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September 13, 2008
The lawyer thing: GCs, do you really need Big, Clumsy & Mediocre in 50 cities Worldwide?
If you are a savvy General Counsel, is there any reason to keep engaging your US or UK-based law firm that expanded in the past few years all over the globe like a spastic hamburger franchise?
One of our most clicked-on posts is here. It's a bit dated, about 3 IBLC meetings behind--our Fall gathering and work sessions, with law firms of 5 to 250 lawyers in size, were in Zürich just last week--but you'll get the idea. The IBLC has 100 law firms in strategic cities worldwide.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2008
Anne Reed on Juries: City v. Country.
See Anne Reed's "The City Jury And The Country Jury" at her always fine Deliberations:
Tom Wolfe, NYC, state court juror
Our firm faces this issue generally in some current civil proceedings; for years, we have noticed the irony (for us, anyway) that federal court juries are often more rural and less educated (not always but often) than juries in state courts.* Medium-size cities like San Diego, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh have that pattern: the more rural federal court jury may very well be less well-educated than the state, county or city jury.
Our experience is that city dwellers in America in both court systems selected from the master jury list may be less likely to show up for duty in the first place. An exception: historically, Washington, D.C. lawyers who live in the District have shown up for jury duty with admirable regularity in both the D.C. District and Superior Court, located downtown and at the foot of Capitol (a/k/a Jenkins) Hill.
George "Goober" Lindsey, Mayberry, federal court juror
*WAC? and Hull McGuire love humans and therefore love all jurors (except for The-Morally-Certain and, of course, some Duke grads and most engineers). But most state courts are flat-out "musts-to-avoid"--and "VBFs" (Very Bad Forums) for good business clients. If, however, you and your business client are before an unknown or "strange" state court--and especially in state systems where judges are popularly elected--do get a jury.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:24 PM | Comments (1)
Redux: Budgeting litigation with the client.
[E]veryone can provide a budget. Everyone can live with a budget. The real questions are whether lawyers will agree to do so and whether clients will walk with their wallets when lawyers don't.
See Pat Lamb's short but fine piece on budgeting litigation costs with a client [August 21], a subject WAC? is always re-thinking but infrequently getting right. "The Lie of Litigation Budgeting" is at his respected In Search of Perfect Client Service--the site which inspired the launch of WAC? three years ago. Pat, one the few litigators we've known with a natural gift for law firm economics, started the Valorem firm in Chicago earlier this year.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 04:17 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2008
Blawg Review sobers up, gets literate.
Ed. of Blawg Review, last known photo, Cambodia, circa 1968.
We've been traveling and saving clients, Kent maids in distress, and The World. We are behind on our Blawg Reviews--but we always catch up with the best thing that's happened to law blogs and the mainly idle people who love to read them. Each week at Blawg Review, a new host, eager to please and guided by the above Ed., works all weekend like a rat in heat to write a compelling thematic review of the past week's best articles. BR appears on Monday morning.
This week, Blawg Review, hosted by Hanna Hasl-Kelchner of legalliteracy.com, honors International Literacy Day, which was Monday, the 8th, and a beacon to 98.5% of the insurance defense bar, various "McLaw" tribes, and other law cattle in the USA. See Hanna's #176. Last week, Jamie Spencer of Austin DWI Lawyer hosted #175 with posts including the WB-Bollywood fight over Harry Potter, and Jordan Furlong's fine piece on law as automated and dumbed down in "The Rise of Good Enough". More McLaw. Cerebral types can read about the IRS' refusal to recognize Antarctica as a foreign country, so that U.S. salaries earned there are domestic, and therefore taxable. That's mighty cold, Kevin Underhill. Dang.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2008
Two Ways of the Trial Notebook
A quick one from the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, where there are Old Ones and Young Ones in their dark Monday suits. Men of all ages with shaved heads who look like Moby. Tall trilingual Nordic women, many beautiful, with serious faces and laptops. They prepare for battle this week in the mostly-down markets of The West.
Ah, grasshopper, it's trial time. For business trials, and non-business trials, see for starters the outlines for Trial Notebooks, either One or Two, at Evan Schaeffer's Illinois Trial Practice. We like the latter, but you should mix and match--and use your great brain. Both sides of it.
And be advised. As Tom Hanks, or someone, once said: "There is no boilerplate in baseball". Each client, each problem to solve, each transaction, and each trial: each is wonderfully unique, and Different From The Other, whether your firm does "cookie-cutter" work or not.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
Recap: "Should associates pay their law firms in the first 2 to 3 years?"
Two first years relax after a day of thinking, researching, writing, cite-checking and proofreading, as more senior lawyers stay late to re-do their work, and then write off time, lest they commit major interstate mail and wire fraud when bills are sent out.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:27 AM | Comments (4)
September 07, 2008
Don't popularly elect judges. It's bad.
Even if all elected judges were honest, judicial elections naturally erode public confidence because they imply that judges have "constituents" (i.e., the entities and lawyers who contribute to their campaigns) and that justice is political, and may be purchased. It doesn't pass anyone's smell test. In a country with the best law schools in the world and with legions of truly talented lawyers, who believe that lawyering is a privilege and art, we can do better than that. --A blogger in 2005
There aren't many absolutes out there, but here's one: Judges should not be elected public officials. It's medieval. It's beneath all the U.S. states. It's bad for clients and good lawyers. And it just smells bad. See at Law.com "Recusal Fight Highlights Judicial Election Concerns" and our April 28 piece "The Elected Judiciary". We can do better.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)