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April 30, 2012

Is much of the digital technology we buy simply not ready for market?

In the beginning, Thought Itself suffered. The Tools became the Main Event. And then The Tools worked inconsistently. Ever feel like you are (1) paying for and relying on digital infrastructure and products, AND (2) simultaneously serving the vendors you pay, and doubling, as New Tech Lab Rats? When my parents first bought a TV over 60 years ago, I'm sure it did not take seconds some days and 15 to 25 minutes on others to access the airwaves and turn the bloody thing on to watch Meet The Press or Pinky Lee. Products and services should not be rolled out until they work 99.9% of the time. Have we created a demand for things that do not really "work"?

H.G. Wells & Devo: Are We Not Men?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2012

Liberia: Reaction to Charles Taylor's conviction at The Hague is mixed.

The Charles Taylor verdict is the "first of its kind" against a world leader at The Hague. See this NPR report. Lead-in to the interview:

In an historic judgment, the UN-backed court at The Hague found Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, guilty of war crimes. He was convicted of abetting murder, rape, and the forced enlistment of child soldiers during Sierra Leone's civil war.

Taylor had been on trial at The Hague for almost five years. He was accused of backing rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone during that country's civil war by selling them weapons in exchange for diamonds.

It was a dramatic trial. There was graphic testimony about gruesome atrocities, mass rapes, amputations, cannibalism and information about the tens of thousands of people killed during the decade-long war.

Taylor in court 3 days ago.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2012

"Jiro Dreams of Sushi": A Must-See Documentary for Millennials.

A movie about quality, standards, work--and genuine class.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2012

Mannish boys grow up to be Senators.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2012

Politico: Sen. Rob Portman as Mitt Romney's Number Two.

Southern Ohio's Taft Country has a long tradition of smart, hard-working, solid, uber-credentialed and refreshingly un-flashy Republicans who run for office, get elected and stay awhile on the national stage. Cincinnati's Rob Portman is in that mold. He would help Mitt Romney govern. If you vote GOP in November, Portman is, hands down, the most talented number two you could hope for. See in yesterday's Politico "Rob Portman: Vice President Vanilla?".

Posted by JD Hull at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2012

The New Manufacturing: Surprise. It's Digital.

See by our Brit Watchers at The Economist "The Third Industrial Revolution", part of a special report on the ripple effects of new technologies. It begins:

The first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century, with the mechanisation of the textile industry. Tasks previously done laboriously by hand in hundreds of weavers’ cottages were brought together in a single cotton mill, and the factory was born. The second industrial revolution came in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of mass production. The first two industrial revolutions made people richer and more urban. Now a third revolution is under way. Manufacturing is going digital.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:19 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to be that kind of lawyer, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mega-Doers in the Profession:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by JD Hull at 02:33 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2012

Have a job? It doesn't mean you're smart, Jack. Not even a little smart.

It may mean you're conformist, unimaginative, risk-averse, white or lucky enough not to live and work in El Centro, California, a vibrant, hot, tough and hard-working large U.S. farming border town I've spent lots of time in since 1996. See at MSNBC "Cities where unemployment is double the national rate".

AP Photo. El Centro has 26.7% unemployment

Posted by JD Hull at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2012

Shakespeare, Law and Literature.

See from three years ago a post by Dan Ernst in Legal History Blog on "Law and English Literature". Ernst reviews and introduces two papers by Eric Heinze, of University of London School of Law. On the first Heinze paper:

Legal scholars' interest in Shakespeare has often focused on conventional legal rules and procedures, such as those of The Merchant of Venice or Measure for Measure. Those plays certainly reveal systemic injustice, but within stable, prosperous societies, which enjoy a generally well-functioning legal order.

By contrast, Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy explores the conditions for the very possibility of a legal system, in terms not unlike those described by Hobbes a half-century later. The first tetralogy's deeply collapsed, quasi-anarchic society lacks any functioning legal regime. Its power politics are not, as in many of Shakespeare's other plays, merely latent, surreptitiously lurking beneath the patina of an otherwise functioning legal order. They pervade all of society.

Dissenting from a long critical tradition, this article suggests that the figure of Henry VI does not merely represent antiquated medievalism or inept rule. Through Henry's constant recourse to legal process, arbitration, and anti-militarism, the first tetralogy goes beyond questions about how to establish a functioning legal order. It examines the possibility, and meaning, of a just one.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2012

Poetry Month, Year, Age, Whatever: Seamus Heaney's Toome.

At Toomebridge

Where the flat water
Came pouring over the weir out of Lough Neagh
As if it had reached an edge of the flat earth
And fallen shining to the continuous
Present of the Bann.

Where the checkpoint used to be.
Where the rebel boy was hanged in '98.
Where negative ions in the open air
Are poetry to me. As once before
The slime and silver of the fattened eel.

--first poem in Electric Light (2001)

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

April 17, 2012

Greater China: More than a feeling. Try not to screw up, okay?,

Do see "The Legal Faults With Faulty China Translations" at China Law Blog.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)

Tripoli or The Hague: Can Muammar Gaddafi’s son get a fair trial in Libya?

Our take: The International Criminal Court in The Hague makes more sense. At South Africa-based IOL News, see "Al-Islam Faces Justice on Libyan Soil". It begins:

Muammar Gaddafi’s son and former heir Saif al-Islam will be put on trial inside Libya and there will be a verdict before the middle of June, a Libyan official said on Monday.

The decision comes despite appeals by rights groups to Libyan authorities to hand him over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for trial, amid fears that he may not get a fair trial in Libya.

A trial in the capital Tripoli would, however, mark a small step forward for the central government, which has been struggling to unify the country under its authority since Muammar Gaddafi’s capture and killing last year.

Reuters: Saif al-Islam.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2012

At China Law Blog: China IP Rights. Deja Vu "All Over Again".

See "China IP Protection. Deja Vu All Over Again" at Dan Harris's China Law Blog. Enduring, honest, excellent and useful.

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

Poetry Month, Millenium, Age, Whatever: Michael Drayton & Ray Davies Get Wild for Old Blighty.

O famous Kent
What country hath this isle
That can compare with thee?

--Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Canada to India. Australia to Cornwall. Singapore to Hong Kong.

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

April 15, 2012

We thought "Unbundling" applied to lawyers was a Hull McGuire term/concept for 15 freaking years but...

...it's good it's out there. It's a team effort, anyway. Ah, hubris. Ego. Pride. And the license for unbridled grandiosity that attends all Anglos, cads, trial lawyers, dreamers, workaholics, the part-Irish and recovering addicts. (Hey, it was. Doing/saying it mixed with brick/mortar context for over 15 years.) But see "Launch of Unbundling Book at ABA Techshow", via our friend and ADR guru Don Philbin. We are so angry about this. May need to call Scott Greenfield or Bennet Kelley for a little IP Justice.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

What really came out of the mystic German wood?

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

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

The northern European tribes that became the German people--even as they emerged to become different and often scary strong modern nations, and leaders in world commerce--haven't always have "freedom" in the way Brits, the French and Americans think of it. They also loved Order--and still do. They tend to agree amongst themselves most on issues of how things should be "ordered". And Order can cut into real freedom. So instead of "freedom", Germans have had Philosophy, Literature, Poetry, Music and, more infrequently, Humor. German peoples had a serious sense of tribal government since antiquity in scattered villages and towns for hundreds of miles. But most of us like it better when they stick to Commerce--and to the many Arts in which they do shine.

A Deutsche forest

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2012

WAC/P? Media Hit: "Keep Your Beginner's Mind."

[Verbatim below from 2.2.09. Will seem familiar to a few of you; no, we're not trying to make anyone feel guilty.]

The ability "to think like a lawyer" is about 10% of what you need to be an effective lawyer.

Lots of people finally acquire it. Some are famously better and faster at it than others. A revered Skadden M&A partner wrote years ago that, at a minimum, it requires thinking about something that is "inextricably attached" to something--but without thinking about that something 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. 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 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. 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.

So maybe read Alan Watts. Or at least read a lot of David Giacalone at f/k/a..., an HLS grad who really gets it. Think of David as your spiritual leader and technical adviser in one person. Read, for example, his "Phoenixes and Beginner’s Mind". Keep reading him.

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.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2012

In The Economist: Shareholders Get Serious. Corporate Governance No Longer A Joke. Dang.

Power to the Shareholders and all that--but Shareholder Rights is still an expensive, unforgiving and tortuous hell for many well-meaning Boards. Active SHs often tend to be powerful--or whack-jobs with too much time to kill. Not much in between. See "Heating up: Shareholders are ever more willing to vote against management".

Posted by JD Hull at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2012

REDUX: The New White Trash: "Who Cares What Makes Generation Y Tick?"

M.G. Krebs: Hero of those Happy Going through Life as Turds.

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.

(past post dated 03.01.10)

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

April 10, 2012

BBC: Egypt may not relapse into a predominately Islamic lawdom, after all.

The Mother of All Arab Spring Injunctive Relief Actions. And good news for a way more nuanced world. See "Egypt Court Suspends Constitutional Assembly". Excerpt:

A court in Egypt has suspended the 100-member assembly appointed last month to draft the country's new constitution.

Several lawsuits had demanded Cairo's Administrative Court block the decision to form the panel as it did not reflect the diversity of Egyptian society.

They said women, young people and minorities were under-represented.

Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist Nour party, which dominate parliament, have a near-majority.

Liberals and secularists fear some of them would like to amend the constitution so that it follows the principles of Islamic law more strictly.

BBC Photo

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

San Leandro, 1903.

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

New "memoir" on the midlife Florentine experience: Rebecca Bricker charms us all.

Think of it as an Under the Tuscan Sun for Boomers with Attitude. Tales from Tavanti by Rebecca Bricker.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2012

Myron Leon Wallace (1918-2012). Journalism as a warrior-thinker-hustler's art form.

Mike Wallace. Whether you liked him or not, you had to admit this: no one worked harder at fact-gathering and journalism than this guy. He was always prepared. CBS's Wallace was perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most aggressive, major chord in the media soundtrack for us American Boomers growing up. He made journalism a warrior-thinker-hustler's art form. After he and others at 60 Minutes were on for a year or two, beat reporters at AnyPaper, AnyWhere, were are a lot less likely to be looked own on as losers and screw-ups. Like Mencken and Murrow before him, he gave the whole neighborhood more class and gravitas. RIP, sir. Thank you. See CBS reporting.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2012

Spring: We all feel its giddy dance and play.

Spring ushers in important observances by most religions and faiths. Yet nearly everyone has Spring in their deepest wiring without a scripted assist from organized religion or other "crowd control" cults and cultures that want to tell you how to think, feel and act.

All of us feel Spring's play: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, Druids, Scots, Picts, reveling Irish folk, 3 or 4 Germans, dour Eastern Europeans, Boring Anglos Like Me, All Of The French, ultra-serious Korean dudes, Czech engineers, non-human animals (your dog, Randy) and just plain fleshy folk in the Midwest. All of us notice the natural world a bit more. A flash of joy for no reason at all.

We all do a move. Hips are often involved. Quick--but visible. It may be a jig, a giddy leap, a prance, a simple dance, the Philly Dog New Breed, a strut, boogie or waddle to nod and celebrate. It's merely primal. It's always physical.

We all refuse to ignore rebirth, renewal, new life cycles, being here now, and possibilities of bold fresh starts.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2012

G.M. Wallace in my kind of writer, polymath, lawyer and faux fool.

In case you missed it, as we did, Blawg Review 315 this first week in April was hosted by one erudite mother, writer and Pasadena-based commercial trial lawyer named G.M. Wallace. A seer, polymath and a river to his people, George, simply put, is the kind of guy who beats crested newts to death with his bare hands. You can visit him right here.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)

Is "Professionalism" just a Lawyer-Centric Scam?

For those of you interested in minor blogislative history, and for what it's worth, one article gave rise to the WAC/P? blog 7 years ago. Reprinted from a 2005 "Law Week edition" of The San Diego Daily Transcript, here's "Professionalism Revisited: What About The Client?", written by one of the most hard-working, polished and physically attractive of trial lawyers, lobbyists and business warriors on this failing, commercially degraded and cover-your-ass planet. Note that the piece ends with "rules of professionalism"--but from the client's perspective. (Hey, what a concept.) Excerpts from Rules 1, 5 and 6:

1. We come first. Be nice--but if in doubt, use the rules. If you feel you know the lawyers you are dealing with, we will follow your advice and instincts. If you are in doubt about the lawyers, or if it might compromise us to deviate from the formal procedural rules, please stay close to those rules.

5. If you have, or would like to have, a personal relationship with opposing counsel, that's fine, but don't let the relationship hurt us--the client. We don't care as much as you do about your maintaining or developing collegiality with other lawyers in your jurisdiction; in fact, we could not care less.

6. If opposing counsel shows animosity toward you for following the procedural rules and keeping things moving, that is tough. This is not about the lawyers. We hired you to represent us. We would like you to get this done. Again, as your client, we seldom think that aggression and persistence are "unprofessional".

Posted by JD Hull at 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2012

In The American Prospect: Ohio's Rob Portman as Mitt's Running Mate.

Ohio's first-term U.S. senator, and Cincinnati golden boy, does make sense for a Romney GOP ticket. And, while staid, Portman (in our view) is still way more exciting than Mitt Romney. See "Romney's Veep Calculations" by Patrick Caldwell, who otherwise nails it in his piece of two days ago. Talented Portman would help Romney govern.

March cover

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

Cross-Border Smarts: Getting past whether to "kiss, bow or shake". How do different foreign nationals actually think about doing deals?

So what happens when Americans do business with the English? English trading with Germans? Or Germans with Japanese? Why do the Spanish and Finns view the concept of a written contract so differently

Richard D. Lewis's When Cultures Collide. Buy it, read it, refer to it and link to his blog. When Cultures Collide (Nicholas Brealey 3d edition), by Richard D. Lewis, is our favorite book on doing business internationally. We've been gushing over it for years at WAC/P? and Hull McGuire. Practical, expert, non-touchy-feely advice by a man who studied and consulted on international business before it was cool. First published in 1996. Well-written, often very funny. We've bought about 10 copies over the years. If there is ever a movie version, we'll stand in line to get tickets.

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

April 04, 2012

"We love Whole Foods but shop at Wal-Mart". Discuss.

Read "We love Whole Foods but shop at Wal-Mart" by MSNBC's Allison Linn. Quality/Customer Service takes on Price/Convenience. See any analogies in the arena of professional services? The arena of higher-end clients themselves?

Reuters/John Gress photo of Chicago Wal-Mart store in January 2012.

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

April 03, 2012

High Speed Rail in America: Some things our European cousins do quite well.

And so we should take that hint. Why can't we take a more earnest stab at high-speed rail? Three of our builder clients (and a 4th targeted one) are at once encouraged, skeptical and curious about this Reuters story of yesterday: New California High-Speed Rail Plan Cuts Cost. Kudos for Governor Moonbeam, also in office when I was in college. The article begins:

(Reuters) - California officials on Monday unveiled a major overhaul of a controversial plan to build a high-speed rail system in the state, slashing the cost by some $30 billion, to $68.4 billion, and addressing other criticisms of the massive project.

The new plan must now receive a final blessing from the California High Speed Rail Authority before going to the state legislature, which has to approve the release of the first chunk of the nearly $10 billion in rail bond funds voters approved in 2008.

The state must greenlight the spending and sell the first of the bonds to obtain $3.3 billion in federal matching funds and start construction in the fall as planned.

White House press conference Rah-Rah Exhibit "A" in early April 2009, 3 years ago. C'mon, guys.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2012

Morning, Campers: It's Monday. Need speed-freak jive?

Posted by JD Hull at 02:27 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2012

What About Just Mediocre?

If you can't beat 'em, Be Them. It's just a click away, click away, click away.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)