What About Paris? ™

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Reynolds Price (1933-2011)

See The Chronicle, Duke's daily.

Oxford, 1961.

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January 23, 2011

Rue Cambon, Paris.

Two of several photos two years ago by Paris and Amsterdam-based Tara Bradford, an American writer, at the fine Paris Parfait:

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January 22, 2011

Saturday's Charon QC: A Whole Man Endures.

The man's an artist. For a few days in March 2007, short fleshy German women in bad moods were attractive.

Now in his 24/7 twittering days (he's good at it, too)--which we hope soon morph into an even better chapter--there is no better writer or broadcaster on Law in the West, global commerce, politics, European culture (they have quite a bit there), England's course, America in perspective, art, Beauty and Truth. He writes, and lives, from that wellspring of joy most of us can't ever locate on the cosmic map. Be envious.

He's charming in person, too. He's got this patrician but velvet voice that could make any demented ex-wife totally heel, zip it and think straight and clearly for, say, 5 or 6 minutes. And while we'd like him to blow the tobacco smoke and Rioja out of his tubes a bit more with a few more trips each week to the gym, there is no better showcaser of the qualities that make the Whole Man.

Very whole. As in well-rounded. Remember that?

We know, too, that Mike is a straight-up Lower England Stud with Taste. He once showed up to do a live interview of me at a Mayfair hotel room with a very bright, tall and ravishing chestnut haired 27-year-old girl, uh, technical assistant. So our meeting that March in 2007 started us off well--and hey got me jazzed enough to swive a snake in a sandstorm for four or five days, or at least until I reached Mainz. German women in bad moods were attractive.

See Charon's recent Law Review on "Coulson resignation, Regulatory Ambush, Client Care (but not how we know it), Have lawyers escaped culpability for credit-crunch?"

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January 21, 2011

THE Book: International Arbitration & Mediation--A Practical Guide.

And we'll see the Movie when they make it. "Today's business world is about risk." That's the first sentence of the 2010 book and resource by two lawyers--one in-house and the other outside counsel--who live and breathe international dispute resolution. GE's Michael McIlwrath and King and Spalding's John Savage prepared International Arbitration and Mediation: A Practical Guide for counsel who regularly advise and guide businesses when they negotiate international deals. Kluwer Law International, 528 pages.

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January 20, 2011

GOP-led U.S. House repeals year-old health care reform law.

Sometimes a Smug Notion. Noted. And it probably won't matter. Now it's the Senate's turn. And then there's a veto cooking up over at the Big House just down the street. Know any Magic? NBC: House Votes to Repeal Health Care Law. It begins:

WASHINGTON—The Republican-controlled House has voted to repeal the nation's year-old health care law, clearing the way for the second phase of the "repeal and replace" promise that victorious Republicans made to the voters last fall.

The repeal, which was passed by a vote of 245 to 189, has little or no chance of passing the Senate, where Democratic supporters of the law have the majority. And Obama has vowed to veto it if it reaches his desk.

Republicans said repeal was necessary because the law provides for a government takeover of the health care system, raises taxes and would destroy jobs.

Democrats denied that, and said repeal would strip Americans of new protections against insurance industry abuses that deny them coverage they have paid for.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Chris Abraham: Seer, Force, Renaissance Man, Your Future.

He's a Force of Nature and there's nothing anyone can do about it so just follow his career and eventually join him. Berlin and DC-based, on fire, a Renaissance Man and a mainstay Hull McGuire mentor and friend, he's the human reason--together with Washington, D.C.'s Mark Del Bianco and Chicago's Patrick Lamb--What About Clients/Paris? even exists. So we are in his debt.

He moves (i.e., vibrates), he talks, he laughs, he persuades--and he brims with ideas and joy. And, like the undersigned, he is infuriatingly right about too many things. Chris Abraham over at The Marketing Conversation is someone you should get to know. Chris is probably going to find you anyway. I see him in D.C., California, Charleston and--well, I could not avoid him anywhere I go.

Chris found me seven years ago--and explained what a "blog" is. He was just warming up. Since then, he and Abraham Harrison probably have been doing more to change the way people think, live, gesture, market, connect and otherwise collaborate together globally--and, yes, the ways we view ourselves, view each other and talk to one another in the Cosmos--than Buckminster Fuller, Edwards Deming and Marshall McLuhan combined.

You might as well give in to the guy. We did.

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Two Former Hull McGuire Associates Turn to Crime.

"Hey Beavis, let's check their garage after this." See at MSNBC "Burglars Snort Ashes of Cremated Man and Two Dogs". Excerpts:

Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff's deputies said.

The ashes were taken from a woman's home in the central Florida town of Silver Springs Shores on Dec. 15. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another container with the ashes of her two Great Danes.

"The suspects mistook the ashes for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine," the sheriff's report said.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2011

Two Client-Centric Places to Visit.

The reason they are so helpful may lie in the fact that lawyers, accountants, and other professionals are just a small part of their large followings. See Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg and Church of the Customer by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. These sites focus on the Art of the Business Relationship: getting and keeping clients.

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Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. (1915-2011)

The Natural: He liked people.

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North Korea: The Look and Feel of Juche.

Only rarely does Blogdom really earn its keep. But there are exceptions. Don't miss "A Visit to North Korea", both the reporting and the accompanying photos, at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture. Excerpt:

While it has replaced Marxism-Leninism in North Korea, Juche acknowledges the influence of traditional communist doctrine, although over the past two decades, the military rather than the proletariat or working class, is the main revolutionary force.

To the traditional hammer and sickle, symbolizing the factory worker and the farmer, Juche’s icons also include a writing brush for the “Samuwon” class of writers, professors, engineers, and bureaucrats – a departure from the emphasis in other communist nations.

"Revolutionary posters all follow the same formula: a farmer, a factory worker, an office worker or engineer, usually carrying a T-square, and a soldier. One is always a woman." (Photo: R. Lewis)

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January 18, 2011

Duke: Cisco Systems' John Chambers to give 2011 graduation main address.

See The Chronicle, Duke's daily.

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Rule Three: Ensure Everyone Knows That The Client Is The Main Event.

Rule Three: Make Sure Everyone in Your Shop Knows That The Client Is The Main Event. The truth is that they probably don't.

Above: Generic dweebs some U.S. firm has agreed to pay.

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January 17, 2011

My Marrakesh: No "Ordinary Life".

...don’t live an ordinary life--anyone can do that. Be brave. Live a life filled with adventure.

It's short. Don't divert its natural exciting course with cookie-cutter moves--followed by years of regretful reveries and those awful "what ifs". In a popular movie of the 1970s, Ruth Gordon, a wonderful writer and actress, quipped in character to a young man named Harold 60 years her junior: "If you don't go out there and try, young man, you won't have much to talk about in the locker room".

Gordon, in that movie, and in real life, played a dame, advisor, teacher, elder seer. Grande Dame. Great Lady.

Ah, Great Ladies. I had two very strong, vibrant grandmothers. Each urged authenticity and drive in all things. Each had very strong children: my parents. My grandmothers even greatly liked each other. Both were well-traveled, well-educated and well-read. Both had long lives. One died very recently, and the other when I was a senior in high school. The two are always in my head; I still seek them out.

Great Ladies are still around if you look hard enough. But we know that a certain breed of them--the ones with lives that straddle the mind-numbing changes of the last 80 to 100 years--are vanishing every day. Our peripatetic friend Maryam had at least one of her grandmothers taken from the same inspired and celestial fabric as mine. Do visit today's My Marrakesh and "Essaouira: And a Tale of Jean and a Life Filled with Adventure". Don't be envious what you read there. But do change your life, if you need to.

Photo by Maryam

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Hermann the German: Tucson, Guns and Sarah Palin.

The New Congressional Redistricting in the Wild West. Probably not. So we always listen to the Berlin-based Hermann the German at Observing Hermann for one possible German reality check on America. He even speaks English. Writes it. Seems to likes tall blondes named Greta, Rolanda and Sigfreda. And Hermann's right a lot, friends. See his "Sarah Palin?"

Above: "Hermann's Triumph at Teutoburg Forest", Johann Janssen (1870-73). Another Hermann the German, or Arminius, in September of 9 AD, trouncing Roman legions. What? You're a proud Western professional, businessperson or leader? You don't know about Arminius? Then finish your education. Or at least start one.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

Martin Luther King Day: BR #294 by A Public Defender, "Gideon".

The bright and way feisty if thin-skinned anonymous young guy "Gideon", who writes the fine A Public Defender, has a very first-rate BR #294 you can see right here. Class Factor: High. Lots. Humor: Much. Forced PC Compliance: None. Gooey Hallmark MLK Stuff for People Not Alive in 1968: Mercifully Virtually None. Blawg Review is now in its 6th year. Well done. And well done.

If King has not been killed, he would have turned 82, two days ago, on the 15th.

Eighty-two is the same age as my own father, who told me about it at the time, and who is still very much alive and thriving. My Dad was then 39. I remember exactly where I was when I was told, and what time of the day it was. Although my father was and is no liberal, he--like everyone sane and decent--grieved over what had happened.

For months and months, even in most southern Ohio, the balcony stills of that Memphis hotel were etched in the minds of anyone old enough to read and watch television. We had all been through this kind of thing before, in 1963, in Dallas. And later in 1968, and just 8 weeks later, it would happen again, at a Los Angeles hotel.

Montgomery, Alabama, September 4, 1958. King was 28.

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My American States: Dudes, Where's My Merit-Based Judge Selection?

Yes--it's the same basic article we always run. Get used to it.

Socially, we are pretty liberal on these folks. No really. Three or four of our firm's friends are elected state judges, or ex-state judges.

We still say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too terribly strongly if one of our sisters, brothers, sons or daughters very very briefly dated one, probably.

States: Can You Get Off Your Knees, Please? Look, maybe think of it like this: Good Crops, Motherhood, the Flag, Andy Griffith, puppies, selflessness, courage, Beauty, Truth, a thin Marie Osmond, a really good-looking Eleanor Roosevelt, Sweetness, Light, and replacing state judicial elections with merit-based selection in 39 American states.

Let's be clear. Popular election of state judges is beneath: (a) you, (b) your law firm, (c) your family's dog, and (d) your business clients, and especially if you act for businesses who trade nationally or globally. That institution, favored in a 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.

With each election cycle campaign donations are driving up the costs. This is, of course, wasteful and inefficient. See "The New Politics of Judicial Elections in the Great Lakes States, 2000–2008" by Justice at Stake. More importantly, the very existence of state laws regulating campaign contributions to candidates running for judicial office send two unintended but lousy messages:

1. Judges, like mayors and congressmen, have "constituents".

2. Justice, like real estate or widgets, is "for sale".

We appreciate that many of the some 10,000 elected American judges were excellent lawyers, and that as jurists they do first-rate, honest, exemplary, and often inspiring work. We have indeed stayed loose and open-minded on this subject.

In fact, 3 or 4 of our firm's friends are elected state judges--or ex-state judges. (Hull even dated one for until she turned 35.) We are gracious. We say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too strongly if one of our sons or daughters very briefly dated one. But elected benches are by nature glaringly "fishy" to even the most casual observer and especially, it seems to us, in the Midwest and South, and wherever else American Horse Sense abounds.

Merit-based selection, of course, is not perfect. However, it has worked very well for two centuries in American federal courts with a minimum of bad appointments and embarrassments--even if you adjust for the fact that state judges outnumber federal judges (who are appointed for life) by a factor of over 10 to 1. Last year, we followed the U.S. Supreme Court case about a popularly elected state supreme court judge, and campaign money recipient, who failed to disqualify himself in arguably suspect circumstances. In Caperton v. Massey Coal Company (June 8, 2009), the Supreme Court ruled that a West Virginia judge should indeed have disqualified himself from hearing an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against an a coal company because its CEO had been a major campaign donor.

Judges should not have "constituents"--i.e. law firms, and their clients, who make campaign contributions. Right now, in most American states, they do. And there is no way to dress that up. Generally county-based, American litigation at a state level is already frustratingly local and provincial for "outsider defendants"--businesses from other U.S. states and other nations sued in local state courts--who cannot remove to federal courts, the forums where federal judges can and should protect them from local prejudice.* American states that still hang on to electoral systems look increasingly provincial, classless, and silly from a global perspective. It's time for the States to grow up, and adopt systems of merit-based appointment.

*One reason that federal diversity jurisdiction was created in the first place was because of the Framers’ concern that prejudices of state judges toward out-of-state persons would unfairly affect outcomes in trial courts. Erwin Griswold, Law and Lawyers in the United States, 65 (Cambridge, Harv. Press 1964). Over 200 years later, our current systems in the states make that local prejudice almost inevitable. See also, the interview of General Electric's Mike McIlwrath in July 2009 of Prof. Geoffrey Hazard of Hastings Law School, who addresses why European business really fear U.S. state courts.

(from past posts)

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)

Salzburg: Mozart, Huns and Lawyers.

St. Peter's cemetery. Catacombs are further down and up in the cliff.

You may dream in American. But you still live in the world. Far from being a museum piece (like Venice, sadly), and being a favorite on the tourist's list of "cute small Alpine cities" (like Kitzbuhel, which IS real perky and cute but less storied) in Europe, Salzburg, Austria is best appreciated by digging deeply, and with a reverence. Celts settled it, and they mined salt. The salt commerce never stopped--and in later centuries barges floated tons and tons of it on the Salzach River to points all over Europe. By the 8th century, salt barges were subject to a toll.

Rome claimed Salzburg around 15 BC. Much later, Charlemagne ate and slept here. It was capital of the Austro-Hungarian territory between 1866 and 1918. And apart from Mozart, art, salt, ancient Celtic culture, St Peter's (above) and restaurants carved into cliffs, this staid Austrian city is home to the International Business Law Consortium, an active group of over 85 first-rate law and accounting firms in strategic cities all over the world, and founded in 1996.

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January 16, 2011

The Internet Law Center's Bennet Kelley: There's a Recession?

Intelligent, shrewd, funny, but still able to be cold and calculating when he needs to, as all truly excellent lawyers need to be.

--One Bennet Kelley customer

Utility Infielder of Internet Law. And mega-busy. Hard working lawyer, Internet and privacy expert, and awarding-winning political columnist, Bennet Kelley and his LA-based Internet Law Center get client feedback we all covet. A native of Providence, he moves in an astonishing mix of higher-end business, political and international circles. He spent years in DC. He's super-smart and intuitive. Writes column for for Huffington Post.

"Winning" comes to mind. Even Republicans like him--and hire him. Mega-dry and/or sarcastic Brits like him. Pre-cocktail hour Germans and Austrians like him. My mother, wife and small children are charmed silly. Our dogs tried to jump in his rented Renault when he left our house in the Tyrol--after his first visit. My wife, too.

We strongly suspect the man's Irish.

Kelley: Nearly humiliated this post's author.

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"...the only life we've ever known..."

U.S. Steel Building, 3rd ugliest building in U.S.

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Sane Post-Church Chat for a Sunday: Silverman v. The Vatican.

Settlement Bonus: Seller snags cash for new Papal Waterslide.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2011

Via Twitter we just landed $5.5 million engagement.

Coming soon. We'll post about it any day now--by end of next week, hopefully. Very soon. Yeah, that's the ticket. For sure.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 14, 2011

South Wales: Swansea Jacks? In Bergen County, NJ, right?

Well, no. But we know that you've never been anywhere--and that you're not the least bit curious about Anything East of Bermuda. Another "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 by doing something not even most world-class degenerates (i.e., Raoul Duke, W.C. Fields, Holden Oliver) would try at home. In 1969, the highly correct, wonderful and close-to-WAC/P-perfect 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.

High Street, 1907

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January 13, 2011

Bruce Antkowiak: "Why Law Schools Must Reform".

Law firms cannot be expected to do 95% of the work of lawyer-building. In that regime, clients suffer the most.

The U.S. Law Degree: As immediately useful as "a Ph.d in Poetry"? Bruce Antkowiak, a storied Pennsylvania defense trial lawyer, ex-DOJ section chief and 1977 Harvard Law grad, is now a full-time law professor at Duquesne University. This op-ed piece, "Law Schools Must Reform", appeared last week in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette. Antkowiak's article is subtitled: "They need to leave the ivory tower--and teach practical lawyering."

Antkowiak's piece is at once both an important call to arms and, frankly, a modest proposal. In addition to making law firms truly efficient, could we ask law schools to perform even minimally and produce something of value? I.e., What are you folks really accomplishing in those 3 years, anyway? We practitioners don't get it. You are making things not only frustrating--but very very expensive. Clients suffer the most.

Can you help even a little? Step up? Firms will train. But we cannot be expected to do 95% of the work of lawyer-building.

Question: What can schools do to prepare students for the day-to-day world of work and commerce?

Excerpts from Antkowiak:

You would think that law schools would make fundamental changes to their programs in the wake of the job crisis, fearing that law degrees might someday be assessed like a Ph.D. in poetry -- soul-satisfying but potentially impractical. A few have responded dramatically, but most have held fast to the traditional law school model or made superficial changes. Why the resistance?

For many law schools, their institutional identity dictates that they be largely disconnected from the practice of law. This is done (I suppose) in the belief that we "in the academy" will thereby establish ourselves as an intellectual elite worthy of praise for the intricacy of our philosophical analysis.

The crisis in the law job market has not occurred because the world has miraculously become such an inherently just place that lawyers are no longer needed. The cries for justice remain as loud as ever. You can hear them no matter how high your ivory tower may rise.

New Siwash Law Grad: Do Law Schools Keep Getting It Wrong?

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January 12, 2011

Bennet Kelley on Tucson: A New Year of Living Dangerously?

See Bennet Kelley's column yesterday in the Huffington Post, "Responding to Tucson's Day of Terror". Excerpts:

Gabby and her husband Mark thanked me for the prior column [in March 2010, denouncing violence against Democrats like Giffords following the passage of health care reform] and I responded by telling them that I just wanted them to know that people out there "got their back". That is something all of us can do now in response to Tucson's day of Terror.

Just as midnight gives way to dawn, so must we fight darkness with light. We can shine a light on hate speech and incitements to violence by promptly exposing and denouncing it wherever we see it and calling it for what it really is. This is because the offense of hate speech is not just its content but the assumption that the listener must share these views.

This is especially true when hate is wrapped in the flag, since there is nothing patriotic about hate, bigotry or violence against public servants chosen by the people.

Kelley

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January 10, 2011

Paris in White. Richard Nahem in Tuileries.

Visit Richard Nahem at I Prefer Paris today. First, if you're an American, find out where Europe is located. Figure out where France is. Study some Paris history. Then play in a white garden built by a Medici girl in 1564. Acquire something rare.

R. Nahem photo (Jan. 10, 2011)

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Some Good Tucson News: Representative Giffords is Alive.

Not much good news. And at one point Saturday afternoon Fox News was the first media source to report that Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona's 8th Congressional District had died in Saturday's shootings. Other outlets followed. Many of us--who had turned off the news eventually---went through Saturday (and possibly Sunday) thinking that Giffords, 40, had not survived. She's alive. E.g., BBC and LA Times. There are optimistic reports on her recovery. Tough girl. We already knew you were talented, interesting and brave. Hang in there, Gabby (and husband Mark Kelly). Fight.

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Wake Up Loud, American Workers.

Still Hatin' Life. You even have It anymore?

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2011

Best American Hood Ever.

Benjamin Siegel (1906–1947)

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January 07, 2011

A Freshman Senator to Watch: Ohio's Rob Portman.

Pretend for a moment that all Republicans and Democrats cannot be reduced to cartoon characters and cultural stereotypes, or relegated to someone's gallery of demonhood. Learn about Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) (Washington Post), sworn in just this week. He's smart, honest, well-spoken, young (55) and has done everything right so far. Well, perfectly. He's an "R"--but not a shrill dweeb. My sense is that the reading of the U.S. Constitution yesterday across the Hill would have embarrassed him. (But he would never tell me.) The most talented and sane end of the GOP establishment loves the guy. Importantly, we think he'd even get along well with our bud Al Franken. As a fellow Midwesterner, Franken would admire the new junior Ohio senator, too.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

What if your life was actually interesting? Expats in the U.S and Europe vs. China.

See in The Economist "A Tale of Two Expats". Is life really easier for Western expatriates in China than it is for Chinese expatriates in the West? Answer: either expat has it all over you. Time to sell the house and kids and wife? Maybe leave Columbus? Think about it. Life's short. One of the best sentences from a Brit pen ever: "A final headache for Chinese expats is that, when you move to an oppressive Western capitalist society, you encounter a working class that can throw its weight around."

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2011

Frac me: Marcellus what?

If your firm does any work whatsoever for clients in fossil fuels--energy, environmental or the business side of either--see in Environmental Protection this piece by Keith B. Hall at New Orleans' Stone Pigman: "Hydraulic Fracturing--Is it all it's cracked up to be?". It's a fine primer on fracing and the extraction of natural gas from U.S. shale formations, if you don't know much about those two issues. Louisiana folks know a lot about both. Politically, moreover, it's a hot button issue right now, especially in the American Northeast.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

Ed Rendell: A Democrat with Sand.

Last week's National Journal showed the outgoing Pennsylvania Governor riled: "The Wussification of America". Keep doing that, sir. New male interviewees are whistling "The Sound of Music" score in our anterooms.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2011

The 112th Congress: Bring It. But Bring Jobs.

I'm so nervous I just sit and smile. I worked "up there" twice but I never saw this: (a) 15% real unemployment, (b) a split-as-hell Congress, (c) a new but able Speaker with the personality of a lead weight, and (d) a black U.S. President with a 50% approval rating and the luck and fortune of a grown-up Ferris Bueller. See for starters today's The Hill. And Sarah Palin's still a Total Betty. (I do like her smile.) By the way, if you are a lawyer or other professional of any age or specialty and think all this Congress stuff above doesn't concern you, you're wrong. Please think more about that nice job at Sears.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2011

Breaking: Erudite Brit explains Cicero to Unwashed Yankees.

Arrival of Charon. Gustave Doré's take on Dante's Inferno. Plate IX: Canto III:

And lo! towards us coming in a boat
An old man, hoary with the hair of eld,
Crying: 'Woe unto you, ye souls depraved!'

Get your learn on, Law Campers. Conjugate Verbs all by yourselves. Dabble in World Geography. Even some History. Visit Professor Charon at Blawg Review #292.

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January 01, 2011

Janus

Janus, two-headed Roman god of doors and beginnings.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)