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April 30, 2023
Brian Neary's Hawk.
A celebrated Hollywood polymath--television producer, songwriter and award-winning author--Brian Neary has written a spy novel that's "not like the others." It's a tight page-turner by a master that captures and catapults you in the first few pages. Even if you have no time to read. Even if you don't like spy yarns. Trust us on this one. Buy it. Read it.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2023
1950
This is what American Heroes look like.
July 1, 1950. Miami. Both 22 years old.
A jock. A fashion model. Both average students.
Combined net worth at time: $46. Rounded up.
JDH III: “Best day’s work I ever did was marrying your Mom.”
Posted by JD Hull at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2023
“Ernest, the French aren't like you and me...”
“Yes, they have more class.”
--With apologies to the famous Fitzgerald-Hemingway exchange.
Like their natural enemy the English, the French are of course wonderful--but neither nation's citizens are openly "friendly." When the English and French encounter Yanks abroad, they can't get why Americans are so outgoing, or why they would even want to be. Many Americans (I am one of them) are openly curious, warm and effusive everywhere they go. It can be mildly disruptive. We Yanks do like to chatter a bit and ask questions. Most Northern Europeans, on the other hand, would rather choke to death than ask a question about anything, and routinely bristle at at the overly-familiar tone they associate with American tourists and businessmen.
This is especially true of Brits and the French. Sure, the English, who are more more relaxed and self-deprecating than the French, are getting better at chit-chat and we've been seeing this for years in customer service at the retail level in England's biggest cities (even in London) and villages. But a Parisian shop, store or hotel employee is still likely to treat basic customer service as horribly degrading to his or her person-hood. I.e., "I know it's my job, madame, but I will keep my distance still." Despite my own English roots--I've got smaller bits of German, Welsh, Irish and French, and dabs of any of the four can make you hopelessly eccentric and irritating in completely different ways--the French are my still favorite. They are flirtatious and serious, volatile and sturdy, civilized and feral, logical and irrational. But they do want their children of all social classes steeped in the best of Western culture.
Art, the Humanities and the Great Ideas is a necessity, not a luxury. The French, British Francophile Julian Barnes writes, are “designed by God to seem as provokingly dissimilar from the British as possible. Catholic, Cartesian, Mediterranean; Machiavellian in politics, Jesuitical in argument, Casanovan in sex; relaxed about pleasure, and treating the arts as central to life, rather than some add-on, like a set of alloy wheels.”
So the humanities, ideas and old verities from great men and women now gone are essential for living and enjoying life as a Whole Person. Art isn't just for the rich, the elite or the intellectual. Moreover, the French are not runners and cowards--don't make the mistake of buying into the notion that they shrink from adversity. Throughout most of their history, they've been calculating, competitive, courageous and war-like. They are intelligently patriotic. And they'll beat you with argument, and arms, if they have to. But their real gods are Reason and Art. My sense is that, in the next few decades, the French will manage to save us all from ourselves, as they can be counted on to remind humans of what's important--and who we all really are.
Watch them.
Original Post: March 6, 2009
Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2023
Spring 1597. Legal London. Consider Love's Labour's Lost.
Here is the complete text of a circa-1595 comedy by Shakespeare, Inns of Court in still over-percolating Legal London. And, most certainly, it was performed before law students at Gray's Inn, where Elizabeth was the "patron". Interestingly, the play begins with a vow by several men to forswear pleasures of the flesh and the company of fast women during a three-year period of study and reflection. And to "train our intellects to vain delight".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2023
The Viper Room: Lawyering Is A Backstage Pass to the World.
The Strip, Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood. As the fictional movie character John Milton said, law done right is a "backstage pass to the world." We've a client doing good things in Africa with an office here. How many lawyers have a practice with client meetings two blocks from the Viper Room and The Whiskey? Probably quite a few. But I grew up in the Midwest--where TGIF restaurants are considered to be pretty wild, and it's eccentric to wear a trench coat and tasseled loafers on the same day. So this kind of meeting venue may be my notion of gratitude.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2023
Posted by JD Hull at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2023
Salzburg, Austria: Mozart, salt, Huns and lawyers.
You may dream in American. But you still live in the world.
Salzburg, Austria. Far from being a museum piece (e.g., Venice, sadly), and being a favorite on the tourist's short list of cute small Alpine cities (e.g., Kitzbuhel, perky but less storied) in Europe, Salzburg is best appreciated by digging deeply, no pun intended, and with a reverence. Celts settled Salzburg, where 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 had claimed Salzburg around 15 BC. Much later, around 800, Charlemagne ate and slept here. It was capital of the Austro-Hungarian territory between 1866 and 1918. Apart from Mozart, art, salt, ancient Celtic culture, St. Peter's (below) and restaurants carved into cliffs, this staid Austrian city is home to the International Business Law Consortium, an established (1996) group of over 100 first-rate law and accounting firms in strategic cities worldwide. What more could a new age road warrior and her clients ever want? Well, frankly, Mainz, Germany is pretty cool--but we'll save that for a future post.
St. Peters in Salzburg.
Original post: May 18, 2010.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
Earth Day 2023, Edition No. 53
Today is Earth Day, No. 53. The first was on April 22, 1970. It was started by the late U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), and organized and led by Denis Hayes, National Coordinator for the 1970 Earth Day, and since then a mainstay leader, thinker and writer in the environmentalism movement.
Senator Nelson was a lawyer, outdoorsman, true Wisconsin character, ex-governor and hardworking legislator. To get an idea of him, see my 2005 remembrance of "The Earth Day Senator", which appeared in Environmental Protection Magazine after his death in July of 2005. In Nelson's very first speech as a senator--in March of 1963--he had argued that reductions in America's air and water quality to be a pressing national issue. .
"We need a comprehensive and nationwide program to save the natural resources of America," he continued. "Our most priceless natural resources are being destroyed."
Step right up, folks. This was new and different 1960s-era stuff. Conservation and protection of natural a resources--once the province of civics classes, the scouting movements, and a few scattered organizations like the Sierra Club--was about to become national, emotional and political.
Six years later, Nelson tapped Hayes to launch the first Earth Day. Denis Hayes has been student body president at Stanford University, and an activist against the war in Viet Nam. After Stanford, Hayes was attending Harvard's Kennedy School of Government when Nelson in 1970 hired him to spearhead the first Earth Day.
Hayes himself became a leader, solar power advocate, author and main driver in the then-new environmental movement. See this past post on his widely-discussed new book (with his wife Gail Boyer Hayes) "Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America's Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment."
Earth Day is now observed in 193 countries.
Nelson
Hayes
Posted by JD Hull at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2023
The Best of Partner Emeritus: On Stewardesses.
Flying is not the fun it used to be. If you came of age after The Great Neutering, here's some great American cultural and client service history you may have missed. See the nostalgic exchanges between commenters back in January of 2016--back when it had comments--at David Lat's Above the Law in "Former Biglaw Partner Who Got Wasted On Plane And Caused Flight Diversion Charged With Airplane Assault." Seventy-eight comments. Below is a sampling:
I miss the old days of flying first class on Pan Am. The stewardesses were very friendly, smoking a cigar was not taboo and slapping a flight attendant’s posterior was greeted with a “you’re a feisty one aren’t you?” Nowadays, you get placed on the “no fly" list for innocuous conduct.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
In Praise of Real Girls: Parker Posey
They're picking up prisoners--and putting them in a pen. All she wants to do is dance.
--Danny Kortchmar/WB Music Corp. ASCAP (1984)
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Get "Party Girl" (1995) and watch her dance in the last scene. Add Ms. Posey to our Pantheon.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)
“106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.”
Posted by JD Hull at 11:01 PM
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April 20, 2023
Bring Back Real Girls: Audrey Tautou
b. Beaumont, France 1976
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Read Fischer’s Albion’s Seed
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12 Rules of Client Service
...are right here. Revel in their Wisdom. Ignore them at your Peril. Teach them to The Help.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:59 PM | Comments (1)
JDH IV smirk at 23. Highland Park beach.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2023
Happy 53rd Earth Day. Thank you, Sen. Nelson.
Happy Birthday. Earth Day. 4.22.1970. Thank you my first boss Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:02 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2023
The Wrong Stuff?
What if the regime of diversity, inclusion and equity produced a substantial breakdown of the day to day management of the Western world and the collapse of most of our physical infrastructure? Because I think it really could. And soon.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Writing Well: The Editors.
"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." --H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
"I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse." --Henry James (1843-1916)after a request by the Times Literary Supplement to cut 3 lines from a 5,000 word article.
Herbert George Wells, 1908
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
Norman Cousins: But can you write?
It makes little difference how many university degrees or courses a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
--Norman Cousins, Editor and Writer (1915-1990)
Cousins in 1951 on Ninoshima Island (Chugoku Shimbun)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2023
Frederic Leighton, “The Return of Persephone,” 1891
Spring ignored Mankind and arrived as usual. Finally. Happy Spring to any fellow Druids, Life Worshipers and Optimists. Get out of your cars and dance.
Below: Frederic Leighton, “The Return of Persephone,” 1891.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2023
Rule 4: Deliver legal services that change the way clients think about lawyers.
Based on actual experience lawyering, we wrote and published 12 Rules of Client Service in installments during a six-month period starting in October 2005. The 12 rules do seem to have legs. We are flattered. In whole or in part, they regularly appear in publications and sites for lawyers and non-lawyers (e.g., accounting and real estate). Some folks who discuss, quote or mention them like all 12 rules. Others like one or two in particular.
Our favorite? It's Rule Four: Deliver Legal Work That Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers. It's our "Harry Beckwith" rule. Harry Beckwith, who first ignited the thinking of many professional services thinkers in "Selling the Invisible", was a huge influence on how we could make changes in everyone's lawyering--and the idea here is really his, not ours. An excerpt from Rule 4:
Why try "to exceed expectations" when the overall lawyer standard is perceived as low to mediocre? If your clients are all Fortune 500 stand-outs, and the GCs' seem to love you and your firm, is that because your service delivery is so good--or because other lawyers they use are so "bad" on service? Why have a low standard, or one that merely makes you look incrementally more responsive and on top of things than the boutique on the next floor up? Why not overhaul and re-create the whole game?
If you read the better writers on selling and delivering services, like Harry Beckwith in Selling The Invisible, you pick up on this simple idea: Rather than under-promise/over-deliver, why not change the way people think of lawyers generally and what they can expect from them generally? Get good clients--those clients you like and want--to keep coming back to you by communicating in all aspects of your work that you care deeply about your lawyering for them, you want to serve their interests on an ongoing basis and that it's a privilege to be their lawyer. Show them you fit no lawyer mold.
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Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
86 more, Jack…
Posted by JD Hull at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Dean 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 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2023
Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980)
You were born an original. Don't die a copy.
Henry Miller
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2023
1916
Posted by JD Hull at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2023
107 Things Long-Divorced Slightly Amoral American Lawyers Know.
1. Swive no one named Zoe, Brigit or Natasha.
2. Let no one leave anything in your home or hotel room.
3. Don't buy cheap shoes.
4. Shoe trees. Cedar.
5. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (1926-present) is always important.
6. Most British women don't like British men.
7. Legal interviews don't tell you much.
8. Have a coworker in same room if you interview someone.
9. Don't jump to hire law grads with blue collar backgrounds. Some think they've arrived and are done.
10. Women make better associate lawyers.
11. On documents, Rule 34 (Production of Documents and Things) and Rule 45 (Subpoena) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do very different things. Know what they are.
12, Dogs are the best thing about this planet.
13. Cats not dogs if you travel.
14. Great-looking women think they're ugly.
15. Great-looking men are a tad delusional.
16. Irish, Welsh, Finnish, Ethiopian and Afro-American women are heroes. Forever in charge. Enduring.
17. A disproportionate number of Irish people are drunks.
18. A disproportionate number of Irish people are verbally or lyrically gifted.
19. Jewish doctors do not understand Irish, English and German drunks.
20. Jews and Italians are the best drinkers. They have rules. They have genes.
21. The Jews are It. Consistently awesome and world-changing tribe for 2500 years.
22. Well-dressed Russian women are cheap, treacherous and insane.
The Cardsharps, Caravaggio, c. 1594
23. For decades the wrong people have gone to law school.
24. Lawyers are less well-educated and well-rounded every decade.
25. Most lawyers dislike lawyering.
26. There are at about 40 exceptional American colleges and universities.
27. Do one silly thing every day.
28. Never be impressed by Phi Beta Kappas.
29. Always be impressed by Marshall scholars, Rhodes scholars and Williams grads.
30. Have at least 3 impeccable suits. They should be expensive but need not be tailored.
31. Don't wear bow ties every day. Almost every day is fine.
32. Cuffs on all long pants except jeans and tuxedo trousers.
33. Wear khaki pants and suits or seersucker suits in Summer. Summer means Memorial Day to Labor Day.
34. Twice a month dress like a pimp from a New Orleans whorehouse.
35. Know who you are. Learn family history back five generations.
36. Talk to people on elevators. All of them.
37. Don't do Europe with other Americans.
38. Just 2 cats.
39. People are happy going through life as turds.
40. When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can.
- Hugh Grant (b. 1960)
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41. Always attribute--especially when you think no one will notice.
42. More than one person may have the same original thought.
43. Never let people tell you who you are.
44. Never let people tell you how to feel, think, act, write or speak.
45. Always talk to jurors post-verdict.
46. One juror will always surprise you big time. Learn who that is before you close.
47. Don't communicate in any manner ever with that one female juror who seemed to like you a lot.
48. Women are meaner, more vindictive and more treacherous than men.
49. The dumbest woman is 100 times more complex than the smartest man.
50. Most men are simple. Not that much going on.
51. Rule 36 (Requests for Admissions), my friend.
52. Rule 56(d) ('When facts are unavailable to the non-movant') is misunderstood.
53. Civil RICO is an unintended consequence. Use it the right way.
54. Seldom watch television.
55. All Moms suffer.
56. Your Mom is your best friend.
57. Buenos Aires has the best-looking people on this planet.
58. Lovemaking probably cannot be learned.
59. Love can be learned.
60. There are no lapsed or recovering Catholics.
61. All British women are named Lucy, Pippa or Jane.
62. Jewish women rarely have great legs.
63. Jewish women are good lovers.
64. Japanese women are the best helpmates.
65. Slightly insane WASP women are the best lovers.
66. Fewer people should become parents or lawyers.
67. Brown shoes go well with gray suits. No one knows why.
68. Your handkerchief should never match your tie.
70. Suspenders (or braces) are superior to belts.
71. Being Right is expensive.
72. No prayer is imperfect.
73. 'Thank you' is a prayer.
74. The English diss anyone non-English. This will not stop.
75. The French are playful.
76. The Irish are playful, but in a different way.
77. Women in Prague are not playful.
78. Zimmerman was right. You gotta serve somebody.
79. Don't tell people you just met your problems. They don't care.
80. Copy someone on every letter.
81. "Never write a letter. Never throw one away."
82. Many Jewish men are overly-suspicious. There's a reason for this. Work with it.
83. Irish guys talk too much. There's no reason for this. Work with it.
84. Never needlessly anger Sicilians, the Irish, the Welsh or Scots.
85. Be nice to important people who just had a downfall. Don't pile on. They'll be back.
86. 'Beware of the lily white.'
- J. Dan Hull, Jr. (1900-1988)
87. God was not kind to women.
88. Avoid people with no enemies.
89. Tighten up. Like Archie Bell & The Drells.
90. Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton worked a lot harder than you did.
91. Attitude is more important than Facts.
92. At work co-workers do one of two things: help you or hold you back.
93. Persian women make too much noise.
94. Tribes are important.
95. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
- Ellen Jane Bry (b. 1956)
96. Nothing is more important than a first kiss.
97. Lots of women kiss badly.
98. Write prompt handwritten thank you notes. Use Crane's, at a minimum.
99. The Arts are 'central to life, rather than an add-on, like some set of alloy wheels.'
- Julian Barnes (b. 1946)
100. Coffee and sugar drive everything.
101. Ritual, minutia and irrationality are important.
102. Men say the vilest possible things to each other they don't mean.
103. Women say the nicest possible things to each other they don't mean.
104. Keep no ledgers on what people do for you.
105. Humans are Nuts. Get used to it.
106. End all talks, meetings and writings on a high note.
107. Trust no one in Budapest.
41. Always attribute--especially when you think no one will notice.
42. More than one person may have the same original thought.
43. Never let people tell you who you are.
44. Never let people tell you how to feel, think, act, write or speak.
45. Always talk to jurors post-verdict.
46. One juror will always surprise you big time. Learn who that is before you close.
47. Don't communicate in any manner ever with that one female juror who seemed to like you a lot.
48. Women are meaner, more vindictive and more treacherous than men.
49. The dumbest woman is 100 times more complex than the smartest man.
50. Most men are simple. Not that much going on.
51. Rule 36 (Requests for Admissions), my friend.
52. Rule 56(d) ('When facts are unavailable to the non-movant') is misunderstood.
53. Civil RICO is an unintended consequence. Use it the right way.
54. Seldom watch television.
55. All Moms suffer.
56. Your Mom is your best friend.
57. Buenos Aires has the best-looking people on this planet.
58. Lovemaking probably cannot be learned.
59. Love can be learned.
60. There are no lapsed or recovering Catholics.
61. All British women are named Lucy, Pippa or Jane.
62. Jewish women rarely have great legs.
63. Jewish women are good lovers.
64. Japanese women are the best helpmates.
65. Slightly insane WASP women are the best lovers.
66. Fewer people should become parents or lawyers.
67. Brown shoes go well with gray suits. No one knows why.
68. Your handkerchief should never match your tie.
70. Suspenders (or braces) are superior to belts.
71. Being Right is expensive.
72. No prayer is imperfect.
73. 'Thank you' is a prayer.
74. The English diss anyone non-English. This will not stop.
75. The French are playful.
76. The Irish are playful, but in a different way.
77. Women in Prague are not playful.
78. Zimmerman was right. You gotta serve somebody.
79. Don't tell people you just met your problems. They don't care.
80. Copy someone on every letter.
81. "Never write a letter. Never throw one away."
82. Many Jewish men are overly-suspicious. There's a reason for this. Work with it.
83. Irish guys talk too much. There's no reason for this. Work with it.
84. Never needlessly anger Sicilians, the Irish, the Welsh or Scots.
85. Be nice to important people who just had a downfall. Don't pile on. They'll be back.
86. 'Beware of the lily white.'
- J. Dan Hull, Jr. (1900-1988)
87. God was not kind to women.
88. Avoid people with no enemies.
89. Tighten up. Like Archie Bell & The Drells.
90. Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton worked a lot harder than you did.
91. Attitude is more important than Facts.
92. At work co-workers do one of two things: help you or hold you back.
93. Persian women make too much noise.
94. Tribes are important.
95. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
- Ellen Jane Bry (b. 1956)
96. Nothing is more important than a first kiss.
97. Lots of women kiss badly.
98. Write prompt handwritten thank you notes. Use Crane's, at a minimum.
99. The Arts are 'central to life, rather than an add-on, like some set of alloy wheels.'
- Julian Barnes (b. 1946)
100. Coffee and sugar drive everything.
101. Ritual, minutia and irrationality are important.
102. Men say the vilest possible things to each other they don't mean.
103. Women say the nicest possible things to each other they don't mean.
104. Keep no ledgers on what people do for you.
105. Humans are Nuts. Get used to it.
106. End all talks, meetings and writings on a high note.
107. Trust no one in Budapest.
Originally published July 10,2016
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2023
Lawyering: You Don’t Get to Have a Bad Day.
Job and His Friends, Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1810
There are bad days. A parent is sick. A child gets stitches. You are coming down with the flu. You learn your girlfriend is cheating on you. In fact, both of your girlfriends are cheating on you. But at least not with each other.
Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect. Practicing law is getting it right, saying it right and winning--all with a gun to your head. Being accurate, thorough and timely are qualities most of us had in the 6th grade, right? Back when everyone told us we were geniuses and destined for great things? But school's out--now it's about real rights, real duties, real money and personal freedom. That's a weight, and it should be. Suddenly facts are everything--and the actual law less important than you ever imagined. In time you learn to research, think and put things together better and faster. You develop instincts.
You learn there is really no boilerplate and no cookie-cutter work. There are few forms. You learn there are no right answers--but several approaches and solutions to any problem. You are being asked to pick one. But at first, and maybe for a few years, being accurate, thorough and on time is not easy to do.
‘I Have Clients?’ One day, you start to visualize your clients as real companies and real people with real problems. These are your clients--not your parents or professors--and they are all different. You feel their pain, and it's now yours, too.
Mistakes. If you work with the right mentors and senior people, they will allow you to make mistakes. You need freedom to make mistakes. You'll be reminded, however, not to let those mistakes out of the office and hurt any client. It's a balancing act, a hard one.
Bad days? So sorry. But your problem, Justin. You are expected to be ‘professional’--no, that is not about being polite and courtly with other lawyers--and put clients first on your worst day. And it's going to happen. Expect it. You have a difficult day ahead of you. A critical court hearing or motion. A jurisdictional deadline to file something. A meeting. A pitch to a new would-be client. But a parent is sick. You are coming down with something yourself. Your boyfriend is cheating on you. Your teenage kids hate you. Or maybe this morning you had to abandon that 12-year-old Honda you had in law school on the 14th Street Bridge. Minutes before your big afternoon meeting or court appearance, a GC or co-worker calls you with the worst possible news.
These things will happen. You sag visibly--like an animal taking a bullet. You're beaten, beaten completely--and now you have to get up and fight or act for someone other than yourself. In five minutes, you have to be at your very best. You up for this? Because, in our experience, very few of your peers are.
Bucking up. Using fear. While you can't work in a state of constant worry, fear and paralysis, talking yourself into heroics, getting a little paranoid and even embracing a little fear won't hurt you, and may even help. You are being paid both (1) to be accurate, thorough, timely and (2) to just plain not screw up.
Thorough means ‘anticipating,’ too. What makes you really good in a few years is being able to "see the future" and spot a ripple effect in a flash. To take a small example, if your client is in an active dispute with the government or on the brink of a full-blown litigation with a competitor, the client's and many of your own letters and e-mails aren't just letters and e-mails. Whoa, letters. Emails. They are potential exhibits, too. They can be used for you or against you. So they need to be written advisedly and clearly so that they advance your position and so that a judge, jury or someone 5 years from now can look at it cold and figure out what's going on. No talking to yourself here; think about future unintended consequences when you think and write.
But Not Perfect. Not talking about mistakes here. I refer to the paralysis of high standards. I know something about the second part of Rule 10--because I tended to violate it when I was younger. And I still want to.
Perfectionism is the great destroyer of young lawyers. Don't go there. Don't be so stiff and scared you can't even turn anything in because you want it "perfect” and you keep asking other lawyers and courts for extensions. It's not school, and it's no longer about you. Think instead about Rule 8: Think Like The Client--and Help Control Costs. Balance efficiency with "being perfect", and err on the side of holding down costs. If a client or senior lawyer in your firm wants your work to be perfect, and for you to charge for it, believe me, they will let you know.
"Patient Job" by Gerard Seghers (1591–1651), National Gallery, Prague.
Original WAC/P? post: April 3, 2011
Posted by JD Hull at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
Go somewhere different. Meet someone different.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2023
The Resurrection, 1463, Piero di Benedetto
The Resurrection, 1463
Piero di Benedetto
1415-1492
Republic of Florence
Posted by JD Hull at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)
The American Morality Olympics
The giddy drive to make all American civic strife a team sport or a cartoon — complete with stock heroes and stock villains — is both the funniest and most dangerous thing happening in year 2023. Don’t miss it.
— Holden M. Oliver, April 6, 2023
Posted by JD Hull at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2023
The New Work-Life Lawyering
Posted by JD Hull at 05:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2023
Legal London in the Spring: Law Cattle in Love
Each Spring, we send you the complete text of a circa-1595 comedy by Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. You can read it aloud--or, even better, act it out. First performed before Queen Elizabeth at her Court in 1597 (as "Loues Labors Loſt"), it was likely written for performance before culturally-literate law students [Editor's Note: Long ago, well-rounded professionals existed] and barristers-in-training--who would appreciate its sophistication and wit--at the Inns of Court in still over-percolating Legal London. And, most certainly, it was performed at Gray's Inn, where Elizabeth was the "patron". Interestingly, the play begins with a vow by several men to forswear pleasures of the flesh and the company of fast women during a three-year period of study and reflection. And to "train our intellects to vain delight". They fail happily.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
The Easter Ferret
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2023
Doing America: Open, Talky, Informal, Wonderfully Appalling.
People will not wait to be introduced and will even begin to speak with strangers as they stand in a line, sit next to each other at an event, or gather in a crowd.
--Commisceo Global, a London-based consultancy on what to expect in America
One of my best Brit friends is a City (central London) lawyer who lives part of the time in Kent. He and his wife live in a very old village which is about the same population it was 1000 years ago: about 200. To a degree, and at only certain times, I like making him uncomfortable with my American colonial manners, and in some situations work at it pretty hard. In most respects, however, I do as my European hosts do wherever I am and wherever they take me. But there are exceptions. For one thing, I refuse to park my friendliness and open curiosity about people, places and things. I can't help it. Even when I am trying to tone things down.
Like the time I upset everyone by chatting up my Kent friend's butcher early one quiet Saturday morning while the butcher was cutting up something that we would prepare later for dinner. Just the three of us. No one else was in the store. It was quite tiny but had a prosperous look. The butcher was clearly proud of his shop. I started asking the butcher about the store, how business and even his hat, which I complimented him on. Which took me only about 30 seconds. The butcher looked a bit frantic, said nothing and turned to my friend for help or an explanation. The butcher got both. My friend quickly said something like "He's an American...very friendly you know...what are we to do?"
It's true. American manners drives Brits, Germans and most northern Europeans nuts: American informality, openness, curiosity non-stop cheerfulness and friendliness. Over on their side of the pond, even a very self-assured and accomplished southern England executive, consultant, lawyer or other professional, for example, would rather choke to death than talk to strangers in a subway or ask how to get to a bank or money exchange. But wide-open is what Americans are and have always been; if you want to do business in the U.S., you need to step up. Or at least tolerate us. When we Yanks are over there, you guys can complain and be mortified all you want. And you do.
There is no end to multi-cultural etiquette primers on "doing business internationally", and most of them are of course drivel. The best advice in a nutshell? Go where you need to go, and watch your American hosts carefully as you work--but do "go native". Be prepared to amp yourself up just a notch. The website of UK-based Commisceo Global Consultancy does a nice job of laying out the overall business atmosphere here in a few sentences:
American friendliness and informality is legendary. People will not wait to be introduced and will even begin to speak with strangers as they stand in a line, sit next to each other at an event, or gather in a crowd.
Americans are direct in the way they communicate. They value logic and linear thinking [note: not sure I agree with foregoing clause] and expect people to speak clearly and in a straightforward manner. Time is money in the U.S. so people tend to get to the point quickly and are annoyed by beating around the bush.
Communicating virtually (i.e. through email, SMS, Skype, etc) is very common with very little protocol or formality in the interaction. If you are from a culture that is more subtle in communication style, try not to be insulted by the directness.
Original WAC/P post February 21, 2015
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2023
Still working on Maggie's Farm?
"It's a shame the way she makes me sweep the floor..."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Hesse on Good Friday
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian, 1919
Posted by JD Hull at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
Easter Rising 1916: 107 years ago in Dublin.
460 killed, 2600 wounded, 16 executions. The proclamation was read by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office in Dublin on Sackville Street (since 1924 O'Connell Street)--and the Rising began. It was modeled on a similar if less well-supported proclamation by Robert Emmet in 1803.
However, as one of our readers, Patrick J. Keeley, has pointed out:
The proclamation in 1916 was an actual declaration of a Republic. Emmet is more known for his speech from the dock when he spoke of Ireland one day taking its place (free) among nations of Earth. I don't think he ever actually proclaimed a Republic, he lead what in effect was a mob, sadly inebriated down Thomas Street in 1803. A noble effort and a tragic end to what would surely have been a brilliant legal career.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2023
This is East Anglia: Aldeburgh.
More precisely, it's in Suffolk, East Anglia, England, on the coast, and jutting out into the North Sea. Due east: The Netherlands, where lots of the DNA here originated over 1000 years ago. Pronounced "All-bruh". I've been here four times, starting in 2003. If you are in London, and you have an extra day, do something different and drive or take a train northeast to Aldeburgh, a Suffolk secret well-kept from Americans. The home and muse of the great Bertie Lomas, a much-loved and gifted poet, writer and editor who died at 87 in 2011. And if you are a beach lover--or a merely a lover on the beach--you and yours are hereby put on notice about the little round stones beneath you. You’re welcome, campers.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)
Indian Hill
I miss growing up in Indian Hill, Ohio. A community that protected its own. If I were driving around at 17 and the local cops stopped me, this:
“Why it’s Dan Hull. John Hull’s eldest. Got any beer, dope or cocaine there in your Daddy’s car?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you like some?”
Posted by JD Hull at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
Help send this boy to camp!
Posted by JD Hull at 05:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2023
4E Prayer
No one bears more responsibility for the current stark cultural and political divides in America and Europe than our once-respected mainstream and establishment media. You folks knew better. We looked up to you. You broke hearts. After the nobility and integrity of our early-television era, and before that the beginnings of the great newspapers, the once truly liberal Fourth Estate stopped leading. You began to celebrate fashion, mediocrity, mental illness and intolerance itself. You fanned the flames of Civil War II. You insisted on Human Evolution at your pace. You went too far. You bullied like a deranged big brother. Fix it if you can. Lead again.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)
Born Outlaws: The Americans
Belle Starr: Non-Hollywood/non-Wanker version, circa 1885.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2023
One Possible Medieval Palm Sunday…
Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1320) by Pietro Lorenzetti.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:21 PM
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What's "offensive" changes--and quickly: Frank Zappa on CNN's Crossfire 1986.
Obscenity. Offensiveness. What words are bad? What ideas or standards are bad? Consider a 21-minute discussion 38 years ago about "filthy rock lyrics" with (truth be told) right-leaning Zappa, "conservative" Novak, "liberal" Braden and a respected if tad-demented Washington Times reporter on CNN's Crossfire. Also featuring the U.S. Const. amend. I, the function of government and, well, Real Life. What's offensive? It of course changes with shifting perceptions in the kaleidoscopes and gyres of time. And quickly. Now forget about “obscenity” for a moment. Switch to “bigotry” and “racism.” Do remind yourselves that in, say, 1900 an Oberlin or Harvard prof with the most liberal possible views on race would be viewed as a “racist” pariah on April 13, 2018. Expand your minds today a bit, and get off your knees, Campers. Thank you the late Duke history prof and changing South expert Lawrence Goodwyn.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2023
Cummer.
I've mentioned the small but elegant Cummer Art Museum and Gardens here sporadically, usually in connection with a particularly famous piece in its admired collection. Other times you saw older photos of its founders taken in the early 1900s. I'll give the Cummer its due at some point.
For now? The Cummer was once the home of my mother's Aunt Nina Holden Cummer in central Jacksonville, Florida. It was built in 1904 by Nina and her husband Arthur on 2.5 acres on the St. Johns River. The couple began buying art almost immediately after moving in. Arthur died in 1943. After his death, Nina continued the acquisitions, slowly and studiously expanding and diversifying the collection. Parts of it now date back to 2000 BC.
"Aunt Nina" lived at what is now the Museum until her death in 1957. My parents spent the night before their wedding here in July 1950. There are now some 6000 objects in the collection. The gardens date back to the original gardens built to complement the house. The Cummer continues to grow its collection. It attracts about 130,000 visitors a year.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)