services businesses that she's regulating than she had the first time around the block. Maybe she'll start a trend at the CFPB: know something about the business before you start regulating it. The regulated might want to see if things improve with an approach other than on-the-job training.

Lousy Morale Is Not A Deterrent To Belief In The Greater Good

It's always sad when an agency dedicated to the proposition that all banks are created equal...equally bad, that is...falls short of its lofty ideal of seeing evil where others do not and wielding upon it The Sword of a Thousand Truths. Yet, we find that what we previously thought was just a minor dyspeptic episode suffered by a government bureaucracy otherwise chock-full of pristine beauty, peace, and contentment is, in fact, a virus of employee morale malaise that makes Ebola look like a cold sore.

The Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. government’s newest agency championed by Elizabeth Warren to regulate financial institutions, is suffering from sliding employee morale and distrust of the agency’s leadership, according to the latest internal survey of its workforce.

Among the red flags raised by the survey obtained by The Washington Times, was that CFPB workers registered the biggest decline in optimism when asked whether the “organization’s senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity.”

[...]

Conditions inside the CFPB have deteriorated so much that the agency was forced this fall to solicit outside help for equal employment opportunity issues such as counseling, mediation, investigation and case management services, signaling it may not be able to handle the volume of employee complaints with its in-house resources.

According to its annual employee survey — which hasn’t been released publicly but was distributed internally Oct. 30 — opinions have shifted significantly against the CFPB this year. In 41 out of the 75 questions asked, employees' favorable opinions decreased or unfavorable opinions increased compared with last year.

[...]

the bottom 10 most unfavorable survey results revolved around performance reviews, proper recognition from management, employee empowerment, the ability for an employee to climb the agency’s ladder into a better position, and satisfaction with senior leaders’ policies and practices.

As a silver lining under this dark cloud, in 9 areas, the Bureau's employees rated the Bureau higher than its "peers" across the federal regulatory landscape. Although the article doesn't list those 9 areas, we assume that one of them involves superiors spraying their footwear with Eau de View Strawberry to make boot licking a less disagreeable task.

Before the bureau's opponents take heart from the possibility that the proletariat might rise up, throw off its chains, and slaughter its overlords, the survey demonstrates that notwithstanding the fact that the CFPB is a lousy place to work, its oppressed minions remain true believers.

The greatest strength at the agency is its employees’ belief in the value of the work they do, according to the survey. More than 90 percent of employees at the CFPB feel the work they do is important. They also are satisfied with their physical work environment, such as the noise level, temperature, lighting and cleanliness. Physical conditions at the agency had the largest jump in employee approval year over year.

Unionization and newly renovated workplace palaces apparently offset, to a substantial degree, the fact that your bosses suck golf balls through hundred-foot garden hoses. Therefore, expect the disgruntled foot soldiers of the Adjustment Bureau to continue to show up in the back pockets, and look over the shoulders, of evildoers (i.e., financial institutions). Being discriminated against, bullied, and unfairly reviewed apparently not only does not deter an ideologue from his or her progressive march toward utopia here on Earth, it does not even slow his or her pace.

CFPB delenda est!

Ben Goes Private

One of our favorite regulators, "Little Ben" Lawsky, has let word slip out that he's planning to leave his post as New York Banking Jeffe  next year to take a job in "the private sector." He won't reveal exactly what part of "the private sector" he intends to inflict himself upon. However, we've long been a fan of his broad base of experience in how businesses, especially banks, operate on a granular level. The Wall Street Journal linked above sums that "private sector" experience up nicely.

Mr. Lawsky previously served as Gov. Cuomo’s top aide during both his governorship and his term as New York State Attorney General. Prior to that, Mr. Lawsky was a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and served as chief counsel to New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.

If he wants to fill the small slippers of his idol, Elliot Mess, he might be aiming for a short stint as a talk show host that no one watches, or, perhaps, as a busboy in a brothel. However, if he intends to really make his own mark on the world, we have the following suggestions of employment for which we assume he is well qualified:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Whatever private sector job he chooses, we're absolutely certain that he'll simply nail it.

A Certain Level Of Disengenuousness

Housing Wire's Trey Garrison gives us fitting parting observations of last week's hearing by the House Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigation concerning allegations that the CFPB is a veritable Paul Bunyon of stacked-high hypocrisy when it comes to employee discrimination.

There was a certain level of disingenuousness [sp.] that went beyond the usual political posturing at the House Oversight & Investigation Subcommittee investigating discrimination and retaliation at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Wednesday morning.

[...]

In a hearing with partisan heat just simmering, Democrats opened by demanding a standard of proof of the allegations that they’d never demand in any other similar investigation.

Meanwhile, Republicans – who want to keep pressure on the CFPB on as many fronts as possible – seemed to be embracing the vague, controversial legal theory of disparate impact, which says even if there is no discrimination, if the outcome isn’t racially balanced, then there is discrimination anyway.

Having U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, saying that he wants to make headway and not headlines in anything related to racial discrimination was, in fact, one of the ironies in a morning of ironies.

It's refreshing to see a reporter call them as he sees them. I also appreciate the well-deserved bi-partisan snark. It's as if one of the qualifications for serving in Congress is a post-graduate degree from Clown College. All Garrison is doing is pointing out the fact that both parties wear face paint and big red noses that go "beep-beep."

Trey also notes the irony of Representatives Green and Watters urging an expansion of the subject matter of the hearing to discrimination by all federal agencies, after doing their darndest to have the hearing cancelled, after initially calling for a hearing to be held. Those position pivots would have made the broken field maneuvers of Barry Sanders seem encased in in concrete, by comparison.

A final bit of snark addressed the fact that Rep. Watters noting that she was "overjoyed" with the subject matter of the hearing, racism. The Subcommittee's Republican Chairman just couldn't constrain his fist of snark.

“We welcome your new tone – remarkably different from tone of your letter,” McHenry said to Waters.

Give her a week. She'll feel equally strongly both ways.

On Second Thought

After joining Republicans in calling for a hearing on allegations of employment discrimination practices at the CFPB, Representatives Maxine ("I Will Socialize You") Waters and Al ("Love and Happiness") Greene decided it was all a big mistake. They asked the House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb ("No Quarter Asked, None Given") Hensarling to "table" the hearing on the grounds that it would deal with only one employee's complaint rather than general practices, and that it appeared to be merely an opportunity for Republicans to pound the CFPB. I think they're right about the pounding. Therefore, I wasn't surprised that Rep. Hensarling told them that he's going ahead with the Bureau bashing.

Hensarling and oversight subcommittee chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said Monday that the hearing will not center exclusively on one individual’s complaints, but on the overall environment at the consumer bureau as well. They also noted that the committee initially asked several CFPB officials to testify, but that the bureau has declined to cooperate.

“We hope that you will help us encourage other suffering employees to come forward to the Committee as whistleblowers,” the Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Waters and Green.

My guess is that the CFPB will take the position that it doesn't litigate in Congressional hearings. Based on its past conduct, we assume that it prefers to litigate in the press. Hensarling and his cohorts  are not as warm and fuzzy interlocutors as are reporters for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post.

 

It's interesting to note that the linked news report states that the CFPB "hired an outside investigator to look into the issue, and a subsequent six-month probe concluded that [the complaining employee's] claims are valid and also described a 'toxic environment' at one of the agency’s divisions." That investigator will also testify at the hearing, which seems to me to indicate that the topic of the hearing will range beyond one employee and into the "toxic environment" of the CFPB.

 

I can understand why the CFPB doesn't want to appear, but if Waters and Greene are genuinely interested in pursuing the issues they raised in their letter that demanded a hearing, they ought to show up and ask appropriate questions. You know, like asking the employee "When were you last in psychological counseling?" Or, "Is it correct that you and Lindsay Lohan were seen French-kissing at The Viper Room last weekend?" Perhaps they could impartially inquire of the independent investigator if his shoes were purchased at Wal-Mart or Johnston & Murphy, and why he's wearing white before Easter. That kind of blocking and tackling would at least keep things moving.

Oh, wait a minute: the CFPB is willing to testify. In the press.

Scott Pluta, the agency’s assistant director of the office of consumer response accused of retaliating against Martin, called Martin’s claims “patently false.”

Pluta also claimed that he was hoping that the Committee allows him to testify. Unfortunately, the Committee claims that he's never made a request to testify.

 

I will testify to the fact that this whole affair gives the average reader a bad case of tired head. Nevertheless, it's political theater of the absurd and it is entertaining.

Et Tu, Maxine?

Now Richard Cordray knows how Robespierre felt when The Convention turned on him.

Top Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee are asking several watchdog agencies to provide more information about federal regulators' employment policies and practices with regard to minorities and women.

Nine members of the panel signed joint letters March 24 to the inspectors general of several financial regulators and the Treasury Department asking them to look into the issue.

[...]

Democrats are also seeking the Federal Reserve Board's inspector general (which also oversees the CFPB), to look into the consumer bureau's performance appraisal process and how its Office of Minority and Women Inclusion has been involved in that process.

"We request that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) immediately exercise its independent oversight authority over the bureau's operations, to detect whether any personnel practices and policies have created an unfair or discriminatory workplace for minorities and women employed at the CFPB," states the letter sent to Inspector General Mark Bialek of the Federal Reserve, which was released Wednesday. "Allegations of discriminatory behavior at the bureau, in perception or practice, must be investigated thoroughly to ensure that no individual, coalition or group of individuals undermines the agency's vital mission of ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers from all backgrounds."

The letters were signed by Reps. Maxine Waters, the Financial Services Committee's top Democrat; Al Green, D-Texas; Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.; Emanual Cleaver, D-Mo.; Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.; John K. Delaney, D-Md.; Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.; Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio; and Denny Heck, D-Wash.

King Richard will be lucky if that motly crew doesn't send him to the guillotine, or worse: socializes him.

A CFPB spokesman said that the CFPB welcomed the investigation. I understand Leon Trotsky said the same thing days prior to his opponents sticking an icepick through his eardrum.

The "beauty part" of this investigation is that it's only one in an expected dog pile of investigations. Since Democrats are are leading the charge, the rest of the Republican-dominated House is happy to jump on the bandwagon.

Separately on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee announced a hearing April 2 to look into the CFPB's performance evaluation process and complaints filed by employees. All of the Democrats who signed the letters are members of this subcommittee.

Since Congress is all about the infliction of unintended consequences, let's hope an unintended consequence of this witch hunt is the impositions of some checks and balances on this unchained violator of diversity, inclusiveness, and the protection of the brain-fogged. We'll be following this investigation all the way to its white-washed conclusion.

The Road To Hell Is Unchecked and Unbalanced

When the American Banker broke the news last week that the CFPB, a proponent of hammering banks and other financial services businesses with the "disparate impact" doctrine in order to find discriminatory effect where no discriminatory intent, was itself allegedly guilty of disparate treatment of minority employees of the CFPB, a number of readers wrote me to ask when I was going to jump on the bandwagon of focusing a spotlight of snark on one of my favorite punching bags. I think the facts, and the numerous statements of current and former employees cited by Rachel Witkowski are sufficiently eloquent without need to embellish the damnation they provide. As one industry observer quoted in the article stated, everyone will be jumping all over the CFPB's hypocrisy. Why jump on the dog pile when its already teeming with pitbulls?

My problem with the CFPB's conduct isn't that it's filled with hypocrites. After all, I'm a lawyer, one who toiled for years in the cesspool of Big Law, where, in many firms, hypocrisy is not only common, it may be an asset. At least, it may be an asset if your end game is to be the largest road apple in a bushel basket full of them. Not that every big law firm is full of them, but a number of them are. And you road apples know who you are.

The CFPB is full of those grossly flawed creatures known as human beings. They have biases, prejudices, and blind spots, just like the rest of us. They also make occasional misjudgments due to the fact that they're not gods, like, for example, Zeus or Alec Baldwin. Like any other federal bureaucracy, the CFPB will, from time-to-time, be governed by people who, like Anita in West Side Story, want to "stick to their own kind," even when they don't consciously acknowledge that bias, even (or perhaps most especially) to themselves. There even will exist (as some anonymous employees allege) "bullies" at the senior levels, the kind of guys who the jocks used to stuff into their lockers in high school, and who are spending the rest of their neurotic lives taking their nerd-like rage out on the rest of the human race, especially upon those lower than they are in the organizational food chain.

No, my problem isn't with the hypocrisy or other character defects of human beings. Rather, my problem is related to something that one employee quoted by Ms. Witkowski touched upon.

Employees give the agency credit for addressing some employee complaints. It has, for example, resolved concerns involving out-of-pocket travel expenses. However the prevailing sentiment among the dozen employees and former staffers who agreed to talk is that the CFPB's senior staff still lacks necessary checks and balances.

"I joined this agency because I wanted to do good and help the community, but it didn't turn out that way, and now people are just trying to save their hides," says the third employee. "Yeah, it's a new agency and will have some growing pains, but they [supervisors] do what they want, and I do think they need to have someone watching over them."

Yes, the entire agency needs someone "watching over it." However, Elizabeth Warren, the self-proclaimed originator of the concept of the CFPB, and her enablers, deliberately concocted the structure of the Bureau so that it did not have effective checks and balances. The idea for an oversight commission to run the Bureau instead of a single director who can be removed only for cause was rejected, and the scheme consciously removes the budget from normal Congressional appropriation processes. These characteristics are intended to limit any outside influence on an "agency" that would be run by people who were committed to the goal of protecting "fog brained" American consumers from predations of the inherently evil financial services industry, predations that the "fog brained" are too befuddled to discern, even with the clearest of disclosures. Unlike any other federal government financial services agency, this entity was intended to rule effectively unmolested by the elected representatives of the people.

What we're seeing in the CFPB is what we've seen in other agencies. The people running it aren't any better, albeit not any worse, than the people who run other agencies or, tellingly, than the people who run the businesses that are subject to the CFPB's regulatory oversight. However, in the case of the CFPB, where are the "checks" to curb the abuses of the Bureau that are applicable to both "the regulated" and to the other financial services regulatory agencies of the federal government?

[sound of crickets chirping]

No, I expect the CFPB managers will suffer from character flaws, hypocrisy included. What concerns me is what concerned James Madison when he wrote The Federalist #51 226 years ago: the need for checks and balances on the branches of the federal government.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

In the case of the CFPB, the "auxiliary precautions" are notably absent, or, at least they don't exist in sufficient number or strength to reign in the failings of its ruling class. Until they do exist, much mischief is possible from these less-than-angels.

Wells Fargo Is Not Firearm-Friendly

While community bankers in the Show Me State are not only packing heat, they're unloading it on would-be bank robbers, the effete Big Banks in Florida unload not on the bad guys, but on pistol-packin' Annie's in their own ranks. 

Ivette Ros grew up in a house where her father kept guns. For her, it was a natural step to get a concealed weapons permit and then to carry a 9 mm handgun. 

The 37-year-old Tampa resident is a single mother of three children and said she carries the gun for safety.

“It’s just something about having it versus not having it,” she said. “I feel naked when I don’t have my gun.”

Her employer didn’t feel the same way. Carrying the gun got her fired, she said.

Ros has filed a lawsuit in circuit court against Wells Fargo Bank, which she said fired her last year from her job as manager at the bank’s Oldsmar branch. Her lawsuit says the firing violated her constitutional right to carry arms and asks for monetary damages and attorney fees.

Wells Fargo (whose brand, ironically, is a stage coach and whose marketing has not infrequently in the past emphasized its roots in the American West, a land where the .45 Colt revolver was made famous), claims it was doing the right thing by firing Ms. Ros.

When it comes to employees carrying guns into the office, though, the company’s rules are clear, said Kathy Harrison, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman.

“Team members are strictly prohibited from possession of firearms and weapons on company premises,” Harrison said.

The company does offer exceptions when a state statute exists allowing for someone with a concealed weapons permit to keep a gun in their locked vehicle in the company parking lot, she said.

So, Ivette's mistake was in not leaving the gun in a locked car in the bank's parking lot, where, as even a bulb as dim as the one that writes this blog could deduce, it would be of limited value against an armed robber. Instead, she kept in concealed on her person, where, as our friends in Missouri have shown, it has a certain usefulness in spitting out lead in situations where lead poisoning is an appropriate malady to strike your typical armed sociopath.

Ms. Ros' attorney claims that the bank's policy violates his client's Second Amendment rights.

“The second amendment is not a privilege. It’s a freakin’ right.”

Well, yes it is. However, a law professor points out a flaw in that freakin' argument.

Jason Bent, an assistant professor of law at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, said the constitution limits the government’s ability to restrict gun possession. A private employer such as Wells Fargo is another matter, he said.

“There is nothing in the state statute that says the employer has to let her bring it into the building,” Bent said.

The "statute" he mentions is the concealed handgun law in Florida.

The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That is, "infringed" by the government. I agree with Professor Bent that I don't see state action that violates the Second Amendment here. Then again, I'm no freakin' Second Amendment expert.

While personally, I support the right for any woman to carry the biggest, baddest piece of firepower she can conceal on her person, as a bank lawyer, I also support the right of a bank to make and enforce reasonable rules concerning firearms on its premises. On this one, my rational side (rarely on display in these pages) leans toward the big, bad bank.

That said, I would like to sit down with Ms. Ros some day and compare our respective concealed weapons.