Former investment banker Michael J. Marshall appears to have turned his experience as a jailhouse lawyer into a profitable new career.
Marshall spent a lot of time reading law books in the 46 months and six days he spent at the federal prison in Oxford, Wis., after a 1985 conviction for mail fraud. Though he doesn’t have a law degree, he earned a reputation there as a jailhouse lawyer.
Since his release, Marshall has built on that experience and now operates National Legal Research Associates, a three-member paralegal firm at 2000 W. Armitage Ave. According to its brochures, widely disseminated among inmates at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago, the 2-year-old firm offers presentencing and post-conviction advice and parole analysis to defendants and their lawyers.
Marshall says he has helped at least one defendant negotiate a plea agreement with prosecutors.
By his own account, Marshall has had “a diverse career.” He has worked as a radio announcer, taken law courses through the now-defunct LaSalle Extension University and operated an investment bank in Northbrook.
Marshall says he is making a lot of money in his new role-for which, he believes, he is ideally suited. After his conviction on 61 counts of mail fraud for his activities as head of Michael J. Marshall & Associates investment bank, the Lake Forest native says he won the respect of fellow inmates at Oxford, many of whom brought him their legal problems.
“My background is a plus for me,” he says. “When clients see me coming through the MCC, they are glad because they know that I am keenly aware of how they feel every step of the way through the legal system. Just about every prisoner believes his attorney has sold him down the river, but with me it’s different.”
The brochures list Loop attorney Martin Abrams as “of counsel” to the paralegal firm, but Abrams disavows any official connection. He says his name is being used without permission.
“I like Marshall; we play a lot of golf together. He has promised to drop my name from his new brochures when they come out,” Abrams says.
With the rising number of people accused of illegally entering the U.S., Marshall says, his firm lately has begun to focus on “immigration, detention and deportation” matters.
Attorney general wanted
Is it a case of “Have Report, Need Attorney General?”
Retired U.S. District Judge Nicholas Bua, now in private practice and a special counsel to the Justice Department, reportedly is close to completing his review of the 10-year-old controversy involving Inslaw Inc. and accusations that the computer firm’s software was pirated by the federal government.
What’s needed, according to some sources, is the swearing in of a new attorney general to whom the report can be presented.
That could happen soon, as the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to open hearings Tuesday on the nomination of Dade County, Fla., prosecutor Janet Reno for attorney general.
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U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is one of the senators who has pushed for a resolution to the Inslaw controversy. He won a promise from Atty. Gen.-designate Zoe Baird-before her nomination was withdrawn-that she would read reports by Bua and the House Judiciary Committee.
Aides say there’s a good chance Simon will ask for a similar commitment from Reno.
– COUNTING THE DAYS. Clayborn Smith, a 22-year-old South Side resident charged with murder and aggravated arson, was sentenced last week to three years and four months in Cook County Jail-and he has yet to stand trial.
Angry because his request for a new assistant public defender was rejected, Smith began uttering a particularly vulgar four-letter word to normally mild-mannered Criminal Court Judge Earl Strayhorn. Strayhorn was not amused and started ringing up jail time for contempt of court.
When the judge reached three years, Smith countered with, “Four years.” Strayhorn obliged. The jail time was reduced, though, after Strayhorn counted the contempt charges and sentenced Smith to 30 days on the first breaches and worked up to the maximum of six months on later counts.
– LEGAL BRIEFS. American Family Insurance of Madison, Wis., Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider overturning a decision last October by the federal appeals court in Chicago, which held for the first time that the Fair Housing Act prohibits redlining in issuing insurance policies. … Cook County Public Guardian Patrick T. Murphy is scheduled to talk about problems in the state’s child-welfare system at a dinner meeting of the Du Page County Bar Association March 18 at the Drake Oak Brook.