What About Paris? ™

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January 22, 2011

Saturday's Charon QC: A Whole Man Endures.

The man's an artist. For a few days in March 2007, short fleshy German women in bad moods were attractive.

Now in his 24/7 twittering days (he's good at it, too)--which we hope soon morph into an even better chapter--there is no better writer or broadcaster on Law in the West, global commerce, politics, European culture (they have quite a bit there), England's course, America in perspective, art, Beauty and Truth. He writes, and lives, from that wellspring of joy most of us can't ever locate on the cosmic map. Be envious.

He's charming in person, too. He's got this patrician but velvet voice that could make any demented ex-wife totally heel, zip it and think straight and clearly for, say, 5 or 6 minutes. And while we'd like him to blow the tobacco smoke and Rioja out of his tubes a bit more with a few more trips each week to the gym, there is no better showcaser of the qualities that make the Whole Man.

Very whole. As in well-rounded. Remember that?

We know, too, that Mike is a straight-up Lower England Stud with Taste. He once showed up to do a live interview of me at a Mayfair hotel room with a very bright, tall and ravishing chestnut haired 27-year-old girl, uh, technical assistant. So our meeting that March in 2007 started us off well--and hey got me jazzed enough to swive a snake in a sandstorm for four or five days, or at least until I reached Mainz. German women in bad moods were attractive.

See Charon's recent Law Review on "Coulson resignation, Regulatory Ambush, Client Care (but not how we know it), Have lawyers escaped culpability for credit-crunch?"

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 21, 2011

THE Book: International Arbitration & Mediation--A Practical Guide.

And we'll see the Movie when they make it. "Today's business world is about risk." That's the first sentence of the 2010 book and resource by two lawyers--one in-house and the other outside counsel--who live and breathe international dispute resolution. GE's Michael McIlwrath and King and Spalding's John Savage prepared International Arbitration and Mediation: A Practical Guide for counsel who regularly advise and guide businesses when they negotiate international deals. Kluwer Law International, 528 pages.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2011

GOP-led U.S. House repeals year-old health care reform law.

Sometimes a Smug Notion. Noted. And it probably won't matter. Now it's the Senate's turn. And then there's a veto cooking up over at the Big House just down the street. Know any Magic? NBC: House Votes to Repeal Health Care Law. It begins:

WASHINGTON—The Republican-controlled House has voted to repeal the nation's year-old health care law, clearing the way for the second phase of the "repeal and replace" promise that victorious Republicans made to the voters last fall.

The repeal, which was passed by a vote of 245 to 189, has little or no chance of passing the Senate, where Democratic supporters of the law have the majority. And Obama has vowed to veto it if it reaches his desk.

Republicans said repeal was necessary because the law provides for a government takeover of the health care system, raises taxes and would destroy jobs.

Democrats denied that, and said repeal would strip Americans of new protections against insurance industry abuses that deny them coverage they have paid for.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Chris Abraham: Seer, Force, Renaissance Man, Your Future.

He's a Force of Nature and there's nothing anyone can do about it so just follow his career and eventually join him. Berlin and DC-based, on fire, a Renaissance Man and a mainstay Hull McGuire mentor and friend, he's the human reason--together with Washington, D.C.'s Mark Del Bianco and Chicago's Patrick Lamb--What About Clients/Paris? even exists. So we are in his debt.

He moves (i.e., vibrates), he talks, he laughs, he persuades--and he brims with ideas and joy. And, like the undersigned, he is infuriatingly right about too many things. Chris Abraham over at The Marketing Conversation is someone you should get to know. Chris is probably going to find you anyway. I see him in D.C., California, Charleston and--well, I could not avoid him anywhere I go.

Chris found me seven years ago--and explained what a "blog" is. He was just warming up. Since then, he and Abraham Harrison probably have been doing more to change the way people think, live, gesture, market, connect and otherwise collaborate together globally--and, yes, the ways we view ourselves, view each other and talk to one another in the Cosmos--than Buckminster Fuller, Edwards Deming and Marshall McLuhan combined.

You might as well give in to the guy. We did.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

Two Former Hull McGuire Associates Turn to Crime.

"Hey Beavis, let's check their garage after this." See at MSNBC "Burglars Snort Ashes of Cremated Man and Two Dogs". Excerpts:

Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff's deputies said.

The ashes were taken from a woman's home in the central Florida town of Silver Springs Shores on Dec. 15. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another container with the ashes of her two Great Danes.

"The suspects mistook the ashes for either cocaine or heroin. It was soon discovered that the suspects snorted some of the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine," the sheriff's report said.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2011

Two Client-Centric Places to Visit.

The reason they are so helpful may lie in the fact that lawyers, accountants, and other professionals are just a small part of their large followings. See Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg and Church of the Customer by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. These sites focus on the Art of the Business Relationship: getting and keeping clients.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. (1915-2011)

The Natural: He liked people.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (6)

North Korea: The Look and Feel of Juche.

Only rarely does Blogdom really earn its keep. But there are exceptions. Don't miss "A Visit to North Korea", both the reporting and the accompanying photos, at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture. Excerpt:

While it has replaced Marxism-Leninism in North Korea, Juche acknowledges the influence of traditional communist doctrine, although over the past two decades, the military rather than the proletariat or working class, is the main revolutionary force.

To the traditional hammer and sickle, symbolizing the factory worker and the farmer, Juche’s icons also include a writing brush for the “Samuwon” class of writers, professors, engineers, and bureaucrats – a departure from the emphasis in other communist nations.

"Revolutionary posters all follow the same formula: a farmer, a factory worker, an office worker or engineer, usually carrying a T-square, and a soldier. One is always a woman." (Photo: R. Lewis)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2011

Duke: Cisco Systems' John Chambers to give 2011 graduation main address.

See The Chronicle, Duke's daily.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Rule Three: Ensure Everyone Knows That The Client Is The Main Event.

Rule Three: Make Sure Everyone in Your Shop Knows That The Client Is The Main Event. The truth is that they probably don't.

Above: Generic dweebs some U.S. firm has agreed to pay.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2011

My Marrakesh: No "Ordinary Life".

...don’t live an ordinary life--anyone can do that. Be brave. Live a life filled with adventure.

It's short. Don't divert its natural exciting course with cookie-cutter moves--followed by years of regretful reveries and those awful "what ifs". In a popular movie of the 1970s, Ruth Gordon, a wonderful writer and actress, quipped in character to a young man named Harold 60 years her junior: "If you don't go out there and try, young man, you won't have much to talk about in the locker room".

Gordon, in that movie, and in real life, played a dame, advisor, teacher, elder seer. Grande Dame. Great Lady.

Ah, Great Ladies. I had two very strong, vibrant grandmothers. Each urged authenticity and drive in all things. Each had very strong children: my parents. My grandmothers even greatly liked each other. Both were well-traveled, well-educated and well-read. Both had long lives. One died very recently, and the other when I was a senior in high school. The two are always in my head; I still seek them out.

Great Ladies are still around if you look hard enough. But we know that a certain breed of them--the ones with lives that straddle the mind-numbing changes of the last 80 to 100 years--are vanishing every day. Our peripatetic friend Maryam had at least one of her grandmothers taken from the same inspired and celestial fabric as mine. Do visit today's My Marrakesh and "Essaouira: And a Tale of Jean and a Life Filled with Adventure". Don't be envious what you read there. But do change your life, if you need to.

Photo by Maryam

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Hermann the German: Tucson, Guns and Sarah Palin.

The New Congressional Redistricting in the Wild West. Probably not. So we always listen to the Berlin-based Hermann the German at Observing Hermann for one possible German reality check on America. He even speaks English. Writes it. Seems to likes tall blondes named Greta, Rolanda and Sigfreda. And Hermann's right a lot, friends. See his "Sarah Palin?"

Above: "Hermann's Triumph at Teutoburg Forest", Johann Janssen (1870-73). Another Hermann the German, or Arminius, in September of 9 AD, trouncing Roman legions. What? You're a proud Western professional, businessperson or leader? You don't know about Arminius? Then finish your education. Or at least start one.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

Martin Luther King Day: BR #294 by A Public Defender, "Gideon".

The bright and way feisty if thin-skinned anonymous young guy "Gideon", who writes the fine A Public Defender, has a very first-rate BR #294 you can see right here. Class Factor: High. Lots. Humor: Much. Forced PC Compliance: None. Gooey Hallmark MLK Stuff for People Not Alive in 1968: Mercifully Virtually None. Blawg Review is now in its 6th year. Well done. And well done.

If King has not been killed, he would have turned 82, two days ago, on the 15th.

Eighty-two is the same age as my own father, who told me about it at the time, and who is still very much alive and thriving. My Dad was then 39. I remember exactly where I was when I was told, and what time of the day it was. Although my father was and is no liberal, he--like everyone sane and decent--grieved over what had happened.

For months and months, even in most southern Ohio, the balcony stills of that Memphis hotel were etched in the minds of anyone old enough to read and watch television. We had all been through this kind of thing before, in 1963, in Dallas. And later in 1968, and just 8 weeks later, it would happen again, at a Los Angeles hotel.

Montgomery, Alabama, September 4, 1958. King was 28.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)

My American States: Dudes, Where's My Merit-Based Judge Selection?

Yes--it's the same basic article we always run. Get used to it.

Socially, we are pretty liberal on these folks. No really. Three or four of our firm's friends are elected state judges, or ex-state judges.

We still say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too terribly strongly if one of our sisters, brothers, sons or daughters very very briefly dated one, probably.

States: Can You Get Off Your Knees, Please? Look, maybe think of it like this: Good Crops, Motherhood, the Flag, Andy Griffith, puppies, selflessness, courage, Beauty, Truth, a thin Marie Osmond, a really good-looking Eleanor Roosevelt, Sweetness, Light, and replacing state judicial elections with merit-based selection in 39 American states.

Let's be clear. Popular election of state judges is beneath: (a) you, (b) your law firm, (c) your family's dog, and (d) your business clients, and especially if you act for businesses who trade nationally or globally. That institution, favored in a majority of states in some form, makes states that still conduct them appear insular and potentially unfair to both American litigants and to non-Americans and their businesses abroad.

With each election cycle campaign donations are driving up the costs. This is, of course, wasteful and inefficient. See "The New Politics of Judicial Elections in the Great Lakes States, 2000–2008" by Justice at Stake. More importantly, the very existence of state laws regulating campaign contributions to candidates running for judicial office send two unintended but lousy messages:

1. Judges, like mayors and congressmen, have "constituents".

2. Justice, like real estate or widgets, is "for sale".

We appreciate that many of the some 10,000 elected American judges were excellent lawyers, and that as jurists they do first-rate, honest, exemplary, and often inspiring work. We have indeed stayed loose and open-minded on this subject.

In fact, 3 or 4 of our firm's friends are elected state judges--or ex-state judges. (Hull even dated one for until she turned 35.) We are gracious. We say hello to them in public--and once even had one to dinner. We would probably not object too strongly if one of our sons or daughters very briefly dated one. But elected benches are by nature glaringly "fishy" to even the most casual observer and especially, it seems to us, in the Midwest and South, and wherever else American Horse Sense abounds.

Merit-based selection, of course, is not perfect. However, it has worked very well for two centuries in American federal courts with a minimum of bad appointments and embarrassments--even if you adjust for the fact that state judges outnumber federal judges (who are appointed for life) by a factor of over 10 to 1. Last year, we followed the U.S. Supreme Court case about a popularly elected state supreme court judge, and campaign money recipient, who failed to disqualify himself in arguably suspect circumstances. In Caperton v. Massey Coal Company (June 8, 2009), the Supreme Court ruled that a West Virginia judge should indeed have disqualified himself from hearing an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against an a coal company because its CEO had been a major campaign donor.

Judges should not have "constituents"--i.e. law firms, and their clients, who make campaign contributions. Right now, in most American states, they do. And there is no way to dress that up. Generally county-based, American litigation at a state level is already frustratingly local and provincial for "outsider defendants"--businesses from other U.S. states and other nations sued in local state courts--who cannot remove to federal courts, the forums where federal judges can and should protect them from local prejudice.* American states that still hang on to electoral systems look increasingly provincial, classless, and silly from a global perspective. It's time for the States to grow up, and adopt systems of merit-based appointment.

*One reason that federal diversity jurisdiction was created in the first place was because of the Framers’ concern that prejudices of state judges toward out-of-state persons would unfairly affect outcomes in trial courts. Erwin Griswold, Law and Lawyers in the United States, 65 (Cambridge, Harv. Press 1964). Over 200 years later, our current systems in the states make that local prejudice almost inevitable. See also, the interview of General Electric's Mike McIlwrath in July 2009 of Prof. Geoffrey Hazard of Hastings Law School, who addresses why European business really fear U.S. state courts.

(from past posts)

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)

Salzburg: Mozart, Huns and Lawyers.

St. Peter's cemetery. Catacombs are further down and up in the cliff.

You may dream in American. But you still live in the world. Far from being a museum piece (like Venice, sadly), and being a favorite on the tourist's list of "cute small Alpine cities" (like Kitzbuhel, which IS real perky and cute but less storied) in Europe, Salzburg, Austria is best appreciated by digging deeply, and with a reverence. Celts settled it, and they mined salt. The salt commerce never stopped--and in later centuries barges floated tons and tons of it on the Salzach River to points all over Europe. By the 8th century, salt barges were subject to a toll.

Rome claimed Salzburg around 15 BC. Much later, Charlemagne ate and slept here. It was capital of the Austro-Hungarian territory between 1866 and 1918. And apart from Mozart, art, salt, ancient Celtic culture, St Peter's (above) and restaurants carved into cliffs, this staid Austrian city is home to the International Business Law Consortium, an active group of over 85 first-rate law and accounting firms in strategic cities all over the world, and founded in 1996.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2011

The Internet Law Center's Bennet Kelley: There's a Recession?

Intelligent, shrewd, funny, but still able to be cold and calculating when he needs to, as all truly excellent lawyers need to be.

--One Bennet Kelley customer

Utility Infielder of Internet Law. And mega-busy. Hard working lawyer, Internet and privacy expert, and awarding-winning political columnist, Bennet Kelley and his LA-based Internet Law Center get client feedback we all covet. A native of Providence, he moves in an astonishing mix of higher-end business, political and international circles. He spent years in DC. He's super-smart and intuitive. Writes column for for Huffington Post.

"Winning" comes to mind. Even Republicans like him--and hire him. Mega-dry and/or sarcastic Brits like him. Pre-cocktail hour Germans and Austrians like him. My mother, wife and small children are charmed silly. Our dogs tried to jump in his rented Renault when he left our house in the Tyrol--after his first visit. My wife, too.

We strongly suspect the man's Irish.

Kelley: Nearly humiliated this post's author.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

"...the only life we've ever known..."

U.S. Steel Building, 3rd ugliest building in U.S.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

Sane Post-Church Chat for a Sunday: Silverman v. The Vatican.

Settlement Bonus: Seller snags cash for new Papal Waterslide.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (2)