LOS ANGELES — Paul Zuckerman was sifting through résumés when he paused, “astounded,” over a particularly strong applicant for a law-clerk opening: Ivy League undergraduate, top-notch law school, legal work for two judges in Washington.
Zuckerman’s Los Angeles County firm handled personal- injury cases — auto accidents and slip-and-falls. He figured the applicant, whose credentials marked him for a prestigious “white shoe” firm, had applied to the wrong place. Then he read the cover letter.
Stephen Randall Glass wrote that he was a disgraced former Washington journalist. While in his mid-20s, Glass had blistered prominent people and organizations in articles he fabricated for the New Republic and other magazines, then engaged in elaborate frauds to conceal his deceit. Zuckerman remembered the scandal. “Shattered Glass,” a movie, had been made about it.
“What a liar,” Zuckerman remembers saying, and hit the delete button.
Now, eight years later, Zuckerman not only supports Glass but would like to eventually make him a partner.
Search for truth
Whether Glass becomes a lawyer will be up to the California Supreme Court, which must determine whether he has rehabilitated himself. Lawyers might spin their client’s story but are supposed to adhere to fact. The justice system is a search for truth, and clients depend on the veracity of their lawyers.
The State Bar of California wants him kept out of the legal profession. The bar told the high court that Glass, a “pervasive and documented liar,” had “tainted the entire journalism community.”
Now 39, Glass lives in a small, rented home near Silver Lake with his longtime girlfriend, three cats and a beagle. He has spent years in therapy and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his quest for a law license. He declined to be interviewed but insisted during sworn bar testimony in 2010 that he is a changed man.
Glass wrote 42 magazine stories that were wholly or partially fabricated. He made up phony notes, a fictional website, fake business cards and bogus voice mails to cover up. He had his brother pose as a source to fool a suspicious editor.
By the time Glass was caught in 1998 — an online reporter for Forbes tried to match the reporting on one of Glass’ stories and could not locate the subjects — he was 25 and on track to earn $100,000 a year. He was fired and entered the day program at Georgetown law school.
Georgetown law professor Susan Low Bloch met with Glass after his firing and believes he was tormented before being caught.
“I think he was relieved when he crashed,” she said. He struck her as “very, very anxious to please,” intense and prone to speaking rapidly, “very New Yorky,” despite his Chicago roots.
She hired him as her research assistant, making him promise “under absolutely no circumstance” to lie. His work was “absolutely outstanding,” and she recommended him for posts with two judges she informed of his past and who later “became part of his fan club.”
Legal fight
Glass passed the New York bar examination and applied for a law license in 2004 but withdrew after learning he would be rejected on moral grounds. He moved with his girlfriend, a lawyer and writer, to California and sent out nearly 100 résumés.
In 2009, the California bar denied Glass a law license. He appealed, and a 10-day confidential bar trial was held. Glass summoned law professors, employers, friends, the former owner of the New Republic and even his psychiatrists to attest to his newfound honesty and ethics.
The bar judge ruled for Glass, and a review panel upheld the decision 2-1. The bar committee in charge of licensing appealed to the California Supreme Court, noting that Glass had not disclosed all his fabrications until his California application and had inaccurately told the New York bar he had helped all the magazines identify his falsehoods.
The court accepted the case in December. His confidential bar files were opened and his licensing blocked. No hearing date has been set.
