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January 17, 2009
Last to rave and to be re-born.
The Phoenix represents to many the life cycle: birth, growth, death and re-birth because from the ashes life arises anew often strengthened through reinvention. But this happens not just from reinvention of oneself but through innovation. And innovation helps to propel us forward.
--SCL
We got a Phoenix for you right here. This past week, billing hours, and defending the insensitive, the unreconstructed and the un-defendable, WAC? nearly missed telling you about Blawg Review #194. The host this week: she always makes too much sense. So we do not always agree with Susan Cartier Liebel--is that a great multicultural handle or what?--but we always read her anyway at her Build A Solo Practice, LLC. Reason: we check in with her just in case we are wrong-headed, backward or archaic about life and the law generally, which is likely. If we ever decide to evolve, and become sensitive new age gentlemen, which is not likely, we'd hire her in in a heartbeat. Currently, we do not need a "coach"--but we do need sensibly-priced Jameson Irish hooch. Directions?
Phoenix Park Hotel, 520 North Capitol Street, N.W. Washington, D.C, within lunging distance of Kelly's Irish Times, in case you get un-evolved and can't walk home, or wish to meet Róisín, Tara or Brigit.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:36 PM | Comments (3)
January 16, 2009
Beavis, can you spare a dime?
Breaking: Twenty-somethings, reality collide. MSNBC: "Generation Y job-seekers hit hard". Excerpt:
Younger workers are finding out the hard way that they have to hustle to land their dream job, says Debra Condren, business psychologist and author of “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word.”
“These young adults don’t know how to jump in and be aggressive,” she says.
Query: If they're not proactive and aggressive, would you want these workers at your shop even in "good times"?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 04:13 AM | Comments (3)
January 15, 2009
One big global downer: car sales worldwide.
In The Economist today, read about "The Big Chill". Excerpts:
Sales figures published the week before the show confirmed what everyone already knew: the second half of 2008 saw the most savage contraction of demand since the modern industry was formed after the second world war....
Prestigious brands have been clobbered as much as volume manufacturers. BMW’s American sales fell by 40% in the year to December and those of Mercedes by 32%. Rolls-Royce, whose customers might be thought impervious to hard times, sold 29 cars in December 2007, but precisely none last month.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Next time: turn off the lights, be very quiet, and lie on the floor.
In other words, pretend it's Halloween at WAC?'s house. See Rule 4 and then "Dropping A Summons And Complaint Outside A Door Makes Good Service" by trial lawyer-author J. Craig Williams at his May It Please the Court. This Ninth Circuit case may be limited to its colorful yet hardly shocking facts. WAC? is experiencing profound paramnesia here. Williams writes:
The process server attempted to serve Brenneke four times, leaving notes and asking Brenneke to contact the process server. On the process server's fifth and last trip to Brenneke's house, Brenneke hid in his house, refusing to answer the door when the process server knocked....
Brenneke responded to the door intercom and acknowledged he was at home, and even looked out a front window at the process server.
Still he failed to answer the door.
Frustrated, the process server held up the summons and complaint to show Brenneke, and said, "You are served."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2009
No ordinary times.
"...a time for us all to read fewer newspapers and more history." Read this one: "Lessons From the Depression" at Bruce MacEwen's Adam Smith, Esq. Excerpt:
Never in my career--or the careers of those I speak with continually--has there been a time of greater uncertainty. The future is as hard to visualize as it is to see the East Side of Manhattan from Central Park West on a deeply foggy morning, or New Jersey from Riverside Park. You know it's there, with definite shape, but you can't see it or draw it or write about it with clarity and conviction.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
Client costs are your problem, too.
Rule 8: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.
Ask any associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2009
Hillary's new trial
Only a senator as forthright and as respected as Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) could raise the question the right way. Hillary is one of the great managers of our time, and her husband gives good phone and great parties. She works hard. She's well-traveled. She's even been to Arkansas and Utah, both foreign countries. We know that Bill can hold his own in a conversation with the wife of the Sultan of Kelantan. Confirm her. Washington Post: "Clinton Challenged on Foreign Library Contributions".
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the nominee of President-elect Barack Obama to become the new secretary of state, appeared before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today and ran into a challenge over foreign donations to her husband's presidential library. [more]
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Exotic jurors: the ample, the deaf, the nasty.
Incontinent jurors are different than you and me, Ernestine. Lots of weird jury lore out there this week. The facts range from socially uncomfortable to spectacularly unsavory. Where will it end?
First, Milwaukee's Anne Reed wrote about jurors who are Powerless over Twinkies.
Next, at Simple Justice, our anti-PC comrade Scott Greenfield of New York City writes about "The Politically Correct Jury", inspired by a tragic Ohio drowning case in which a homicide conviction was recently set aside. Reason: a hearing-impaired juror couldn't pick up vocal subtleties in a 911 tape of the defendant, a key bit of evidence. Nor could the Ohio trial court have expected that of her. Greenfield:
What bone in their head compelled a judge to allow a hearing-disabled person to sit on a jury? It's the same bone that allows blind people, non-English speaking, non-fluent-English speaking, incontinent, people with attention deficit with or without hyperactivity, and a variety of others to sit on a jury. It's the bone that makes them believe that pigs may indeed be capable of flight and people should not be defined by their challenges in every situation.
I abhor discrimination against people who are disabled. But I similarly recognize that there is a reason why they are called disabilities. There are some things that they cannot do well. It's not their fault, and they should not suffer for being disabled. But they similarly should not be placed in situations where their disabilities preclude their ability to perform a function adequately.
Finally, at ALM's Legal Blog Watch, Boston's Bob Ambrogi, who could probably write a successful and critically-acclaimed novel, gives us "The Case of the Stinky Juror". It begins with his usual spare prose: "Something smelled fishy in the courtroom of Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Nancy Staffier-Holtz." And: "The smell pierced through even into the judge's lobby." Dang. Air Wicks, maybe? At least for federal courts?
Query: Just how do you cover this stuff at the Trial Practice course you're giving over at old Siwash?
Blue-ribbon juror in many U.S. jurisdictions.
(Photo: NYC's Scott Greenfield in formal "high-prole" federal court garb, readying for voir dire in Missouri.)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 07:10 PM | Comments (2)
January 12, 2009
"From Mistrust to Cynicism to Corruption"
We are not sure that "Madoff's a bad man" but do see this one at Trusted Advisor by Charles Green. Thanks to the Blawg Review editor, the vigilant and uncanny Ed.
In Twain's and Eastwood's stories, an organization starts out proud of its reputation for rectitude. Then someone descends into venality. It starts with “borrowing” to tide things over the weekend. But--as with any crackhead--it doesn't stop there.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Does culture drive global trends more than economics?
The US, Russia, the EU, China and India may react differently to the same event. See at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture, one of our favorite sites, "Culture and the Credit Crunch". I don't think the post supports the thesis that well--but it's an interesting and worthy idea. Excerpts:
The USA, with its risk-taking, speculation and short-termism, is always likely to tend towards boom and bust. But we should never underestimate the USA's supreme ability to bounce back. As staff started filing out of Lehman Brothers for the last time, representatives from other investment firms were filmed outside trying to recruit those leaving. A true demonstration of the American spirit.
How about China? Its march may be held up by temporary obstacles along the way, but it is an inexorable march with an unstoppable momentum.
[W]hat future for the EU? In a crisis, will the key countries hold together? Or will German caution berate Anglo-Saxon profligacy and French pride be hurt by German frankness?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2009
New Zealand: A Kiwi summer vacation.
The Griswolds do Easter Island? Well, Wellington's Geoff Sharp is not Clark Griswold, but do see "How to Salvage a Summer Holiday" at his mediator blah...blah.... It begins:
Given my last post you are forgiven for expecting this entry to come from a remote Andean valley or beamed out from atop Machu Picchu which, btw, is rumoured to have gone wireless. [more]
Stop. Machu Picchu gone wireless? Say it ain't so, Geoff.
Sir Geoffrey of Wellington
Posted by JD Hull at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)