« March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008 | Main | April 06, 2008 - April 12, 2008 »
April 05, 2008
Was Europe ever in love with America?
No, but we Yanks could spruce up our image a bit. See the Berlin-based press digest Atlantic Review, its piece "European Love for the US and American Isolationism", and anything else these young German Fulbright alumni are writing.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Hassett: More on what's new in getting/keeping clients.
See Part 4 of Jim's "The most important trends in legal business development".
Posted by JD Hull at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2008
US: Stocks up, jobs down.
AP: "Stocks rise despite gloomy jobs report". In March, 80,000 jobs were lost.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
International ADR: Is arbitration on the rise?
Hear the latest IDN interview, No. 21, "AAA's Richard Naimark: Is International Arbitration Growing?".
Posted by Brooke Powell at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Changes: Is your medium dying?
Via one Andrew Johnston, a real journalist in Chicago. WAC? values people who can put sentences together and walk at the same time.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2008
More bird-watchers: Henry Paulson's excellent adventure.
See "Will It Fly?" in The Economist.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
Law Birds of London
Bird pron. "beud" (London); "burd" (Scotland) n. woman. See The English-to-American Dictionary. They include Law Minx, Legally Blonde in London, Law Girl and the pioneering uplander and biker-solicitor Ruthie of Ruthie's Law, who is now London-bound. Keep your hands away from the cages.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (7)
Lawyer "professionalism" is still a crock.
Like work-life balance, lawyer "professionalism" as touted and practiced in the U.S. is an anti-client, lawyer-centric ruse which needs to die before it can be re-born. It is disingenuous and a crock. It's a license for mediocrity, cooked up and maintained by lawyers who think law is a special club for special people. It has one or two redeeming features (i.e., when civility actually helps to get things done), which are generally outweighed by its abuses and sheer silliness. Hint: what does your client/GC want and need? Start there. See the more PC version of our view which passed muster with the overly-polite San Diego media in our world-famous 2005 article, "Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?"
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (1)
April 02, 2008
18 states file suit to compel EPA to act on climate change.
A year ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. ruled that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act, and directed the EPA to determine whether such emissions, associated with climate change, endangered public health. Today, according to mainstream news sources, 18 states have sued the EPA to act within 60 days. It's a mandamus-like pattern states, cities and public interest groups have used for two decades under the CAA to prompt the EPA to move on other issues within its expertise, such as interstate acid rain transport. See NBC news. WAC? is trying to obtain a copy of the petition-complaint, which was set for filing today.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Trains and boats: New Clean Air Act regulations.
Published on March 14, a new final U.S. EPA rule on air emissions from locomotive and marine diesel engines is designed to reduce from these sources particulate matter (PM) by 90 percent and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 80 percent. See Environmental Protection and EPA rule and guidance.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
More on punitives: Europe v. America
See NYC trial lawyer-thinker (you don't always see both in one human) Eric Turkewitz's piece Punitive Damages: Why America is Different than Europe. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole piece:
European governments...are significantly more interventionist in the private lives of the people than here. You see that in nations that restrict free speech or grant universal health care, as two examples. Our notions of freedom are not always the same as elsewhere... Intervention [in the non-U.S.] means not only larger government with larger powers. It also means higher taxes to pay for it. So wrongdoing is handled by the government, which the people pay for.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:30 PM | Comments (1)
The Environment: Got mercury?
From both regulatory and remedial standpoints, it's hard to make mercury go away. See at Environmental Protection magazine "Mercury Spill Control 101" by Mark Ceasar at OMNI/ajax in Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania, USA.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Rule 4: Deliver Legal Work That Changes the Way Clients Think About Lawyers.
Why "try to exceed expectations" when the overall lawyer standard is rightly perceived as laughably low to mediocre?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2008
Holden H. Oliver (1968-2008)
WAC? co-writer and third year law student Holden Oliver died in Palo Alto Monday while visiting his girlfriend, an undergraduate student at Stanford University. A Boston native and former reporter for the Kansas City Star, Holden worked many years for the London and Aldeburgh bureaus of the New York Times, and later entered Stanford Law School. Last year, he was elected to an editorial position on the Stanford Law Review. He joined WAC? as a law student in the summer of 2006, when he also worked for Hull McGuire's D.C. office. Death was the result of a kiln explosion in which his companion, a Stanford freshman less than half his age, was not injured. If you wish to help us honor Holden, his irreverent uber-WASP prose style, and his philandering, amoral lifestyle, donations can be made in his name to the Nantucket Preservation Trust, the The Cosmos Club or Kelly's Irish Times in Washington, D.C.
Posted by Brooke Powell at 02:22 PM | Comments (4)
March 31, 2008
"Why not a teaching law firm?"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Pirate Blawg Review #153
Aye, matey--it's not Talk Like a Pirate Day yet, but Real Pirates keep it up all year round. The savage and merciless "Captain George" Wallace of Wallace & Schwartz hosts this week's Blawg Review #153 at Declarations and Exclusions. Read it now, ya' empty ignorant black-hearted law scums, or we'll have it out of yer meager wages.
Posted by Brooke Powell at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Do you really need to take that deposition?
As a companion piece to an earlier WAC? post, "Informal Discovery", see at Stewart Weltman's Lean and Mean Litigation Blog "Deciding Who to Depose (Part I)".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
"The best customer service is no service"
Via a tip from our vigilant friend Moe Levine, see in the Financial Times Alan Mitchell's review of the book The Best Service Is No Service, subtitled "How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy, and control costs", by Bill Price and David Jaffe. Mitchell's review: If You Want to be Loved, Do it Right. Note that the book, which we haven't read, appears to focus more on customer service for products, services and product-service mixes--mobile phones, utilities, equipment, banks*, etc.--than on the delivery of consulting or professional services.
*Don't get us started on the client service cesspool of retail banking, in which basic fiduciary duties to bank customers are unkown to or routinely ignored by the marginal cretins most banks employ.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)