« November 26, 2006 - December 02, 2006 | Main | December 10, 2006 - December 16, 2006 »
December 09, 2006
Women and start-ups: This Week's "Baby" Show.
"I'm There for you Baby", hosted by WAC? friends Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, airs from 1-2 p.m., West Coast time on San Diego's CASH 1700 AM, or listen live via simulcast on the CASH website. This week includes a discussion with female entrepreneurs.
Posted by Tom Welshonce at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
Ms. Bry stars in "The 60s" - All you need is love, and a shrink.
She is actress, producer, writer, Renaissance babe, mom, ex-stunt girl (for fun, Google her name re: the Superman movies), and WAC? friend and advisor. Ellen Bry stars tonight in the Trish Soodik comedy "The 60s" at the acclaimed Pacific Theatre in Los Angeles, 703 Venice Boulevard, at 8:00 PM. Directed by Paul Linke.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2006
On your lower left: 20 new non-U.S. blogs.
The ever-growing Directory of Non-U.S. Blogs, on the lower left side of this site, recently grew by 20, with new sites from or about the law in Columbia, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Portugal, Czech Republic and Korea. We appreciate the the tips re: good and active non-U.S. blogs (legal and, in some cases, non-legal).
Posted by Tom Welshonce at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Good Legal Writing, Plain and Simple.
Good sites on better writing for clients, lawyers and other humans can be found at The Estrin Report. Declare war on "aforesaid", "party of the second part", "oye, oye" and "COMES NOW THE PLAINTIFF, Purple Monkey Corporation, by and through its attorneys, and for its Motion, the following of which is an obsequious prayer, to this Most Honorable Court...." Just say it.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Weenies in the News: Bill Frist
Staying in both loops, WAC? has dirtied his hands for both Ds and Rs, on Capitol Hill and in campaigns--intern, government employee, legislative assistant, lobbyist and fundraiser. True, it's a mixed, weird crowd that gets off on this stuff. But people from all persuasions are heartened by this anticlimactic news. WKRN.com: Frist Steps Down From Senate Majority Leader. Chattanoogan.com: Bill Frist Will Not Run For President In 2008. The second story is an old political one. Except when he opened his mouth, Frist was the Rs' perfectly engineered dog food; in the test markets, however, none of us dogs ever liked it.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
Intriguing Google Search of the Month.
This morning we found "attorney strategy meetings are useless", at WAC?'s Site Meter, originating from one of our favorite NYC IP firms at 12:20:53 AM Thursday for 2:17 minutes. An associate's cry for help?
Posted by JD Hull at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
$965 Million: Hard Rock Cafe To Be Sold to Seminole Tribe of Florida.
Here's something you don't read every day. From the Associated Press, Seminole Tribe Buying Hard Rock Cafe Business for $965 Million.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Hassett's Not So Excellent Adventure
Bad service, bad buzz. As Harry Beckwith's young son once said, "too often, service sucks". From Jim Hassett at Legal Business Development, here's "Unhappy customers and my problems with ACT". Don't tug on Superman's cape, dude.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
Kid From Brooklyn sounds off on gay marriage, existential dread.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2006
Chicagoland
My mother and brother were born there. As I kid, and like other Procter & Gamble children growing up in the 1960s, I lived there twice before we moved to Cincinnati, the Promised Land for our corporate cult. Until I was about 18, I thought that moving around like that--my birthplace D.C., then Chevy Chase and Aberdeen, Maryland, Chicago (brother David), Grand Rapids, and Detroit (sister Becky)--was perfectly "normal". So, after Detroit, where Becky was born, the five of us moved back to Chicago again and lived, this time, on the North Shore, on Lake Michigan, near Ravinia, in a suburb called Highland Park, a child's perfect wonderland of woods, ravines and beach. That neighborhood is the setting for the movies Ferris Bueller's Day Off (note Cameron's yard, where the ravine swallows his dad's classic car), and Risky Business.
It was a fine and sometimes moving early lesson, thanks to my mother who pushed my Dad to move us there, in multi-culturalism. As two of the only local Gentile kids at our public school, my brother David and I would love the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) because they were ours to play dodgeball all day long with about 10 other non-Jewish kids, or kids from "mixed" families, at Braeside Elementary, at 150 Pierce Road. All our friends had those days off. We did miss them, but enjoyed our all-day recess-at-school. Still, I remember feeling left out and jealous we weren't Jewish. To this day, my frame of reference for looking at the world is broader, richer and better due to my family's Chicago episodes. It stretched us and me.
In the next four weeks I'll be working in Los Angeles, D.C., and Pittsburgh, and maybe NYC--with detours for Christmas in Ohio, and New Years in South Carolina. And back to San Diego, then Nashville. But Chicago will be first, starting later next week. I am going back for a week to work downtown--and excited about being again in the most vibrant American city between the coasts, hands down, and amongst lawyers who get it.
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight
Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys...
Chicago, Carl Sandburg, Poetry magazine, 1914.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
The Greatest American Lawyer: Never graduate.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." C. Darwin
Posted by JD Hull at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)
Commission: Iraq Policy "not working".
Shocking, breaking news--like Keith Richards likes drugs.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)
"Have You 'Bothered' To Seek Client Feedback?"
Tom Kane continues the discussion that makes lawyers squirm.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2006
Slick Answers to Lazy Interrogatories.
Color me silly, but I love and respect written discovery during the pretrial process in American federal courts. Years ago, a fed-up U.S. district court judge, throwing up his hands during arguments by lawyers on a motion to compel discovery responses, referred to answers to interrogatories as "slick lawyer answers to lazy lawyer questions".
I feel his pain. Once a new second year associate who worked briefly for our firm (after one year at another firm) complained that we were putting too much thought into a set of interrogatories under Rule 33, Fed. R. Civ. P. Our new hire patiently explained to me that interrogatories and other written discovery were in fact "simply a way for lawyers to bill time so they could make money, and nothing more." He was adamant about it, too.
Nice guy, and I liked him--I always try to take his cab when I'm in Pittsburgh.
But complex and hard-fought civil cases really do turn about 90 per cent on the quality of the discovery questions and requests, including deposition questions, and the responses to them. And well-thought out and strategically-timed written discovery is the best way there is to prepare great depositions--and get ready for trial.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)
Boola Boola, Balkin, Blogging.
If you haven't yet, see Balkinization, which focuses on First Amendment and individual liberty issues. Popular, and created by Yale Law professor Jack Balkin in 2003, shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq, this blog is worth the time of busy people in practice or academia. It's intelligent and lefty without being and preachy and shrill--a risk with this kind of blog. It has a sense of humor. If Balkin promises in a tangible way to help WAC? with battles against lame forms of legalese, faux lawyer professionalism, and/or pointless regimes of "PC", I will: (1) fly to New Haven first chance I get and buy Balkin and two of his talented writing team members dinner, and (2) not turn R over the sight of liberals emascualting the First Amendment, keep reading Mother Jones and the New York Times, and continue raising money for sane Ds. Save me, guys.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2006
Blawg Review (#86) in Purgatory.
Dante's Mount Purgatory. The guide is still Virgil (a/k/a Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise) on the terraces of Blawg Review #86. See also the Editor's introduction, Blawg Review in Purgatory.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)
Canada: Management-side Employment Law Blog
Note that one of the better Canadian blawgs is Thoughts from a Management Lawyer, by Michael Fitzgibbon, with one of Canada's largest and best known law firms. Michael follows labor and employment law in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Hassett: Lawyer Marketing in 7 Words
And they are: Meet the right people, advance the relationship. Or kiss the frogs, sort the princes, and keep moving? Well, Jim's is shorter, better. See Jim Hassett's "Everything You Need to Know About Legal Business Development, in Seven Words" at Legal Business Development.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
France's 24-hour news "through French eyes" to debut.
WAC? is pleased. Here comes France 24, the French CNN or BBC, which will include an English version, first on cable in NYC and DC. About time. Like it/them or not, France is most consistently civilized and enlightened Western nation, and save a few notable detours, that's been true for centuries. The West needs a French lens.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2006
Coming soon: 20 new blawgs to be added to WAC? non-US directory.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)