March 20, 2010
Getting beyond King and Country.
A wise man's country is the world.
--Aristippus (435-360 BC), as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosphers
"There is hope. I see traces of men." Aristippus was shipwrecked on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. He and his fellow survivors did not know where they were or if the island was inhabited. But he sees geometric figures drawn on the sand.
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Real heroes: Annabeth Gish
Add Ms. Gish to our Pantheon. It's hard to find it all in one human.
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"All Hat, No Cattle".
Like it or not, everyone in your shop has to buy into client service like a cult, like a religion--like an angry sermon that lifted them out of their pews at The Church of the Final Thunder.
Real client service--i.e., know-how consistently delivered as an experience and skills the customer likes and wants more of--is now a global cliché. And maybe that's the problem.
Apart from those of us who regard CS as a joke, or as obligatory rhetoric, do most of us really know what client service is, or should be, in our own shops for our best longstanding clients? And if we do "know", do we even have a clue on how difficult client service regimes are to establish, maintain and enforce?
See our December 18, 2009 post or almost any post on your left under Clients--Keeping Them.
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Charleston
The Dialect. First, what about the accent you hear there? That regal way of speech? You're in South Carolina, of course--but the speech you hear is barely "Southern". Most likely, experts say, it's a blend: of Gullah spoken by African Americans, and of English spoken by Europeans, over 300 years ago. Linguists love it, and you still hear it in the streets, especially "South of Broad".
The Dance. It was popularized by a song and its accompanying footwork, "The Charleston," by James P. Johnson in the Broadway musical "Runnin' Wild" in 1923. Like the unique Charleston dialect, the Dance goes way back, too. It's been traced to descendants of slaves who lived on islands off the coast of Charleston and in the city itself. Thought to have been first performed locally around 1903.
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March 19, 2010
Quit wasting depositions, deposition time, and deposition money.
Why use deposition time to learn things you can learn quickly and inexpensively from phone calls, libraries and even the most rudimentary Google search?
Before you schedule a deposition, do some informal investigation. Next time a new case begins, resist rushing into written discovery and depositions. Step back from the discovery routine--you'll get into that bubble soon enough--and learn a few things on your own.
Twenty years ago, James McElhaney, a gifted lawyer, writer and teacher of trial tactics, and the ABA Litigation Section, first published McElhaney's Trial Notebook, now in its fourth edition. Discovery, McElhaney noted, is a good way to learn what a witness will say, or to bind a party or witness to a particular version of the facts.
But it is also "a very inefficient way to get information."
Let us add to that:
Formal discovery can be--and often is--an unimaginative, cookie-cutter, dumb-ass, straight-up lazy, wasteful, and client-unfriendly way to learn much of the background information, and many of the facts, that will frame and flesh out your case.
This is especially true of depositions, and (for that matter) any other live sworn testimony. If you really don't have to "wing it", don't.
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Les Bouquinistes
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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Human Gargoyles, 1908
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Some key FRCP deadlines changed in big ways on December 1, 2009.
Be serious. 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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March 18, 2010
Real Heroes: Parker Posey
They're picking up prisoners and putting 'em in a pen. And all she wants to do is dance.
--Danny Kortchmar/WB Music Corp. ASCAP (1984)
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Rent "Party Girl" (1995) and watch her dance in the last scene. Parker Posey is her own World: picaresque, funny and eccentric, all without being contrived. This is the intensely pretty Bohemian girl next door. Playing the floundering Manhattan girl-turned-librarian, Posey has you convinced by the end of the movie that, when she's nervous or uncomfortable in her real non-actress life, she automatically just starts to dance. It's like having Katharine Hepburn, Neal Cassady and François Villon in one person.
In 2006, I met Posey in the Newark Airport when I was on the way to Manchester, and would have been happy to miss my plane. She was headed to New Mexico to work. When she speaks, she has the slightest trace of an American southern accent, having grown up in both Maryland and Louisiana. She is unassuming and subtle, only fleetingly hip and ironic, and looks you in the eye. What surprised me about her in person the most was this: her authenticity and smarts cannot hide how gorgeous she is.
So there's lots going on here. It's easier to understand why for years Posey has turned down money and type-casting in favor of brave, odd and "forward" roles. She's an actress first, and a celebrity somewhat reluctantly. And only then if it doesn't get in the way.
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Writing well: What drives you?
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.
--W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)
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March 17, 2010
"Settlement Perspectives": Why not ask the GC?
Blog posts. Even when they come from the better law and business sites, most of them--about 99 percent, frankly--aren't going to change your work, your life, or even your day. We're all busy. We search quickly and expectantly for that 1 percent. When we find one, and digest it, we hope it sticks.
Here's a gem we would like to have worked up and written ourselves: "Toward Better Client Service: A Few Questions for Outside Counsel " at John DeGroote's Settlement Perspectives. The in-house counsel/GC questions come from P.H. Glatfelter's General Counsel Thom Jackson. Whether or not you agree with the dozen questions Jackson and DeGroote outlined, or whether they precisely fit your firm's business model, these, at a minimum, serve as a very fine first draft. Bravo.
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Pont Saint-Patrick, Cork
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March 16, 2010
P&G's Alan Lafley: Look to the meaningful "outside".
The Consumer as Boss and Laboratory. For nine years, from 2000 to mid-2009, A.G. Lafley served as chairman of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. Lafley got the CEO job when he got it--in June 2000--in large part because the company was experiencing downturns, and stock price fluctuations, seldom seen in its 163-year history.
During his watch, however, P&G doubled it sales, and grew its line of billion-dollar brands from 10 to 23. Some say the even-keeled and reflective Lafley elevated P&G's "art of the customer" to new levels.
What is brand loyalty? What "moments of truth" lead a housewife, grocery chain, or government buyer to prefer Tide, Pampers, Crest or Pringles over competing brands? Who, exactly, are our customers? Why do they buy from us? When is price not so important?
In May of 2009, and just before he stepped down as CEO, Lafley 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.
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Invoice some hourly work promptly every two weeks.
Billing twice a month keeps the client attuned in real-time to the actual economic demands of the project--and helps the client plan.
Real time billing: invoice the client promptly twice a month. Like everyone else, we expect the "future of law" to include different billing alternatives. However, by that we mean the following: billing the same client different ways depending on the difficulty and intensity of the work.
Generally, we see flat fees for "commodity" work. And we believe hourly rates will continue to dominate for complex and novel projects--particularly where the relationships are longstanding and solid between in-house departments and outside law firms.
Case-by-case judgments about "value"--not hours, flat fees, or hybrids--will drive most engagements.
One idea comes from our Pittsburgh partner Julie McGuire, who does transactional and corporate tax work globally, and it seems to work especially well for intense or "fast-moving" projects--and when you are billing by the hour. Julie's done this successfully for transactional work, and some arbitrations, for years.
It's simple. If a new or existing client has litigation or a transaction which is particularly intense and time-consuming--especially in the initial stages--depart from your fee agreement or usual practice with that client and at least temporarily invoice the client every two weeks.
(That means you can't wait long to get the bills out, though. Give yourself three business days tops.)
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Never write a letter, never throw one away.
Thompson had a way of keeping anyone unfriendly to the very idea of him beyond even mere curiosity. 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.
--What About Clients?, 2007
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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1916: Forógra na Poblachta
("Proclamation of the Republic", April 24, 1916)
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Writing Well: First sentences.
Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.
--Elizabeth Bowen, Anglo-Irish fiction writer (1899-1973)
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Play Time on the Internet is over. Wanted: A few good rules.
Certainly, if he were real, Ned Beatty's character Bobby in the movie adaptation of the James Dickey novel Deliverance would be permitted to write in the blogosphere using a pseudonym. "Chattooga River Cutie", maybe. Those not in Club Ned? Real name, please. Time to man up. (Photo: Warner Bros.)
Life and Work are both supposed to be Fun and Meaningful. We can still get both. And if everyone wants to be a "junior journalist" on the World Wide Web, that's fine, too. Pretend away, Justin. Knock yourself out. But you need a few rules.
You need a few good, and intuitive, Internet rules for lawyers, non-lawyers, business people, academics, middle managers, CEOs, bloggers, commenters, students, sales people, Pulitzer winners, Fulbright scholars, store clerks, your Mom, Gen-this/Gen-that, your demented Uncle Seamus, and the 70-year-old guy across the street with strong views about Sarah Palin, Wall Street and the Cubs.
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Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
A "second" city, but a key one, Swansea, Wales is roughly to Cardiff, Wales what Manchester, England is to London. Vikings settled in this area on the South Wales coast in 1013, when they took it from local Anglo-Saxons. Later, in the 1100s, Normans founded the town of Swansea. It became a major industrial center and port by the 18th century, and now mixes manufacturing with an increasingly thriving services industry. About 230,000 people live here.
Dylan Thomas started out here in 1914, and ended his life prematurely in Manhattan in 1953. In 1969, the actress Catherine Zeta Jones was born in Swansea. Jones still speaks fluent Welsh and has an oceanside home here. Her son, with American actor Michael Douglas, was born in 2000. His name is Dylan.
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High Street, 1907
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March 15, 2010
Big Moxie in Greensboro: Kyle Singler.
Want a job, Kyle? Call us. Let's talk. From The Chronicle, Duke's daily: "Singler’s dive into stands, solid shooting lead Duke to title".
Ian Soileau, Duke Chronicle
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Important Irish reality check.
Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
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The Ides: Death of an Alpha Male.
First, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty...
--Plutarch, on young Caesar
Today is the Ides of March, death date of Gaius Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 BC-March 15, 44 BC), general, politician, schemer, explorer, writer, alpha male, womanizer, patrician and, as we begin to observe St. Patrick's day, no friend of Gaelic peoples. Grandiose, flawed, and truly great, he made Rome an empire. Caesar conquered what is now France and Belgium--and got Rome more interested in taking on an assortment of Celtic tribes in Britain after his death.
An egomaniac, he was both charming vain dandy, and a skilled military leader, with a surprising compassionate streak. A century after his death, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote an enduring bio. Plutarch even mixed it up with armchair psychoanalysis, treating Caesar's life in "parallel" with that of Alexander the Great, another wildly self-assured fellow. The term Ides of March ("March 15") has nothing to do with our hero; "ides" means middle in the earliest Roman calendar, which some say was devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome.
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Ease-of-Use for Services: Will we ever get there?
Services, not products, are the whole ball game these days. Goods are incidental.
"Client Service". In our view, that huge gap between the promise and the reality has rendered the term nearly meaningless. Even for those who deeply care about the crusade of delivering "it", this simple idea generates much self-loathing and guilt.
It's a mantra we repeat to ourselves, to our employees, and to our customers. We believe that if we say "it" enough, "it" will come. With the best intentions, service providers really do institute--but rarely work at and enforce--regime after regime of Client Service.
The reason: "CS" is much much harder than it looks. You weave your skills into a buyer's "experience" of them, and deliver them together as One Thing. CS is a hard-acquired habit. It never was easy. Never supposed to be easy. So...
What if the services sector, now King, competed for clients and customers on the basis of "Ease-of-Use"? Develop and apply ease-of-use concepts for products and goods to pure services? Our clients' services? Our services? Law. Accounting. Consulting. Advertising. Newer and non-traditional services, too. Anything where a service (something valuable but "invisible") or product-service mix is part of what you pay for.
In other words, ease-of-use for services.
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March 13, 2010
UPDATED: CPR's Interview of Richard Susskind: "The End of Lawyers?"
If you haven't read him yet, you've probably heard of Richard Susskind, of Susskind's latest book--or at least of the idea that looms in its title that might even keep you from buying and reading it. Last month, in-house lawyer Mike McIlwrath, in a two-part discussion on February 19th and February 26, interviewed Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers? - Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. Rather than angst, what emerged was a fountain of ideas and opportunities for lawyers who serve higher-end clients.
And technology--if in the hands of seasoned corporate lawyers--will be a major facilitator.
As clients and the profession continue to change before our eyes, only a few have made it a full-time job to think through the fallout and discuss solutions. Susskind is a expert in legal technology who, in the mid-1980s, studied and obtained a post-graduate degree in computers and law. In the next 25 years, he wrote, lectured, and authored two other books, as well as countless columns on law for The Times of London.
Much of his work concerns the effects technology is having on corporate law practice globally. A popular speaker these days, Susskind teaches in Glasgow and London and, since 1998, has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England.
"More for less" as the new regime. Susskind has long predicted IT-driven changes in the relationships between in-house departments and firms. How work will get done, and paid for, Susskind has argued, is about to change, radically and in the long term. Moreover, those changes, while threatening at first, are likely to make lawyering more enjoyable--or at least more fun for the handful of us drones who actually liked it in the first place.
Richard Susskind
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Buenos Aires: Have Mercy.
Only a few cities will raise the dead, heal the sick, and make blind men see. Outsiders of either sex walking in Buenos Aires for the first time are often unexpectedly stunned. These are seriously pretty people in a half-blended mist of Inca, Africa and Europe.
The best part? You may look openly and fixedly at who or that which you admire--and do that all afternoon. Anita Hill and National Public Radio will not be camped out in front of your hotel room by 6:00 AM the next day. No investigations. No EEOC claims. Just Life. You and your biggest human instincts.
You may observe how people actually walk. In the City of Borges live the most heavenly people on the planet: Las Porteñas.
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Duncan Campbell King: A Man in Full.
No, no, he's not from Pittsburgh--too frail and well-read--but good guess. We admire Albion's new star Duncan Campbell King at Wrath of a Sumo King. He has given up all hope of ever behaving normally, and raised that to an art form. "I am Duncan Phebus Sumo Mercutius Steerpike Campbell King, Litigator Extraordinaire, and I do not want you to like me."
Venting, sporting women and the First Amendment are the main events here. Like in olden days before we liberals ruined our speech and children with PC agendas--so your boys could grow up to sound like Mr. Rogers, or maybe your grandmother in St. Cloud. Duncan is hereby given a Club Ned pass for life: authentic, experimental, un-PC, feral.
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March 12, 2010
China Business: The Rules.
If you are walking into a meeting preparing for a heated pissing contest why bother? There are no deals of the century in China, no deal has to be done today, and there are options.
--Richard Brubaker
For pros, clients, and the unwashed. Seattle's Dan Harris has located "The Rules" over at Rich Brubaker's Shanghai-based All Roads Lead To China. Our three--make that four--favorites with Harris's commentary:
3. Have lines (moral and economic) that cannot be moved. This is a great one and one that I too often have seen violated. In fact, I met with someone just the other day who told me that he had left China after building up a successful business there when he realized that what he was doing to keep it up had turned him into someone he did not want to be.
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Real Heros: Scott Greenfield
(From a May 23, 2009 post, "Slackoisie-Fest: Fighting Loserism")
Ben Franklin, Tom Edison and Clarence Darrow root for Greenfield in Doers' Heaven.
--Holden Oliver (2009)
Listen, you creeps, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the filth and the crap. Here is a man who stood up.
--Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976)
The fight against Wankers at Work. Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice rails, too often alone, against The Slackoisie: our Cliff Notes kids, workplace weenies, and new Maynard G. Krebses with a straight-faced argument on the right to be barely adequate at work. This is Gen-Y. You were born after 1978. You demand--with no real bargaining power--that employers buy into "work-life balance".
You want a family-life "lifestyle". You call yourself Super-Daddy. Or Concerned Humanist. Or Non-Selfish Sensitive New Age Person.
Some trendy if wimpy U.S. employers are increasingly buying into this.
Enemy of Looters: Scott Greenfield (pre-industrial accident)
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March 11, 2010
Patrick Lamb: Get used to it, Jack.
It's time to step back and re-think things when a hardworking optimistic trial lawyer and innovator like Pat Lamb writes this: "The "good old days" are not coming back". Quoting a Hildebrandt report he links to:
We enter 2010 with little prospect of a robust recovery and with mounting evidence that the profession is entering an era in which the fundamental economics of legal practice are likely to be significantly different.
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March 10, 2010
Manchester, England: "Shameless"
"It's a mean old town to live in by yourself." Still fabled, wonderfully gritty and real,this ancient second city once had an economic school of thought named after it, via England's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Carole Houlston in "Manchester":
Lowry-loving
Boundry shoving
Cottonmilled...
Bomb-rocked
Unbroken...
Mean Town Blues
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Read it, brush yourself off, get to work.
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March 09, 2010
Canadian Bar Association: Serious about clients.
Keeping good clients, getting new ones, making new ones "stick". These are on everyone's mind these days. For all 4.5 years this blog has been up and running, the Canadian Bar Association's PracticeLink on "Client Services" has been--hands down--the best bar organization site out there on client service. CBA apparently sees CS as a way of lawyer life. "A full-time activity" is the expression used. PracticeLink is well thought-out, packed with the best resources, and far beyond the usual lawyer lip service on Client Service.
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Hermann the German: Casting a Cold Eye.
"The Germanic work ethic is a hilarious myth."
Apparently, it's not just Yanks. The work ethic is suffering globally during The Recession. In "Here people work until they are 67?", Hermann, our long time Berlin-based stringer, reports a new drama across the Atlantic.
In the wake of a recent meeting between German and Greek officials on the issue of Greece's mounting debt problems, a German tabloid is telling Greeks to work harder (get “a more Germanic work ethic”). To avoid financial crisis, Greeks must rise earlier and work harder, the newspaper gently suggests, in an open letter to the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou.
Well, Hermann's not buying any of it. Nonetheless, we know that Germans on occasion are overcome by motivation and resolve.
Sacco di Roma - 455, Karl Briullov, Russian (1799–1852)
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Idealawg: Can anyone fix Gen Y's quick-fix chip?
Lest we begin to hear the awful roars of manager-wielded chainsaws in the white collar workplace. Seriously, for a sober moment, like about five minutes, let's resist the burning urge to vent about the time, money and resources spent recruiting, training and keeping smart young workers and students whose idea of excellence is showing up by 9:00 AM and breathing on their own for eight hours.
First, know that it's everyone's--or no one's--fault. But it's still a mind-numbing problem, i.e., employees who can't work, and don't even know it. Many employers in the West never expected this to happen--any more than they believed they would be abducted one evening by the Crop Circle People and taken to the planet Zangor.
Second, and seriously, this time, take a look at Stephanie West Allen's post at her Idealawg entitled. "Are Gen Y kids harder to teach? Are Gen Y employees harder to manage?". She highlights one part of the puzzle being discussed by John Dunford, a prominent British educator, who has suggested that English children currently in secondary school are "harder to teach" because they are so oriented to the Internet and television that success in school "cannot come fast enough". In short, they require instant gratification.
Here are some excerpts from a speech Dunford made this past weekend that appeared in yesterday's Daily Mail (which Stephanie links to along with another article about Dunford):
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March 08, 2010
Who says popular election of state judges is "Fishy"?
How rude. Not giving money to sitting judges and would-be judges for their campaigns? Next thing you know, lawyers will no longer be the main event--with clients calling some of the shots. See at Choose Judges on Merit, a site by the renegade Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, "Electing Judges is 'Fishy'". Dang. Where will it all end?
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The Dude finally abides.
Bravo, Mr. Bridges. A win for the real-life opposite of The Slackoisie--or The Anti-Slackoisie. See The Los Angeles Times. We are not always right at this blog--it's strikes and gutters, man. But here's a strike for huntin' dogs at the Oscars. "His Jeffness". That does sound good.
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Make Yours Moxie.
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March 07, 2010
Will someone please give Jeff Bridges his Oscar now?
Real heroes. For his performance in Crazy Heart--and because he has worked his ass off over the years to be excellent again and again.
A reserved and classy human and family man in real life, Bridges has been an artist's artist since his Duane Jackson days in The Last Picture Show. A rangy and compelling actor. Most critics have admired and liked him since 1971--but over the years no one could figure out why he wasn't opening movies. We'd wager that things in his world are about to change.
In Crazy Heart, Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, an eccentric but truly authentic bad-ass cowboy Alpha male who finally grows up--but at a price (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie tells a fine and believable story--with a happy ending sans the goofy Hollywood slam dunk. Bridge's character, like his acting career, is a study in grit, growth, and great victories in later life. At 60, Bridges is famous and respected but now may start being a serious commercial player.
The Dude's ship just came in. We may have to call him "His Jeffness".
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March 06, 2010
Fight Weenies: Draft Sarah Silverman for Congress
She may have her pick of House districts in three states to pick from. Think about it. We're serious.
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22 rue de Sevres, 7th arr.
Moment and magic is where you find it. Now a resident of the Marais district, ex-New Yorker Richard Nahem photographs, and writes I Prefer Paris. From late May of last year:
(Photo by Richard Nahem)
Marcello Mastroianni in windows at Le Bon Marche
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March 05, 2010
Writing well: A hack in Manhattan makes good.
I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.
--Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Inspiration. Jack London thought you could not wait for it. You needed, he felt, 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 had ever been.
Wild Walt, circa 1860, by Matthew Brady
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The Religion of 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.
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ChatRoulette. Chat hags. Come again?
We have questions. If 87% of players are male, could this be one of those "confused young men" things? Like a post-modern digital Village People community? And the players have names like Chadwick, Raphael, and Little Sammy? Do people somehow sit in circles? Is there a competition? Are Ritz crackers involved? Can you really get nexted if you went to Duke?
Another thing. Kash Hill, a new ChatRoulette player, is a Vision. A babe. A total Betty. What's in it for her? What's she doing with all these, well, losers? Do they have Chat Hags in Manhattan?
Look, if you must play ChatRoulette, please check in first with Kashmir Hill, and read "A weekend of ChatRoulette (Or: I play ChatRoulette so you don’t have to)" at her blog, The Not-So Private Parts. Excerpt:
I lost my ChatRoulette virginity on Friday night. After drinks at Burp Castle in the East Village and a big bowl of ginger-scallion noodles and fatty pork buns at Momofuku’s noodle bar, I came home full and not yet ready for bed. So I decided to give the site — that I had already written about — a try.
I donned red over-sized, goofy sunglasses with stars on them. Both because the site of first impressions rewards gimmicks to start conversations, and because I wanted to browse incognito. Even knowing I would be paired with anonymous strangers, I felt slightly uneasy and the glasses provided protection.
A Contributor and blogger at True/Slant,
Hill is also an Editor at Above the Law.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
A constant barrage of small but powerful ads.
It's the difference between achieving a robust corporate law practice and getting a job scraping barnacles off your ex-partner's new yacht. If you are working, you are marketing. See "Rule Six: When You Work, You Are Marketing" from our annoying-but-correct 12 Rules. Every moment your firm "works for a client"--it sends the client something, it sends an e-mail, it talks with the client, it does virtually anything for or about that client that the client knows about or should know about--it transmits a small but powerful message.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
March 04, 2010
London Stone -- Part II
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The London Stone: 111 Cannon Street
After finishing up at Stanford last year, Holden Oliver had a few drinks and ran amok in Legal London. Then he got dressed up like an early 20th century bobby for no reason at all. Here he poses before the mysterious London Stone on Cannon Street.
Finding the Stone is not hard:
You head east, down Fleet Street, past Dr. Johnson's house, past St. Paul's a block north, staying on Fleet Street (not Lane) which becomes Ludgate Hill (past intersection with Old Bailey), which becomes Cannon Street, to 111 Cannon, across from the tube station. You'll miss It if you're not careful.
You may give an oath to It if you like. Make a wish. Maybe lay a curse on someone.
I have a thing about The London Stone--probably because I live much of the time in California in an "old" 22-year-old home. Back East (and even in the Midwest where I did most of my growing up), there's much older stuff, of course.
Sometimes in more civilized regions of America--generally on the east coast--a house, street or grave will date back to the 1600s. But it's nothing like you stumble upon at every turn at every moment in London. In America, out West, and very close to my home in California, you can see rock and cave paintings. In the American Midwest and South, there are mound-builder mounds and other antiquities.
But these don't cut it for me. I like old books, old homes, old anythings; however, they need to be the relics of my cruel, greedy, goofy-looking European ancestors.
(I am sorry. Do feel free to alert the Oberlin College faculty, and the BIA. Maybe Keith Olbermann's having a slow day.)
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (3)
And some talented.
All heiresses are beautiful.
--John Dryden (1631-1700)
Dylan Lauren (1974- ) (Rabbani & Solimene)
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March 03, 2010
ADR Risings
For lawyers, depositions are like CAT Scans. It seems you can never be faulted for doing one too many.
If we can ever get international arbitration and mediation away from litigators like me, and over to the true "resolvers", it may work as it was intended, and as many GCs still want it to work. In the meantime, do read "Changes In Legal Practice And The Use Of ADR" by Richard Webb at his Healthcare Neutral ADR. Excerpts:
Since entering the ADR field, I have wondered about the inherent conflict between the interests of the lawyer engaged on an hourly fee basis and the interests of the client in achieving the most economically efficient result.
Most lawyers operating in the traditional legal model are like most doctors practicing in a traditional, healthcare setting with fully insured patients. When a patient presents with a complaint, the doctor deploys whatever resources are at his or her disposal to diagnose and cure the problem.
Whether it is consultations with specialists, diagnostic tests and procedures, medications, surgeries or other therapies, the limits of modern medicine are the only constraint. For lawyers, depositions are like CAT Scans. It seems you can never be faulted for doing one too many.
Rich Webb of Healthcare Neutral, LLC
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Writing as Hell.
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
--Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
March 02, 2010
The 'New' Rules: Thank-You Notes.
Break the rules at your peril. People will say mean things about your dog, your wife, your girlfriend, or all three.
Or about you. If, say, you went to Brown, snide people will remind you and your friends that Brown used to be the safety school for the Ivies.
If you went to Duke, they'll say Princeton had too much honor and class to accept Buck Duke's filthy tobacco money and re-name Princeton "Duke".
If Princeton, and you're a guy, they'll say you were always kind of light in the Cole Haans, and a real flake, anyway--so what can you expect?
Inspiration, 1769, Jean-Honoré Fragonard
In case your Mother or Governess never told you, you're from Utah, or you were stoned all seven years at Choate, let us remind you to never thank anyone for something truly important--a meeting, referral or a dinner--with anything but a prompt handwritten thank-you note. No valid excuses exist for not doing it. Too few of us practice gratitude--in either business or our "other" lives--enough. Some say the practice of saying thanks is good for the soul. Others swear it's good for revenues, too.
Many, many business people and some lawyers with the highest standards taste (i.e., wear socks to meetings or court) think that no written thank-you note means no class--as harsh and low-tech as that may sound.
Typed is okay--but handwritten is better. Even if you are not convinced that thank-you notes are noticed and appreciated (they are), pretend that WAC? knows more than you (we do), and do it anyway (thank us later).
Good stationery. We suggest Crane's on the lower end, or something better, like stationery from Tiffany's, or a Tiffany-style knock-off, on the higher end. A "studio card", maybe. Just make it plain. Simple. Initials on it at most.
If you get personalized stuff, have a return envelope address to a home or business--but without the business mentioned. It's personal. Leave Acme Law Firm off it.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
Thinking Warriors.
There has been no illustrious captain who did not possess taste and a feeling for the heritage of the human mind. At the root of Alexander's victories one will always find Aristotle.
--Charles de Gaulle, Army of the Future (1934)
Alexander the Great was out there. He was well-educated, persistent, confident, smart--and a brilliant commander and politician. A warrior's warrior. Alexander was also wild and self-destructive. His men, who loved him, sometimes mutinied.
Alexander worried his fellow Macedonians back home, as he bullied and charmed his way through the then-known world. Many texts say that his off-the-charts political and personal excesses greatly also worried his teacher, Aristotle, the measured and cautious academic. Alexander was, in fact, a student of Aristotle at his school in Mieza.
Aristotle's mentor, of course, was Plato, who was himself mystical, poetic, and aristocratic. Plato was more like Alexander in background and personality--perhaps a better teacher-student match for the young Alexander.
But Plato died when Alexander was 8, and when Aristotle was only 37.
Hey, don't stop reading. Lawyers, students, politicians and business leaders--and especially trial lawyers--should know about these guys.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Anonymous comments reminder: Time to man up, spine 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.
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 and commenters have already "discounted" themselves. They are second-class citizens. They generally say third-rate things. Certainly, they have no incentive to exceed below-average. Feel free to look down on them--and enjoy it.
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.
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.
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March 01, 2010
Our "New White Trash": Who Cares What Makes Generation Y Tick?
You cannot short-cut or dumb down the process of becoming a quality professional who serves clients, patients, customers or buyers. You can't Google it. You can't fake it. If you don't want to learn how to do your work, consider: (i) volunteer work with street people, mental patients, addicts, special children, Boomer-era acid casualties, or animals, (ii) retail, (iii) consulting, and (iv) full-time blogging. The short post below originally appeared on May 20, 2008:
From a marketing e-mail I received today:
Are you frustrated by young workers who feel entitled to success, need constant praise, want everything to be 'their way'? Are you struggling to attract and retain a generation of workers whose commitment seems more temporary than permanent?
This is Generation Y, a workforce of as many as 70 million, and the first wave is just now taking their place in an increasingly multigenerational workplace.
In this 1-day seminar, we'll show you how to motivate and manage Generation Y. You'll learn what makes them tick, how to retain them, and make them productive and energized.
It's your problem, Gen-X and Gen-Y. Not ours. Work, figure it out, ask questions, and we'll help you--but it's your job to adjust to "us" and the often hard adventure of learning to solve problems for your employer and its clients.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (7)
Rule 5: Bombarding the client in real time.
Your work: if the client, customer or buyer doesn't see it, hear it, and know about it, you never did it--and, sorry, Jack, but it did not even occur. No one cares what you're thinking, what you did, and what you know.
Rule Five: "Over-Communicate": Bombard, Copy and Confirm. It's from the annoying but hopelessly correct and righteous 12 Rules.
Chapter K of Jay Foonberg's book, How To Get and Keep Good Clients says that you should bombard the client with everything written concerning your firm or the client's matters. While Foonberg talks about "bombarding the client with paper" with an emphasis on keeping good clients (i.e., marketing indirectly), I always think of his Chapter K in terms of client work and client files.
1. It's the client's file, not yours. You don't own it. And we think the client is entitled to a copy of all of it as you create it. In real time. Not just final documents like letters, contracts and pleadings. Everything. Send clients copies of e-mails, memos to file, research memoranda, cases, anything typewritten, even if the client complains a little. There are some common sense exceptions, like some e-mails, some drafts and some handwritten notes--and of course what clients say they want instead--but there are not many.
2. Your work: if the client doesn't see or hear it, you never did it, and it did not occur. If you don't show and tell the client what you are doing, and do that as you are doing it, there's no reason for the client to appreciate you, your work or your firm, or pay your bill.
(from earlier WAC? JDH posts)
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R. D. Lewis: Got Grϋndlichkeit?
Two Englishmen, meeting on the street may say "Hello"’ and exchange brief words on the weather.
Two Germans are likely to ask "Alles in Ordnung?" (Is everything in order?). Ordnung is not just a word, but a world view. Follow the rules, be organised, do the expected.
Germans, business, and The Rules. At his Cross-Culture, Richard D. Lewis, a well-known British linguist and international business consultant, writes that German business people are very different than you and me, Ernest, in "The Cultural Commandments: Germany". There are ten. Our two favorites:
1. Be thorough...and then check everything again. Lewis: "Grϋndlichkeit (thoroughness) is a core German virtue. You should show a mastery of facts, figures, and every last detail."
3. Don’t make it sound too simple. "Life isn’t simple, is it? So why pretend otherwise? To German ears, simple messages are not complete..."
Lewis, who has made cross-cultural communication in commerce his life's work, offers a summary. Germans as traders are (a) honest, expecting others to be honest, (b) straightforward, and (c) blunt, "disagreeing openly rather than going for diplomacy".
Any questions?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
February 28, 2010
A Man of Kent.
Ex his omnibus longe sunt humanissimi qui Cantium incolunt, quae regio est maritima omnis, neque multum a Gallica differunt consuetudine.
"By far the most civilised are they who dwell in Kent, which is entirely a maritime region, and who differ but little from the Gauls in their customs." - Julius Caesar
Like London, and the County of Suffolk to the north, from where my mother's family came to Massachusetts via Ipswich 376 years ago, I am in love with Kent, mainly the eastern part. The County of Kent is the southeastern doorway to the British Isles--it has even more history, legend and myth than London.
Latecomer Julius Caesar, who first invaded Kent in 55 BC, called it Cantium, home of the Cantiaci. You can read about them here in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Do remember when you read the Commentaries that Caesar--a WAC/WAP favorite--was always running for office, or answering his political enemies, and would not come into his full power until 49 BC.
Augustine founded what became the Anglican Church in Kent in about 600 AD. Thomas Becket, Chaucer's "holy blissful martyr" and, despite all the hype, quite a politician himself, was killed here, at Canterbury, in 1170.
Canterbury Cathedral
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February 27, 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 The Economist's review of Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America (Knopf).
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
Real heroes: Chrissie Hynde
Can you say that? How free are you, anyway?
Way to go Ohio: Firestone High School, Akron, Ohio, 1969.
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February 26, 2010
Heroes: Neely Swanson's No Meaner Place
No Meaner Place will highlight writers and writing that for one reason or another have pushed aside, shoved to the curb, and abandoned; wonderful scripts that have never made it to the big screen or to the small screen in series form.
--Neely Swanson, August 11, 2009
Writing Well, Hollywood. Here's why I personally admire directors, actors, producers and their writers:
Business executives, professionals, government officials, politicians, physicians, lawyers, academics, accountants and other generic white collar dweebs can--and do--make it big in their worlds and disciplines without being extraordinarily creative, gifted or otherwise talented. Or being talented at all.
In the West, we reward (a) fitting in, (b) moderate energies, and (c) making the right moves. There is nothing wrong with that. But is it enough?
In the scheme of things, most of us just slip by. We escaped the more discerning judges. We worked for other mediocre people. We surrounded ourselves with people who made us comfortable rather than challenge us. We were a bit energetic--and a lot lucky. We did the "right things", on safe paths, often chosen by others.
Next, we pretended that we, our firms or our colleagues, are smart or excellent or brilliant. On those days--the ones when we believe our own press releases--maybe someone should, you know, get the net.
Big Talent in the West's entertainment industry? I've been around or worked with some who have it, both known and inexplicably unknown, since I was fairly young. The rub: Big Talent, the kind attracted to and simmering in our LA and NYC-based entertainment industry, as well as places like London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, is merely a prerequisite.
It is rarely enough.
"Hollywood is the one place in the world where you can die of encouragement." -Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Even if you have Big Talent, and hit big once--the odds are greatly against that--you might not work again. You must, like Faulkner's Dilsey, endure.
Big Talent and Big Moxie. You need both to make it.
Sometimes unsung quality, even when coupled with the verve it needs to be noticed, gets its day. Maybe even another chance. First, however, it needs a Champion--a discoverer and advocate. This blog--about Clients, about "Paris", about Old Verities--is simply about Quality, and the values you can't get from family, school or church. You get them on your own.
And that's precisely why we like No Meaner Place, an unusual, nuanced and important new site by Neely Swanson, former Senior Vice President for Development at David Kelley Productions (L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, Lake Placid). Here is brains, toil, courage and magic--in writings by skilled storytellers that never reached the public.
Of the talented writers Swanson now interviews, and their writing that was "pushed aside" in the past:
Some of them were produced to pilot, poorly, some were entirely ignored, some were too original, some were, well who knows what they were...but all of them deserved better fates.
During my many years reading and recommending scripts, projects and writers to David Kelley, I read thousands of script submissions, books, short stories and plays, and among them were some truly terrific potential projects.
It is my intention to be entirely positive and only write about scripts that transported me, in one way or another; I will not write about bad or mediocre scripts.
Whether or not you can create or write, go to this site if you have dreams and grit. Swanson, who knows good scripts as well as anyone, has created at No Meaner Place her own narrative about talent, heart and struggle that inspires. Many of the writers she interviews have had past writing triumphs. See for starters "What’s Your Story? by Jack Bernstein". Even Bernstein, a well-regarded mainstream television writer-producer, who has also scripted three feature films you've heard about, doesn't shoot out the lights on every writing project.
Disclosure: While we at Hull McGuire do know Neely Swanson, she has no idea that we're writing about NMP. But we're not the first to notice Neely Swanson's new blog.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (1)
February 24, 2010
Start-up clients: A "miserable and tortuous" hell?
For over ten years, our firm has shied away from representing start-ups--even those run by savvy entrepreneurs with past successes and big bucks. To be more precise, we have routinely run from them.
Reason: Start-ups are not generally sophisticated users of legal services. They cannot distinguish between, say, a David Boies or James Freund, and JoJo the Demented Car Accident Lawyer. Although creative and way fun, start-up people are moreover (a) paranoid about lawyers ("lawyers are all alike and our enemy"), (b) flat-out cheap and/or (c) too wild and crazy to listen to us.
But we have been wrong about many things. Here's a gem we missed last month at Venture Hacks, guest-authored by Scott Walker, a Los Angeles-based lawyer with a solid background, and an interesting and relatively new boutique firm focusing on start-up clients. It's called "Top 10 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers". My favorites: No. 5. "Because they spend too much time on insignificant issues”. And No. 1--but you'll have to see for yourself.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (3)
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
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
Inside Counsel: 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. If you're 52, even longer in the tooth, or one of those heartless seasoned yeoman lawyers who love their jobs and think about clients 24/7, and are just learning the names of your teenage kids, it's, well, interesting. It might even make you angry.
If you're 25 or 30, however, you might be mystified by all that American drive in the "seniors". Perhaps suspicious. Hey, just 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!
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk). Permalink | Comments (0)
February 23, 2010
Real Heroes: Tom Wolfe
Cuff links, stick pin.
When I step out
I'm gonna do you in.--Gibbons, Hill and Beard
Man in Full: Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr.
Prince of Journalism, Risk-Taker, Interpreter, Virginian, American Original. "Every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man."
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February 22, 2010
"Is that an elected county judge in your pocket?"
"Or are you just hugely happy to see me?"
Even our finest popularly-elected state judges are steeped in a taint.
Think of it like this: Good Crops, Motherhood, the Flag, Andy Griffith, puppies, selflessness, courage (Mae West, above, had lots of it), beauty, truth, a thin Marie Osmond, sweetness, light, replacing state judicial elections with merit-based selection in 39 American states.
As NYC trial lawyer Scott Greenfield and maybe others worry that writers at this site are getting soft and even, well, flitty, we will reach and try here to be frank, and forthright:
Popular election of state judges is beneath: (a) you, (b) your law firm, (c) your family's dog, and (d) especially your clients, and especially if you act for businesses who trade nationally or globally.
That institution, favored in a vast majority of states in some form, makes states that still conduct them appear insular and potentially unfair to both American litigants and to non-Americans and their businesses abroad.
Posted by JD Hull. Permalink | Comments (0)
February 20, 2010
Work-Life Pulitzer.
The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) spent his life as a poet, student, teacher, newspaper reporter, farmer, factory worker, father, husband and accomplished Yankee. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times.
(New York World-Telegram & Sun)
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Rue du Vaux
Are you positive Mademoiselle Clotilde du Vaux sparked a religion? Ever wonder about place names in Paris? There are about 6200 of them. Read about Clotilde-Marie de Ficquelmont in Invisible Paris.
Auguste Comte's "muse"
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February 19, 2010
Washington Post: 'Justice Obama' may make more sense.
At this blog, we regard Mr. Obama with the kind of respect and reverence often reserved for a Jimmy Carter, Adlai Stevenson or Robert Taft: great, brilliant, inspiring, transformational, a beacon to their party's rank-and-file. And wholly "deserving" but fatally unsuited by personality to be President of the United States.
While we greatly admire President Obama, we agree with the sentiment in the title of our post. Lawyer's lawyers and reflective academics should not lead a Superpower. We tried to tell you this in late 2008. We were heartened when Mr. Obama had the sense to select Rahm Emanuel, enemy of the Slackoisie, as his chief of staff. But it's not enough, even as we recognize many U.S. presidents (i.e., Bill Clinton) get off to awkward and even tragic starts, and flounder in the first two years.
In November of 2008, I broke a life-long pattern by voting for John McCain, a Republican, for president. My own family, in southern Ohio and Florida, moderate Republicans all, also broke ranks and voted for Obama, a Democrat. My aberrant vote? Sour grapes, in part. I was, and still am, more comfortable with a centrist manager like Hillary Clinton as my national CEO. She's simply not a doctrinaire or big government Democrat. Hillary's a Boss--a strong and decisive one.
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The Final Religion: Fat Tuesday
New Orleans, Louisiana 1879
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February 18, 2010
Hubris: Zeus and Religion.
Ah how shameless--the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share.
Do you need religion to check hubris? Does it matter who or what you use to curb folly and excess? We think not. Anyway, that's Zeus speaking above--in a rare public apppearance--in Homer's Odyssey. He's the last anthropomorphic god we at WAC/WAP? will let take liberties with us. Just for a little while longer, though.
But should you view world religions as more than first-rate crowd control devices to keep you and yours in line, Zeus (also below) is seen either negotiating with you or practicing his aim--Westerners have never been sure which--with his lightning bolt. So be advised: 1. Be good. 2. Aways follow someone else's rules. 3. Don't screw it up.
P.B. Persinger: "Semele and Zeus with Thunderbolt" (2007) 10" x 8" Oil
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American Religion.
Ellen Bry: Stamford girl makes good in "Lost and Found Family"
It is a movie for people who go to church, sing, watch lots of TV, eat a lot, have never had an original thought, and are afraid of virtually Everyone and Everything All The Time. Already a cult classic, it will comfort millions stuck in the vast gray reverie of American Fly-Over Country.
Sony film released in September picks up speed in Bible Belt. Ellen Bry, a nighttime drama television mainstay (St. Elsewhere, Dexter, Boston Legal, Monk, The Closer) for decades--and known in the LA-NYC underground as WAC?'s in-house photographer--has the lead role as Ester Hobbes, a Chicago socialite who suddenly loses everything, in The Lost & Found Family, a new Sony Pictures release.
In the film, we meet a determined and spiritual woman who is surprised to learn that she has inherited just one thing from her dead businessman husband: a run-down old house in Georgia, and the turbulent foster family living in it.
Taken from the story Mrs. Hobbes' House, The Lost & Found Family is a poignant, uplifting, instructive and remarkably powerful family film set in the American South. It was filmed in Jackson, Georgia, a town between Atlanta and Macon, with a population of about 4000, in Butts County.
It is a movie for rural people who go to church, sing, watch lots of TV, listen to Bocephus, have at least two cousins in the Meth trade, eat a lot, and are afraid of virtually everyone, and of everything, all of the time. It is bound for fame as a cult classic: a comfort to millions of rustics stuck in the vast grayness and troubled reverie that is American Fly-Over Country.
Hey, just joshing you. Early in 2008, I saw a rough cut of The Lost and Found Family--then still entitled Mrs. Hobbes' House--before Sony Pictures acquired it. Do see the new Sony clip below, which includes what I saw. Like me, you may recognize the people portrayed.
An American story. Many Americans, including my own family, have roots that reach deeply into, say, southwestern Virginia, east Tennessee, and southern Missouri (where I've visited family my entire life), going back well over two centuries. These tribes often haven German (Palatine) and northern English or Scottish roots. They do endure. Later generations are still there: always hard-working and proud, sometimes devout, seldom well-to-do, and worlds away from the country club life Ester Hobbes led when her husband was alive. They often struggle to make the best life they can.
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Old Time Religion.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893), "Romeo and Juliet", 1870.
(Oil version, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, USA. 1867 watercolor version in Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK.)
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February 17, 2010
Rule Five
Over-Communicate: Bombard, Copy and Confirm. It's from the annoying but dead-on accurate 12 Rules.
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February 16, 2010
In Praise of Structure
As with client service, our standard for doing the work is embarrassingly low---and we are exporting that low standard whenever and wherever we can.
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.
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February 15, 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 14, 2010
Redux: Sarah Silverman for Congress
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, Mr. President. And Sarah Kate Silverman doesn't have President Obama's no-spine/sand/stones problem; she would man up to Congress. Are we turning into Canadians and the Junior League? Keep reading.
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.
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Santa Monica 1904
Source: Legendary Surfers
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February 13, 2010
You don't want French children to make fun of you, do you?
Got core knowledge? New day for us Americans. We now live in the world. Education is not just about getting a job.
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February 12, 2010
Make Yours Moxie.
Your business, your rules. Get off your knees. Demand things of yourself--and of others. (1) What did you do this past week? (2) What did your employees do for you this week? (3) What did you all do for customers and clients?
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Karl Llewellyn: Eternally baiting fresh Siwash grads.
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn (1893–1962)
We have no great illusions, my brethren and I, about how much good it will do you to be told these things in advance...You conceive this, I take it, to be somewhat in the nature of the pep meeting to which you were first exposed when you entered college.
You expect me to tell you that you should be earnest about your work, and get your back into it for dear old Siwash, and that he who lets work slide will stumble by the way.
My guess is that he was not a fan of "going through the motions". We can safely assume he would have never Twittered (or at least not have disclosed that activity to sane and serious clients). And he would have been deeply saddened by the current professional trend of doing all things in a way to "please the professional"--rather than to advance the interests of the entity served: Client, Patient, Buyer, Customer.
The above of course is from the opening chapter of the The Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study (1931), which sprung from a series of introductory lectures Karl Llewellyn gave to first-year law students during the 1929-30 academic year, when he was appointed the first Betts Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia. The book's title is from a poem "The Bramble Bush" by Robert Penn Warren, excerpted here:
There was a man in our town
and he was wondrous wise:
he jumped into a bramble bush
and scratched out both his eyes--and when he found that he was blind,
with all his might and maine,
He jumped into another one,
and scratched them in again.
(from past WAC? posts)
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February 11, 2010
Charles Nesbitt Wilson (1933 - 2010)
"Come on up and meet my girls". In the 1980s I saw him in person just once, chatting up people near a bank of pay phones on the first floor of the Longworth Building, where I worked. That's the only thing I remember that he said.
You simply watched him. You weren't hanging on every word. He was tall, jovial and charming, and leaned back and to one side when he talked. That day, he was having a good time--but to me he seemed smarter, more formidable and even more fun than the way Tom Hanks would play him twenty years later. You would have noticed him no matter what he had done for a living. He really didn't seem like a U.S. Representative (or that he cared whether he did).
Anyway, we had all heard that he had a good-looking staff of women in his office next door at the Rayburn Building. Some of us may have checked.
Eventually, though, people took Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson very seriously. See yesterday's AP piece in the Houston Chronicle. Two excerpts:
As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Wilson helped secure money for weapons and worked with then-CIA agents Gust L. Avrakotos and Mike Vickers to get them to the mujahedeen. The Soviets spent a decade battling the rebels before pulling the Red Army from Afghanistan in 1989.
Wilson left politics in 1996, after he no longer found it any fun.
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Dupont Circle 2-6-10
The best coverage is Sunday's Washington Post (..."a flash mob with cabin fever...") and Sunday's Huffington Post. The Dupont Circle snow battle was a structured free-for-all. The Washington Post notes that pre-skirmish legal disclaimers were circulated.
(Photo: Huffington Post)
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February 10, 2010
Writing Well: Got heart?
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
--William Wordsworth, 1770-1850
Writing--any kind of writing--is hard work. The most inspired "work moments" I've had are in this category: watching someone struggle with getting to the right word or phrase under pressure and when they are tired. The first time I saw it was watching a college daily editor--my roommate both in college and in DC for a while--struggle at 4:00 AM over a few words in the final sentences of a student reporter's story covering a public figure's on-campus speech.
He was also a stringer for a well-known newspaper, and knew his bosses far away would see his article. The public figure had screwed the pooch; he said some goofy and impolitic things that, given his government job, he should not have said, or said differently. The event was likely to draw attention from mainstream media around the country the next day.
And that happened. My friend, of course, couldn't have known in advance of any storms his piece might cause; I really doubt that would have mattered in his effort.
He still deeply cared, at four in the morning, about the writing--which was "good enough, but not quite there yet"--and it moved me.
Wordworth's Muse: In the Lake District, you might hear "ghostly language of the ancient earth".
Getting it right under pressure was Steve's life. He later worked as a reporter for two national newspapers, and wrote a best selling and well-regarded book on international trade.
Writing, any kind of writing, is hard work--especially hard for those who are good at it, or even just care about it.
Even if you can't be perfect, and often you can't, please put your heart into it. Half-assed writing in any genre and in any profession--letters, reports, summaries, briefs, memos, anything written--means (1) you don't care, (2) you don't believe it and (3) I shouldn't read it--especially if I am a client, boss, judge or other "editor".
Typos? Missing words? Bad documentation/citation? Horrible grammar? Long rambling inefficient sentences that tragically hide great ideas and points? Not getting to the point early enough? Lazy writing?
It all means you're either in deep personal crisis and should have someone else do it or, and much worse, you really hate what you are doing. You're telling me, the reader, "screw you, Jack". If the latter, it's time to make an application over at that cool shoe store, amusement park or gas station that would just love to have you.
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Daniel O'Connell, Barrister.
Would this gentleman have Twittered? We think not. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), "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. As a leader, O'Connell had moxie, brains, drive, patience, organizational skills, and personality out the wazoo. More about him here and here.
O'Connell was also a consummate and legendary trial lawyer, a bit of an actor, and way-fun just to be around. In a set of lectures published in 1901, 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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February 09, 2010
Real heroes: 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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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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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 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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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
'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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