Pejman Yousefzadeh

So argues Ted Frank:

I started the Center for Class Action Fairness in 2009 on a whim, with the vague goal of racking up some court experience that might let me establish a law-school clinic and sneak onto a tenure track at an advanced age, and maybe do some good in the process. Then I discovered how much I like litigation when I have autonomy and don’t have to make arguments I don’t believe in, and discarded the idea of writing law-review articles no one would read. Today I have two attorneys working for me, a fascinating docket, and get to argue more appellate cases every six months than I did in my entire ten-year BigLaw career. Every month, I’m presented with class action settlements where class members have legitimate objections and want to object, but my attorneys don’t have the time because of other opportunities or commitments. Every month, I’m presented with still other class action settlements where class members would have legitimate objections, but no class member ever approaches me. If I were more gregarious and extroverted and proselytized for my cause better (and if I wasn’t burdened with a right-wing resume that has the consumer blogs skeptical of my motives and refusing to write about me), I’d be even more utterly overwhelmed with these opportunities. I don’t have a monopoly on class action objections or helping consumers and shareholders. At the risk of creating competition that cannibalizes my donors, go do what I do, maybe you’ll do it better. You’ll certainly make more money than me and my attorneys do if you don’t handcuff yourself with a non-profit structure; this year alone, we’ve sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars of legitimate attorney-fee requests because we would have exceeded IRS limits if we asked for everything we were legally entitled to.

Ivy League schools have been discriminating against Asian-Americans for years; affirmative action programs produce illegal racial discrimination and entitlement to attorneys’ fees in places other than New Haven; the Obama administration is engaging in any number of lawless counterproductive activities that could be stopped by litigation; there’s a potential opportunity to profitably advocate on behalf of mass-tort clients victimized by their attorneys. Mad at your law school? Find a friendly tenured law professor and bring an antitrust class action against the AALS. Sue telemarketers that violate the TCPA: be the one who takes down those bastards at Card Services. Go, find clients, toil in obscurity and poverty for a few years, come out millionaires.

And these are just some of the things I would do if I didn’t have to sleep or if there were 144 hours in the day or I could clone myself five or six times. And it drives me nuts because nobody’s doing them!

People seem to think that a certain profession will make them rich. Not so. But a certain mindset just might.