Cady Bar the Door, a blog written by Brooks Pierce partner David Smyth, has been chosen as one of the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100. This annual list highlights the 100 best blogs for a legal audience. The ABA Journal is the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association and is read by half of the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers every month.
Cady Bar the Door features Smyth’s insightful and often humorous look at the latest enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as issues related to regulatory investigations and white-collar crime. The blog is also home to The Insider Trading Cartoon Series, animated short videos Smyth has created to help explain insider trading law.
In its announcement, the ABA Journal said: “Brooks Pierce attorney David Smyth writes with drama about federal securities law enforcement, insider trading and criminal news-of-the-weird that hits the appellate courts. As former assistant director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement, he knows what he’s talking about.”
“It’s amazing to me that anybody pays attention to what I write,” Smyth said. “I know many people, even other attorneys, find this area of law very dry and boring, so I look for the humor in each situation – and try to create it if needed.”
Before joining Brooks Pierce, Smyth served as an assistant director in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement. While at the SEC from 2005 to 2011, he spearheaded high-profile investigations and litigation involving insider trading, financial statement and disclosure fraud, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, investment advisory fraud, auditor misconduct and broker-dealer misconduct. He was also instrumental in establishing and supervising the Enforcement Division’s Office of Market Intelligence, created in the wake of the Bernard Madoff scandal to revamp the SEC’s process for receiving and analyzing whistleblower tips regarding potential violations of the federal securities laws.
