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May 24, 2008
Is txt msgng the new threat to France?
The Economist asks: "Parlez-vous SMS?" France's American-like President Nicolas Sarkozy is worried about what "text-messaging is doing to the French language". Please aim higher, sir.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:10 PM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2008
IP getting its green on?
Patent and natural resources law may collide more. Wonderful, especially if it makes business sense. See Cincinnati's Patent Baristas, New York's IP Law360, and London's Science Business.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Got proofreading?--Part II
Proofreading may be boring. But it's important, and part of who you are if you are in the business of turning words into money and value. Here's a comment by Minneapolis lawyer T.J. Conley--he gives us wisdom and a tip--in response to yesterday's post:
One of the senior lawyers at our firm used to say that you are only as good a lawyer as you are a proofreader. One of my tricks, to avoid the natural tendency to see what you think should be there, is to read a document backwards. You'd be amazed at what you catch.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2008
Ford CEO Mulally: Tough times
Rising fuel and steel costs mean reduced production and profit goals. Bloomberg. The Guardian. The Detroit Free Press. AP. Good news: we'll get smaller cars on the road.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Ted Kennedy
To be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart. --Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Call me a cultural stereotype. A boomer. A limousine liberal. I don't care. Ted Kennedy being diagnosed with malignant cancer of the brain floored me. I don't even know why.
Long ago, Duke University, which changed my life in a number of ways, awarded me my first paid desk job to work for Wisconsin's Senator Gaylord Nelson. With some help from my father, I rented an overpriced and horrible little apartment across the street from the hospital on Washington Circle where I had been born 21 years earlier, and excitedly entered the world I'd been seeing on television since I was in my early teens growing up in the Midwest. That first sunny Monday morning in May, I walked all the way to work, zig-zagging down Pennsylvania Avenue, and then up Constitution Avenue, well over two miles total, just to take it all in. But I walked in a hurry.
The Hill job was in health policy, and I was asked to follow and report on the work of the busy U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health, chaired by then 42-year-old Ted Kennedy. I saw Kennedy up close a lot during committee sessions and mark-ups during the next 3 months. (A few years later, I worked again on Capitol Hill, and lived there for many
years. I'd see him around. Today, if I were lucky, he might recognize my persistent face if he saw me--but I certainly wasn't important those first 3 months.) But way before that, as the "last Kennedy", he was always part of the soundtrack of my life and my friends' lives since we were in our early teens. But he was more than a name, mystique and the booming populist oratory and Gaelic cadences of speech which come naturally to him.
For me, Ted Kennedy has never been about ideas, legislative agendas or even the Kennedy schmaltz: the hope, the dream that never dies, the struggle, all that. He left that music to others, like to his uber-aggressive brother-in-law, Steven Smith, and to his staff. I just never saw Kennedy as an ideologue, even when he ran for the American presidency--which I bet he never really wanted. A character out of a novel, he's simply as Irish as they come: brooding, playful and contradictory. Quietly but definitely war-like. He's smarter than people think, and remarkably adept at sifting through and making sense of too much information thrown at him. In the main, though, he's passionate, human, even poetic--and vulnerable in all the best ways.
Like lots of senators, he's also distracted as hell, even endearingly spacey--but warm and charming, a natural politician, easily the best in his family. He can turn that on and off. Like Bill Clinton, and for whatever the reason, Kennedy genuinely likes people; it's not for show. Watch the guy in a crowd. He's at ease once he's there. He physically resembles most, and is most like, his mother Rose, the family saint and caregiver. And that soulfulness, I think, helped him to be very good at his job. Family friend and economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that Ted Kennedy was the best U.S. senator he'd seen in his lifetime.
Finally, the last Kennedy is as wounded as they come, too. Try, if you can, not to cry when you watch a clip of his eulogy of his brother Robert in 1968, when he was 36. Kennedy's voice cracked badly, and I can't forget the sound of him as he struggled to finish the speech for his older brother. It wasn't about politics, ideas, or even about anyone's family. The sound was pure grief and loss, unashamed.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
HRC: Until the last dog dies.
That's a Bill Clinton Ozark mountains expression. We have always liked it even though WAC? writers (and Hull McGuire lawyers) are very split among the three candidates still punching, and we have some stalwart if calm Clinton dislikers. But wondrous, irrational keep-your-options-open optimism is very American. Sometimes it works. From today's daily Hillary Clinton campaign e-mail update: "On May 31, we'll hear the decision from the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee on whether they'll seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida". But, she continues, "Puerto Rico votes in 10 days, and the last primaries in Montana and South Dakota are just two days later, and...." See Salon's "She's in it to spin it".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
How To Work With A Weenie, If You Must.
Two fine posts on Gen-Y, Gen-X, Boomers:
Scott Greenfield, NYC, Simple Justice, "Hull to Gen Y Lawyers: Get It or Get Out". Greenfield is a criminal trial lawyer and writer.
Jordan Furlong, Ottawa, Canada, Law21: Dispatches From A Legal Profession On The Brink, "How to Work with Boomer Lawyers". Furlong is Editor-in-Chief of National magazine at the Canadian Bar Association.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
Got proofreading?
Proofreading errors are avoidable, even under the gun--if you make ardor in proofreading a habit.
Take invoices to clients. Invoices, if done correctly, are a great way to communicate what you've done for a client and they can even serve as a marketing tool. They are a genre of documents we all need to get right. Clients can always be expected to read them. So they need to be really "right", right?
Lawyers don't talk about proofreading enough. It amazes us that badly proofread pleadings and letters still emanate from some of the best American and European law firms. It mars and even desecrates otherwise good and sometimes brilliant work. Mistakes will happen in
law practice in any event--but the idea is to minimize them, and especially those you can control. Proofreading errors are avoidable, even under the gun, if you make ardor in doing it a habit. Our recurring nightmare is that the GC of our best client says: "If at $___ an hour you guys can't spell [or write], believe me, we can find a law firm tomorrow morning that can." For that reason, as mentioned in a 2005 WAC? "Just Say It" post on writing for lawyers, Rule 5 (of 8) in the good writing section of our firm's Practice Guide is:
5. Proofread, proofread, proofread. (Oh yes, at our firm, we have a written policy on proofreading you must actually sign before you start work. Go ahead, laugh.)
"Pretend that, for every typo you miss or grammatical error you make, you have to buy Dan Hull as many Heinekens as he could drink in one evening in his late twenties on St. Patrick's Day in the most expensive Capitol Hill watering hole he and his friends could find."
Together with thinking and writing simply and clearly, there's no more important habit for a lawyer to develop. Misspellings, omitted or misplaced words and off-the-charts bad grammar are often important errors which blot out otherwise good work--and ones we can control.
It's that simple.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (2)
Learning well
Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), poet and statesman.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2008
The Dumbest Generation?
See last week's WSJ piece "Can U Read Kant?" in which David Robinson reviews Mark Bauerlein's new book. In The Dumbest Generation, Bauerlein, an Emory English prof, contends that the digital revolution and cultural factors "have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy". OK, it's bad, but let's not go nuts.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
Oil is $132 a barrel.
Another new record. Bloomberg: "Oil Rises Above $132 on U.S. Supply Drop, Bank Price Forecasts". Last week, the US DOE says, supplies fell 5.32 million barrels to 320.4 million, the biggest drop in 4 months.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)
China's New Labor Law
Plus "Why Vietnam Is No Big Thing". Read peripatetic Dan Harris at China Law Blog. And see "China Earthquake Donations".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2008
Who cares what makes Generation Y tick?
From a marketing e-mail I received today:
Are you frustrated by young workers who feel entitled to success, need constant praise, want everything to be 'their way'? Are you struggling to attract and retain a generation of workers whose commitment seems more temporary than permanent?
This is Generation Y, a workforce of as many as 70 million, and the first wave is just now taking their place in an increasingly multigenerational workplace.
In this 1-day seminar, we'll show you how to motivate and manage Generation Y. You'll learn what makes them tick, how to retain them, and make them productive and energized.
It's your problem, Gen-X and Gen-Y. Not ours. Work, figure it out, ask questions, and we'll help you--but it's your job to adjust to "us" and the often hard adventure of learning to solve problems for your employer and its clients.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (28)
Not just an Irish thing: "Let no man write my epitaph".
It was a 1960 movie with Shelley Winters, Ricardo Montalban, Jean Seberg and Burl Ives (playing a nice boozy Irish Chicago judge) I first saw as a re-run on TV growing up in Cincinnati. It was based on a 1958 novel by Willard Motley. But the words came from a real guy, Irish nationalist Robert Emmet, during the "speech from the dock" before he was hanged by the British in 1803 for leading a march on Dublin Castle. History doesn't think Emmet was the most effective Irish rebel who ever lived--but his final words endured:
I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world – it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph. No man can write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives and character dares now to vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace until other times and other men can do justice to them. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2008
Perfection's curse: Why Justin isn't helping us move the ball.
Devil perfection is the bane of first children, overachievers and, yes, lawyers. Especially new ones from top schools and/or with top grades. Rule 10: "Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)
Blawg Review #160: Ms. Ruthie, finally.
"The ultimate London law bird", according to Palo Alto-based WAC? news chief Holden Oliver, hosts this week's Blawg Review #160 at Ruthie's Law. For a time she was Robin to GeekLawyer's Howard, and much more. Brains, beauty, wit and British subtlety in one hard-working solictor. Originally from King's Lynn in Norfolk (on The Wash), she just moved to London, which she plans to conquer. A European with an American soul.
Posted by Brooke Powell at 11:31 PM | Comments (1)
May 18, 2008
How did Humans first start resolving the Fist Fights of Life?
The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), International Dispute Negotiation program (IDN): Interview with American cultural anthropologist Robert Carneiro.
Ten thousand years ago, how did humans first go about developing formal methods of resolving disputes--and why did they do it in the first place? Listen to IDN's latest podcast interview by General Electric's Florence, Italy-based litigation counsel Mike McIlwrath. This is Mike's 26th interview with the best and brightest of the litigation-ADR international community, including U.S. trial lawyers with higher-end business clients. Not one program has disappointed us.
This week, Mike interviews respected American anthropologist Robert Carneiro on the "Evolution of Dispute Resolution". The Carneiro interview is an especially compelling IDN segment, and rapidly covers: evolution of the state, the orderly introduction of legal systems with formal methods of conflict resolution, dispute resolution in societies that have remained in clusters of small, autonomous groups, and conflict resolution's role in keeping larger groups together and productive.
The IDN segment got us thinking, and worrying. In our view, much business litigation--and in the U.S. especially--is a wasteful ruse of "going through the motions", and outright churning, often in cavalier disregard of both fact and law. Lawyering itself during the litigation process has lapsed into a cynical mix of untruthfulness and laziness. Even many clients think it's business-as-usual to join their lawyers in misusing the system ("the lawyers will tell me what to say" and "they keep telling me not to remember anything"). Suits which easily form the basis for subsequent abuse of process actions are filed every business day of the year.
Is demanding good faith in the good fight too idealistic? Can we at least evolve that much? One small step further? Litigation and ADR all over the world needs to be both streamlined and resistant to processed and packaged falsehood. Both lawyers and judges need to be proactive in making the terrain not only more business-friendly but increasingly economical, fair and honest for all participants, from Microsoft and Coca-Cola to corner shops and street vendors.
Think of it as real truth-finding done efficiently.
Like humans themselves, litigation, ADR and dispute resolution will always be aggressive by its nature and context--as it probably should be. Even sophisticated litigants need to vent. But it should be intelligent and aggressive--not a "game" for and by lawyers. A bloodless but honest war, with prompt starts and quick endings. That goal is still possible, even for American humans and their lost generations of lawyers, in this century. Think about that when you hear Mike's interview with Dr. Carneiro.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:26 AM | Comments (1)