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January 31, 2023
Lawyering: You're not entitled to a “bad day,” Jack.
Prescient. Accurate. Inspiring. Irritating. Even upsetting. But they are not about you. Born right here in 2006, and part of Hull McGuire cosmos since the 1990s, the 12 Rules of Client Service try to align client and lawyer interests, and do a good job of that. They require discipline, persistence, attitude and a mind-set of enforcement. And big ones, frankly. Have a nice day.
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January 30, 2023
January DC 2023
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January 28, 2023
32nd NW
This was once my grandpop’s house in DC. He and my alpha-as-hell grandmother Alene Oliver Hull lived there circa 1950-1966. I even lived there a short while in 1953. I miss the house. I miss them. Like my Dad John Hull also wished, I wish I could be more like Dr. J. Dan Hull, Jr. None of us will ever touch his kindness, patience, persistence, intellect, strength, and genuine class. I snapped this photo and others on September 3, 2022.
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Wertheim a. M., Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann, 1822
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Taffy Hull August 12, 2005-December 30, 2022
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January 27, 2023
REDUX: To Jurors, Does Your Staff Come Off Like Creeps, Weenies & Dorks?
It’s American trial season again. The period just after any holidays. Count on it most jurisdictions. But we now have fewer civil trials--in both American state trial courts and federal district courts--than we did fifty years ago. But we still have them. And lots of them have jurors. In America, we have so many different types of civil disputes in courts of record heard by juries that most Europeans, especially Germans, think we've gone a bit far with the right to a jury trial, and due process generally, if not completely around the proverbial bend. We waste too much time and money, some say. Maybe they're right. But under our federal and state systems, jurors are here to stay. We are dug in.
No matter how elitist or egalitarian you are on the subject of jurors here in the States, please understand something.
Jurors are not dumb. They miss little. They watch you and your team--lawyers, fact witnesses, expert witnesses, consultants, law firm employees and even partisan well-wishers you may have invited--in the courtroom, in the back of the courtroom, in hallways, in restrooms, in parking lots and in restaurants.
In short, they are watching you and yours. You get the idea.
Here's something you already know. Jurors will always surprise you in their decision-making. No matter what an expert might tell you, or how hard you've worked at selection, you're always wrong about one, two or three of them. You find out things about some of them at the verdict, with or without special interrogatories.
You'll learn tons more, however, if you have the opportunity to speak with them after the verdict comes in and they're dismissed. Ask them how they viewed the personalities in the courtroom and whether they formed opinions about anyone. Of course they did.
Creep Control
Anyway, during trial, don't go out of your way to antagonize jurors with sideshows which have nothing to do with the trial itself. Bring no "creeps" with you to trial. Keep them in the office. If they must show up--even for a moment--teach them to "un-creep" themselves, starting at 60 second intervals, and practicing until they can hold out for five minutes at a stretch. Hint: They pretend they are happy confident people who genuinely like other humans. And life. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. And remember, you seek progress--not perfection. Be gentle at first.
Non-Creeps
Bring to trial no "non-creeps" capable of any snide, "mean" or creepy gesture, facial expression or body language glitch lasting more than one half-second. Instruct your non-creeps to read this post to be on the safe side. Reformed creeps--you spotted them early and sent them to rehab but they are ultimately powerless over they way they look or act--need pep talks, and brief courtroom appearances. See above.
Recovering Creeps Who Under Pressure of Trial May Relapse and Fold or Explode in Public
See above.
A Note on Nerds
In doses, however, a few generic dweebs and weenies running in and out of the courtroom with a huge box of documents, a phone message from your wife about Nantucket this summer with the Bloors, a good luck note from your mistress, your lucky bow-tie, your spats, your reserve pair of Bass Weejuns--face it, many on your staff are the kind of people you routinely made fun of in high school--is okay. Jurors expect nerds will be in the building. You're a lawyer. You live in a world where nerds are almost normal. Jurors get and tolerate that.
But jurors just don't like self-important "assisting creeps". That's really personal. Let us explain more.
A few years ago, after a two-and-a-half week trial, we won a jury defense verdict in a breach of contract and fraud trial involving three established companies and a super-nail biter which no one could call. Everyone had "bad" facts to deal with. All counsel and most witnesses did a fine job. An honest, fair, bright and even-tempered judge presided. So we interviewed some jurors right after the trial--and were told by all but one of them that they were seriously annoyed by some of the sneers, body language, guffaws and antics of the fire-breathing "let's kick some ass" associates and paralegals in the firms helping the plaintiff and the co-defendant in and out of the courtroom.
This seemed to happen a lot with two younger lawyers the same firm who sat together in the court room smirking and cockily approaching counsel's table bearing a note or message with an attitude that said: "take that" and "your sufferings will be legendary, chumps"--that kind of thing. Harmless macho stuff. But it hurt. Jurors noticed. In our interviews, some of the jurors used words like "creeps", "jerks" and worse to describe these people. The law firm's culprits were just over-jazzed, over-confident, over-macho and young (and they lost.) But their behavior, even subtle things, may have tipped the balance.
Don't screw up hard work and a client's chances at trial with mean-spirited sideshows confirming what many jurors thought about many lawyers anyway. Jurors are watching you, your attending GC, client representative and/or your witnesses and your associates and paralegals like hawks: in and out of session, in the halls, in the back of the courtroom, restrooms, parking lots, restaurants. Very little is missed.
Whether or not you think your trial people (men or women) are capable of looking or acting like "creeps" and robots of war at any moment during the roller-coaster ride of a trial, explain to them in advance the importance of "maintaining" a demeanor which appears professional yet fair, friendly, amiable and genuinely good-hearted. Better yet, hire only those people to help you present your case to a jury.
Note on other participants, witnesses, GCs: Wood-shedding of course is not soley for those smirking associates or nasty-ass paralegals who hate life. Plaintiffs, defendants, employees for both, fact witnesses and expert witnesses of parties need the same wood-shedding or cautionary harangue. In-house-counsel? No, generally not. They tend to get it.
Original post: January 6, 2012
Posted by JD Hull at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2023
Write With A Pen Occasionally, OK?
AUGUST MÜLLER, LIEBESGLÜCK – DER TAGEBUCHEINTRAG (DETAIL), CA. 1885
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January 25, 2023
Heroes: Robert Edward Turner III.
Work like hell--and advertise.
--Ted Turner (1938- )
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January 24, 2023
We miss Sir Thomas Sean Connery (1930-2020)
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January 22, 2023
Suffolk Blues
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January 20, 2023
Edward I: Longshanks, the Scots and the Stone of Scone.
Apud Monasterium de Scone positus est lapis pergrandis in ecclesia Dei, juxta manum altare, concavus quidam ad modum rotundae cathedreaie confectus, in quo future reges loco quasi coronatis.
--14th century English cleric Walter Hemingford
An oblong block of red sandstone known as The Stone of Scone (or Scottish coronation stone) was already ancient and storied when Edward I "captured" it" in 1296 as a spoils of war. Edward took it to Westminster Abbey. There it was fitted into a wooden chair, known as King Edward's Chair. Most subsequent English sovereigns have been crowned on it.
The combative and opinionated Edward, who spent much of his reign taming and subjugating the Scots, and hated them, once referred to the Stone as "a turd".
Seven hundred years after Edward lifted the Stone from the Scots, on July 3, 1996, the British House of Commons finally ordered that the Stone would be returned. It was handed over to Scotland in November of that year at the England-Scotland border and taken to Edinburgh Castle. It will remain in Scotland except for future coronations at Westminster Abbey in London.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2023
Daniel E. Hull, Sr. (1768-1854)
Missourian John Daniel Hull I (1866-1953) was my great-grandfather. John’s own father was a farmer, accomplished horseman and Confederate soldier who on saddlehorse just before the war helped move the Hull family from Virginia to Missouri. His son John, a businessman in Mountain Grove, MO, never attended college but worked his ass off, bought a bank and a drug store, raised 4 kids as a widower and saw my grandfather graduate from Yale. Old John Hull crowed about my birth in 1953 and I got to meet him before he died. Below in turn is the grave of his own great-grandfather Virginian Daniel E. Hull, Sr. (1768-1854). With 12 years separating their lives, they unfortunately never met. They were, respectively, 87 and 85 at death. I first visited Daniel's grave on May 6, 2015. It's still beautifully kept by Lutheran church people in Middlebrook, Virginia I don't know and still have not met.
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January 18, 2023
Encore: T.J. O’Hara - Dan Hull interview, November 17, 2021
Written intro by T. J. O’Hara
“John Daniel Hull, IV, founder and partner of the D.C. law firm of Hull McGuire PC, joins T.J. O’Hara, host of Deconstructed, to share his political experiences and observations from inside the Beltway. Mr. Hull is a distinguished attorney who, as a Democrat, served as a Legislative Assistant to a congressional Republican before beginning his career as a litigating attorney.”
“In recent years, his political affiliation has shifted to a more conservative point of view, and he explains what drove his change of heart. He cites the tenor of the media in Washington, D.C. and how it has impacted the way with which events and individuals are often portrayed.”
“Mr. Hull describes the similarities and differences he personally observed in the Black Lives Matter protests he attended as well as the January 6th rally that served as a precursor to the insurrection at the Capitol later that day. His observations of the attendees and some of the groups that drove the behavior of the crowds are quite interesting in each case. As a former journalist, his “takeaways” are quite compelling.”
“Then, Mr. Hull does a “deep dive” into “free speech” differentiating the actual element of that phrase and its misplaced use. T.J. quizzes him on “freedom of the press” as well, and he dissects that issue as well.”
“From Antifa to the Proud Boys, Mr. Hull has had an opportunity to directly observe the behaviors of both and the aftermaths of their actions. He describes what the media reported relative to the facts versus the impact of any partisan spin on national perspectives. Learn how an actual observer evaluates the actions he saw, the people he met, and the way each was presented to the public. Some may be in complete alignment with what you might suspect. Others may stun you with what the genuine details reveal… particularly with respect to the law.”
“Leave your political biases at the door and enter the world of someone who lives in D.C. and regularly experiences history as it occurs. Then, ask why this isn’t what you may have read or seen from either side of the aisle.”
Broadcast November 17, 2021
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January 17, 2023
La Peste
“....the day would come again when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”
— The Plague (1948)
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January 16, 2023
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
Above: King, about 28, in 1957 at his home in Montgomery, Alabama. Had he lived, King would have turned 94 yesterday. In 1964, at the age of 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was 39 when he was killed.
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The London Stone.
We've written about it before. I have a thing about it--probably because for now I live a lot of the time in California in an "old" 22-year-old home. Back East, in DC, NYC and Nantucket, and other parts of the U.S. where people do not use "party" as a verb, there's much older stuff, of course, sometimes going back to the 1600s--but nothing like you stumble upon every moment in dear old Albion and Western Europe. Sorry, rock and cave paintings and U.S. mound-builder relics don't cut it for me as much; so alert the Oberlin College faculty, the BIA and NPR--and then sue me. I like old books, old homes, old things; but they need to be the relics of real goofy-looking Europeans like me.
The Stone is important to me because it's mysterious and fires the imagination--not because it's way old. There's a myth that the Stone was part of an altar built by Brutus of Troy, the legendary founder of London. Not true in any respect--but the Stone is Dang Olde, older than Boudica, Tacitus, Disraeli or Keith Richards, and at the very minimum, an enduring symbol of the Authority of The City since London Roman times. So we're talking about at least 2000 years of Stoneness. Some scholars think 3000 years.
Anyway, finding It is easy: you head east, down Fleet Street, past Dr. Johnson's house, past St. Paul's a block north, staying on Fleet Street (not Lane) which becomes Ludgate Hill (past intersection with Old Bailey), which becomes Cannon Street, to 111 Cannon, across from the tube station.
Got it? You'll miss It if you're not careful. You may give an oath to It if you like. The Stone likes that.
Original: 8-29-08
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Geoffrey Arnold Beck 1944-2023
First heard you Jeff on vinyl when I was 14. You were a virtuoso innovator and genius who always suprised. Thanks for being in my life’s soundtrack. Everywhere all the time. Ohio. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. Europe SoCal.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2023
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. Hang out with no one. 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
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January 13, 2023
Sensitive Litigation Moment #129: Lawyers Aren't Royalty.
It's not about the lawyers anymore. No one cares you're a lawyer. Not impressive. A big so-what. In America, they made it easy to become a lawyer. Some day, everyone, including your waitress in Richmond, Kentucky, will be a lawyer. So get a head start on those you can. Distinguish yourself by serving clients. And get higher standards.
See Rule 9: Be There For Clients--24/7 from our Mr. Rogers-like but deadly serious 12 Rules.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2023
Yankee Mystic Ralph Waldo Emerson v. Louisville Slugger Hunter S. Thompson.
Writing in 1841, Emerson, essayist, poet and deeply spiritual Transcendentalist, is almost derisive about our progress. Hamstrung by tradition, routine and yearnings for safety, we (non-Emersonian mere mortals) cannot or will not grow:
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 to-day 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 in 1857
Thompson, writing about 130 years later, while covering the turbulent, exhausting contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, including George McGovern's star-crossed campaign against Richard Nixon for the White House, is far more charitable, struggling to be emphatic with 20th century Everyman, and funny, as always--but he seems to reach the same conclusion:
Once they let you get away with running around for ten years like a king hoodlum, you tend to forget now and then that about half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they honestly doubt their own sanity. These are not the kind of people who really need to get hung up in depressing political trips. They are not ready for it. Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare.
--Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Thompson circa 2003. He died in 2005.
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January 09, 2023
Armstrong Chapel, 1831
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January 07, 2023
Merry Christmas, Ethiopia
January 7, 2023. Merry Christmas to my many new friends in the American Ethiopian community. You folks inspire us all. Family focused. Educated. Work ethic. Class. SpiritualIty And way gorgeous women with the most exciting eyes. Thank you.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2023
Byron Galvez: Rosa, 1989.
"Rosa", 1989, Byron Galvez (1941-2009)
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January 04, 2023
Blaise Pascal: Time and Brevity.
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
― Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), The Provincial Letters, Letter 16, 1657
By François II Quesnel for Gérard Edelinck, 1691
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January 03, 2023
Bring Back Real Women: Lucy Liu.
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January 02, 2023
In 2023, Bring Back Real Women.
Let’s bring back Real Women. Women with Everything.
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January 01, 2023
Euripides: Speech, Expression, Humor, Satire.
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
— Eurípides (480-406 BC)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)