February 09, 2010
This month's Inside Counsel: New Lawyers in Paradise.
Screw the cite-check and pass the Cheetos. Why do things the hard way? It's not like lawyering is demanding. In February's edition of InsideCounsel magazine (formerly Corporate Legal Times), do see Associate Editor Lauren Williamson's cover piece, "Mind the Gap: Generation Y Attorneys Enter the Workplace". Whether you're 25 or 52, Williamson did a masterful job. But why are Boomer partners in the office for hours after the associates leave? Stealing stuff maybe. Wait, Shepard’s® does what? Dude, you're hosin' me. No way!
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Real heros: Catherine Deneuve
Gallic elegance. Catherine Deneuve is as strong, resilient and talented as she is beautiful. The only woman in the world who could make director François Truffaut completely and hopelessly lose it. She is smart, entrepreneurial and ageless. Add her to our Roman Pantheon.
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Rule 9
Lord Chief Justice Sir John ("Pompous") Popham, circa 1603
Lawyers aren't special. We're in a service business. We are not royalty. Get used to it. Rule 9: Be There for Clients 24/7. Returning telephone calls promptly and keeping your client "informed" is not client service. Color all that barely adequate. Get a new standard.
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February 08, 2010
America's Henry Miller
My people were entirely Nordic, which is to say they were idiots. Every wrong idea which has ever been expounded was theirs. Never once had they opened the door that leads to the soul; never once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark.
--Henry Miller (1891–1980), Tropic of Capricorn (Grove Press, 1961)
Even when writing about his own tribe of northern Europeans, he was funny, profound and painfully on target. Born in Manhattan and, interestingly, of German-Catholic parents, Henry Miller, novelist and painter, lived in Paris, Big Sur, Pacific Palisades, and many places in between. An inspiration to more than a few Beat poets and writers, he was a generation older than them--and beat most of them to it.
He lent an angry but insightful, funny and bawdy voice to the sentiment that Americans were too desperately conformist, unwittingly sterile and flat-out afraid to seize and live real life. Despite his often tiresome overtures of extreme existential dread, Miller was, and is, way fun to read. He could write beautifully; at his best, no one is better.
Women. He knew how to write about them in any profession, culture or walk of life. When he wrote of women, he was infuriating, hilarious or touching, moving easily from porn and hate, to awe and worship. Deep down, I think Miller loved them all--especially when he ranted against them. The whores of Paris, too.
"Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race."
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February 07, 2010
Alternative Church
They don't know what love is.
--R. Newman
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February 06, 2010
Writing well, living large.
Commenting on the body of work left by John Dryden (1631-1700), the English poet, critic and playwright, Samuel Johnson, who was born a few years after Dryden's death, called Dryden's compositions "the effects of a vigorous genius working upon large materials".
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February 05, 2010
Justin Patten: Value and Service--Not Hours and Flat Fees.
See "It is Not About The Hourly Rate - It is About Client Service" by Justin Patten, who straddles Hertfordshire and London. His well known and respected site is Human Law Mediation. Patten is one of original UK lawyer-bloggers, along with Charon QC, GeekLawyer and Ruthie.
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Lafley: Look to the meaningful outside.
The consumer as boss. From 2000 to June 2009, A.G. Lafley served as chairman of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, where he is now a director. Last May, he wrote "What Only the CEO Can Do" in the Harvard Business Review. Here's an excerpt, in which Lafley quotes the consultant-writer Peter Drucker (1909-2005) in comments Drucker made in 2004:
Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside.
The CEO alone experiences the meaningful outside at an enterprise level and is responsible for understanding it, interpreting it, advocating for it, and presenting it so that the company can respond in a way that enables sustainable sales, profit, and total shareholder return growth.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Nameless or anonymous blogging: Time to man up, spine up, grow up.
Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as needed "privacy" and personal "style". However, anonymous blogosphere participants are rarely worth anyone's time, thought, or respect.
The revered French Resistance in action 70 years ago. Today, certainly, these fighters might need to comment and blog anonymously. But most lawyers, shoe store managers, Tulane grad students, accountants, and other Country Club Charlies haven't earned that privilege. Past posts on the subject are here and here.
And grow a pair. This blog does not publish anonymous comments. Absent compelling reasons, nameless blogosphere participants, in our view, are rarely worth anyone's time, thought, or respect--even when they think and say brilliant things. Anonymous writers have already "discounted" themselves. They are second-class citizens. And they generally say third-rate things; they have no incentive to exceed below-average.
It doesn't take much thought or courage to lob one in there when you don't sign your name. Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as needed "privacy" and personal "style". But it's a ruse. Most of us can do better than that. Don't buy into nameless blogging and commenting (or participation through pseudonyms) unless it's deserved.
As Walter Lippmann once reminded us, "cowardice" is a strong word, and you don't throw it around. We dislike using it. It implies a certain moral superiority of the user (which the writers of this blog would never claim, and do not wish to achieve). It generally furthers no discussions, and justifiably puts people on the defensive. But that word, unfortunately, may fit here.
If you want evidence and examples, see the comments on any given day to posts at Above the Law, which enjoys a status as one of the most successful sites ever (in or out of the law). Check out the anonymous haters, nameless "experts" and scores of prissy pundits who won't sign their real name to their rants and indictments. (We don't know how much David Lat is paying editor Elie Mystal these days, but it's not enough. Mystal is a mensch, soldier, hero and lightning rod who is often himself targeted for abuse.)
Club Ned Exemptions. "You sure do have a pretty mouth." Special needs exemptions, however, may be available to deserving applicants at this blog. Examples: Rape victims discussing being raped. CIA operatives talking about their jobs. Cuban, Iranian, Chinese dissidents. Abused housewives. Risk-takers and Radicals. Real victims. And those who have experienced a "high profile" humiliation--like Ned Beatty's character Bobby in "Deliverance".
Everyone else? (1) Get over yourself. (2) Get some help. (3) Or simply get back to work. You're just not ready for the bigs until you sign your real name to your real words.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (5)
February 04, 2010
Kitzbühel
Speaking of snow. Kitzbühel is a medieval town in the province of Tyrol, Austria, near the river Kitzbühler Ache. The Illyrians, a war-like from the Balkans, mined copper around here starting between 1100 BC and 800 BC. Around 15 BC the Roman Emperor Augustus occupied and claimed this area--by that time the old Celtic province of Noricum--which included the Austrian Alps. After the fall of the western Roman Empire, the Bavarii tribe settled in the Kitzbühel region (around 800).
So Kitzbühel is old, with a 12th century wall around much of it. It's small (around 8500 people), beautiful, historical, and a bit slow--but loads of fun for those with pluck. In modern times, and before non-Austrians found it and made even it more famous for skiing, the region was a resort for wealthy and proper Austrians from towns like Vienna.
But Kitzbühel has loosened up a bit. Well, a lot. It now has decent jazz. Drinking happens. It's inexpensive to live or visit here. It's surprisingly quiet. You can write your novel or textbook. You can miss editors' deadlines--and count on forgiveness. Oh, you can ski. And you can watch some of the best skiers in the world.
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What some sophisticated clients just might want.
We understand that, in lawyers, our friend Ari Gold seeks the following:
1. Quarterbacks--not Generic Dweebs.
2. Value--not Reduced Rates.
3. Verve--not Risk Aversion.
"Lawyers? Send me take-charge workaholics who don't dress like FBI agents or talk like Mr. Rogers."
(Photo: HBO)
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February 03, 2010
Working Well: Inspiration
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
--Jack London (1876-1916)
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February 02, 2010
The Great American Tocqueville Novel.
Two years ago, we applauded Alexis de Tocqueville for that young Frenchman's uncanny prediction in his Democracy in America of a U.S. president exactly like George W. Bush. We had argued that "W", warts and all, and whether you like him or not, is indeed the "new man" Tocqueville kept seeing during his nine months here in 1831. And that no American should have been too surprised to wake up in 2000 and learn that such a creature got the top job.
Tocqueville, of course, has been getting high marks for prescience from Americans and Europeans in the last 25 years after being ignored for the first 150 years. Now it's time for a new addition to the "Tocqueville renaissance": a novel--and necessarily a "road" novel at that. See in this week's The Economist the review of Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America (Knopf). We'll buy and read this one.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Sarah Kate Silverman for Congress
A papal water slide, too. To run, she may have three states to pick from. Or at least give her job/role at State? (We're serious.)
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'O New York City you talk a lot...'
You look like a city. You feel like a religion.
--L. Nyro, 1969
Foley Square, 1963
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February 01, 2010
Key FRCP deadlines changed on December 1, 2009.
Surely, you jest. The 10-day post-trial deadline is now 28 days? While the work of the Judicial Conference's five Advisory Committees never really stops, big changes to federal court rules, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), don't occur that often. The newest amendments are "technical amendments"--but the changes are anything but technical.
Two years in the making, the changes were signed into law (H.R. 1626) by the President on May 7, 2009, and became effective December 1, 2009. There are also significant changes to some of the time triggers in the appellate, criminal and bankruptcy rules. All are part of the Judicial Conference's "Time-Computation Project".
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The Beat Years: The Real Story Behind The 7 Habits.
With apologies to Stephen Covey but on some days we think he's wrong about almost everything anyway. Lawyers who won't take a stand is a time-honored tradition. Our hero, "Ernie from Glen Burnie", who is not such a lawyer, is a life-long friend. He'll stand up for people who pay him--and people he just met on the subway. It's his nature.
Ernie played football for one of the Ivies. He thinks in terms of collaboration but getting things done. He's smart but friendly. Guys' guy. Ladies' man. Lawyer's lawyer. Renaissance Human. Charmer. Playful rogue. A reveler in words. A trial lawyer with business sense. Ernie even writes well.
Ernie's "available" and "comes to play". He will tell you what he thinks. He will act. If you are a GC, you can call him in the middle of the night with your insider-trading problem, or report that your kid at Dartmouth just thrashed a waiter and both Hanover cops. And, as the M Street crowd will tell you, when he's not working, he's the kind of guy who never hits on married women over 40.
You can read Ernie's story--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--at "The Seven Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers".
This is a true story, mostly. So listen.
Stand-Up Guys: Ernie, a dead-ringer for 1950s icon Neal Cassady, and WAC? during their pre-lawyer Beat years at Nathan's, now a D.C. saloon for older players.
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January 31, 2010
The Press
Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.
--Edmund Burke, likely in 1792, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons.
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Kabul
Give us that old-time ambition. In case you never worked it out, What About Clients?/What About Paris? is merely about Quality. Values. Old Verities. It's the Enduring Stuff no one nation, religion, community, family, school, employer or profession can pretend to give you.
Maryam, a heroine in our story, is a photojournalist who lives with her family in Marrakech, Morocco. She's been in Kabul and Herat since January 5. She has an innocent's shining eye for everyday beauty and courage.
All photos below, and behind the links, are by Maryam and My Marrakesh.
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January 30, 2010
54, rue Saint Louis en l'île.
A Hull McGuire hideout since 2001: 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, new art. Save for your 7th 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. Be late to breakfast at your peril.
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Romain Rolland: Of things that matter.
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), Nobel Prize winner, in "Lightning Strikes Christophe".
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Rule 4: 'Hey sailor'
The most beautiful maiden in the leper colony. Why try "to exceed expectations" when the overall lawyer standard is rightly perceived as low to mediocre? Can we step up and set new standards? Rule 4: Do Work and Deliver Services that Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers.
"Hey there, sailor. How about a little third-rate work today? No one will even notice."
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January 29, 2010
Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010)
Salinger changed writing. He died Wednesday. There are hundreds of articles out today but see The Boston Globe.
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Trophies for everyone?
When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
--Sir W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911). Dramatist, librettist, illustrator.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
January 26, 2010
Patrick Lamb: Sane writing serves clients.
Here's another good piece on writing for lawyers. Visit our friend Chicago trial lawyer Patrick Lamb at his enduring and pioneering In Search of Perfect Client Service. Read "Writing Plainly Is Good Client Service". Come to think of it, Pat Lamb and his colleagues have a lot of good client-centered ideas.
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Angry Writing.
"Being right", a writer-lawyer here said years ago, is "very expensive". John Day at Day on Torts picked up on this gem by Max Kennerly at his Litigation and Trial: "Always Draft Angry Briefs. Never File Them". We read it twice.
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Storytelling
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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January 25, 2010
We, the Bourgeoisie.
We do have a passion for routine and ritual. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), by Surrealist Spanish director Luis Buñuel, is about the ritual of dining, and its more revealing and darker undercurrents.
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Rule 10
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
The Dweebs. The Dweebs. Perfectionism is the downside of Type-A. While a great starting point, and wonderful instinct, the drive to get things absolutely right is also a curse: of eldest children, professionals, knowledge workers, most lawyers, all spouses, your Mom, and the geek classes, or Techwazee.
Ah, devil perfectionism. The horror, the horror. Too much, and you need rehab. Your colleagues start questioning your judgment.
Clients 99% of the time are not paying you to be perfect. They don't want it. See "Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect" in WAC?'s annoying-but-accurate 12 Rules. Be excellent, not perfect.
(from past HO posts)
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Satire
The satirist is to be regarded as our physician, not our enemy.
--Henry Fielding, 1707-1754
Physicians--like lawyers--may no longer be the great community leaders and societal architects they once were or people had hoped they could be. Both professions now breed technicians. As things get more complex, that, of course, makes sense, and we could do worse. But you still get what Fielding was trying to say.
Satire down through the ages never has had the power, on its own, to make people change things. Satire does clarify and make us think. But the law needs certainty, clarity and steadiness of tone--all kept at a consistent wave-length so we do not lose our place. We need to know the speaker or writer is 100% sober. It's not always fun. It's steady. You can rely on it.
However, you do get excited and think you are about to see some great and epic satire and commentary every time you read a pleading which begins "COMES NOW...", a letter which begins (and our favorite) "Enclosed herewith please find..." or contract which uses "said" frequently. You are disappointed when you realize it's intended to be a serious document.
Legal writing. Legalese. Can't we just "say it"?
(from past WAC? posts)
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January 24, 2010
Muse
Dina Vierny (1919-2009) was Aristide Maillol's model and real life muse. She died January 20, 2009.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Churchill in Paris
A photo from Paris-based Clear Blue Sky.
Winston Churchill in front of the Petit Palais, Av. Winston-Churchill, 8th Arrondissement.
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Paris in York by Bradford.
York, England, about two years ago, by American writer Tara Bradford at her Paris Parfait:
The current York Minster Cathedral was started in 1230 and completed in 1472.
(Photo by Tara Bradford)
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January 22, 2010
Human Gargoyles, 1908
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Disraeli on books.
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
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January 21, 2010
Redux: The War Against Legal-Speak.
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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January 20, 2010
R. D. Lewis: Getting cross-border smarts.
So what happens when Americans do business with the English? English trading with Germans? Or Germans with Japanese? Why do the Spanish and Finns view the concept of a written contract so differently?
Buy it, read it, refer to it and link to the blog. When Cultures Collide (Nicholas Brealey 3d edition), by Richard D. Lewis, is our favorite book on doing business internationally. We've been gushing over it for years at WAC? and Hull McGuire. Practical, expert, non-touchy-feely advice by a man who studied and consulted on international business before it was cool. First published in 1996. Well-written, often very funny. We've bought about 10 copies over the years. If there is ever a movie version, we'll stand in line to get tickets.
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January 19, 2010
Sarah Kate Silverman doesn't like PC, either.
Sarah Silverman is saucy and attractive, too. If you don't think that's very important, you're wrong--but you can write us an angry letter, not invite us to parties, or tip off Nina Totenberg and NPR.
The Future is Not for Weenies. We have this Vision of It:
When politically-correct culture, and other goofy forced-conformity social agendas wane and disappear, you will be able to say what you want. (Okay, anything that puts kids at risk--and about Mothers--will not be fair play.) You will use words like "secretary", "stewardess"--and even "stew", if you've had a few drinks on the plane.
If you're a lawyer, you will start using the term "Chinese wall" again. You will be able to swear, and loudly, in the workplace, and start war stories with: "You know, I had this case in the Southern District, back in 1987, when men were men."
After the Revolution, you will be able to flirt, and be playful and even a tad eccentric, at work.
If someone you work with is lazy, you will be able to say things like, whoa, that dude Josh "is lazy" rather than have to say it's so awesome that Josh is "low profile/independent/a team member requiring minimal face time/empowered by his flexible hour arrangement/a pioneer in work-life balance".
The expression "Not Work-Oriented" will be okay, too.
Using "not work-oriented" rather than "lazy" is also a proven attention-getter. Granted, it's too indirect. It's soft. Sounds a bit PC. But think of it as a transitional term you can employ until people start saying what they mean.
For example, we have used "not work-oriented" frequently in recent years in telephone conversations with people, unknown to us, who check references, of former employees, who we know too well. Saying that your ex-employee Kendall, who had top grades at Dartmouth and Duke Law, and had interviewed well, is "not work-oriented" is easier, faster and frankly more fun than struggling through on the phone with:
Mr. Bloor, it just wasn't a 'fit'. Kendall has many gifts. But we always knew she would flourish more in an alternative work setting where, you know, team members were, uh, not required to do any work per se, or actually perform, or add value. You know what I mean.
After the Revolution, you will also be able to use your real name when you give your opinion in the ether of the Internet.
In fact, anonymity will be banned--and reserved for rape victims, Iranian and Cuban dissidents, Ned Beatty "Deliverance" casualties, and the ballot box at primary and general elections. You will be able to utter all manner of potentially rude, offensive, defamatory and even straight-up tacky things--but you will take responsibility by backing it all up with your real name.
More great news: In the New Order of Things, long after PC culture has dissipated and died, the Seas will not turn Red. No One will go to Hell. The Family Unit will not Implode. The Clintons won't Abduct Your Kids.
You get the idea. We don't like "PC culture" that much--sane First Amendment people of any political persuasion never do unless to make fun of it--and so we do cherish Sarah Silverman.
Right now, America needs shock troops. Yanks don't think much on their own anymore. So Sarah's our girl.
Besides, Sarah is saucy and attractive. If you don't think that's important, you're wrong--but you can dash off an angry letter, not invite us to parties, or report us to Nina Totenberg and NPR.
Silverman's also a fine comic, writer, actress, musician, and rebel's rebel who never met a taboo she did not like.
While at first blush Silverman's humor may seemed based on stereotypes, she's smart and ironic, not mean, and an unrelenting satirist of life and priorities in America.
Meet Lenny Bruce's adorable grandchild who has escaped from Scarsdale, New Canaan or Shaker Heights and now has a bunch of uncomfortable questions for us all. She's going to ask them, e.g., "Sell the Vatican, Feed the World".
Let's see, what else?
Her sister is a Rabbi. But Jesus is Magic? She's ethnically Jewish--but for years allegedly wore a St. Christopher medal from her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel ("It was cute the way he gave it to me. He said if it doesn't burn a hole through my skin, it will protect me...").
She claims ancestry from Hungary, Poland, France and Slovakia. She does not drink. For you snobs, she graduated from a prep school in New Hampshire. She attended NYU. She turns 40 this year.
How about this: Can we run her for Congress in, say, California, New York, or New Hampshire, this year or 2012?
That might help move things along.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
January 18, 2010
Dude, where's my MLK Day?
UPI reports that, in Cincinnati today, "Construction work faces MLK Day protests". It's nice to see that Americans everywhere remember and honor a great man and world leader. But implying that people who want to work today cannot work on a public school construction site?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
Greenfield: When is anonymity "all talk, no responsibility"?
"Okay, kids, get your learn on. Today we will learn about the right of all Americans to throw stones at your house and run away like thieves into the night." Do see "All Talk, No Responsibility" at Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice. It's a piece we wish we had written about a new U.S. Supreme Court case (cert. just granted) that we will follow. Doe v. Reed, No. 09-559, concerns the "right" of Washington state petitioners to be anonymous after successfully bringing a referendum to the ballot for the November 2010 general election. The referendum seeks repeal of a controversial law on domestic partnership rights. Frankly, we could care less about the law at stake here. (We haven't read it.) The item on the ballot is not the issue. Anonymity in "getting it there" is. The Supreme Court's decision is expected early this summer.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Hassan: You can't teach attitude.
Sorry--but I'm no Stephen Covey. Most employees cannot be "saved". Burning inside 99.5% of all employees worldwide is an overwhelming ambition to Get Home, Eat Twinkies and Watch Wrestling.
What About Clients?, July 2, 2009
But some of us keep make-believing we can "inspire" attitude. We get hurt. Worse, buyers, customers, and clients get hurt.
This MSNBC video is worthwhile. The attitude "can't be taught in a course" part starts at about 2:50. A native of Pakistan, Fred Hassan was chairman and CEO of Schering-Plough from 2003 until late 2009, when in merged with Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. outside of North America). Hassan is now on Time Warner's Board.
Nearly everyone sane believes what Hassan is saying. But hardly anyone (except maybe Jack Welch) has the sand to both say and act on it. You don't need to be mega-rich and have attended HBS to tell the truth. Straight talk is not a luxury of the world's elite.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
January 17, 2010
Writing Well: The Editor
I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.
--Henry James (1843-1916), after a request by the Times Literary Supplement to cut 3 lines from a 5,000 word article.
James with Edith Wharton, 1904
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January 16, 2010
Genevieve wants to know: Who are your Huns?
I know it, I see it. The Huns will not come.
In 451, Sainte Genevieve (422-512) saved Parisians from the Huns, the legend goes. People had started to flee Paris in anticipation of the invasion led by Attila--but stopped when she told them she had a vision that the Huns would not enter Paris. She became the city's patron saint. In 1928, a grateful Paris erected a statue to her on the Pont de la Tournelle, a bridge now about 400 years old. Genevieve is facing east, the direction from which the Huns approached.
She is also said to have converted Clovis, king of the pagan Franks, to Christianity--but she hasn't quite worked that magic on me. I still visit her anyway. If you walk in a southwesterly direction--from, say, the Place des Vosges on the Right Bank--to get to the Left Bank, you can use that bridge (Pont de la Tournelle). If you do, you can walk right under Genevieve, with Notre Dame and Ile Saint Louis on your right.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
January 15, 2010
Where do you live? Lawyer Town or Client Town?
"The Lawyers", circa 1855, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Are the three gentlemen in Daumier's famous sketch "client-centric" or merely "lawyer-oriented"?
We will never know. WLCs, maybe? A WLC is a Weak or Wimpy Local Counsel engaged by your firm and/or your client for litigation or other contentious matters who, after being hired, instinctively, routinely, and most often inadvertantly place their relationships with local lawyers and other players in their jurisdiction ahead of the interests of your shared client, which is almost always "an outsider".
Signature noise: "I have to practice in this town." They are akin to rocks, plants, and household appliances. They are legion. They don't get it. Avoid them and hire someone else (or shop for a different forum). See our world-famous October 2008 piece "Weak/Wimpy Local Counsel: The Next Epidemic?".
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January 14, 2010
More on law schools providing value some day and hopefully before we all die.
Or, "You Got Anyone On That Campus Who Can Chew Gum, Cite-Check, And Look You In The Eye At The Same Time?". We note that practical skills are being mentioned more in writings about law school education. Bravo. Show us. We're tired of wasting our money.* Last month we wrote about American law schools--and this time only a few people complained. More recently we noticed these: "Problems in the law school 'business plan'" at From Burke to Kirk and Beyond, which shares a few things in common, mostly good, with this blog, and "The changing face of the early stages of law practice" at Libertas et Memoria, which comments on the recent ABA story about a possible new premium placed on practical skills that got us so excited we forgot to fire people last Friday.
Finally, an interesting excerpt from FBTK:
Law schools will be the last to abandon speculative debt as the means of financing themselves through their willing applicants, because a very large number of applicants are smarty-pants who couldn't make it as scientists, engineers, bankers, financiers, etc. The applicant doesn't realize how speculative his investment is until he is one to four years in.
*WAC? could care less about student debt. Your problem, Teacups. Don't any of you have family money? Enrique, would you be good enough to decant the Port? Kindly leave the bottle as well.
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"Never write a letter, never throw one away."
Kurtz. He got off the boat. He split from the whole goddamn program.
--Captain Willard, "Apocalypse Now" (1979)
WAC? misses HST. Thompson put some of his best and funniest stuff in personal letters--and he wrote volumes and volumes of them. See the Charlie Rose interview, undated, but likely about 1997.
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January 13, 2010
More Plural Life
Whether you're a Baptist, Neo-Platonist, property law professor, or average philanderer struggling to get by, forget about HBO's "Big Love" and learn something. Brooke Adams, a Salt Lake Tribune reporter, tells us almost daily about The Plural Life. Start with her piece yesterday on "Young’s Plan":
Sally Denton, in her book “Faith and Betrayal,” observes that Brigham Young “launched the most ambitious communal socialist society” in America’s history.
She could have been describing the community in Short Creek, now known as Hildale and Colorado City, and the United Effort Plan Trust when she writes about Brigham Young’s plan. This is how the UEP Trust, at least in its inception, was designed to function — and also sheds light on why the states’ efforts to reform and reorganize it have alienated FLDS residents. From Denton:
“Young decreed that there would be no private ownership of land, since it belonged to God. The harvest would be placed in communal storage for distribution according to individual needs.” And:
“. . . There would be no private ownership of property in what one of [Brigham] Young’s clerks described as this ‘place where the land is acknolwedged to belong to the Lord.’ and each man would be assigned two plots, one for a home and one for a farm. . . ."
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The Unbearable Lightness of Lawyers?
Risk-aversion can be annoying. Get off your knees. Tell the client what it can do, too. What it should do. Take a stand. And just say it. See "The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers" and "Just Say it: More Good Things on Good Writing".
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January 12, 2010
"France as a model?"
As an economy? No, not yet. But we'd love it here at WAC? if the French would get back to work. Sixty-five years is a long holiday, even in Europe. President Sarkozy, a reformer who continues to impress working Yanks, wants that to happen. He's just never been sure how to get there. But the man can sell. See at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture this week something by Jacques Méon. Excerpts:
Indeed, the French Economy has been more resilient than many other developed countries and President Nicolas Sarkozy has been quick to state that France has been one of the countries that best resisted the crisis.
The situation is in fact not that rosy and 2010 and beyond will hold many challenges for the French Economy. The pick up from the crisis is actually quite slow and quarterly GDP growth projections for 2010 are between 0.3 and 0.4%.
France is living beyond its means and President Sarkozy has again recently insisted on getting them through. One of these reforms will be the delicate one on retirement age and pension benefits, but at a time of slow economic growth, implementing all the planned reforms will not be easy.
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Oran, Algeria
Our citizens work hard. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, "doing business".
--Narrator describing Oran in opening pages of The Plague (1947), by Albert Camus
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January 11, 2010
Rule Eight
Ask an associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of the answers helps anyone in your firm think like the client.
Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs is Rule Eight. It's from our self-righteous and opinionated but accurate, and soulful, 12 Rules.
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J.P. Morgan (1837-1913) was cheap, rich, opinionated,
and controversial. But he knew want clients wanted.
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January 10, 2010
Back to Hell's Kitchen.
Jacob Riis photo of Bandits' Roost (1890)
Above: Hell's Kitchen, NYC, before it got cute. The work, images and outcry of Riis were all famous at the time. So was this photograph.
Next door to Times Square, Hell's Kitchen always seems worlds away. It keeps changing but stays famous: from Irish and German immigrant sub-city to gangland neighborhood to actors' quarter to, these days, more of a yuppie heaven. But it's still authentic. Real estate brokers years ago came up with the new labels of Clinton and Midtown West--but it did not work. Those handles will never replace the real name.
Older neighborhoods, like older people, have personalities--they are feisty as Hell. And they have spirit. If you are in Manhattan some weekend, stroll around there on a Sunday morning early. The whole 'hood is a Religion, just like the rest of New York City. You'll see everything there is, and visions to deliver you.
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January 09, 2010
Real heros: Annabeth Gish
Add Ms. Gish to our Pantheon. It's hard to find it all in one human.
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Detroit 1970
Dwfyn darogan dewin drywon. For aging Druids in America's Midwest.
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January 08, 2010
Speaking British Well
They do talk and dress all funny. Dang. The English-to-American Dictionary.
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January 07, 2010
Professionalism, Actually.
Let’s say you’re a blues guitarist with a broken ring finger on your fretboard hand. What do you do? If you’re Albert King, you put a splint on it, and you get out there and play.
Clients. Consumers. Buyers. It's about "the customers"--and not just about being polite and courtly to other attorneys. It's not a club. Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Not that big a deal anymore. No one cares. For example, every single person waiting tables in Washington D.C. last week was a graduate of Georgetown, Hastings or Yale Law. (Eventually they will eat your lunch.) It's true. We checked. So get over yourself. Think about the Main Event. Remove your head from your Wazoo. Work harder to distinguish yourself. Join a better club. For starters, visit Ray Ward's Minor Wisdom or his the (new) legal writer.
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The Plural Life.
I don't think we're in Indianapolis any more. Here's something you don't see much. And it combines a serious purpose with a sense of humor. Brooke Adams, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune writes a blog called "The Plural Life", where she covers the polygamy beat, especially polygamy trials, her speciality. Adams, who also writes regular straight news items (e.g., the usual "Polygamous Sect Seeks to Stop Sale of Farm") for The Tribune, takes you "there", using all known social media tools to do it. She has a breezy oh-well tone about this assignment. It's compelling. Like she's covering the State Fair in Oz and, after all, someone has to do it.
Raymond Jessop Trial, November 2, 2009 (The Plural Life)
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January 06, 2010
Rule Six
Small, powerful ads. See our Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing. Every moment your law firm "works for a client"--it sends the client something, it talks with the client, it does virtually anything for or about that client that the client knows about or should know about--the firm transmits barrages of small but powerful ads. The client notices then and there.
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January 05, 2010
Real Heros: Benjamin Disraeli
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) was provocative, precocious, and a comeback kid all his life. Though he had very early success as a writer, he failed miserably in business. He then ran for office--but kept losing. As a young man, he picked ill-considered political fights that he often lost with Daniel O'Connell, the dangerously witty Irish barrister-politician.
Finally, in 1837, he was elected to the House of Commons. But he blew his maiden speech so badly he was laughed at uproariously from beginning to end.
A shameless self-promoter, he attracted too much attention. He even dressed to provoke. He shunned most men, preferring women, especially the high-born. Mainly, Disraeli was restless. He bored easily. He simply liked the limelight, and getting important things done.
As a student, the idea of practicing law, which he pursued briefly, left him feeling stale and useless. "Izzy" said he felt most alive when he was doing something both public and difficult.
Early in his career, he once wrote unhappily to a friend: "I am dying for action, and rust like a Damascus sabre in the sheath of a poltroon." Disraeli, A. Maurois (Random House 1928).
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Vanity Fair, 1869
(from past posts)
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Our New Male Writers: Not much to talk about in the locker room?
(BBC Television)
"Justin, honey, your editor at Knopf called. He wants you to read more Henry Miller. Roth, Mailer, Bukowski, and Cleland, too. So do I." And here is some must reading for those who must employ (or date, or already married) post-Boomer adult males, or New Age guys. See Katie Roiphe's December 31 essay in the New York Times, "The Naked and the Conflicted".
Note that the handful of younger novelists she discusses are between 38 and 50 years old, American, successful and celebrated. One Pulitzer. But what Roiphe is suggesting about the emerging U.S. male, and our new PC culture, is both instructive and eerie. Moreover, Roiphe, a respected non-fiction author, novelist and NYU prof, is writing about male peers here. She was born in 1968. Three excerpts:
Our new batch of young or youngish male novelists are not dreaming up Portnoys or Rabbits. The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex.
The younger writers are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically untoward.
Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life.
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Remedial virility lessons? If it comes to that, Roth, now 76, might lend a teaching hand.
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January 04, 2010
And some are talented.
All heiresses are beautiful.
--John Dryden
Dylan Lauren (1974- )
Dryden (1631-1700)
Photo: Rabbani & Solimene
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January 01, 2010
Starting fresh, curious and truly awed.
He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that 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.
--from Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster, 2007) by the Aspen Institute's Walter Isaacson, former Time managing editor.
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.
WAC/WAP? 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. 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 this 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.
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Janus
Samantha Janus, "Guys and Dolls", 2006, London
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December 31, 2009
Scotland's Hogmanay: Staggeringly Cold.
Wear that rabbit fur-lined Somerled helmet Aunt Mordag gave you last year at the Burning of the Clavie. However you go--Druid priest, celebrated Celtic warrior, or just a rank-and-file Viking fighter--do dress and dress warmly if you're in Scotland today and tomorrow for Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year's celebration that sometimes goes on until January 3. Sub-zero temperatures are expected. See the Herald Scotland and The Guardian.
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Last year's Hogmanay in Edinburgh got way out of hand.
(Photo: Daily Telegraph UK)
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December 30, 2009
The Economist: Working U.S. Women Officially Rule.
Robert Palmer once sang, persuasively and with brio, that "the women are smarter". We'd add braver, and more motivated. It's bracing to hear we may have new heroes and leaders. Just stay focused on merit. Some worry that the frightened U.S. male worker is steadily losing Moxie, Mojo, and the Ability to Think and Act on His Own. So this is good news. See at this week's The Economist the cover piece "We did it!":
At a time the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce.
Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.
Rosie the Riveter, now in her eighties, has arrived.
Image: The Economist (from J. Howard Miller's WWII poster "We Can Do It!")
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Rule Seven
"Know the Client" is from our world-famous if nettlesome--we're right about this stuff; so just get over it, and do it, OK?--12 Rules. Learn the stock price, industry, day-to-day culture, players and long-term goals of the client. Visit offices and plants. Do it free of charge. Learn and keep learning about it. Devise a system to keep abreast.
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Charon QC's Christmas Art
CQC aims to add paintings through New Year's Eve.
We don't understand the Art or the Context, but it did put us in a holly jolly mood. But the "F**kART" series? We'll noodle that awhile.
Never law cattle, always original, CQC makes us like the state of being alive, curious and thinking, and to want more of it.
Christmas ‘09 (2009)
Oil on canvas
Charonasso
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Real Heros: John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin, author, historian and civil rights figure, died this past year at the age of 94. Franklin wrote From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, a classic first published in 1947. He taught at Fisk, St. Augustine's, Howard, Brooklyn College, Chicago, and finally Duke, where he taught history to undergraduates, and served for seven years as a Professor of Legal History at the law school. He wrote, published and lectured into his nineties.
John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)
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December 29, 2009
Puebla, Mexico
Palacio de Justicia. In wealthy, business-friendly and functional Puebla, about 60 miles southeast of Mexico City.
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December 28, 2009
Doing Rome
When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can.
--Hugh Grant (2004)
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.
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December 27, 2009
Got standards yet?
Art, literature and the humanities 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.
--Holden Oliver
Education is about more than just getting a job. Cultural literacy has never been an American strength. And many American professionals, and executives in leadership positions, continue to be satisfied with becoming--and remaining--"techs". Can Americans change that? If we could, we would astonish and charm the entire world. See "Ernest, the French aren't like you and me."
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December 26, 2009
Under the influence: Mistletoe and the Druids.
For centuries, starting around the 21st of the month (which fell earlier this week), Druids liked to leave the house, get wild and "put on the dog". Both warriors and mystics, Druid fighters in the woods of northern Europe came at you painted, naked, screaming, chanting and, well, quite rowdy. Even the Romans were a little afraid of them--especially in what is now northern Wales.
But except for celebrations of solstice and equinox four time a year, Druids are pretty quiet these days. Could a Christmas-season plant with a mythical calming influence be the reason? Well, here's a Steamboat Today (Steamboat Springs, Colorado) piece that links mistletoe to Druids.
The Druids felt the plant could protect against poisons, illness and witchcraft spells. In their time, if enemies met under mistletoe in the forest, they were required to be peaceful until the next day. This may be the origin of the custom of kissing under a ball of mistletoe as a sign of goodwill.
Isle of Anglesey: The Druids' island in northwest Wales
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