« December 06, 2009 - December 12, 2009 | Main | December 20, 2009 - December 26, 2009 »
December 19, 2009
Richard Nahem: A Paris Christmas.
All month long, our friend Richard Nahem, an American photographer and writer who lives in the Marais district, has given us Christmas in Paris 2009.
Hotel de Ville (R.Nahem)
Posted by JD Hull at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2009
It's Limey Time at the ABA Blawg 100.
Two Hip Brit Wits. Legal London and the Profession Unbound can be found at GeekLawyer and Charon QC.
GeekLawyer is a barrister with an IP specialty. He is smart, rude*, hopelessly un-PC, and usually toasted. A tad more sober, Charon QC is a charming academic with a velvet voice and golden pen. He is eclectic, erudite, and only mildly Albion-eccentric. I.e., criminally insane by Yank/New York City standards.
These blokes are lawyers. But, even so, each steps up and just says it--on a variety of subjects. Each reconnects us with our European forms and heritage. And of course neither uses "party" as a verb. Or "interface" as a word. What more could we want from real Limeys? Or from real Lawyers?
So do vote (just click on ABA banner above) for our English cousins in the ABA Blawg 100's In My Humble Opinion category. These are not the only remarkable sites in the "IMHO" niche--but do cast your votes for these two fine writer-thinkers.
*On good days, Americans are merely dismissed as "the colonials".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:22 PM | Comments (1)
"All hat, no cattle".
Everyone in your shop has to buy into client service like a cult, like a religion--like an angry sermon that lifted them out of their pews at The Church of the Final Thunder.
Real client service--i.e., know-how consistently delivered as an experience the customer likes and wants more of--is by now a global cliché. Hey, you must say you are "into" it--but do you even know what it is? It sounds easy, and intuitive to the speaker and listener.
"Client and customer service...how hard could that be?"
Very. Making a client be safe and feel safe at the same time is as hard an order to fill as we can imagine. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, hooker, fishing guide, house painter, drug dealer, or mom-and-pop corner store owner, superior work alone won't keep a good client or customer coming back.
Clients want something more. You have to figure out what that is.
And then everyone in your shop--yes, everyone--has to buy into CS like a cult, like a religion, like an angry sermon that took them out of their pews at The Church of the Final Thunder.
"Yes, yes, got that covered." One problem is self-deception: (1) most service providers think they know what CS is, but they don't; and (2) if they really do know, they don't know how to discipline their organizations to make CS stick.
"All hat, no cattle." The second and more immediate problem is deceiving clients themselves. At a minimum, even if you don't have a clue what CS really is, do you say you provide it when you don't? Is CS a little joke at your shop? A ruse, maybe? Something for the website? For that first pitch?
Well, there are voices in the wilderness besides ours on that one. And one of our favorites is Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog. See again his post from June 2008, "Don't Let Client Service Be Merely Lip Service" and the related links.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:16 AM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2009
New FRCP deadlines effective December 1, 2009.
While the work of the Judicial Conference's five Advisory Committees never really stops, big changes to federal court rules, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), don't occur that often. The newest amendments are "technical amendments"--but the changes are anything but technical.
Two years in the making, the changes were signed into law (H.R. 1626) by the President on May 7, 2009, and became effective December 1, 2009. There are also significant changes to some of the time triggers in the appellate, criminal and bankruptcy rules. All are part of the Judicial Conference's "Time-Computation Project".
FRCP. Rule 6, FRCP, the general "time counting" provision, and post-trial Rules 50, 52, and 59, are among the rules changed. Gone forever in Rule 6 is the much relied-upon (and, for many, much beloved) "11-day rule" adopted in 1985. It was designed to take the hardship out of 10-day post trial deadlines, i.e., don't count weekends and holidays for deadlines of 10 days or less.
But you no longer need it. In the new provisions, the Advisory Committee on Rules of Civil Procedure gave litigants more time (a lot more) to file motions for judgment, or for a new trial, under Rules 50 and 59. Beginning on December 1, the time to file after entry of judgment was 28 days rather than 10 days.
Sources. The D.C office of Chicago-based Mayer Brown published an advisory to the in-house community on November 30, 2009. It summarizes changes to the civil and appellate rules. See also the April 2009 summary at Smart Rules. The popular Cornell Law School site on the federal rules put up all the FRCP changes by December 1, but is still working on getting the Advisory Committee Notes into it.
The most complete Advisory Committee history and Congressional legislative history of the amendments are at the federal rulemaking section of the U.S. Courts website.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2009
Is French Television still hiring up all the good Anchorettes?
From earlier this year, see La Mom via The Paris Blog. We still admire 43-year-old Laurence Ferrari, the Sorbonne-educated anchor at French channel TF1. She also has world-class looks. We don't know if it's true or not, but for a brief time after her divorce, Ferrari was romantically linked in the European press to Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president.
This is hard for us to believe for a number of reasons. One reason is rational. After all, Sarkozy has never been mistaken for Paul Newman, Warren Beatty or Johnny Depp. But WAC? is famously shallow on non-lawyering issues. We don't know how two such oddly-matched humans could be attracted to one other. We steadfastly believe in looks. Don't trust us.
More importantly, did La Mom need to call Ferrari "the French Katie Couric--minus the aging cheerleader look"? Look, Jacques, you're talking about America's Sweetheart. We'll always defend D.C. native Katie, even if she is at times cranky, and was once mean to one of our writers at The Monocle, and for absolutely no reason at all.
Ferrari: Smart. Tough. But she flirted for France? We doubt it.
(Note: WAC? alumni Oliver is on loan to this blog through the end of the holidays, or until his wife learns of it, which ever happens first.)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2009
Suddenly, American CPAs are boozing, drugging and philandering.
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Columbia Pictures
Not really. But those folks do seem to be "getting out" more.
It's good to escape your own neighborhood--and on a regular basis. A real road trip--like drive from DC to Charlottesville or Chapel Hill. Or at least a virtual one. Like take a vacation from lawyers. Consider meeting engineers, actuaries, doctors, sales people, chimney sweeps, cocktail waitresses named Merle--you get the idea.
And accountants. As with lawyers, real accountants put clients first. As a friend of ours recently said:
Once I start gazing at my clients and stop gazing at my wallet, I have a life. Because I am doing what is important. Amazingly, my wallet takes care of itself.
Accountants, also like lawyers, are reputed to be careful and a bit risk-averse. And self-important and boring. But we never completely bought that (about the accountants, anyway). For many businesses, their day-to-day accounting firms are more cost-efficient, solution-oriented and productive than their outside law firms.
You and yours starting a business and putting your money, sweat and ideas into it? You aim to be the new Apple, new Starbucks, new P&G?
Well, that's just great. Do hire both a CPA and a lawyer you respect and trust--you need both kinds of consigliere--and do it well before you incorporate. But find that CPA firm first.
Our fellow Midwesterner Michelle Golden at Golden Practices likes good practicing accountants, too. She's noticed all the accounting blogs sprouting up (about 125 so far). One of the CPA sites Michelle features is hosted by Hansen Neiffer, a firm which intrigued and impressed us with its niches and reach.
Hansen Neiffer works out of two offices in the cities Yakima and Kennewick, key cities located in southern Washington state. This is an important American agricultural region with steady to high growth even now. However, the firm services businesses--many, but not all, are farms--in not only in the U.S. Northwest but throughout the U.S.
And while WAC? writers are primarily urban (read: way urban) creatures, we also admire Hansen Neiffer's blog Farm CPA Today, and noticed this gem: "Corporate Farms in Africa". It comments on a recent Business Week piece on the new momentum (in large part by American agribusiness) to invest in African farmland. Makes us want to visit Yakima and Kennewick. Or survey the rice farms in Siaya, Kenya.
Yes, it's good to get out of your neighborhood from time to time.
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Posted by JD Hull at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)