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October 27, 2006
The Senate Race in Tennessee: "How would Jesus vote?"
Before getting knee-deep into private practice, WAC? worked twice--on both Senate and House sides for, respectively, a 'D' and then an 'R'--at the U.S. Congress, and this consumed 3.5 years. Despite this, I still like national politics, and have been in and out of it on some level, usually fundraising, usually for 'D's, ever since. (Wes Clark was my last gig). Like other baby boomers, I came of age as Republicans learned how to run and win elections, which really just happened a little more than 25 years ago. I even sat in, as a young associate lawyer on the clock for a firm client, on a string of "strategy" meetings conducted by the late Lee Atwater, the infamous GOP consultant, after I had left Capitol Hill. I remember feeling like a spy.
Today, I am still amazed that over the past 25 years Karl Rove and other real, hard-core infrastructure Republicans out of the Reagan era before Rove, a talented but flat-out mean and extremely exclusive lot who most Americans never meet, could dupe millions of the now "new" rank-and-file middle-class Republicans in the South, West, Midwest, and even working-class parts of the Northeast--voters they don't personally like, care about or would ever have coffee with--into voting Republican in the first place. Yes, it amazes me.
I don't hate Republicans. I grew up in serious 'R' country, and I vote 'R' a lot. And I am a lawyer, one who writes about meeting higher standards; competence, even when evil, thrills us all. The Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves have been very effective--and Democrats have spent years wondering what hit them in a mix of alarm and envy. 'R's learned how to recruit big-time business and legal talent. 'D's, with their "big tent", have seemed repeatedly like world-class screw-ups, even during the Clinton years. The last time "competence" was closely associated with a Democratic presidential campaign was in Teddy White's book The Making of a President, on the 1960 Kennedy victory.
But I am even more amazed that many middle-class Southerners who are "religious" (of any race) ever vote Republican, or that they even exist in great numbers. Reagan Republicanism is at heart a Yankee-Northeast/Orange County, California invention for (1) the wealthy (let's not define that--but I am thinking $2 million minimum net worth) who vote their pocket books (that's perfectly rational) or for (2) the limited number of true believers who really do believe in non-activist government (that constituency makes sense, too). There are people of true faith in any religion, and other spiritual beings; they quietly inspire, and we seem intuitively to know them when they're around us a while. But you don't meet that many. I know and like lots of genuine Republicans in several states, Southerners included, and hardly any of them, except for a zealot or morally pretentious jackass here and there, claim to be particularly devout, observant or religious. Some of my best friends, and nearly all of our firm's clients (i.e., the client GCs and reps), are sane 'R's.
You can't tell anyone how to vote. But naturally-occurring religious Republican Southerners? Who are these guys? I travel, and I'm not running into them. But maybe I am dead wrong about their very existence. See Salon's article "How Would Jesus Vote?", focusing on the "church-vote" component of the campaign of Democrat Harold Ford Jr., who is black, in the Tennessee Senate race, and how Ford may pick up a few of those coveted 'R' church votes. This grabbed me. Maybe white 'R's are in those pews--and Democrat Ford, with a Bush-Republican Congress backlash going for him, has a shot at those voters.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
"And then it dawned on me a minute into his opening that 'Racehorse' Flannigan, our trial counsel, was untried..."
Corporate counsel: Ever get That Sinking Feeling about your fire-breathing litigators after the trial starts? Do those guys just threaten on the phone, write letters and interrogatories and hold press conferences--or can they really try your company's case? Can they connect with a jury? Do they even like juries? How tough are they at 4:00 PM on the fourth day of trial before a hostile judge?
From Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch, here is "Is Courtroom Competence Going Kaput?", inspired by a report of the Boston Bar Association on the waning of both jury trials and trial lawyer competence. And Boston is not alone.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
Hill & Knowlton blog: Client Service Insights
My friend Pat Lamb of In Search of Perfect Client Service made me aware of Hill & Knowlton's blog Client Service Insights. WAC? is going to permanently link to this one. Clever and interesting, CSI just conducted and announced a "winner" of its First Annual Scariest Client Service Stories Contest in honor of Halloween. On the homepage currently: "Insight #1 - Client service excellence isn't about doing the things no one else can do; it's about doing the things anyone can do, but just don't." So simple, it's scary. Read that to yourself a couple of times. Then ask your brilliant young associates--the ones who like you were law review editors and still think it's all about being "smart"--to read it exactly 13 times. Aloud, in unison.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2006
Sensitive Litigation Moment #15: You gotta see (and hear) this...
It's the Mediator vBlog Project --a blogging first, and it has mediators Diane Levin of Boston and Geoff Sharp of Wellington, New Zealand written all over it. Be warned that, while Diane's video at the new Mediator vBlog Project site is clever, warm and inviting, Geoff's video, on his own blog, is brilliant--but cartoonish and extremely unsettling. I strongly suspect Geoff's not American, either. According to Diane, MvBP's mission is:
to take advantage of recent video sharing technology to post short video clips of mediators everywhere at work. The more 'live' the better. The site provides a platform for mediators from around the globe to share their skills by video. Simple really.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
Civil perjury: If you can prove it, do you use it?
Coming soon. Bad lawsuits encourage lying under oath during discovery. WAC? will get to this one soon. In the meantime, see one of the best short pieces on judicial reform ever written, "Making Civil Justice Sane", by Philip K. Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense. The article came out in June 2006. Howard suggests that judges be empowered to stop insubstantial suits at the beginning.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Talent and Elites in America: Which cities?
Los Angeles, NYC, Boston? DC, Seattle? From Adam Smith, Esq. (Bruce MacEwen), see "Is Your Firm Where 'The Brains' Are?", inspired by an article in October's The Atlantic Monthly. Look at the maps.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
Points east, and Hermann the German.
Apart from items required for a few bad habits, I like very old paintings, sketches and maps. Especially old maps (more affordable)--so I buy them.....This, to the southeast, is Berlin. And this is Berlin-based Hermann the German and UPI International, both worrying about the exodus of educated and young Germans to other lands.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
Harvard Prof Kingsfield Lives!
He's holding forth right now at Blawg Review #80, and even WAC? is intimidated. Kingsfield has called on an absent Mr. Hull, who has left town, skipped class again. Also at BR is the Carnival of Capitalists (#159).
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Go-to lawyers.
Here's a great practical post I almost missed but quite a few others noticed. It's by Blawg Review mainstay Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise and called "Eight (or Nine) Attributes of a Go-To Lawyer". Colin comments on and even adds to a list from an article in the June 2006 issue of Corporate Counsel by Daniel DiLucchio. Two key traits on the list are:
6. Willing to "put skin in the game" — Able to take a calculated risk with a client and communicate that he's standing behind him.
8. Sense of urgency — Shares the client's need to move quickly in a highly competitive environment.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2006
Amsterdam, languages and fun facts.
On a book/film project, and as a respite from contentious IP and environmental disputes back East, I'm likely headed to Amsterdam, a favorite European city. Amsterdam is poorly understood by Americans, with our oftimes Victorian and morally pretentious view of real life. This city is about beauty, great art, great food, healthy free-thinking people, and genuine class--not just the Sex Museum, social welfare, cathouses along canals in the de Wallen or smoking hash at the Betty Boop coffeehouse. Cosmopolitan, the Dutch like other languages. In the Netherlands, the official ones are Dutch and, in the north, Frisian (which many believe is the closest thing to Old English still spoken). But about 85% of the total population has basic knowledge of modern English. German and French spoken here, too.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Doing Business In China: The Basics.
From Seattle-based Dan Harris's China Law Blog, here is "Doing Business In China: The Basics Of The Basics".
Posted by JD Hull at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
Speaking of Candor...
Speaking of KFB, political incorrectness, wild men, anti-weenies and just saying it, from Salon, here's an interesting piece about Edward Abbey, "Where Have You Gone, Edward Abbey"? Abbey (1927-1989) was a writer, essayist, radical environmentalist and thinking person's loose cannon who lived in the desert American southwest. He made conservatives and liberals nervous, and many wanted him put to sleep. People confuse Abbey with Edward Albee, a still-living playwright, when they see his name in print. Different guy.
Let's note that back in the day, WAC? and his college girlfriend--now a lawyer but despite this is still creative and able to think, speak and write--were charter subscribers to Ms. magazine. Ms. is a real American achievement, even if you hate it. To the then 2-year old "Mizz" Abbey wrote in 1973: "Some of us menfolks here in Winkelman [Arizona] ain't too happy with this magazine of yourn". He didn't like Texas, either, writing in 1954:
...it combines the bigotry and sheer animal ignorance of the Old South with the aggressive, ruthless, bustling, dollar-crazy brutality of the Yankee East and then attempts to hide this ugliness under a facade of mock-western play clothes stolen from a way of life that was crushed by Texanism over half a century ago. The trouble with Texas: it's ugly, noisy, mean-spirited, mediocre and false.
Today, and more than ever, Salon Salon writer Philip Connors concludes, "America needs the ornery writer".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
Charon QC
Saturday is a particularly good day to visit my friend Charon QC. Here's a Brit who works harder than most of us Yanks, and has fun doing it. He's got a dang good WLB, too. WAC? has it on good authority that Charon loves the law, clients, hard work, counting his money, thinking, ideas, politics, reading, action, talking, sports, smoking, drinking and biking. Only Bill Clinton is better connected, or as dynamic and fun. Charon blogs at least once a day--but just for the bloody hell of it. Meet Mike Semple Piggot, Renaissance chap.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)