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August 31, 2009
Redux: The Sacred, Immovable, No-Excuses Weekly Conference Call.
They are missed or canceled only for the most compelling reasons. Vacations, trips to Europe, Asia, South America, head colds, bad traffic, hangovers, my-wife-and-girlfriend-found-out-about-each-other? Sorry, no excuse.
My dog ate my notes, and the draft amended counterclaim? Or, the law schools tried to 'humanize' but instead emasculated the new law clerks (and they are all singing show tunes instead of fighting for clients)?
Nope. These don't cut it, either.
The Sacred, Immovable, No-Excuses Weekly Client Conference Call. It's one of our favorites. Click on it. If your firm currently is doing a litigation, transactional or other project which falls into the category of either "fast" or "intense", here's a practice you can institute today that your firm probably does not have in place. It's a no-brainer. It has enormous benefits right away. And it will both impress and help any good client. It will not put the hurt on your "WLB". It will help you too.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2009
6 Place Paul Painlevé, 5th arrondissement
Hôtel de Cluny, Left Bank
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Be right back--going out to get some smokes.
This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances...
--Tom Wingfield, Narrator, and Laura's brother, pointing to a picture on the mantle in their St. Louis walk-up, in The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
1950 production with Jane Wyman as Laura, Kirk Douglas as the Gentleman Caller.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2009
South Tower
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
We Americans? We lawyers? Too normal?
So, Justin, did you ever have an original thought in your whole damn life? Go ahead. Go crazy. It's Friday. Wear those spats for ten minutes. Americans, as much as any creatures on Earth, do have a passion for routine and ritual. And what of Lawyers--and other Dweeb Breeds? A recent WAC study of lawyers in Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Cincinnati--I have strong family and life ties to each of these Midwestern cities--states that True Lawyer Wildness, Originality and Flashes of Personal Anarchy are reflected in clothing: i.e., wearing a bow-tie, tasseled loafers and a trench coat--but all at once, and on the same day. But you never know. We always need to look beyond the veneer, and day-to-day patterns. "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.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)
Los Angeles: Long lines, pitches, dreams and money.
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott): "Jaws in Outer Space."
Stills (1989, Samuel Hazo): "A celebrated war photographer loses his wife to a stray bullet in Lebanon, disappears and is presumed dead; he suddenly surfaces in Manhattan, and meets a young woman making a documentary about his work and life."
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming): "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again." (Richard Polito, Marin Independent Journal)
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2009
Ambiguity: There are several quality answers and solutions.
There are no right answers, proven-out formulas, connect-the-dots kits.
The current winners--think Jobs, Murdoch, Eastwood, Drudge--are those who are custom-making solutions and brilliantly implementing them.
--Jane Genova
"E" at the Beach: Grateful to be a guy who could think on his own.
An acceptance of complexity, of subtlety, of unclear-ness. Do you hire people who have and embrace that with open eyes, excitement and vigor? And can think hard things through? Well, do you, Jack? Or do you attract the cookie-cutter crowd?
My problem: for more and more younger people in the workplace, novelty--which I view as gorgeous, sometimes elegant, and always beckoning--makes their heads explode.
Complexity. A messy problem. A "hard" thing.
They don't like it. They can't deal with it. They want a "form".
But great work doesn't have "forms". Am terribly sorry about that. You will just have to think on your own.
So here's a true gem we love--written in late December 2008--by Jane Genova at Law and More (subtitled "Deconstructing What Happens in Law"): "Managing Partners: Are Your Millennial Gen Associates Not Dealing With Ambiguity".
The issue for WAC? is not just one about the care-and-feeding of often delicate Gen-Y, the new, complex, and astonishingly intricate "tea cups" in your shop. How do your lawyers, other professionals and staff of any generation with undergraduate degrees in, say, engineering (no Aggie jokes, please) and accounting deal with the wonderful chaos of hard, complex, messy, unruly and--"worst" of all--novel problems?
To me, those are the fun ones--and often the only issues I want. But novelty makes lots of us fold.
For many projects, for a great client or for your firm, Western logic and/or "the usual procedures" cannot provide all the answers. You either have that awareness--or you don't. Most lawyers just don't.
And it's the reason even good clients perceive us as "half-there" technicians and mechanics who, somehow years ago, lost their common sense and any degree of creativity we once might have had.
Read Genova's valuable, perceptive thoughts.
Link, and Inspiration: Stephanie West Allen.
(from a previous WAC post)
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy
Note: Nearly everyone I am close to lives in a time zone ahead of mine. Except my friend Ellen who called me about 11:15 PT last night and told me. Even with a fifteen months' "heads up" about Ted Kennedy having brain cancer, I was stunned that Kennedy--the only one of Joe Kennedy Sr.'s four boys to not die violently and young--had died. So this did hit me. My first vote for a Republican presidential candidate ever last November--John McCain--was not the sea change in my ideas, instincts or emotions I had thought. I don't expect anyone under 45 or so to understand. Below is exactly what we wrote last year, on May 22, 2008, in this post, the day after it was disclosed that Kennedy was ill:
To be Irish is to know that, in the end, the world will break your heart.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Call me a cultural stereotype. A boomer. A limousine liberal. I don't care. Ted Kennedy being diagnosed with malignant cancer of the brain floored me. I don't even know why. Long ago, Duke University, which changed my life in a number of ways, awarded me my first paid desk job to work for Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson. With some help from my father, I rented an overpriced and horrible little apartment across the street from the hospital on Washington Circle where I had been born 21 years earlier, and excitedly entered the world I'd been seeing on television since I was in my early teens growing up in the Midwest. That first sunny Monday morning in May, I walked all the way to work, zig-zagging down Pennsylvania Avenue, and then up Constitution Avenue, well over two miles total, just to take it all in. But I walked in a hurry.
The Hill job was in health policy, and I was asked to follow and report on the work of the busy U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health, chaired by then 42-year-old Ted Kennedy. I saw Kennedy up close a lot during committee sessions and mark-ups during the next 3 months. (A few years later, I worked again on Capitol Hill, and lived there for many years. I'd see him around. Today, if I were lucky, he might recognize my persistent face if he saw me--but I certainly wasn't important those first 3 months.) But way before that, as the "last Kennedy", he was always part of the soundtrack of my life and my friends' lives since we were in our early teens. But he was more than a name, mystique and the booming populist oratory and Gaelic cadences of speech which come naturally to him.
For me, Ted Kennedy has never been about ideas, legislative agendas or even the Kennedy schmaltz: the hope, the dream that never dies, the struggle, all that. He left that music to others, like to his uber-aggressive brother-in-law, Steven Smith, and to his staff. I just never saw Kennedy as an ideologue, even when he ran for the American presidency--which I bet he never really wanted. A character out of a novel, he's simply as Irish as they come: brooding, playful and contradictory. Quietly but definitely war-like. He's smarter than people think, and remarkably adept at sifting through and making sense of too much information thrown at him. In the main, though, he's passionate, human, even poetic--and vulnerable in all the best ways.
Like lots of senators, he's also distracted as hell, even endearingly spacey--but warm and charming, a natural politician, easily the best in his family. He can turn that on and off. Like Bill Clinton, and for whatever the reason, Kennedy genuinely likes people; it's not for show. Watch the guy in a crowd. He's at ease once he's there. He physically resembles most, and is most like, his mother Rose, the family saint and caregiver. And that soulfulness, I think, helped him to be very good at his job. Family friend and economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that Ted Kennedy was the best U.S. senator he'd seen in his lifetime.
Finally, the last Kennedy is as wounded as they come, too. Try, if you can, not to cry when you watch a clip of his eulogy of his brother Robert in 1968, when he was 36. Kennedy's voice cracked badly, and I can't forget the sound of him as he struggled to finish the speech for his older brother. It wasn't about politics, ideas, or even about anyone's family. The sound was pure grief and loss, unashamed.
See in New York Times "Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies".
Edward Moore Kennedy (1932-2009)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
FCPA and China: Teleconference on September 3.
China is, after all, this century's Wild West show. See Dan Harris's China Law Blog for details about a seminar next Thursday on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977--and China. FCPA, enacted during the Jimmy Carter administration as an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and amended in 1998, prohibits (and makes a crime) bribery of foreign officials to obtain or retain business, and requires companies with securities listed in the U.S. to keep accurate records and effective internal controls.
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
Writing Well: Working at it.
Half my life is an act of revision.
--John Irving (1942-)
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2009
Writing Well: Not Easy Ever.
Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
--Gene Fowler (Eugene Devlan) (1890–1960)
Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2009
Litigation: Lawyering, Real Life and a Little Zen.
Keep Your Beginner's Mind. The ability "to think like a lawyer"--what you get in law school and then polish in practice--is at most about 8 percent of what you need to be an effective lawyer. That's right, about 8 percent.*
Legal reasoning. Lots of people finally acquire it. Some are famously better and faster at it than others. A revered M&A lawyer wrote years ago that, at a minimum, it requires the ability to think about something that is "inextricably attached" to something else--but without thinking about that something else to which it's attached.
Legal reasoning is critical--but it's never enough by itself to become an outstanding lawyer. The rest is frame of mind: energy, ambition, organization, logistics-sense, re-thinking everything all the time, a take-charge orientation, genuine people skills, and an urgent passion to solve tough problems.
Two pieces of great news: By the age of 25 or so, many of us already have the above skills and orientation. If we do NOT have them, or have ALL of them, we can still get them.
Some important--but maybe not so great news: If you want to do higher end work--and be truly valuable, get that other 92 percent in place as soon as you can. Smart and even brilliant will not cut it. Brilliant people and lawyers with talent out the Wazoo and no organizational skills or discipline is one of the oldest and saddest stories on earth.
These days, and more than ever, training associates and paralegals to be effective and productive ($) quickly is much on the minds of employers. Get competent at all levels of problem-solving, and working at problem-solving with others.
It's still done through mentoring--but you--the "mentoree"--can't be passive. Demand to be trained well--and by someone who knows what they are doing. We're not paying you to take you by the hand, coddle you, or make you laugh. Your problem, younger folks.
Further, if you think you want to be a litigator or trial lawyer, you will also need Very Tough Hide--something which you can learn the hard way.
Finally, no matter what, you need The Will, and Big Ones.
Almost all of students we have interviewed in the last five years made law review, and will graduate at the top of their class. Again, not enough. Lawyers need to learn to think and act on their own from the first day. You need the traits listed above.
Think of it as an inside job.
If you are new, "steal our clients", please. Be that good. That will take a while. While you are learning, please understand that you are getting more than you are giving. You don't know much. (Not PC but true--get used to it.) So it's not unreasonable for us to ask you to try to do perfect research, editing and proofreading.
But we love your ideas, your first impressions, and the trick is to be confident enough to ask dumb questions and make comments. Often, your first impressions or "reactions" to a problem or project are very good--but we don't always hear them right away.
You may not know at first very much law, or how to apply it to facts for a fee, and then give the "right advice". But you have instincts evolving all the time--they have little to do with law school--that may surprise you. You had them all along. Perhaps see Alan Watts.
naughty child–
instead of his chores
a snow Buddha“Gimme that moon!”
cries the crying
child--by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue (thanks to DG).
(From an earlier post, "Keep Your Beginner's Mind")
*Our blog, our law firm: our numbers.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:48 AM | Comments (2)
August 21, 2009
Client Town or Lawyer Town?
"The Lawyers", circa 1855, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Are the three gentlemen in this famous sketch client-centric or "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. See our October 2008 piece "Weak/Wimpy Local Counsel: The Next Epidemic?".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
Litigation: Depositions should get "the Badness" out there.
WAC? working with Montagnard troops, Cambodia, 1968.
There is a reason why it is called discovery. Invite the other side's witnesses to tell you everything they possibly can about why your side should lose. Revel in these "bad" answers---don't cringe. Make sure that you carefully dissect every part or premise of a "bad" answer.
Savor the brutality: Get The Badness in your case out in the open. The above is from a 2008 article by Chicago trial lawyer Stewart Weltman that we love and cannot live without: "The Two Most Important Questions to Ask During A Discovery Deposition-Part I".
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2009
Litigation: Quit wasting depositions, deposition time, and deposition money.
Why use deposition time to learn things you can learn quickly and inexpensively from (a) phone calls, (b) libraries and (c) even the most rudimentary Google search?
--DC trial lawyer Ernie from Glen Burnie, speaking with paralegals and associates, circa May 2009.
Before you schedule a deposition, do a simple investigation. Save time and money; get better results. You get the idea. 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 formal discovery, he went on, "is a very inefficient way to get information."
Let me add to that. Formal discovery can be--and often is--an unimaginative, cookie-cutter, straight-up lazy, and truly "anti-client" way to learn. On this subject, there are lots of investigation ideas in McElhaney's book, but they all involve simple curiosity and do-it-yourself "trolling" for information the trial lawyer gets first-hand on his or her own.
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.
Just as witnesses say unexpected and even startling things when they testify, useful and even surprising facts are available about opposing parties through the Internet, court files, published cases, D&B reports, news archives and business libraries. These inexpensive but ignored sources are often inconsistent with information parties will give about themselves in formal discovery.
The upshot?
1. Don't take the deposition at all. You may not need to take that deposition.
2. Take a much better and shorter one--and do much better written discovery requests. If you do take it, you will take a better one. You won't need to waste time asking about things which are easily ascertained beforehand. If you serve written discovery before depositions--you generally should do it before--your interrogatories and requests for documents under Rules 33, 34 and 45 will be much better. (Formal written discovery, in my view, is of even poorer quality and even less informed than most depositions taken.)
3. If you need to, confirm what you have learned with a quick series of leading questions. Anything that you have learned about the deponent from investigation and informal discovery, and that you need to confirm--i.e., work history, education, club memberships, past events in the news, addresses, past titles, writings, current and past businesses and business associates? Go over it and confirm quickly at the outset (or at the right interval for that information) with the deponent quickly.
4. Bonus: Opposing litigation counsel--especially those civil trial lawyers of the generic go-through-the-motions "law cattle" persuasion--will take you and yours very seriously.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
Writing Well: The Editors.
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
--H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Herbert George Wells, 1908
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2009
Litigation: If you bill by the hour, why not bill twice a month?
Billing twice a month keeps the client more attuned in real-time to the actual economic demands of the project--and helps the client plan.
When things get fast and intense, invoice the client twice a month--just ask first. Hopefully, ideas included in this blog benefit both the client and firms. One theme is we can move from goofy "adversarial" (see this blog's first post in August 2005) and one-night stand relationships many lawyers seem have with clients to true partnerships with clients--by doing things the right way for clients we all "like".
Here's one idea that's unusual but effective. I got it from my Pittsburgh partner Julie McGuire, who does transactional work, and it really seems to work for intense or "fast-moving" projects.
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.
Obviously, you should check with the client and get permission; this could be balked at as an administrative burden or misunderstood as an insult if the client isn't on board.
But even a gung-ho sophisticated corporate client or GC you've serviced for years--which is accustomed to seeing over and over again monthly bills for day-to-day work in the, say, $5000 to $10,000 range--experiences a kind of sticker shock when the bill goes suddenly to $20,000, $40,000 or much higher, even if it's only for a short time.
Billing twice a month does two things: (1) keeps the client more attuned in real-time to the actual economic demands of the project (and lets the client plan) and, (2) assuming that the GC or other client rep is seeing work descriptions on bills that show value, effort and the range of things necessary to perform the litigation or deal, the details and intensity of the work are more "present-to-mind", better understood and more fully appreciated.
In other words, the invoice becomes more of a tool to impart a running report on what you and the client are doing together--and a better picture of your real value to the client on that project.
(from past posts)
Posted by JD Hull at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2009
Litigation: Budgets.
War is the last of all things to go according to schedule.
-- Thucydides (460 BC - 395 BC) in The History of the Peloponnesian War.
Spartan Woman Giving a Shield to Her Son, 1805, Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (French).
According to the lore and legend of Sparta, when a son left home for the armed forces, his mother said: "Return with your shield or on it--and don't charge for faxes or associate training."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2009
Litigation: The Miracle, Salvation, and Holy Surprise of Rule 56(f), Fed. R. Civ. P.
(f) When Affidavits Are Unavailable.
If a party opposing the motion shows by affidavit that, for specified reasons, it cannot present facts essential to justify its opposition, the court may:
(1) deny the motion;
(2) order a continuance to enable affidavits to be obtained, depositions to be taken, or other discovery to be undertaken; or
(3) issue any other just order.
Another WAC? Sensitive Litigation Moment. Trial lawyers know that Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or summary judgment, gives a litigant an opportunity to win on its claims or dispose of the opponent's claims relatively quickly and without trial. Accompanied by sworn affidavits, and most often discovery responses, a Rule 56 motion tries to show that there is no real dispute about key facts and that the movant is entitled to judgment under the law.
If the trial court grants it, the movant wins on those claims.
Disruptive as Hell: The "early-in-case" Rule 56 motion (note well-dressed Brit GC after taking a bullet here).
But what if a summary judgment motion is brought against your client--suddenly and out of the blue--and the local rules (or local folkways and practices) of the district court don't give you much time to develop and prepare an opposition. After all, Rule 56 lets a party who has brought a claim file for summary judgment after 20 days, and defendants can file "at any time".
In contentious, high stakes litigation, a quick summary judgment motion right after the commencement of a lawsuit can be extraordinarily disruptive--no matter how it is resolved by the district court. It will fluster even the most battle-hardened-been-there-seen-that GC or in-house counsel.
And it's an expensive little sideshow, too.
Subdivision (f) of Rule 56, "When Affidavits are Unavailable", provides a safeguard against premature grants of SJ. Lots of good lawyers seem either to not know about--or to not use--subdivision (f) of Rule 56.
In short, you file your own motion and affidavit--there are weighty sanctions if you misuse the rule, so be careful--stating affidavits by persons with knowledge needed to oppose the motion are "not available", and stating why.
The district court can then (1) deny the request and make you oppose the motion, (2) refuse to grant the motion for SJ OR do what you really want it to do: (3) grant a continuance so that you can "obtain" affidavits and, better yet, take depositions or conduct other discovery.
Granted, it's a delay-oriented rule, but if used correctly, Rule 56(f) can give you the breathing room and time you need to develop the client's case, and avoid the granting of summary judgment against it.
Note: Some months ago our friend John Day--a Tennessee trial lawyer recently honored by his peers, and a man who thinks it's a privilege to practice law--responded to an earlier and similar post we published, and he made this comment, which we wish we'd written:
Another tactic is promptly serving notices to take appropriate depositions before the Rule 56 response deadline (if you already have enough information to take a good deposition in the case). The opponent almost always objects to the timing of the deposition--and thus you can put the unavailability of a witness and/or counsel in your affidavit while at the same time illustrating your commitment to move the case forward.
A judge may well decline to give more time to gather evidence if no effort has been made to conduct discovery while the case has been pending. This is yet another reason to have a discovery plan in place very early in the litigation (and if you're the plaintiff before suit is filed) and promptly serve written discovery/take depositions/do discovery under Rule 45 [non-party] in a sequence appropriate for that case.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:20 PM | Comments (2)
Cummer Gallery, Jacksonville
Return from the Harvest, William Adolphe Bouguereau, 1878
Posted by Rob Bodine at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2009
Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921-2009)
I grew up in a family of Depression Era-WWII Parents and Boomer Kids. For us, the U.S. economy overall was very good in the 1950s-1970s as we moved around in corporate America from D.C. to Chicago, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago again, and finally southern Ohio. We were not poor. My brother, sister and I attended some of the finest secondary schools in the U.S. My parents--especially my mother, a 1960s prototype of the Strong Suburban Super-Mommy, and one with a caregiver's heart--stressed not only achievement in school and sports, and having constant paid part-time jobs, but also on working with the physically or mentally handicapped, or the otherwise unlucky.
And we were to do that without telling the world about what completely lucky and swell people we were. It meant spending your time, and part of your soul. Bonus: You need not be paid money in those part-time jobs. Secret: You got more than you ever gave. We volunteered--Stepping Stones Center in Cincinnati was just one venue--and my mother and sister each entered careers to work with special adults or special children. Eunice Kennedy died yesterday. No matter what your age, your politics, or your tolerance for social welfare programs, the middle child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy was a very big deal in making lucky people realize how much unlucky people had to give to them. See in the Washington Post this editorial.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
E-mail: Are you lawyering or typing? Is either one of them working for you?
Humans are damn fine machines when plugged into one another. Voices, vibes, faces, bodies, winks, hand gestures, touching another's hand or shoulder impulsively, stares, grins, frowns, hand-written thank you notes, human electricity, NOT-typing, non-virtual joking, yelling, ragging and flirting, real confrontation, intimacy and the "god-in-the-room" magic that starts with two breathing humans in one 3-D place. Stuff gets done, too--and done right. What happened?
--What About Clients? in past posts over the years.
I remember when I first got e-mail, back in the mid-1990s. I would rush home with great anticipation and dial in my 4800-baud modem and I would have...four messages from four very good friends....Now, of course, I get up in the morning and go to my computer and have sixty-four messages, and the anticipation I once felt has been replaced by dread.
--Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, in Afterword to 2002 edition, 274 (Little, Brown & Co.)
E-mail is an overhyped, misused tool. And so are you if you use it without thinking. I receive about 100 non-spam e-mails a day. I write about one third that many, most as replies. Usually short ones. They are often soulless, and easy to misunderstand, even when I try to be precise. Unless I am scheduling when and where to meet someone, I am not sure that I see the point of it anymore.
The e-mails I get back are often worse than the ones I write. The truth: most lawyers just can't write. When they write, they "talk to themselves"--like mental patients do rocking back and forth. Typing it themselves makes all that more of a problem.
E-mailing "just because" is Bad Craziness--and you might start seeing those bats. Or worse. (Art: R. Steadman)
My rule, lately: If I spend more than two hours total a day facing a computer screen, I think of that day as a Failure. My job is to think, brainstorm, plan, organize, write, persuade and solve problems. If I spend more than a total of two hours being my own (and third) administrative assistant--and that includes both productive "thinking" and email-returning "non-thinking" typing--I am just another new Insular Robot Worker-Human.
Forget about being One with the Cosmos; I am barely One with the Zip Code, the Suburb, or the Office Building. Even in my office, with people around, I am an Electronic Island With Cool Toys. Alone. Cut off. Isolated. In reality, and ironically, I am not communicative at all. Ah, good morning fellow dumb-downed robots.
You have a good idea? About the firm, or solving a problem for a client? If you e-mail me about it, you have become insane. Whether you are down the hall, or 2000 miles away, you have lost it. Okay, e-mail me once. Yes, writing helps put your thoughts in order. Sure, get my attention. Then call me. Or meet with me. We can make your idea better while we are talking--and do that quicker. Get the juices flowing.
Voices and "bodies in the room" are perhaps 100 times faster and better at defining and solving a problem. At least. Add a third human--you will get more. Humans are damn fine machines when plugged into one another.
But, and I repeat: if you e-mail me about a truly great idea, and expect to develop the idea efficiently in an e-mail discourse, you are truly insane. Get the net.
Back to Galdwell, in the second opening quote. As it's been eight years since he wrote the above, and he is even more famous, Gladwell surely gets more than 100 each day. It's a mantra now that communications technologies save time and money, including bucks on brick and mortar rents for business. It's all true, exciting, Yankee innovative-cool and--a word film actor William Hurt uncannily slips into so many of his lines over the years--forever "evolving."
See Me, Feel Me, Call Me. But some of us don't even talk as much to people we see every day at work. We do e-mail. What happened to voices, vibes, faces, bodies, winks, hand gestures, touching another's hand or shoulder impulsively, stares, grins, frowns, hand-written thank you notes, human electricity, NOT-typing, non-virtual joking, yelling, ragging and flirting, occasional confrontation, intimacy and the "god-in-the-room" magic that starts with two breathing humans in one 3-D place? Or at least on the phone?
Folks, the electronic toys we have were supposed to be helping tools--not be the main event. Do we appreciate the way e-mail, search engines and social media (yes, including blogging) often degrade and dumb down the complexity of hard problems in this world? Has all this made us smarter and better? Or are we just lemmings, cattle and sheep--lulled into thinking we must be doing good work if these new tools are so amazing? Is Google--how many impulses, instincts, synapses does the otherwise useful Google Dude have?--more inspiring and useful than the wonderfully fast and storied brain of that lawyer next door?
Has "tech" permitted a large cross-section of previously functional humans to hide from--and never learn and benefit from--the complexity of life and work? And from each other?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Richard Haynes: Brilliant, bold, rich, imperfect.
I would have won them all if my clients hadn’t kept reloading their gun and firing.
--Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, now 82, quoted in first-rate March 2009 ABA Journal article by Mark Curriden.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
More Manhattan Moxie: "Notes from the Breadline" continues.
Going suddenly solo and writing about it takes big ones. See at Above the Law: "To Be On Your Own (Part II)", by NYC heroine "Roxana St Thomas" who, for obvious reasons, gets a WAC? Club Ned anonymity permit. Our blog, our rules. If you comment, please use your real name. If you do not, we will track you down, drag you out of your house at 100 Happy Street one Saturday morning, and humiliate you in front of your family, your neighbors, and your little white dog.
Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:50 AM | Comments (2)
August 10, 2009
Paris and Real Life: In black, white and fresh.
Work and life. I love both so I do not separate them. No need to. They usually merge, occasionally split, but always dance with one another.
And their quality depends in large part upon whether I can manage to see conventional things differently--with a sense of surprise. Put another way, can I see routine things--in life and work--as a child would see them for the first time? If I can, it helps me. Helps clients, too. It improves problem-solving at all levels.
On the countless stays I've had in Paris, I visited the Eiffel Tower just once, on my second trip. Even then I thought it was boring and a waste of time--except I met on the tower a woman named Linda who stayed in my life for nearly 10 years. She was smart, beautiful, regal and hopelessly difficult--but never boring. Her arrival forced me to grow and create.
However, unlike Linda, views from, or of, the Eiffel Tower did not excite, overwhelm or inspire. Linda is much much better--in person, in memory. In short, this world famous landmark, as extraordinary as it is, never did much for me. You can have it.
But I am wrong about something every day. You do need to keep changing eyeglasses for work and life. And maybe even for the Eiffel Tower. At Eye Prefer Paris, which ex-New Yorker Richard Nahem writes from the Marais district, Nahem shows in "My Most Unique & Unusual Eiffel Tower Photos" how tired landmarks can be interesting again. For example:
Photo: Richard Nahem
Posted by JD Hull at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)
So what did your Employees do for you last week?
Get off your knees. Come out of the woods swinging and angry--like a bad-ass preacher of the Church of the Final Thunder. --The Value Guy
You seek value for your clients? We got some value for you right here, in your shop, where it all starts. If you are "training them" (support staff, paralegals, associates) properly, and giving them meaningful things to do, good for you. Make them part of your client work, and get them to "think like" (a) a client which wants problems solved and (b) you--the owner, shareholder or partner.
And on item (b), are they treating you like a client? What are employees doing for you this week? How are they adding value? Do they advance things--or hold you back? Are they buying into the ethos of great substantive work, and 24/7-availability client service--like it's a crusade, a religion, and a way of life? After all, you are only asking for the minimum there.
Practicing law correctly is hard.
Learning it is hard.
Client service is hard.
And a job is a privilege--not a right.
Expect something great from employees. "Training"? To be sure, it is likely a myth. Good associates and other support people train themselves, jump into the fray with energy and resolve, and learn by doing. You can't teach it. So find them.
If you have to spend additional time "training" or explaining things to employees, and you still want to keep them, that's fine.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2009
Greater China: More than a feeling.
Dan Harris is no digital creep. In good and bad times, China is part of our new world. Visit China Law Blog. Bold, aggressive, never a generic "law weenie", and a stand-up Midwesterner like WAC?, Dan Harris (bonus: his real name!) thinks about and covers China business and culture better than anyone. Find out about "getting on" in China.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:52 PM | Comments (1)
Notice: WAC? still a No Wimp Zone: No-Name, No-Publish.
To comment at this blog you must tell us who you really are--unless you are a Chinese dissident, a CIA operative, or a Club Ned Permitee. Do be advised.
1. Especially the nameless and unhappy campers who read Above The Law, follow its links to us, don't like our opinions (which may threaten your comfortable mediocrity), like to shoot from the hip, never read anything in its entirety, hate complexity and nuance, can't think, are semi-literate anyway, and have zilch to say.
2. Being miserable, afraid, incompetent and broke is a choice, you know? Try a hot dog stand, opening a flower shop, or selling shoes, maybe. The Law is not your thing, guys.
3. Take a canoe trip and some time to think about it.
People who don't give their real names in the blogosphere generally lack self-respect, do not merit your time, and have something to hide. Losers, looters, hiders and insects. Ignore them.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:01 PM | Comments (2)
Posted by JD Hull at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2009
Lawyers as leaders: Daniel O'Connell, Barrister.
Query: Would this gentleman have Twittered, glued himself 24/7 to a computer, or shilled for Work-Life Balance? We think not. Here's another lawyer who came ready to play with brains, drive, patience, problem-solving skills, and personality out the wazoo. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the "Liberator of Ireland", led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to become members of the British House of Commons. More about him here and here.
A serious and hard-working lawyer who stepped up, O'Connell was a consummate and legendary trial lawyer. He was also 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.
Source: March 30, 2009 HO post.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2009
Nicely done, WJC.
Bill Clinton always did come to play. He and movie pals have excellent airplane adventure, do critical reconnaissance on the Dear Leader, secure release of Ling and Lee, and set stage for future talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs. Not bad, sir. See "Bill Clinton has quite a story to tell", a Reuters piece by Steve Holland, and "Let the Big Dog Run", a New York Times op-ed by Maureen Dowd.
It's not just Kim Jong-il. Even President Obama gets a little weird and excited around Wild Bill.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
Can "professionalism" be a smokescreen for mediocre lawyering?
"Professionalism"--like good crops, the flag and motherhood--is indeed hard to criticize. It is also tough to define. Is it always good for clients? Or can it even hurt?
It's not about the lawyers anymore. In litigation, and in other contentious projects, does the practice of routinely and without question granting extensions, expanding deadlines, and saying "yes" to an adversary's requests for an accommodation really help clients? Or are such courtesies merely effete and provincial folkways that take the focus off the main event: solving problems for clients? See "Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?" in San Diego's The Daily Transcript of April 29, 2005. Has anything changed in five years?
Posted by Rob Bodine at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2009
Speaking and Writing Well: The Overstatement.
If you're wonderfully but spectacularly Irish, like WAC?, and you try cases, you should also take notes here. And then take a year off from work. Just to study your notes and practice your speaking and writing.
Well, maybe take off two or three years. Think of it as an extended rehab for those who chew more than they bite off.
See at The Trial Practice Tips Weblog "The Only Writing Tip That Really Matters", which quotes William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White's The Elements of Style:
When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise.
Blarney Castle, near Cork, Ireland, housing the Stone of Eloquence.
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)
August 04, 2009
Internet Anonymity: You're still not Publius, Jack.
See Charon QC's 150th interview with Dan Hull, their 4th podcast together since the first one in London in 2007. Right here. Most of the program was devoted to digital anonymity. This blog thinks we should reserve it for bloggers and commenters who need or deserve it. Some exceptions: CIA employees, Chinese dissidents, battered women, Club Ned victims, and free speech pioneers.
The rest of you mugs? Grow spines, please. Besides, we need it to prepare and serve the summons. If it's worth reading or hearing, and considering, we need to know who you are. Hey, this is America.
"First of all, they call me The Spine-Hunter..." (Above: Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech)
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2009
Original Complaint
Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead...
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)