March 19, 2024

Michigan Links, Golf and Eddie Guest, the People’s Poet, 1919.

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Guest in Detroit, 1935

Enormously popular for the first half of the 20th century, Detroit’s Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959) charmed America with simple and often funny upbeat poems celebrating Midwestern common sense and optimism. No. He’s not my favorite poet. But I’ve a special connection to Guest. He owned a house in a small but storied Michigan summer community where I spent Junes and Julys of the 1960s growing up in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. He died just before my family’s first visit there. His house on Lake Huron was purchased by parents of one of my Detroit classmates. So I often played near and sometimes in that huge dark house made of large dark logs with the largest porch I’d ever seen at the top of Cliff Road. Guest was always closely connected to the place. It seems odd we never met. He was greatly loved and always somehow still alive in that place. At least it seemed that way to me.There was old golf course—one of Michigan’s first courses—nearby that my brother and I learned on. Guest played the game and wrote several fairly schmaltzy but fun poems about golf. This one appeared in 1919 as part of his highly popular “A Path Toward Home”.

“A Lesson From Golf”

He couldn't use his driver any better on the tee
Than the chap that he was licking, who just happened to be me;
I could hit them with a brassie just as straight and just as far,
But I piled up several sevens while he made a few in par;
And he trimmed me to a finish, and I know the reason why:
He could keep his temper better when he dubbed a shot than I.

His mashie stroke is choppy, without any follow through;
I doubt if he will ever, on a short hole, cop a two,
But his putts are straight and deadly, and he doesn't even frown
When he's tried to hole a long one and just fails to get it down.
On the fourteenth green I faded; there he put me on the shelf,
And it's not to his discredit when I say I licked myself.

He never whined or whimpered when a shot of his went wrong;
Never kicked about his troubles, but just plodded right along.
When he flubbed an easy iron, though I knew that he was vexed,
He merely shrugged his shoulders, and then coolly played the next,
While I flew into a frenzy over every dub I made
And was loud in my complaining at the dismal game I played.

Golf is like the game of living; it will show up what you are;
If you take your troubles badly you will never play to par.
You may be a fine performer when your skies are bright and blue
But disaster is the acid that shall prove the worth of you;
So just meet your disappointments with a cheery sort of grin,
For the man who keeps his temper is the man that's sure to win.

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Pointe Aux Barques, Michigan

For me, it beats Big Sur and the Austrian Alps. My favorite place in the world, it is desolate in the winter and still beautiful. Not too many people live here year round: about 10, they say, and even that may be a U.S. Census error. No one around. PAB sits on the northern-most point of the Michigan Thumb, between Port Austin and Grindstone City, on Lake Huron. It was built as a resort community for St. Louis and Detroit business people in the mid-1890s. When I was growing up and we moved about after leaving the DC area--Chicago, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago again, and finally Cincinnati--we spent June and July here no matter where we lived. Had my first "businesses" here (teaching tennis and later a carwash with my brother). This was the only constant place in my childhood. I still dream about the cliffs and the lake and smallmouth bass and our four dogs and my friends. Edgar Guest, the people's poet, a kind of lyrical Will Rogers, owned a cottage on the main still-nameless road. I used to sit on his porch with my first girlfriend, with whom I am still in touch. I've been here in the winter before, when I was in law school; yet being here during any season is hard to describe.

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March 18, 2024

Redux: The War Against Legal-Speak

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Sir John Popham (1531–1607) was an MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Chief Justice of England. We think he would speak and write differently if he were alive today.

Lawyer-Speak and Legalese. Of the lamer lawyer-centric institutions, only "Professionalism" and "Work-Life Balance" are more embarrassing, abused and irrelevant, and more likely to undermine clients, than the way in which many lawyers continue to speak and write. At least those two prissy battle cries originally had a point. But Legalese never had a point.

A few years ago, a law firm sent us a draft of a simple housekeeping agreement. It was a 3-page confidentiality agreement used during talks for an acquisition. We responded by submitting our own draft because, among other things, the draft we had received (presumably a "model" they had around their office) contained this language:

"Effective on even date herewith, the parties hereto hereby agree to...".

Whoa. How about just one date at the top or bottom of the Agreement and then say "The parties agree..."? And if the whole thing is an "Agreement", with language showing that the parties intend to be bound, maybe you don't even need that?

Either would save trees, ink and space, and would get the idea of contract across, and out of the way. And either would help diminish the image of the self-important "I'm-special" lawyer rocking back and forth in his chair, and talking to himself like a mental patient.

(from past WAC? posts)

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March 17, 2024

Saint Patrick, Bishop of Ireland , 1746, Giambattista Tiepolo

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The Lorica of Patrick

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I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The firmness of rocks.

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

from "St. Patrick's Breastplate", or The Lorica of Patrick

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March 15, 2024

Vincenzo Camuccini, Mort de Caesar, 1798

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Irish Guys: All The Wrong Stuff.

Saint Patrick's Day is on Sunday.

For starters, be advised that real Irish-American males do not wear green on March 17. They do the same things they do any other day, to wit:

A. Get up
B. Inhale aspirin
C. Dress as usual: Dockers, clean "Guinness"-emblazoned golf shirts if there's an important meeting

D. Work, kind of
E. Read, with difficulty (don't count on Ulysses)
F. Head to a real bar (not ones with faux-Irish names like "The Dubliner" or the generic "Irish Bar")

G. Tell stories
H. Listen to some music (rarely Irish tunes)
I. Get drunk; and
J. Fall down on the floor.

I happen to know I'm Irish--maybe too Irish--and as Irish as they come. One great-grandmother, a Belfast Protestant named McQuitty, provides most of the DNA there. In my case, that's 7% of my genetic makeup and, believe me, it's enough. If you're not a slam dunk at proving you're Really Irish--e.g., your parents' names are Flanagan and Murphy, and those are their first names--and want to know for sure if you've got All The Wrong Stuff, here's a test you can take and decide for yourself:

1. All your brothers and sisters are in Alcoholics Anonymous.

2. You talk incessantly and in your sleep and for no reason.

3. Captivated audiences--e.g., juries and Rhodes and Marshall scholarship selection committees--take months and often years to realize that nothing you said made sense.

4. Your idea of foreplay is '"I'm home! Brace yourself, Brigit!"

5. Distant relatives in County Cork list "wearing trousers" and "dwarf-tossing" on resumes.

6. You once read "Angela's Ashes" and secretly dread the first day your wife or girlfriend humiliates you in front of your kids, your mates and the rest of the neighborhood.

7. For years after your last appointment psychiatrists beg you to take your money back.

8. You've spent 20 minutes on the phone giving long-distance relatives about to visit you a detailed report on the weather. You hang up, look out the window and see if you were right.

9. You make fun of Welsh people because they drink too much.

10. You're available at any time to speak at any length about any subject.

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Pont Saint-Patrick, Cork 1900

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March 14, 2024

Hôtel du Jeu de Paume: 54, rue Saint Louis en l'Ile.

"Welcome back, Monsieur Hool." This is Hôtel du Jeu de Paume, the non-oath version. Erected in the 17th century, it once housed a tennis court built by Louis XIII, king from 1610 to 1643. Beams from the early 1600s cross the ceilings. An interior garden. The walls: old books, newer original art. Neither Left or Right bank. Save for your 5th trip to Paris. The longstanding and competent staff takes a "working" dim view of both Americans and Brits. They are wonderfully rude, Paris smart, and Yankee-style industrious. A haughty Labrador even lives here full-time. This is Hull McGuire's hands-down favorite since 2003. Brits never stay here twice. Too French. Be late to breakfast at your peril. The staff does not merely leer and grin when it is says "no" or "impossible!". They laugh, too.

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March 13, 2024

Irish Guys on the World Stage.

"The purpose of the Irish guy is to drink and wear trousers."

--Irish Woman, Dublin, to Dan Hull, 2011

But there's more. Never underestimate Irish guys. St. Patrick's Day is in honor of a Brit captured and sold into slavery by Irish marauders to the chieftain Mil uh in the year 403 to work tending animals in what is now the County of Antrim. After six years, he escaped and returned to England, later becoming a cleric. He eventually returned to northern and western Ireland, and changed that country forever. He is generally credited with turning the Irish from Celtic pagans to Christians. Patrick died on March 17--in either 493 or 460. Never underestimate Irish guys.

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March 12, 2024

The 7 Habits of Highly Clueless Corporate Lawyers.

Lawyers who won't take a stand is a time-honored tradition. Ernie from Glen Burnie, a lawyer and a life-long friend of mine, is not such a creature. It's just his nature. He's an activist in all matters. He'll stand up for people who pay him--and for people he just met on the subway. In late 1995, when the championship Netherlands Women's National Volleyball Team were staying at the Mayflower, Ernie, I and two lawyers from the DC office of [firm name deleted] met the four tallest at Clyde's.....sorry, we're getting sidetracked.

There are so many wonderful stories about Ernie from Glen Burnie. But read first the very short story about Ernie's big find circa 1990. We first reported on it in June of 2006. It's about an old parchment he claims was discovered in Alexandria, Virginia, around the same time we both began practicing law in the District. Do see The Seven Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers. This is a true story, mostly. So listen up.

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Stand-up guys: The author, then a dead-ringer for writer Jack Kerouac, and EFGB in their pre-lawyer and pre-Netherlands Women's National Volleyball Team years.

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O Rare Partner Emeritus Redux

If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. [Y]ou cannot avoid the essence of my character if you aspire to succeed... I or some form of my embodiment will exist to make your existence as uncomfortable and unpleasant as it can be. Welcome to the legal profession you self-entitled nimrods have created.

--Partner Emeritus, Above The Law, 2009

‘O Rare Ben Jonson’

--Words on the gravesite slab of eccentric English dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637) in Westminster Abbey. Jonson also was buried upright.

Twenty-five years ago, before The Great Neutering, before attorney gene pools started to dilute, when service professionals were well-rounded, if not classically-educated Renaissance people, when it meant a great deal to be a lawyer, and indeed to be a man, we had practitioners like Partner Emeritus. That is the nom de plume of a retired Brahmin New York City lawyer with an impressive following on the internet and who many culturally illiterate people--i.e., most lawyers these days (sorry, but that is the perfect truth)--apparently simply do not get. He's intimidating and spine-tinglingly scary to the maggotry, a comedic genius and WASP Yoda to the urbane.

Whoever he is--I sense pretty much everything about the way he portrays himself is authentic save his real name--PE has been there and done that (his legal breadth intrigues me) in upper-tier corporate law. And, perhaps, in life. Like me, he is an accomplished and unapologetic philanderer. A cad. Color him, too, a bit picaresque. Well-read. Well-traveled. He acquired and trained two Afghan show hounds. He even played polo, for fuck's sake. And like me, he does love the law, and this profession, which he worries about. Partner Emeritus is also an accomplished satirist. A Lenny Bruce for those with Mayflower DNA. Governor-for-Life of Upper Caucasia. A Dean Swift for modern Manhattan.

PE entertains in two distinct, interchanging, modes. You commend his taste, and judgment, when he shifts gears from Satirist to Learned Critic. (You don't know when that is? That shifting? Your problem. Start getting a real education by attending the theatre, visiting art museums and reading Tom Jones, Candide, Huckleberry Finn. Devour Miller, Kubrick, Pope, Orwell. Behold Nabokov, Heller, Huxley, Mencken. View Pieter Bruegel. Listen to Gilbert & Sullivan. Will take years--but it's worth it.) Ninety-five percent of the time--no, I do not agree with his every assessment--he's right on the money about people, places and things. His writing is art. Class art. Informed art. Funny art. He disturbs, and brilliantly.

PE's best gift? It is his instinct for detecting two related (I think) qualities he detests: hypocrisy and mediocrity.

Watch him each week expose the growing cadre of bad actors--i.e., twinkies, teacups, imposters, poseurs, plagiarists, thieves--who regularly shill on ATL's eclectic pages, Partner Emeritus has an instinct for the jugular that is dead-on, lightning fast and funny. If you think--and not merely react--you will learn something. You may feel a bit uncomfortable about how you stack up in this universe. But you should learn something about yourself. Otherwise, try not to blow a tube, or pull a hamstring, laughing.

You can read him and howl along with me most weekdays to his comments to certain articles at Above the Law. For many people, PE is the best thing about David Lat's celebrated and storied website. Excerpts from one wistful ATL comment last week:

Prior to owning a 1981 DeLorean DMC 12, I owned a gorgeous 1979 BMW M1. One Saturday, while my wife was with her family at Martha's Vineyard, I took my car into the city and decided to visit the old Copacabana. There, I met a woman named "Sophia." We drank Dom Perignon and danced Salsa and some disco (I was a maven on the dance floor and could have given John Travolta a run for his money during his "Saturday Night Fever" phase). During that evening, Sophia slipped a drug into my drink. The next thing I know, I woke up with a throbbing headache and my lower body was in pain. Apparently, I had crashed my vehicle into a divider on the Long Island Expressway and Sophia was unconscious next to me. A police cruiser drove by and stopped. I explained to the officer that I had been drugged by the latina woman next to me and that she had robbed me (I made sure to place my wallet in her purse before she regained consciousness).

We were taken to the local police station where I filed a report against Sophia. My BMW M1 was totaled and impounded. After a few hours, Sophia and I were awkwardly outside the police station at 5AM. I was in excruciating pain but I had hungry eyes for her so I brokered a deal with Sophia. I offered to drop the charges against her if she agreed to get in a cab with me and go back to my estate and make love to me. She agreed. I will never forget that night. I should have gone to an emergency room (pro-tip: cocaine is more effective at numbing pain than morphine) but all I could think of was being with Sophia, who resembled a young Maria Conchita Alonso.

What I would do to be 37 again.

There are times when I think whether I regret that night. A vintage 1979 BMW M1 would fetch me a cool $750K today but then I would have no memory of Sophia. You could say Sophia was probably one of the most expensive hookers in the history of mankind (despite that my insurance carrier covered the NADA value of that beast of a vehicle at the time, it did not compensate me for the future vintage value of that car which I believe only 500 were made), well next to the women who divorce their wealthy husbands and take them to the cleaners.

Note: Original post July 6, 2015

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Partner Emeritus, New York City. Circa 2008.

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March 11, 2024

Happy Birthday, J. Dan Hull, Jr.

John Daniel Hull, II, 1900 - 1987. My grandfather - always a class act. I spent his last 15 or so Thanksgivings with him in Missouri with just him and my grandmother Alene, who died in 1998 at 101. J. Dan had quiet energy, poise and quality. Elegant. Author, educator, JFK administration mainstay. Cosmos Club. Ozark boy who wanted to go to Yale. He did it all.

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John Daniel Hull, II, 1933, New Haven, Connecticut

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March 10, 2024

Racehorse Haynes on Imperfections

“I would have won them all if my clients hadn’t kept reloading and firing.”

--Richard "Racehorse" Haynes (1927-2017). Trial Lawyer.


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Whitman channels Emerson

“I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.”

--Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Writer Jack London thought you could not wait for it. You needed, he thought, to go out and hunt inspiration with a club. Walt Whitman, however, was luckier. He was a relatively young man when Ralph Waldo Emerson was thinking and writing. Emerson set off the young printer and hack writer, hurling him into an exuberant and celebratory realm, where no one American had ever been.


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March 09, 2024

Badness in Depositions: "Stop me before I coach again."

An objection must be stated concisely in a nonargumentative and nonsuggestive manner.

--from Rule 30(c)(2), Fed. R. Civ. P.

Defending lawyers who testify are bad. And let he or she without sin cast the first stapler. In defending in a deposition, giving speeches and coaching your witness on the record is "bad" because it may be suggestive of the answer the witness should give. We could go on and on and on about this--but we'll just be quiet and let you read it.

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(Does this guy ever shut up?)

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March 08, 2024

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Irish.

“There's no point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”

--Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant Secretary for Labor, a few days after November 22, 1963.

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March 07, 2024

Dan Hull’s Rum Diary: Growing up Hunter Thompson.

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Kurtz. He got off the boat. He split from the whole goddamn program.

--Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Thompson had a way of keeping anyone unfriendly to the very idea of him beyond even mere curiosity. Just unaware. In that case, you were a nice person doing the best you could. You didn't "need it"--anymore than you needed to become good friends with Andy Warhol, Ralph Nader, Harry Dean Stanton, or Dr. John the Night Tripper, whoever they were.

--A Fan

Twenty years ago, when I was an associate in D.C. sweating everything, I worried a lot about something hanging in my office: a framed black, white and red "Hunter S. Thompson for Sheriff" election poster for a 1970 election in Aspen, Colorado.

The poster bore a Harvard Strike fist. Inside the fist there appeared to be what someone explained was a drawing of a plant which bad or crazy people chewed on to "get high". But I quickly realized that anyone who actually knew about Thompson and his books and articles on presidential politics, Las Vegas and the Kentucky Derby--the event in his hometown of Louisville was "decadent and depraved"--would likely like me for having it.

I was right. The poster meant nothing to most people who visited my office, and it even helped me make friends. In the 1970s and 1980s, people read and loved him or had never heard of him.

So you either "knew" HST--or you didn't.

He either delighted, or was too disturbing to explore. A talented and comical writer, he drank too much, really did like chemicals, hated Richard Nixon, upset people on the press entourage, freaked out editors, showed up drunk for "speeches", and arranged for Ed Muskie to be severely menaced on a train by one seriously funny outlaw rich kid named Peter Sheridan.

He liked weapons. He was once accused of firing a military rocket at a snowmobile. According to a friend of mine who worked for one of the TV news networks, Thompson once mysteriously and suddenly showed a handgun to Secret Service agents and reporters sitting in a booth in a famously silly Capitol Hill singles bar, mumbling "just in case there's a firefight..."

Even with that public life, Thompson had a way of keeping anyone unfriendly to the very idea of him beyond even mere curiosity. Just unaware. In that case, you were a nice person doing the best you could. You didn't "need it"--anymore than you needed to become good friends with Andy Warhol, Ralph Nader, Harry Dean Stanton, or Dr. John the Night Tripper, whoever they were.

Even after Thompson became a character in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, saw two movies based on his work, and died by his own hand in early 2005, most people didn't have a clue or want to. One exception in later years: "beer hippies" and GenX stoners finally discovered Thompson--"Gonzo, drugs, liberal stances, hey Hunter's my man"--and my guess is that he secretly looked down on them.

Well, anyone can be in his club at this point. But I needed it all along. He was an angry but fine writer, a humorist, an innovator--and a big hillbilly like me who grew up on the Mason-Dixon line and all along just wanted to fall in love. He still makes me laugh and cry.

Maybe there is no Heaven.

Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested.

Original post: 11.29.2013

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March 06, 2024

Romain Rolland on Creation

There is no joy except in creation. There are no living beings but those who create. All the rest are shadows, hovering over the earth, strangers to life. All the joys of life are the joys of creation: love, genius, action.

--Romain Rolland (1866-1944) in "Lightning Strikes Christophe"

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March 05, 2024

Am rethinking 6-month employee performance reviews.

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March 04, 2024

Les Bouquinistes, part deux

More than a tower or a statue, or an artist's or soldier's name on a plaque or street post, the green bookstalls of Paris are the city's most apt and enduring mark. It's hard to say what's better: the hundreds of paintings and etchings of les bouquinistes in the last 400 years, the thousands of photos of them in the past 100, or one glimpse on any day you could almost take them for granted.

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March 03, 2024

We do love books: Les Bouquinistes.

Those now green Paris book stands lining the Seine go back. 500 years at least. You don't read? Go there alone. Any time of day. You'll meet women named Belle, Luz or Anelise. They'll make you see Jesus by the end of the week.

Below: Jean Henry Marlet, "Bouquiniste quai Voltaire 1821"

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Hermann the German

Hermann the German, or Arminius, was a leader of Roman Auxiliary Cavalry in the 9th Century AD. In the three-day battle known as the Varus Schlact, which took place in a dense forest, he switched sides, led the destruction of three Roman Legions (about 10,000 in number) and stopped Roman expansion into what is now Germany.

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Balking at America

“Once they let you get away with running around for ten years like a king hoodlum, you tend to forget now and then that about half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they honestly doubt their own sanity. These are not the kind of people who really need to get hung up in depressing political trips. They are not ready for it. Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare.”

--Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

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March 02, 2024

Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, London

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March 01, 2024

Mary Harris Jones, "Grandmother of All Agitators"

Big ones. School teacher, seamstress, businesswoman, community organizer, Chicago girl and Ireland-born, Mary Harris "Mother Jones" (1837-1930) had big ones. What a resume, most of it built after she turned 50.

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Denounced on the U.S. Senate floor as the "grandmother of all agitators."

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Redux Online Lolita: Real Life Facebook Messenger Romances.

A youngish, attractive female human —between 18 and 25 from “her” photo — recently friended me on Facebook. I apparently accepted thinking she had some personal connection to me; she does not. Today she privately messaged me to chat via Facebook Messenger. We chatted while I was still at my office--I'm a youngish energetic Boomer lawyer; we're all like this, even on Friday nights--in my last half-hour at work. I unfriended her at 7:26 PM.

Look, there is nothing more dangerous/ unsexy than this kind of human you meet on the Net. Okay, a bit funny to me maybe. However, if you're a regular homely and/or sexually-frustrated married guy unskilled in philandering, or a part-time or novice cad, this is NOT fun, funny or safe. Do not try this at home; you'll just screw it up, end up on a Chris Hansen NBC show. Am correcting typos/punctuation of her English prose for clarity in this post. Otherwise verbatim:

(Chat Conversation Begin 6:56PM)

HER: Hi

ME: Hi, what's up? Can I help you?

[longish pause]

HER: How are you doing?

ME: Fine. And you?

HER: I am doing well. I am looking for a good man.

ME: That would not be me. I have had 2 or maybe 3 wives and scores of girlfriends and cheated on every one of them. Besides you are way too young for me. Way.

[moderate pause]

HER: You mean you cheated on your wives and GFs?

ME: Yes. I just typed that. Every one of them. I think there's something wrong with me.

[No pause at all but then this non-sequitur response...]

HER: But I believe with love 2 people can overcome age and distance.

ME: Well, I don't. I'm looking for (1) Smith College, (2) brilliance, (3) wit, (4) Anglo-Gaelic breeding, (5) athleticism, (6) world-class beauty, (7) a flat in London and (8) really big trust funds. And (9) right here in DC. Must have all 9.

[another longish pause]

HER: Really?

ME: Yes. Absolutely. How did we get to be FB friends? I may be the wrong Dan Hull. There are lots of Dan Hulls and most are lazy hillbillies like me. Half of us are in jail.

[short pause]

HER: Uhhh...ok.

[Chat Conversation End 7:25pm]


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Original post: September 5, 2018

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The Book of Kells

Is anything human-made more beautiful? Below is Folio 292r (circa 800) of The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament. This page opens the Gospel of John. Illustrations in the Book of Kells mix pagan, Celtic and Christian symbols and motifs covering nearly 8000 years of Irish history. The result is an ancient montage of mixed media that's playful, quirky, sexual, mystical and yet deeply Christian. A masterwork of Western calligraphy. 680 pages of the book survives. Housed at Trinity College Library in Dublin.

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“Nice Smart American Kids Make Lousy Lawyers”

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Image: Ragdoll Productions for BBC TV

What kind of human makes a great lawyer?

I don't mean a go-through-the-motions lawyer, a tell-you-what-the law-is lawyer (dipstick variety) or even a yeoman lawyer here. I mean a solid and effective advocate-adviser you can count on when money, reputation, freedom and sometimes life itself is at stake.

People who work every day for 40 years for each client as if it's their first day working on their first real client assignment. Sure, some of the details get to be tedious or old hat after a while--but those juices are always flowing. They are always tuned into their responsibilities to others. They take great pride in it. People, if you will, who were born to be lawyers.

"Nice, smart" kids, maybe?

No. In fact, "nice, smart" kids including scads of first-borns who were always great students, maybe elected Senior Class President in high school or on the debating team in college--they come in droves to the legal profession every year and have done that for generations--almost always make shitty lawyers.

"Smart" is a prerequisite. "Nice" is okay--"happy" is more important--but you meet few sane clients who insist on "nice".

To be an effective lawyer, you need a lot more going on, whether you are doing litigation, transactional work, regulatory matters and even legislative/lobbying kinds of projects. I'm not an expert on personality types. But in my view you probably ought to have all of the following: (1) more energy than most people have, (2) stamina (good physical health, perhaps better than average health), (3) persistence, (4) ambition, (5) resilience, (6) competitiveness and a (7) mean streak a mile wide you can turn off and on. And that's for starters. Here are two more: (8) a natural tendency to thrive on and even relish conflict (no, not "embrace", I said relish) and (9) a natural tendency to regard "stress as kind of fuel".

So with that in mind, we've renamed our blog, starting two days ago--until the day after Labor Day--What About Clients/Paris? will be known as "It's Not About the Lawyers, Teacups." As most of our seven or eight regular readers we've picked up since our launch 10 years ago already know, we think there is currently in the legal profession an alarmingly undue emphasis on concepts like:

(a) lawyer comfort and satisfaction generally,

(b) lawyer self-esteem,

(c) lawyer "resilience" (N.B. "lawyer resilience"; this is a subtopic if there ever was one that is certain to make a lot of sophisticated clients look suddenly like they've lost several pints of blood the first time they hear it),

(d) lawyer "mindfulness" and other pop-Zen faux-Eastern notions of well-being, calm, repose, serenity and right state of mind which are taught by people who have no idea what they're talking about to often youngish lawyers who don't know the difference and which would have Alan Watts, Eknath Easwaran or Gautama Himself rolling agonizingly in their graves;

(e) lawyer mental health, and

(f) the new "Lawyer Patienthood", especially underemployed or unemployed younger lawyers who are desperate to make the profession "fit them" even if in the best of economic times it would be painfully apparent to them and many others that they are wonderful, important and talented creatures who deserve to be happy but were simply not cut out to be lawyers in the first place. "Nice, smart kids" can certainly do many other things.

I think that the wrong humans have been entering law school for some time now, from the oldest Baby Boomers to the youngest of Gen-Ys. Somehow we need to attract those who are born with the basic mental, emotional and physical makings of the kind of person clients and customers can rely on with confidence. There are lots of these folks--and we need to start attracting them to this profession. For the last three decades, at least, they have not appeared in great numbers. Let's develop more sophisticated ways of identifying them--and for the sake of clients everywhere somehow start getting them here.

Original post: September 3, 2015

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February 29, 2024

Naked Lunch, first printing, Grove Press, 1959.

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February 28, 2024

Like to thank the little people

Taken in 2023, this is the most unflattering Marco Island birthday photo I could find. There isn’t even a beach in it. I didn’t get to MI for my birthday this year. But, even better, I did get to see my energetic peripatetic way-youthful mom Penny Hull in Atlanta last month. Penny looks better than I do. She’s also nicer. And thank you everyone for the great birthday greetings yesterday and today. Appreciated. I like birthdays. Well, mine, anyway.

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February 27, 2024

Herman Hesse jokes with The Immortals

Eternity is a mere moment--just long enough for a joke.

--Hermann Hesse's version of Goethe, dead, possessed of a superior perspective, and speaking to Harry Haller, in Steppenwolf (1927).

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Print of Sonning Bridge, River Thames, England. Charles Rosenberg. Published for S. Ireland, 2 May 1799.

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February 26, 2024

James Baldwin’s “Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone."

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An essayist at heart, American novelist, poet and playwright James Baldwin (1924-1987) wrote his experimental fourth novel about the life of Leo Proudhammer, a black stage actor raised in Harlem who moves to Greenwich Village. Proudhammer has a heart attack on stage. Published in 1968, and panned by critics but widely read, "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone" is an incredibly intense coming of age story set the 1930s and 1940s about racial prejudice, the American experiment, family, faith and sexuality.

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February 24, 2024

World Famous, Highly Correct, Way-Annoying 12 Rules of Client Service

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1. Represent only clients you like.

2. The client is the main event.

3. Make sure everyone in your firm knows the client is the main event.

4. Deliver legal work that changes the way clients think about lawyers.

5. Over-communicate: bombard, copy and confirm.

6. When you work, you are marketing.

7. Know the client.

8. Think like the client--help control costs.

9. Be there for clients--24/7.

10. Be accurate, thorough and timely--but not perfect.

11. Treat each co-worker like he or she is your best client.

12. Have fun.

Copyright 2005-2022 John Daniel Hull and Julie Elizabeth McGuire. All Rights Reserved.

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Redux: In Praise of Structure

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Do lawyers know how to get things done, done right and done on time? Do we even value that?

I wonder.

No, I am not talking here about the simple "keeping face" or survival requirements of meeting client deal or court deadlines, or even about the clichés of "working hard", creative thinking, "out of the box" thinking, being persistent, or "working smart".

I mean structure--a real standard for working--and "practicing structure" every day. It's the discipline of: (1) having a plan or strategy for any one project (client or non-client), (2) meeting internal project deadlines (not just "jurisdictional" ones) no matter what, and (3) insisting that everyone in your shop "buy into" the discipline of keeping to that overall plan or strategy and timetable.

"Structure" is not just the hard process of getting things done. It's a frame of mind and a value which must be sold to others in your shop--like the importance of making that 5 minute call to a client about a loose end at the end of the worst day you can remember, even while you could do it the next morning at 8:00. It's realizing that letting anything but emergency tasks "slide" makes you inefficient, unlikely to meet your real goals, and tired.

Do you go into work every day with an idea of what needs to be done on each project, and knowing the difference between "important" and "urgent"?

Example: Monday is your deadline to have the final changes and notes to your web designer on your new firm website, an important but not urgent project you've talked about at internal meetings for months. So far, for once, you have been on track.

But on Monday a longstanding client calls with two new projects; the new projects are exciting but not THAT urgent in the sense they need to cut into internal deadlines and other goals for Monday. You need to take some first steps, though, to get on top of the new matters for your client. After all, these folks are the main event.

So we have a key ongoing internal project v. new client project. Which gets the most attention that day? Which slides?

Answer: they both get attention, and neither slides. The website (long-term important) and the new client project (short term important) are both critical projects.

Years ago, the Stephen Coveys and Edwards Demings out there pointed out that business people burn themselves out by waiting around only for "the urgent" in a kind of manic crisis management that keeps other important things from ever getting done or ONLY getting them done when they morph into a crisis.

For lawyers, other examples would be only respecting deadlines like transaction closing dates and court-filing deadlines--to hell with everything else.

For a long time I've thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action. It's almost as if law school and firms deem us all such "professionals" and "artists" that we are beyond learning skills of project planning and execution.

What a crock. Because you're a lawyer, or other professional (MD, CPA, engineer, broker), you now have a license to be incompetent, semi-competent, or a chronic screw-up on the details of getting much (if not most) of your work done? You're special? An artiste?

Of course not.

Not learning the value of pushing non-urgent but important things along at a steady pace has cost us dearly. As motivated as lawyers often are, our discipline for sticking to anything and seeing it through is often poor; again, unless it's urgent, we just don't see its value. Do our best clients run their businesses that way?

This attitude is the norm, and we lawyers--who rarely innovate or take a leadership position on anything in commerce--are just fine, thank you, with it. After all, "all the other law firms" are mediocre on the discipline of getting things done, and have "crisis-only" mentalities. "Why shouldn't we be that way?"

So we waste time blowing off important, but longer-term projects. Worst of all, we send to others in our firms, and especially to younger lawyers, the message:

"No worries--just work on a barely adequate level; don't do things until you have to; and if it's not urgent, let it slide."

From earlier JDH WAC/P? posts, beginning 2007.

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February 23, 2024

'Oh New York City you talk a lot...'

It's not too far back on the highway not so long a ride.
You park the car out in the open you can walk inside.
A little cutie takes your hat and you can thank her ma'am,
'Cause every time you make the scene you find the joint is jammed.

--Charles Edward Anderson Berry (1926 - 2017)

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February 22, 2024

London’s Geeklawyer

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@Geeklawyer on Dan Hull and What About Clients/Paris?

“Hull? A depraved evil sociopathic neocon beast pretending to love clients to get into their wallets. Then there's his dark side.”

—Geeklawyer, London, 2019

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Anglos, Saxons, Franks, Frisii: Good at Government?

The most civilized nations of modern Europe issued from the woods of Germany; in the rude institutions of those Barbarians we [received] the original principles of our present laws and manners.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter IX (1782)

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February 21, 2024

Partner Emeritus: On the Sanctity of Associate Lawyer Privacy Rights.

If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. I or some form of my embodiment will exist to make your existence as uncomfortable and unpleasant as it can be.

-- Partner Emeritus, New York City, September 3, 2009

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I've loved practicing law. After three years of working on Capitol Hill, I became one of two associates in the small DC branch office of a now-defunct Pennsylvania firm. They gave me a wonderfully eclectic mix of work to do: environmental litigation, energy law, U.S. Supreme Court practice and lobbying for coal companies and banks. In two years the DC office merged with a bigger DC-based firm. We went from 10 to 35 lawyers. And I went from a window office on Eye and 15th, N.W. off McPherson Square to a smaller no-window office three blocks down the street at International Square. I was a 4th or 5th year associate. I didn't complain. I drew a picture of a sun and posted it on the wall.

Meanwhile, up in New York City, and at about the same time, Partner Emeritus' white shoe firm was negotiating a lease renewal--and the Great Man would have gone one step further:

Back in the early '80s when my firm negotiated its lease renewal, I ardently advocated to take less space as I thought placing associates in offices was a waste of resources. Offices are for closers and relevant playmakers who need personalized space to entertain clients. Given that young associates are not permitted to directly interact with clients, there is simply no need for them to have offices.

One of my pet peeves when I was at the firm was the contumacious habit of associates who closed their doors. Whenever I saw an associate's door closed, I assumed he/she was doing one of the following: 1) taking a nap; 2) checking their private email account (e.g., Ashley Madison, etc.); 3) masturbating; 4) engaging in personal phone calls; or, 5) watching internet porn.

As far as I am concerned, associates do not require privacy unless they are on the commode. I personally took a note of all the associates who closed their doors and would often reprimand them or make a notation on their annual review. If it were up to me, I would have had the building maintenance crew remove the doors off of the hinges but I was outvoted on the matter.

I prefer that associates and non-equity partners share the window cubicles. This way, the partners and staff can easily monitor how busy associates are. Moreover, the window cubicles will keep associates on their toes and prevent them from slacking off.

And please spare me the argument that window cubicles dehumanizes associates by making them feel like zoo animals on display. Unlike the animals in the zoo, trust me, no one wants to waste time watching troglodytes push paper.

--Comment by Partner Emeritus to an article by my friend boy wonder David Lat on August 28, 2015 at Above the Law entitled "More Bad News For Biglaw Associates?"


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3rd year associates share 'premium' window cubicle in 1987 (J. Riis).

Copyright 2015 J. Daniel Hull, Ellen Jane Bry, ____ Doe. Best of Partner Emeritus (#6)

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Lower England: Are you a Man of Kent?

As with London, and with the County of Suffolk to the north, from where my mother's family came to Massachusetts via Ipswich 389 years ago, I am completely and hopelessly in love with Kent, mainly the eastern ("Men of Kent") part. The County of Kent is the southeastern doorway to the British Isles--it has even more history, legend and myth than London. Lots, and maybe even too much, has happened here during the past 2500 years. Eventually, in 51 BC, Julius Caesar called it Cantium, as home of the Cantiaci. Augustine founded what became the Anglican Church here in about 600 AD. And of course Thomas Becket, Chaucer's "holy blissful martyr", was killed here (Canterbury) in 1170.

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St. John the Baptist, The Street, Barham, Kent

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February 20, 2024

Stand-up Guys: Daniel O'Connell, Trial Lawyer.

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the "Liberator of Ireland", led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to become members of the British House of Commons. History knows him as a witty, eloquent and formidable politician, and the Member of Parliament for Clare. The English found him infuriating. But O'Connell was first and foremost a consummate and thorough trial lawyer, called to the bar at age 23 in 1798. As a cross-examiner, one modern writer has said, "he had no equal at the Irish bar." And not surprisingly O'Connell was a bit of a showman. In lectures published in 1901, Prof. John L. Stoddard said of him:

He was a typical Irishman of the best stock--wily, witty, eloquent, emotional and magnetic. His arrival in town was often an occasion for public rejoicing. His clever repartees were passed from lip to lip, until the island shook with laughter.

In court, he sometimes kept the spectators, jury, judge and even the prisoner, alternating between tears and roars of merriment. Celtic to the core, his subtle mind knew every trick peculiar to the Irish character, and he divined instinctively the shrewdest subterfuges of a shifty witness.

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Tavern Scene, David Teniers, c. 1658

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February 19, 2024

Wordsworth

We no longer require humor in poets. We demand salvation.

— Mark Van Doren, 1950, commenting on the subtle graduation of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) from his role as "nature poet" to one of philosopher who offered hope and reassurance to troubled Europe.

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February 18, 2024

Work-Life Sir Thomas Malory

No one really knows who wrote “Le Morte d’Arthur.“ The best bet is Sir Thomas Malory, a mid-15th century knight and rogue’s rogue. I won’t summarize his crimes and exuberances here but an English nobleman and knight named Malory who died in 1471 was jailed frequently and certainly had time to write. My version (Modern Library, 1999) is nearly 1000 pages long. Its editor Elizabeth Bryan wrote in the introduction that though he “may have been a scoundrel, Malory was also, it seems clear, a man of ideals who believed in courage and loyalty, and who mourned the passing of chivalry.”

Below: Page one from the original manuscript of ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’ published in 1485.

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February 17, 2024

Kundera on Political Obsessives

Immortality, the 1990 novel by the late Czech writer Milan Kundera (1929-2023), is the one book everyone should read to understand ultra-political ‘single-issue’ humans. It’s also been said that “reading it might make you a better lover.” For real.

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Stepping away from mediocrity.

This is a 2020 book by an angry, misguided, talented black woman. Some good points here on white male mainstream mediocrity. Assuming she’s right—white dudes are flukes and unwitting scumbags—why not a repatriation or segregation movement by 14% of America? Who needs whites around?

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February 16, 2024

Aldeburgh, Suffolk, East Anglia

Go somewhere different. Meet someone different. Aldeburgh, Suffolk, East Anglia. Always a festival.

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February 15, 2024

The Holy Surprise of Thinking on Your Own

He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. An imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the universe, the locksmith of mysteries of the atom and the universe.

--Walter Issacson, in Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster, 2007)


Children come with Imagination. It's standard issue.

--Holden Oliver in 2009

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"E" at the beach: Another fresh take.

Try this at home and work: The Holy Surprise of a Child's First Look. Forget for a moment, if you can, about Clients and Paris. This blog is at heart about Quality, Old Verities, and Values--the things no business, government, non-profit group, religion, politician or leader (a) wants to give you or (b) can give you. No, not even family and friends can. You have to find them on your own. Work and Service, whether you are paid for them or not, are inseparable from these things.

At the blog, at our firm, and in our lives, we seek--in the largest sense--serious overachievers, and aficionados of life, past and present: identifying them, learning from them, having them as friends, hiring them and above all, never holding them back. It is often hard to find these people--or even to remember that they once existed. We do, after all, live in a cookie-cutter world. Originality, intuition, authentic spirituality, and even taste are not valued--these traits are often feared and attacked--in most of the West. This is especially true in America, where we continue to be geographically, culturally and (some think) cosmically isolated. The United States, despite its successes, high standard of living and exciting possibilities, has become world headquarters of both moral pretension and dumbing life down. Besides, fresh thinking leads to painful recognitions. It's easier to let something else do the thinking for us.

"Fragmentation" is a word some people (including those with better credentials than the undersigned to write this) have used for decades to describe modern humans all over the world: lots of wonderful, intricate and even elegant pieces--but no whole. So, in our search for coherence, we look for clues. We look to television, advertising, and malls. To work, and to professional organizations. To secondary schools, universities, and any number of religions (none of the latter seem "special"--they say identical intuitive and common sense good things, but just say them differently), and to an array of other well-meaning institutions. In fairness, all of these have their moments (hey, we all like our insular clubs).

Continue reading...

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Rule 7: Know Thy Client.

Rule Seven: Know the Client

The "12 Rules of Client Service" I have been posting one-by-one starting on November 19 [2006] appear in a booklet Julie McGuire and I prepared internally 5 years ago for associates and non-lawyer staff. We just call it Hull McGuire Practice Guide* (*or how to become a productive associate or paralegal). In the Guide, we call the same rules "Blackletter Rules for Practicing Law". The idea is that each of the twelve overall practice rules harks back to the idea that the client comes first. Clients, clients, clients. For us, that is practicing law. Except for some rewording, the 2 sets of rules are substantially the same. The first six rules are reproduced here.

Several lawyer-bloggers I respect have posted--and in some very eloquent and interesting ways--on the idea of Rule 7, really knowing the client and its culture. I think they say it all. See Tom Kane, Patrick Lamb, Tom Collins and Arnie Herz. Some of the discussion lately was triggered by the nerve jangling report of complaints of some GCs at a Fulton County, Georgia CLE conference in early December 2005. I've chimed in on that, too--here and here.

The client, it seems, actually wants you to know him, her or it. Take time out to learn the stock price, industry, day-to-day culture, players and overall goals of your client. Visit their offices and plants. Do it free of charge. Associates in particular need to develop the habit of finding out about and keeping up with clients (and a client's trials and tribulations) in and out of the areas they are working in. Learn about your client--and keep learning about it. Devise a system to keep abreast.

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Original post February 3, 2006

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February 14, 2024

“Romeo and Juliet" by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

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Dylan Thomas reading Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas (d. 1953) reads Fern Hill: "Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs...." His voice--those Welsh pipes--was also one of his many gifts. A sad early death in Manhattan/So far away from his heart.

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February 13, 2024

Fat Tuesday

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Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1879

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Catherine Deneuve, 1995.

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Catherine Deneuve, 52, in 1995.

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February 12, 2024

State of the West

Based on my various news aggregators and feeds, Western culture is now so fragmented and degraded that we’ve raised minutia and trivia to high art forms, and made heroes out of turds. Am going to ditch my devices and spend more time outside. You’re welcome.

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February 11, 2024

Disraeli on Lawyering: Is law just life on the sidelines?

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Young Ben Disraeli: "I rust like a Damascus sabre in the sheath of a poltroon."

Is being a good lawyer enough?

Consider what the young, precocious, mega-talented, persistent and world class pain-in-the-ass Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) thought--years before becoming Prime Minster of England--as he abandoned his legal career before it really started, in favor of writing and politics. According to one biographer, he exclaimed:

The Bar: pooh! law and bad tricks till we are forty, and then, with the most brilliant success, the prospect of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate, I must be a great lawyer, and to be a great lawyer, I must give up my chance of being a great man.

--A. Maurois, Disraeli (Random House 1928)

Sidelined? Hobbled? Self-discarded in the great race of life? Maybe it's true. Hard-driving lawyer friends (both in-house and in law firms) do articulate a feeling of being "sidelined"--yet they are very proud of what they do as lawyers. They may think: Why merely advise--when you could lead, create boldly, and command? And do that every day? Lots of lawyers are Type-As. Yes, some of us who advise great companies really end up as officers, CEOs, and COOs? Sure, many more of us run for office.

But most of us are at best mousy posturing technicians. Should more and more of us throw our golfing hat in the ring of other life, the fields of commerce, and bigger--or at least different--ponds? Does law school and the profession make many of us so risk-averse, passive and routinely academic in our approach to life that it knocks the will and energy to lead out of us?

Or were we just that way from the beginning?

Original post: 5.28.06

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Super Bowl Now

I raptly watched the first Super Bowl with my dad and brother in 1967. To us, a jock clan, nothing was cooler. Now Americans also celebrate passivity and sloth. But some violence, even in play, is what humans do, and have always done. Below: Jack Kerouac playing for Columbia

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February 10, 2024

Modern Alcoholics Anonymous: Springboard? Or Permanent Cocoon?

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When will my beloved AA get back to getting people clean and sober to participate in real life?

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February 09, 2024

Storytelling for trial lawyers, writers and actual humans in 16 words.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

--Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

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Chekhov with Maxim Gorky in Yalta, probably 1900

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February 08, 2024

Euripides: On Dog Fights

Ten soldiers wisely led, will beat one hundred without a head.

--Euripides (480-406 BC)

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Lafayette Park: Rep. Daniel Sickles was a Far-Out Mother.

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In 1859, in Lafayette Park, U.S. Representative Daniel Sickles shot and killed fellow lawyer Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key. Sickles was a talented, ambitious, somewhat shady and philandering Manhattan politician who counted President Lincoln among his many friends. He discovered that Key was having an affair with Sickles's young yet long-neglected wife, Teresa. During his life, Sickles made American foreign policy, helped create New York's Central Park, had a hand in the development of the modern insanity defense, and was a celebrated if controversial Union Army field general. The best book on Sickle's amazing, checkered and long public life is Thomas Keneally's American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles.

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February 06, 2024

This is East Anglia. Suffolk County. I start here.

Neither the tiny rural village of Lindsey nor the surrounding countryside has changed much since 1634, when one side of my family called Holden left there via Ipswich on the River Orwell for Massachusetts and, in time, a new "Groton", named after another small village near Lindsey. Three hundred and eighty-six years later, Lindsey is pastoral, green, mainly un-peopled and fairly remote. No visible overt 21st century commerce. Some farming. No tourists.

St Peter, a rough Anglican church, at one time Catholic, the one my ancestors attended, built in the 1300s, and even older church ruin, St James (1200s), are the only man-made constants. Still a "parish", Lindsey is on the B1115 Hadleigh-to-Bury road.

This is part of East Anglia--coveted, held and loved for so long by the Danes. The region's been victor and victim over and over again. Mainstream tribes from all over Europe battled here for centuries. It is storied. It is still beautiful. Nothing compares to it.

And it is a key "feeder" region in the English migration to America. From 1625 to 1640, Charles I had tried to rule England without calling the Puritan-dominated Parliament. Puritan dissenters, lots of them, lived in the area around Lindsey, and

from here hundreds of families fled across the Atlantic to the new world. The Winthrops, of tiny Groton, would become founders of the State of Massachusetts. But most of the settlers were poor, working families, and they would devote themselves to quiet, prayerful unpersecuted lives, and of work hard to build new communities. Of course, they would never see Suffolk or the valley of the gentle Brett again.

--Simon Knott

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St. Peter in Lindsey

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108 Things Hopelessly Amoral Lawyers Master.

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WJC and writer, January 1, 2009, noon, Charleston


1. Date no one named Zoe, Brigit or Natasha.

2. Let no one leave anything in your home or hotel room.

3. Don’t do the au pairs.

4. British women are named Lucy, Pippa or Jane.

5. British women rarely like British men.

6. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, the most widely used legal citation system in the United States, was first published in 1926. It is always important.

7. Legal and woke interviews don't tell you much.

8. Have a co-worker in same room if you interview someone.

9. Don't jump to hire law grads with blue collar backgrounds. Some think they've arrived and are done.

10. Women make better associate lawyers.

11. On documents, Rule 34 (Production of Documents and Things) and Rule 45 (Subpoena) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do very different things. Know what they are.

12. Dogs are the best thing about this planet.

13. Cats not dogs if you travel.

14. Great looking women think they're ugly.

15. Pay attention to little things.

16. Irish, Welsh, Finnish, Ethiopian and Afro-American women are heroes. Forever in charge. Enduring.

17. A disproportionate number of Irish people are drunks.

18. A disproportionate number of Irish people are verbally or lyrically gifted.

19. Jewish doctors do not understand Irish, English, German or Russian drunks.

20. Jews and Italians are the best drinkers. They have the genes. They have rules.

21. The Jews are It. A consistently awesome and world changing tribe for 2500 years.

22. Russian women are cheap, treacherous and insane.

The Cardsharps, Caravaggio, c. 1594

23. For decades the wrong people have gone to law school.

24. Lawyers are less well educated, less well rounded and less culturally literate every decade.

25. Narcissists get stuff done.

26. There are at about 40 exceptional American colleges and universities.

27. Do one absurd or silly thing every day.

28. Never be impressed by Phi Beta Kappas.

29. Always be impressed by Marshall scholars, Rhodes scholars and Williams grads.

30. Have at least 3 impeccable suits.

31. Don't wear bow ties every day. Almost every day is fine.

32. Cuffs on all long pants except jeans and dinner jacket trousers.

33. Wear khaki pants and suits or seersucker suits in Summer. Summer is Memorial Day to Labor Day.

34. Twice a month dress like a pimp from a New Orleans whorehouse.

35. Know who you are. Learn your family history on both sides back five generations.

36. Talk to people on elevators. All of them.

37. Don't do Europe with other Americans.

38. Just 2 cats.

39. Sheehan's Rule: "If I don't remember it, I didn't do it."

40. When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can. ~ Hugh Grant (b. 1960)

41. Always attribute. Especially when you think no one will notice.

42. More than one person can have the same original thought.

43. Never let anyone tell you how to feel, think, act, write or speak.

44. Never let anyone tell you who you are.

45. One juror will always surprise you big time. Learn who that is before you close

46. Always talk to jurors post-verdict.

47. Never communicate in any manner ever with that one female juror who seemed to like you.

48. Women are meaner, more vindictive and more treacherous than men.

49. The dumbest woman is 100 times more complex than the smartest man.

50. Men are simple. There is not much going on.

51. Rule 36 (Requests for Admissions), my friend.

52. Rule 56(d) (When facts are unavailable to the non-movant) is misunderstood.

53. Civil RICO is an unintended consequence. Use it the right way.

54. Seldom watch television.

55. Every Mom suffers.

56. Your Mom is your best friend.

57. Buenos Aires has the best looking people on this planet.

58. Great lovemaking cannot be learned.

59. Love can be learned.

60. There are no lapsed or recovering Catholics.

61. Don't buy cheap shoes.

62. Shoe trees. Cedar.

63. Jewish women rarely have great legs.

64. Japanese women are the best helpmates.

65. Slightly insane WASP women are the best lovers.

66. People born after 1980 should not have babies, jobs or dogs.

67. Brown shoes go well with gray suits. No one knows why.

68. Your handkerchief should never match your tie.

69. Nothing takes just 10 minutes.

70. Being Right is Expensive.

71. No prayer is imperfect.

72. The best prayer says thank you.

73. Not caring what people think is a Superpower.

74. The English look down on anyone non-English. This will never stop.

75. The French and Irish are playful.

76. Eastern Europeans are not playful.

77. When your mouth is dry, you know you're plenty high. ~ George Thorogood

78. Don't tell people you just met your problems.

79. Copy someone on every letter.

80. Never write a letter. Never throw one away. ~ Unknown

81. Jewish men are overly-suspicious. There are reasons for it. Work with it.

82. Irish men talk too much. There are no reasons for it. Work with it.

83. Never needlessly anger the Irish, the Welsh, Scots or Sicilians.

84. Be nice to people who just had a downfall. Don't pile on. They'll be back.

85. Avoid people with no enemies.

86. Beware of the Lily White. ~ J. Dan Hull, Jr. (1900-1988)

87. Employees who say they'll double-check never checked the first time.

88. Tighten up. Like Archie Bell & The Drells.

89. Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton worked harder than you did.

90. Attitude is more important than facts.

91. Employees either help you or hold you back. Nothing in between.

92. Persian women make too much noise. Way.

93. Tribes are always important.

94. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff. ~ Ellen Jane Bry

95. Nothing is more important than a first kiss.

96. Don’t hire broke or broken people. Bad.

97. Write prompt handwritten thank you notes.

98. The arts are central to life. They are not optional. ~ Julian Barnes (b. 1946)

99. Plan for surprises.

100. Resist perfectionism.

101. Each person has a thousand selves. ~ Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

102. Men say the vilest possible things to each other they don't mean.

103. Women say the nicest possible things to each other they don't mean.

104. Everyone you meet is not in your mood.

105. You will never know anyone's entire story.

106. Be the ball.

107. End everything on a high note.

108. Trust no one in Budapest.

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Wayne Stanley Kramer, 1948-2024

RIP Wayne Kramer. “I’m sick and tired of playing these blues/And I’m sick to my guts of the American Ruse.”

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February 05, 2024

One Night/One Person: Season 9: It's Cold Again, Campers.

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Damn. It’s getting cold again in the northern hemisphere. Cold as a witch’s tit, Jack.

The purpose of this post—which over the years I keep annoyingly if faithfully revising—is simple. To keep these homeless humans alive during the 30 coldest nights of the year by doing something simple and effective for others. And without holding pressers about what great people we are when it’s cold and we help.

Those nights are coming back.

Bear with me.

As a Yankee, Eagle Scout, outdoorsy dude, lifelong camper and all-weather philanderer, let me assure you that spending a night outside in colder weather has unique challenges. Even in the Fall. And generally in the period October through March.

Exposure. The Elements. And hypothermia. Call “it” what you will. Authors Jack London and Hans Christian Andersen each wrote well-known stories about it. And you can die from hypothermia well above 32 degrees F.

You say you would really like to help the urban homeless on both cold and super-cold American Northeastern and Midwestern nights? Chilly, plain cold and the bitterly cold, there are unpredictable nights that many cities are prepared to accommodate more homeless residents at shelters but for a number of reasons (both good and bad) thousands of Americas's rough sleepers take their chances outside?

Good. So see our inaugural post about our One Night, Person (March 5, 2015) campaign and our follow-up March 7, 2015 post. No, we don't have time to go over all of this again; we're working stiffs like you. Just read the posts.

Once again, and in short, here is the idea and the rules:

You're a Yuppie, professional or other generic dweeb between the ages of 22 and 82.You live in towns like New York City, Philly, Boston, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Wilmington, DC or Chicago.

Or similar cities in Europe. Or Asia. Generally? Think Northern Hemisphere. Planet Earth. Wherever Yuppies roam. You may live in the suburbs or in a downtown neighborhood of these cities. But if you work during the day in a downtown area of any of them, you and yours will go forth and do this:

1. Pick out and ask a homeless woman or man what articles of warm clothing she or he needs that you already have at home or in storage--thermal gloves, wool scarfs, warm hats and beanies, big sweaters, winter coats, thermal underwear, socks, etc.

2. Ask just one person at a time.

3. Agree on a time to meet (preferably at the same place) later that day or the next day.

4. Find the winter stuff you have at home or in storage.

5. Bring said stuff to the homeless woman or man as agreed.

6. Nine out of ten times, your new friend will be there when you show up.

7. Wait for forecasts of the next super-cold night--and repeat.


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February 04, 2024

Doing Rome

Comparisons between old Rome and modern U.S. are exciting and instructive. ~ What About Paris?

When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can. ~ Hugh Grant

Rome. I don't like working here--charitably put, work-life balance is totally out of balance in some regions of Italy--but I love being in Rome. You can walk in this city. You can frolic in it. You can play all day long in and around the The Forum and Palatine Hill, where antiquities are still being found. There's a guy with a shop at the Piazza Navona--2000 years ago the Piazza was a Roman circus (i.e., track) you can still see if you try--who sells me these unique old prints, beautifully framed, that I bought for my father in Cincinnati. I go to that shop on every trip. The Tiber River is still gorgeous and, like the Seine in Paris, steeped in history, and a bit melancholy and mysterious. Lots happened here--maybe too much--and it's as if the river can remember it all.

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Pannini (1743): Ruins, Chiostre, Statue of Marc-Aurèle

In the West, our strongest ideas and institutions, including what became English law, were conceived or preserved by Rome. The increasingly-made comparisons between Rome and the U.S.--no, they are certainly not new--are still exciting and instructive. The Romans were competent if grandiose empire builders who borrowed their best ideas and forms from a previously dominant Greece, while America's cultural debt is chiefly to western Europe. Like Rome, America tended to overextend itself in all spheres. Like Rome, America was globally aggressive. (Other peoples resented it.) You get the idea.

But you can't see, experience and "do" Rome on one trip--same thing with New York, London or Paris--and you shouldn't try. Our advice: do several trips, and "live in it" each and every visit, taking small bites. And spend your trip with anyone but those from the same nation and culture as your own. If you go there with Americans, break out of that bubble. Politely say goodbye--and disappear into the streets on your own.

Original post: September 15, 2013

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February 03, 2024

TJ O’Hara - Dan Hull interview on J6

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Indian Hill

Indian Hill. I miss growing up in Indian Hill, Ohio. A community that protected its own. If I were driving around at 17 and the local cops stopped me, this:

“Why it’s Dan Hull. John Hull’s eldest. Got any beer, dope or cocaine there in your Daddy’s car?”

“No, sir.”

“Would you like some?”

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Writing Well

“You and your firm are judged by every piece of writing that goes out the door.”

--A wise person, possibly Dan White, lawyer-writer-humorist

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Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)

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February 02, 2024

Bring back real dames.


Bring back real women and girls: Annabelle Wallis, English, b. September 5, 1984

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January 31, 2024

Men of Letters: Charlie Rose, Hunter Thompson.

Never write a letter, never throw one away.

--Attributed to the late private investigator and consultant Thomas Corbally, two medieval priests, and three U.S. mayors.

For reasons which go back to 1974, I miss Hunter Thompson. This son of Louisville put some of his best and funniest stuff in personal letters--and he wrote volumes and volumes of them. Over 20,000. I've read some off and on for years; my favorites (and the funniest) are his with boss Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone magazine's founder and editor, in the 1970s and 1980s. Others are published in Thompson's books over the years. See this clip from a Charlie Rose interview, undated, but his Rose's with Thompson, likely about 1997. HST talks about letter-writing here.


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January 30, 2024

E. Jean Carroll’s alright by me.

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I like E. Jean Carroll. Always have. Fine and accomplished writer. Hoosier. Midwesterner. Funny as hell. Former super-jock. Cheerleader. Ex-beauty queen. Former Miss Indiana. Hunter Thompson’s gf for a while. Once mentored a talented young Hull family writer about writing and getting writing gigs. Write me a nasty letter.

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January 29, 2024

Drink Colonial Predator

Don’t forget. My new Colonial Predator Unfair Trade Coffee product launches March 1. All the Oppression,Twice the Caffeine.

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January 28, 2024

Hull Hoops DNA

Center bottom photo: My Great Aunt Helen Hull in 1922. Born 1906. So that makes 4 generations and counting of serious Hull-McCracken hoops talent. My dad John Hull III (b. 1928). My first cousin Mike McCracken (1951). My nephew David Hull, Jr. (1982). And a few lesser lights here and there. Thanks to Mary Helen Allen, her daughter. Just saw this today.

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January 27, 2024

Cultural Literacy For America’s White Collars: When?

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Île Saint-Louis on the Seine, seen from a famous bridge.

Americans, the Alpha-humans, the elect and the "winners" in modern world history, are not well-rounded in our knowledge of the world, its people, and how we all got to this point on earth. Art, literature, the humanities, world history and political theory are not just for the rich, the elite, intellectual, and people who attended Choate and Oberlin. These things are the best part of all of us; they can inform, stir and improve every moment. If America could put real education before "jobs", we would astonish--and charm--the entire world.

Education is about more than just getting a job. Cultural literacy has never been an American strength. Oddly, even American professionals, and executives in leadership positions, continue to be satisfied with becoming, and remaining, in effect, "techs". Four years of college or university training. Seven years. Eight years. More. We are not "well-educated" in a traditional or historical sense.

If you don't regularly read this blog--we have a small but steady non-wanker following--here's a suggestion. Before reading further, skim "Thinking Warriors " and "Ernest, the French Aren't Like You and Me". If these posts make you angry, cause a tizzy, give you a headache, or make you pull a hamstring, just try another blog.

Put another way, Americans, the Alpha-humans, the elect and the "winners" in modern world history, are not well-rounded in our knowledge of the world, its people, and how we all got to this point on earth. Browse the American blogs of the Internet for a few hours. Mostly bad neighborhoods--and getting worse and dumber every month. We are insular and at best (being charitable here) semi-literate as a people. We are uninformed about the history, political roots, ideas and art of the West.

Sure, our schools and universities are called "the envy of the world"--and it's all a crock. We are delusional about our true educational achievement for the rank-and-file. We're a pretty dumb lot--and that includes the vast majority of our white collars and execs. The Net, ironically to some, has only made the situation worse; it imparts the idea that everyone (1) has great value and (2) has something very valuable to share. Neither is true. Neither has ever been true.

In short, very few people seem to know what they are thinking and talking about. But that's not important to most of us. We are 300 million "talkers" and know-it-alls, most of whom have four (4) die-hard hobbies: 1. Sitting, 2. Eating, 3. Watching Bad Television, and 4. A Relentless And Seemingly Eternal National Wankfest: Hanging Out With And Talking To The Same People Over And Over Again. Most of us never travel further than Lake Erie. It shows.

The result: not knowing very much, thinking we know everything, having a limited frame of reference about the World--and 80% of us are now Big Enough To Have Our Own Zip Codes.

The future? Well, it's not looking too good. Consider our human resources.

Some view the 18-35 generation as already broken down, and functionally retarded, with lots more budding failures coming up behind them flying the giddy colors of Sloth and McLife. The pattern mentioned above--in which American students at all levels are given poor grounding in global, cultural and historical "basics"--is even worse for these kids. We have dumbed them down silly.

Our short-term solution for younger adults? We've told them all along that they are "just fine". But they are not fine. They are a bust and--please don't lie to yourselves, your customers, co-workers or shareholders--they are dangerous to have in places of work where quality problem-solving is the main daily event. Or on any terrain where you cannot have a "bad day". Mostly drains and bad investments. Our firm will no longer hire them without probation periods--and very tough ones (which can still be a lot of fun for everyone). Nothing less is fair to our clients and co-workers.

Can Americans change any of this? Sure. If we could just learn some things, and put education before jobs, we would astonish and charm the entire world. We would produce better people. We'd have better employees. (Partners across the country again would be able to invite associates to lunch with clients who can read.)

Art, literature, the humanities, world history and political theory aren't just for the rich, the elite or the intellectual. They are the best part of all of us; they can inform, stir and improve every moment.

Original WAC/P? post September 3, 2008

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Lucien Carr: Beat icon, pro, original, excitable boy.

Lucien Carr: Beat icon, pro, original, work ethic rich kid, excitable boy. I met Beat badboy legend Carr once and briefly when he was much older than in the image below and working in DC for one of the wire services where he had flourished for nearly five decades. Way talented, charming guy. And serious American history icon. Everyone even a little hip should know about his story. In the photo below, Carr is on the right with hand on hip. Research him properly, however you learn stuff; you will not be disappointed, I promise. And that’s of course Memory Babe Jack Kerouac on your left. Two friends. Both gifted in different ways and eventually noticed by The World. But Carr? Lucien Carr, who died in 2005, had the luck on him. In spades. Kerouac would have killed for Carr's luck.


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January 25, 2024

April 30, 2022

John Shields, 1971 Class Valedictorian, Indian Hill High School, Indian Hill, Ohio, on April 30, 2022. No, he’s not dead. I just like the photo. And I like John. My neighbor for years. We met when we were both 9 in early 1962. Third graders at Drake Elementary. Mrs. Oldham’s class. Almost 60 years later we are in parking lot of Tod Swormstedt’s great American Sign Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. 50th IHHS reunion.

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January 24, 2024

Rule 6: "...sending to clients barrages of small but powerful ads."

It's scary. If you're working, you're marketing--and that is Rule 6 of the 12 Rules.

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J. London, honorary Boomer

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"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." - J.L.

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January 22, 2024

Oppression Joe

“Oppression Coffee” is a startup I’ve joked about but I am now thinking seriously about launching it. Unlike 'fair trade' coffee products you see in Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, beans will originate from the most sorry and hopelessly oppressed parts of the Third World. What do you guys think?

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The Shakespeare Edition. Blawg Review #318: Fully-Engaged, Participatory, Risk-Taking, Pro-Immersion, Get-Off-Your-Knees, Change-the-World Will Shakespeare-Hunter Thompson Edition.

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HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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"Maybe there is no Heaven."
Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame & Degradation in the '80's.
Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937-2005)

And Heaven on Earth? That's up to us, right?

Welcome to Blawg Review No. 318, which follows Texas trial lawyer Mark Bennett's inspiring No. 317 at the well-regarded Defending People. My name is Dan Hull. I practice law to (1) make money, (2) ensure that every day will be different than the one before, (3) use everything I have practicing law so I can feel alive, (4) serve sophisticated purchasers of legal services who "get it"--corporate clients with in-house counsel normally represented by much larger firms--and put them first, and (5) treat my law practice and firm as both a shop and a laboratory for new ideas.

"Immersion" is what I seek in life and work. So that my life is full, and full of surprise. For me, this is exactly what William Shakespeare (or whoever authored the works bearing his name) and Hunter Thompson had in common. It is the gift, and courage, to get us to fully participate in the story along with its creator. The Singer, if you will, becomes the Song.

April of course is National Poetry Month. Today, April 23, is the day on which William Shakespeare was very likely born and also (strange as it seems) most definitely the day on which he also died. Happy 448th Birthday, Sir--and thank you. In your plays, characters, story and theme strut, bellow, work, play, dart and dive in and out together with all the surprise and verve of real life. As in Thompson's work generations later, you are always "there". With us. In fact, the sense of writer participation in the work of both Shakespeare and Thompson shoots through each line. In Thompson's case--"as your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit"--writer involvement is impossible to ignore as he throws himself into the narrative. The capacity for detachment, while occasionally important and present in the works of both, is just one tool in the arsenal of storytelling. These two authors are fully-engaged. In the story. With us. Now. Immersed.

I want to be that kind of lawyer, too.

Six years ago, in Blawg Review #43, Boston's Diane Levin gave us a fine Shakespeare edition which celebrates a man whose 38 plays, 154 sonnets and other poems changed the English tongue forever and made it work harder, bend more, stretch mightily and finally give England a language that could keep up with its cascading, unrelenting and wonderfully vibrant and ancient imagination. He used words, made new words and experimented with word-combinations so that both the writing and the author were fully-engaged, participating, immersed in the story, risk-taking. It was not like anything that had gone before it. Read, for example, the entire Hamlet scene above.

Hunter Thompson--I have inadvertently channeled this journalist for nearly three decades since I covered for a college daily an infamous speech he gave--took participatory one step further in his feisty-funny yet oddly clear-eyed new journalism. But, for his time, William Shakespeare's body of work revolutionized what the English language could do. Changed forever how we saw ourselves. His work demonstrated in and of itself what humans could do to change the world. Simply put, Shakespeare, like Geoffrey Chaucer before him, made English cool. Very cool.

And all of you? I hope all of you will do the same thing with your law practice--and with the entire law profession itself. Please push the envelope a bit for us all.

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But first things first, as they told me when I exited my Final LL.M Program. Shakespeare's Works? Who wrote them? Francis Bacon or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, are my two personal favorites for the honor. Perhaps a number of people or a combination wrote them. But not Shakespeare. The chances that the historical person, a well-meaning actor-bumpkin from Stratford named William Shakespeare, wrote all these assorted, richly-layered erudite and intricate gems in a working life in which he retired at 49 is about as likely as learning in a few years that Billy Carter, Jimmy's brother, invented the Internet, thought up Twitter, and did both theoretical and initial lab work resulting in three Nobel Prizes in Physics over a 20-year period. Or, staying with rogue presidential brothers, that Roger Clinton brokered several Middle Eastern cease fires, engineered Procter & Gamble's Gillette acquisition, and still had time to join the special forces, get buff and shoot Osama bin Laden.

If he were living today, Will Shakespeare would reside as a community theater local "star" amongst my many cousins in eastern Tennessee in a house with a front porch decorated by all-year-long Christmas tree lights and featuring a really big Coke Machine. My childhood friend Ernie from Glen Burnie, who has an English degree from Yale, and is now a partner and trial lawyer in a well-known DC-based law firm, dismisses the historical Will Shakespeare more comprehensively, if crudely: "Kind of guy who'd try to blow himself with a Dust Buster, if you ask me." Note: Just heard that Ernie lost his slot again at The University Club.

So Shakespeare couldn't have written "Shakespeare". But Someone Cool, Brave and Hard-Working did--and he, she or it changed Everything: character, story, our sense of an inner life, consciousness itself, words--and how they could sing.

So let's celebrate those who do things, whoever they are, famous or unsung, and especially those who do great things. Which are almost always difficult, frustrating things. A gentleman from South Carolina, trial lawyer Bobby G. Frederick, reminds us at Trial Theory that today is also the 112th anniversary of Teddy Roosevelt's "Citizenship In A Republic" speech delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 23 April, 1910. It is an Ode to Quality long-loved by hard-working full-time lawyers worldwide. Excerpt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

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You get the idea. This Edition of Blawg Review for lawyers who get up and do it every day. Let's start with three "non-virtual" friends of mine. Patrick Lamb, the Chicago business trial lawyer and law firm innovator who got me interested in blogging back in 2005, is a "trench lawyer" if there ever was one. We share similar career paths and a real drive to build a completely new kind of law firm for higher-end clients. I've spent more time personally with Pat than any other lawyer who writes. For several years, and directly due to our connection through blogging, our respective law firms were main drivers together in the same invitation-only international business law consortium based in Austria. We are still members together of a second invitation-only group based in Charleston. We've served on each other's panels on the subjects of higher-end customer service, law practice, and litigation. Pat has great business sense (rare in lawyers) and a fabulous legal mind. See his commentary in "WSJ on ever increasing hourly rate: anyone else get a sense of deja vu?" at his always-provocative In Search of Perfect Client Service. He is one of a handful of people who is changing our profession.

Brit pundit, law professor and velvet-voiced Charon QC, another innovator and doer I met in London in 2007, is one of the funniest and most erudite human beings alive, in or out of the law. If Pat Lamb got me writing again, Charon kept me doing it because he always made blogging, well, great fun. And there were all these great young female "assistants" around him when we met in Mayfair. Anyway, a useful and serious guest post on the UK Facebook litigation by Stephens Scowns Solicitors comes our way in "Careless talk costs jobs". The UK now has 30 million Facebook users. In Preece v. Wetherspoon, an employment tribunal held that a pub manager was fairly dismissed for gross misconduct after she used Facebook during working time to make comments about two difficult customers. You say you had your privacy settings on? Sorry, Sweetie, not a defense. It's still public domain.

The ultimate New York City trench lawyer, and non-virtual friend, is criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice. Scott's made legal blogging--there is no other way to say this--important. Scott, like any number of great lawyers, and great men, is a straight-up pain in the ass. Verbatim quote: "Not trying to be difficult. I just am." He owes me lunch. He owes me at least $5. But I would, and will, refer any corporate criminal investigation I encounter to any general counsel I know to this man. In serving clients, which is the hardest thing on earth to do well, he gets the importance of: speed, lightning application of law to fact, being right there and being organized. He knows how to talk to the most sophisticated clients in the world when they need a little tough love. Hear him, for example, charm Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Yard and Harvard itself in this one: "Taxing the Frugal Future". Talk about immersion in the subject matter.

Another Brit doer, David Allen Green, aka Jack of Kent, is a lawyer-blogger with an impressive record of investigative journalism. He asks "should there be a legal blogging prize?, based on his experience last year of reviewing 2000 blogposts for the George Orwell political blogging prize. One of his sources for this thoughtful piece? Our man Charon QC.

Back in the States, well-known Miami trial lawyer Brian Tannebaum writes at "The Practice", his "combat pay" column at Above the Law, "It's Not Always About the Clients", about abusive clients. It's at once a brave and common sense article that educated me about other practices, especially in the criminal defense area. I did not like the title--I can think of a few others that might fit better here--but I liked what he had to say. He made me think.

Another Alpha Dog, Innovator and Doer: Fellow Midwesterner and Seattle-based Dan Harris writes China Law Blog. Like Greenfield and Tannebaum, he lawyers--and writes--every day. If you work, or want to work, in Greater China, follow Dan. See "The Apple-Proview China Trademark Litigation. It’s Gonna Settle. Bet On It". Can you ever imagine Dan not telling a client what he really thinks? I can't.

Super-Athlete and New York PI lawyer Eric Turkewitz covers the Boston Marathon, The Importance of Drinking Water, and my second favorite poet in The Boston Marathon (Highway to Hell)". This Don Rumsfeld (disclosure: I like and admire the guy) quote and triple-haiku, frankly, has always made sense to me:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

And humorist-lawyer Kevin Underhill of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, a name which is at once lyrical and kind of funny-sounding, but I am not sure why, has written "Plaintiff: This Soap Did Not Attract Women as Promised" at his Lowering the Bar. In my next lawyer life, I would like to do some serious class action work in male pheromone or enhancement products that fail.

Mega-Doers in the Profession:

See the ABA Journal's interesting piece, which echos my thoughts on how powerful GCs have become, called The Rise of General Counsel". "The supply of sophisticated business lawyers has increased beyond demand, increasing the power of a few hundred general counsel who control the budgets," the article notes. And I think that is a very good thing for the right outside lawyers who can make the transition from specialists to "quarterbacks" and project managers.

At Above The Law, find out what lawyers worldwide are among the most influential people in the world on the Time 100 list.

At Jamison Koehler's Koehler Law, see a post addressed to the dreaded Slackoisie as infants. It's entitled "Advice To An Incoming 1L: Humble Yourself Before The Law. Surrender".

AttorneyatWork has something that I, for one, can use: "Staying Healthy: 10 Tips for Traveling Lawyers".

The Economist and the Judge on the Bigger Picture, Services, Subsidies: Near and sadly dear to my heart is a must-read by Decline of U.S. Manufacturing by Richard Posner of the enduring Becker-Posner Blog, where Judge Posner hits a few Rust Belt nails on the head. Excerpt:

Becker points to the analogy of agriculture. Employment in agriculture has plummeted, leading to anxieties spurred by agricultural companies about the decline of the “family farm” and the loss of the imagined virtues of the independent farmer, to combat which agriculture continues to be heavily subsidized. The subsidies are widely recognized to be a pure social waste, and the same would be true of subsidizing manufacturing. Like manufacturing, American agriculture is thriving with its historically small labor force.

Finally, here's a soulful, erudite and off-beat article by Steve McConnell, one of the writers of Dechert LLP's Drug and Device Law called "The Long Goodbye".

What About Paris/Clients? is grateful for the opportunity to host Blawg Review a third time. Blawg Review needs to sign up future hosts. It's always an experience. If you are game, get in touch with Ed, the Editor 'n' Chef. The next scheduled Blawg Review will be on May 21 and hosted by Cyberlaw Central, by Kevin Thompson, of Chicago's Davis McGrath LLC.

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Original post: April 23, 2012 In memory of John (aka Ed. Post)

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January 20, 2024

Mother’s Day in Ohio.

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