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September 30, 2013
Sensitive Litigation Moment No. 43: Money, Guns and 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. In the lore and legend of Sparta, when a son left home for the armed forces, his mother said: "Fight well and fairly. Return with your shield or on it."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 29, 2013
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Get to know his City of Man.
To us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.
We are idolaters of the Old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence.
We do not believe there is any force in today to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday.
We linger in the ruins of the old tent.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Essays, First Series, "Compensation" (1841)
Emerson, 1857. Pain? It's optional, Justin.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2013
Anyway, a Spanish CFO, a Finnish tax lawyer and a real moody Hungarian CEO walk into this Amsterdam coffee shop together at 7:30 AM.
Statutes, regs, courts, government agencies, languages, food and coffee shops do vary from nation to nation and jurisdiction to jurisdiction--and even just within staid Europe. But business people and their deeply-ingrained cultural and national folkways? They vary just as much. Even English-speaking lower England Brits are so different in so many important ways from their Yank, Canadian and Australian cousins that the UK might as well be an entirely different (1) caste system, (2) planet and (3) dimension. So, and first, when you work abroad, assume you are doing something Wrong. Because you are. Second, work hard at understanding different countries and national character. Learn their history; if you don't, you will fail--and you will be an ugly American to boot. Third, get some good help, Jack. Start with the right people, programs and books. Join your World.
The Betty Boop, Niewezijds Kolk.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2013
One Stand-up Guy: Daniel O'Connell, Trial Lawyer.
An Irishman of the best stock--wily, witty, eloquent, emotional and magnetic.
Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), "Liberator of Ireland", led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to become members of the British House of Commons. As a leader, O'Connell had moxie, brains, drive, patience, organizational skills, and big personality. More about him here and here.
O'Connell was also a consummate and legendary trial lawyer, a bit of an actor, and way-fun just to be around. In a set of lectures published in 1901, John L. Stoddard said of him:
He was a typical Irishman of the best stock--wily, witty, eloquent, emotional and magnetic. His arrival in town was often an occasion for public rejoicing. His clever repartees were passed from lip to lip, until the island shook with laughter.
In court, he sometimes kept the spectators, jury, judge and even the prisoner, alternating between tears and roars of merriment. Celtic to the core, his subtle mind knew every trick peculiar to the Irish character, and he divined instinctively the shrewdest subterfuges of a shifty witness.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Rule 2: Clients and Customers--Not You, Your Firm or Your Employees--are the Main Event.
It's Obvious. You shouldn't need your Adderall to hold onto this one 24/7. It's easy here to get your mind Right. See Rule Two: The Client Is The Main Event at our annoying but true, way-righteous and always-correct 12 Rules of Client Service.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2013
New Amsterdam's Eternal Mayor: The Pluck and Fineness of Jacob Riis (1849–1914).
Jacob Riis (1849–1914) was a Danish American reformer, journalist and photographer. He is still famous for his photos of New York City's slums and their uneasy mix of new Americans--especially those taken in Hell's Kitchen and around Five Points. Below in the 1890s is Mulberry "Bend" (then sometimes "Lane") in lower Manhattan and within the Five Points. It's now Mulberry Street, which runs through Chinatown and Little Italy.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2013
Normal is crazy enough: Doing business with the Dutch.
Here's a gem we missed in May at Richard Lewis's great Cross-Culture site: "Normal is crazy enough: Four things you need to know about doing business with the Dutch". Excerpt:
Take the law seriously, because the Dutch do. The law is another form of written rules and regulations that need to be taken seriously. The Dutch therefore highly value written contracts, although the system of Dutch law does not require lengthy contracts, like Anglo-American companies tend to draw up. The Dutch love for truth-telling, together with a desire to avoid uncertainty, explains their direct style of communication. They say what they think, what they believe is right or wrong, often unasked for and in clear words, thus coming across as opinionated or rude.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2013
Cultural Literacy for U.S. Execs, Lawyers, Accountants, MDs, Pols & Leaders: If Not Now, When?
Education is about more than getting a job. Cultural literacy and a working knowledge of the world's history and institutions--and even of the West--have not been counted among America's many enviable strengths at any time during our development as a people and a nation. Let's not worry about the reasons--often explained in terms of our relative geographic isolation, drive and opportunism, and our distaste for intellectuals, classical education or anything too "austere".
Powerful and well-known Americans, executives in leadership positions, respected professionals, politicians, and major stakeholders in commerce continue to be satisfied with becoming, and remaining, in effect, "techs" their entire lives. Can we change that?
If we could, we would astonish, disarm and charm the entire world. Art, literature, the humanities and a sense of historical context aren't just for the rich, the elite or the intellectual. They are the best part of all of us--and they can inform, stir and improve every moment. You say you are doing fine without it? Think again. See "Ernest, the French aren't like you and me."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2013
Lawyering: Invoice some hourly work promptly every 2 weeks.
For relatively urgent things, or for transactions or litigation when they get fast. Here's a suggestion to make both clients and firms more efficient, better informed and way happier on any fast-moving project whenever an hourly rate is in the mix: real time billing. It's a no-brainer. But it takes some discipline. And ask that the invoice be paid in 15 days.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2013
Equinox: Honey, it's Mabon already.
Get your Druid learn on. Today marks the Autumnal Equinox. Cultures and religions worldwide do get weird this time of year. It's called Mabon, Foghar, Alban Elfed, Harvest Home, Second Harvest, Fruit Harvest (especially SF), and Wine Harvest (Boston). Look it up later. What's Mabon, anyway?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Overheard in Los Angeles
Life is short, opera is long, and Wagner is longer.
--Plácido Domingo, Spanish tenor, L.A. Opera general director.
German tenor Johannes Sembach (1881-1944), taking a stab at the role of Pylade in Gluck's Iphigenie auf Tauris
Posted by JD Hull at 03:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2013
Reason to Live.
They don't know what love is.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2013
The War Against Legal-Speak.
Sir John Popham (1531–1607) was an MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Chief Justice of England. We think he would speak and write differently if he were alive today.
Lawyer-Speak and Legalese. Of the lamer lawyer-centric institutions, only "Professionalism" and "Work-Life Balance" are more embarrassing, abused and irrelevant, and more likely to undermine clients, than the way in which many lawyers continue to speak and write. At least those two prissy battle cries originally had a point. But Legalese never had a point.
A few years ago, a law firm sent us a draft of a simple housekeeping agreement. It was a 3-page confidentiality agreement used during talks for an acquisition. We responded by submitting our own draft because, among other things, the draft we had received (presumably a "model" they had around their office) contained this language:
"Effective on even date herewith, the parties hereto hereby agree to...".
Whoa. How about just one date at the top or bottom of the Agreement and then say "The parties agree..."? And if the whole thing is an "Agreement", with language showing that the parties intend to be bound, maybe you don't even need that?
Either would save trees, ink and space, and would get the idea of contract across, and out of the way. And either would help diminish the image of the self-important "I'm-special" lawyer rocking back and forth in his chair, and talking to himself like a mental patient.
(from past WAC? posts)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2013
Heroes: Benjamin Disraeli.
I cannot be silent. I have had to struggle against a storm of political hate and malice which few men ever experienced.
--Young MP Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), asking Robert Peel for a post in the Peel Ministry in an 1841 letter. Peel refused him.
"Dizzy"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
Guernica. The German Officer to Picasso: "Did you paint this?"
Here's a WWII story I first heard in 1992 in Paris from a struggling young Irish painter named Richard hustling his drinks and living by his wit, humor, charm and talent on a few choice blocks of the Right Bank. I never found out what happened to Richard. But ever since I've thought about this simple and apparently fairly well-known Picasso story, and more and more since 2005.
In the Fall of that year, Julie McGuire and I were together in Madrid. We made time to see Guernica, very likely Pablo Picasso's most famous painting, and some other great modern Spanish works, at the Museo Reina Sofia in central Madrid. Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 after both German and Italian bombers shelled Guernica, in Spain's Basque Country, on April 26 of that year, during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing by Germany and Italy happened at the request of Spanish Nationalist forces. The painting is an outcry, protest and lament of the self-assured, polite, smooth and famously composed Picasso.
The smallest details of the story seem to change. But historians and journalists seem to agree on the following:
In 1942, during the 1940-1944 German occupation of Paris, German officers often visited Picasso's Paris studio at a time when some of his paintings were being burned as decadent. On one visit, an aggressive Gestapo officer found a simple postcard with an image of Guernica in the studio. The officer confronted the painter, and held before Picasso's face the postcard with its breathtaking indictments of war, national pride, meaningless death, pointless suffering, waste, government hypocrisy, inflamed leadership and self-destruction.
"Did you do this?", the officer asked.
“No, sir. You did."
Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2013
Wild Men: Jonathan Swift.
Swift was a Titan in rebellion against Heaven.
-- John L. Stoddard, 1901
Anglo-Irish, Angry and Brave: See one of our past tributes to Dean Swift (1667–1745) in "Heroes and Leaders: Anyone out there with soul and sand?"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2013
Soulful in America.
You may have dramatic cheekbones, pouty lips, Chiclet-white teeth, the neck of a gazelle, four feet of legs, a French manicure, and a serious rack of mamm. But if your insides aren't pretty, your outsides don't really mean that much...and there's no time like the present to go in for soul surgery.
--Andrew Creighton Stone, Editor-in-Chief, Los Angeles Confidential
American actress Katharine Ross: Beauty, brains, heart, soul.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2013
Doing Rome.
The comparisons between Rome and the U.S. are exciting and instructive. --What About Clients?
When in Rome, do as many Romans as you possibly can. --Hugh Grant
Rome. I don't like working here--charitably put, work-life balance is totally out of balance in some regions of Italy--but I love being in Rome. You can walk in this city. You can frolic in it. You can play all day long in and paround the The Forum and Palatine Hill, where antiquities are still being found. There's a guy with a shop at the Piazza Navona--2000 years ago the Piazza was a Roman circus (i.e., track) you can still see if you try--who sells me these unique old prints, beautifully framed, that I bought for my father in Cincinnati. I go to that shop on every trip. The Tiber River is still gorgeous and, like the Seine in Paris, steeped in history, and a bit melancholy and mysterious. Lots happened here--maybe too much--and it's as if the river can remember it all.
Pannini (1743): Ruins, Chiostre, Statue of Marc-Aurèle
In the West, our strongest ideas and institutions, including what became English law, were conceived or preserved by Rome. The increasingly-made comparisons between Rome and the U.S.--no, they are certainly not new--are still exciting and instructive. The Romans were competent if grandiose empire builders who borrowed their best ideas and forms from a previously dominant Greece, while America's cultural debt is chiefly to western Europe. Like Rome, America tended to overextend itself in all spheres. Like Rome, America was globally aggressive. (Other peoples resented it.) You get the idea.
But you can't see, experience and "do" Rome on one trip--same thing with New York, London or Paris--and you shouldn't try. Our advice: do several trips, and "live in it" each and every visit, taking small bites. And spend your trip with anyone but those from the same nation and culture as your own. If you go there with Americans, break out of that bubble. Politely say goodbye--and disappear into the streets on your own.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2013
Atonement
Long ago, on the two Jewish high holidays, my brother and I would be two of a very few gentile students who attended classes at a school called Braeside in the north shore suburbs of Chicago. Literally every friend we had observed those holidays. And they were not in school those days. So we just played dodgeball or other games most of those days. At nine or ten years old--and just the rare neighborhood Belfast Protestant feeling a bit left out--I tried to at least stay on top of what the days meant. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, was the one that stuck out most in my mind. It is of course observed today. It intrigued me. It still does, through this and similar traditions, and it is certainly a cleansing, liberating and purging notion. Atonement. Forget about perfection here. Or being comprehensive. Pick one amend to make to someone you've screwed over or barely slighted, or pick one person who makes you uncomfortable for any reason, and face them. Work is a great place to start--but I am sure you can do better than that. Face them and get it off your chest. You got the stones for that? Because no matter what reaction you get, you are just doing it for you, really. And that is all that matters today. Get busy.
Atonement. It's an idea for everyone on the planet. One place to read about it is Leviticus 23:27-28. Above: Jerusalem's Wailing or Western Wall, where construction started about 20 BC.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
Ile St. Louis: Best Address in Paris.
Ditch your American companions and learn something. Yank tourists think Ile St. Louis is about an ice cream shop at its edge near Notre Dame. It's really not. You can slurp ice cream all you want when you're back in Elkhart or Sioux City. You are in Paris right now. This is your life, and life's short. Please walk around, okay? As a village it's over 2000 years old. Escape your American Bubble tourist group. Escape, if you must, your family and friends. Go it alone. Sit, walk or talk to someone around on your own. Or meet a South African woman named Zoe who's lived across from Cluny for eight years, plays the viola and has never visited Cleveland or Chicago. Talk to her. Tell her about those places. And about your life. Learn something. Change your life.
By Richard Nahem of I Prefer Paris
Posted by JD Hull at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2013
Fraught with Legal Obstacles: American Family Weekends.
With thanks to Charon QC, our man in West London.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2013
What happens when you think on your own, anyway?
At Saatchi & Saatchi, Paul Arden's ad campaigns changed everything for British Airways.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
Got a Customer Experience Idea for You Right Here: Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers.
Why? Because even the most sophisticated clients think that too many of us are still clueless dorks who don't help much. See Rule 4: Deliver Legal Work That Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers from our annoying but sturdy 12 Rules.
Is your firm the Best-Looking Maiden in the Lepper Colony?
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2013
Living in America: On the Good Foot.
James Brown, Godfather of Soul, was the hardest-working poor kid ever.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2013
1922: James Joyce gets crazy with Hemingway.
Joyce said to me he was afraid his writing was too suburban and that maybe he should get around a bit and see the world. He was afraid of some things, lightning and things, but a wonderful man. He was under great discipline--his wife, his work and his bad eyes.
His wife [Nora, the model for Molly Bloom in Ulysses] was there and she said, yes, his work was too suburban--'Jim could do with a spot of that lion hunting.' We would go out to drink and Joyce would fall into a fight. He couldn't even see the man so he'd say, 'Deal with him, Hemingway! Deal with him!'
--Ernest Hemingway, as reported by Time July 7, 1999
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2013
Shanah Tova.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
Got New Associates?
See "What are you thinking?" Also entitled: "If a neuron fires in a brilliant young lawyer's head, and no one hears it go off, did it even happen?"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2013
Sometimes American Films Cut It: The Butler.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)
Speaking of Jim McElhaney: Cross-Examination.
See his classic ABA Journal article "It's All About You". Learn more about something hard. Excerpt:
Stop trying to talk like lawyers.
The problem with legalese is that it does not command instant understanding by ordinary people. That means it automatically makes us poor communicators; and communicating is what we're supposed to be doing for a living. It's a bad habit that most lawyers never shake. So start talking like real people again now.
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Posted by JD Hull at 01:00 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2013
Down in Monterey.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2013
Barham, Canterbury, Kent, England.
O famous Kent
What country hath this isle that can compare with thee?--Michael Drayton (1563-1631), in Polyolbion
I've been here several times and will return as many times as I can. London lawyer friends live here in this village and civil parish of the City of Canterbury district of Kent, England: a sane and civilized rural way station on the path from Cardiff or London to Paris. Barham is above all ancient, pastoral and undisturbed. Population 1200. It was spelled Bioraham in 799, after Beora, a Saxon chief. The Anglican village church dates to the 1100s and was likely built over a Saxon church which existed at least by 809. Barham is not far from Canterbury--and local legend has it that one of knights who killed Thomas Becket had an estate here.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)