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October 08, 2009
Second City: Manchester, England
"It's a mean old town to live in by yourself." Still gritty and real, the city once had an economic school of thought named after it, via England's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Life's hard everywhere these days, not just in Manchester. But don't wimp out and mail it in. Get Mean and Eternal like Johnny Winter. Have nice day, law cattle.
Mean Town Blues
Posted by JD Hull at 11:43 PM | Comments (1)
"Play it again, Mike": Prof. Hazard on U.S. courts seen abroad.
(from a July 30, 2009 post)
If you have European clients, you already know that in-house lawyers across the Atlantic do not like to have their company's commercial disputes heard and decided by American courts (even by our most efficient and respected U.S. district courts). Their reasons, however, turn on more than the obvious and commonly-given ones: lengthy and expensive proceedings, juries hearing civil disputes, and the fear of large damages awards, including punitive damages.
One more reason is the perception abroad of the extraordinary "localism" (generally county-based) of judges and juries in the state systems. Still another is the effect that contingency fee arrangements can have on the litigation process.
There are several more reasons. And every one of them can be troubling to both non-U.S. and American in-house lawyers.
At the podcast series of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), do not miss the interview by Mike McIlwrath, an in-house lawyer with General Electric in Europe, of Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., now at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, in "American Exceptionalism: U.S. Civil Justice v. the Rest of the World". The July 17 interview is No. 75 in CPR's International Dispute Negotiation series. Hearing the Hazard interview is a "non-billable must" for any American business lawyer (in-house or outside firm) acting for clients in more than one jurisdiction, within or outside of the U.S.
Geoffrey Hazard is a well-known American law professor and author in the areas of civil procedure, federal jurisdiction and ethics. He has also taught law at Boalt, the University of Chicago, Yale, and Penn Law. One of his former students--and his research assistant when Hazard taught at Yale--is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Mike McIlwrath is Senior Counsel, Litigation for GE Infrastructure-Oil & Gas, and works out of Florence, Italy. Last year, the IDN series earned both McIlwrath and New York-based CPR an award for ADR excellence from CEDR, an ADR group in London.
Geoffrey Hazard
Posted by JD Hull at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2009
Your Antler Dance: Real life, Real Courage, Ray Ward.
Got something holistic, holy and global for you right here. WAC? is about happy corporate clients--and how hard it is to get client service right. It's also about happy lawyers, a prerequisite to great service: family, friends, rest, food, exercise, health, and renewal. And a spiritual life, even if it's a druid-like Antler Dance you and Nadine made up on your own after being over-served one spotty evening at Kelly's Irish Times on F Street, NW. Something eternal, infinite. You need it all, all right, and rightly mixed.
But WAC?, the "blog", has serious limitations. Note re: "blogs"...we're still getting used to the overly-effeminate new age low-testosterone (unless anonymous--then it's way manly) digital neighborhood and the goofy glossaries. "Blogs". Arguably no one with a real job has time to read "blogs". Like, dude, "blogs", who cares?
Anyway, Real Life, which happens to us and those we love, is cruelly shortchanged by this "blog". Most "blogs" don't tell you how to live. We fall short there, too. Consider the lawyers, generic dweebs, wuss-breeds, Weenies, the law cattle who should just moo-out and leave the profession (so they can work in quiet bookstores, and be better metro-sexuals), white-collar slaves, other peasants-by-choice, Gen-Y Looters, and even the next lowest-of-the-low--spineless no-name bloggers and commenters sans Club Ned exceptions--WAC? makes fun of and would like to liberate from bondage.
All these unfortunates need the restorative powers of a wise universe. And WAC? needs it, too. A lot.
So if we were going to read just one overall blog to meet all our life-and-lawyer needs, it would be Ray Ward's Minor Wisdom, a blog which first grabbed us by the lapels 4 years ago.
It is what a blog should be: brave, personal, well-written and damn interesting. A gifted and well-rounded human and lawyer, perhaps put here on Earth to make up for some of the rest of us, Ray writes on everything from excellence in lawyering, writing and appellate advocacy to Christian mystics, politics, music (well, real music), Darfur, Chad, human rights, and human rites. Ray knows we are all just here for a cup of coffee--so make the best of it, and help others whether you are rich or not. He has a sense of humour. He never moralizes. He's curious. And fear seems truly to have been replaced by faith. You ready for that? Would it help you? We know it would.
Ray Ward, The main Rain Man
Posted by JD Hull at 04:11 PM | Comments (1)
October 06, 2009
What's a Nyilv Nosan Muködo Társaság, anyway?
You don't know that one? And what is that strange German symbol-thing you keep seeing in your due diligence--"GmbH", yeah, that's it--what does that mean? How about: S.A.? Oy? Hevra Pratit? And "Cyfyngedig". To be sure, that old rascal Dr. Quaalude, your Corporations prof at Siwash Law, didn't cover any of these. But increasingly lawyers are helping clients to do business with foreign companies and in foreign jurisdictions--and are even guiding clients as they set up shops abroad. See for starters the International Directory of Corporate Symbols and Terms, first published in 2002 by member firms of the Salzburg, Austria-based International Business Law Consortium. An American law prof, writer and businessman named Dennis Campbell is the IBLC's founder and director.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2009
Caesar's town in Toscana
The Army Camp. Been here now for a week doing three different projects. I am usually quite happy in Europe no matter what I am working at, even if I am rarely a full-time tourist. But here having to work--at all, at anything--is tantalizing. There is enough of the highest peaks of Western civilization here to put in giddy overdrive your head and heart for days and days--all in a very compact and walkable area that never loses its human scale, and class.
Beginning around 60 BC, Julius Caesar founded the town on both sides of the Arno River as settlement for retired Roman soldiers. The mix of things that happened here after that--politics, trade, money, power, greed, literature, art and architecture--is remarkable given that Florence at heart was, and is, a small town nestled in the country. Only 350,000 people live in this world famous center. A haughty, slightly snobby and wonderfully disassembled lot.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (3)