Winer Weighs In

Although I haven't had time to try to follow it, I assume the debate about Movable Type's new licensing scheme has kind of settled down. It also looks like Six Apart is still tweaking that scheme to try to make people happy, which is a good thing. Meanwhile, without specifically naming Six Apart or Movable Type, Dave Winer of Scripting News weighed in with this:

Editorial: It's lame to charge for weblog software based on how many weblogs you make and how many authors there are. A weblog isn't that big a deal. Manila lets you make as many weblogs as you want with as many authors as you want. Today's modern $2K computer can manage thousands of weblogs. Charge a fair price and don't fuss over how many blogs they make or how many people edit them.

I couldn't agree more. Granted, I think the blogging software Winer is most closely associated with—Radio Userland—only allows each user to create one weblog, but who's counting?

I know almost no one reading this cares about it one bit. I'm sure there's some great interesting stuff to read on a totally different topic if you follow links from here.

Posted 09:23 PM | meta-blogging

Tough Enough

I almost cried in court yesterday. I was watching a sentencing hearing. I knew nothing about the defendant, the victim, or the families on either side, but I felt incredible sympathy all of them. I'm obviously not tough enough for this job.

Posted 05:48 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer

Necessity

My first little "project" of the summer internship has been to research whether the necessity defense could pass the "smile test" to get a misdemeanor case to the jury. I'm being vague because it just seems like a good idea, but suffice to say the necessity defense (aka "choice of evils" if you're a Model Penal Code (MPC) type) is only successful in a very narrow range of circumstances.

Aside from learning a bit more about necessity, I've also learned that the "research memos" I wrote for my legal writing class were much more works of art than real work products. Where I spent weeks or days developing those memos, when my boss asked for a memo on the necessity defense she was thinking of a project that should have taken me a couple of hours, an afternoon at most. Steep. Learning. Curve.

Meanwhile, check out Steven's 1L review over at Half-Cocked.

Posted 05:51 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer

First Voire Dire

Yesterday I watched voire dire (jury selection) for the first time. It was a fairly simple DUI appeal but interesting nonetheless. The prosecution asked very obvious questions to which it seemed highly unlikely anyone would give a "yes" answer. One question was: "Are you sensible of any bias or prejudice against the defendant or the state?" How many people are going to raise their hands and say "yeah, I really hate people like the defendant" or "I think the state should always lose!" Perhaps not many people feel that way, but even fewer would be likely to admit it in open court.

The defense attorney asked an interesting (possibly standard) question: "How many people here know that, as of now, my client is not guilty?" Only about half the potential jurors raised their hand. So much for presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Posted 05:27 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer

What can I say?

My head is spinning. I know nothing, but I'm learning a lot already. On Day One of my summer internship I learned that I'll be working with the attorney who has the felony docket, which includes robbery, rape, and murder, but recently has included a lot of "paper" cases, including embezzling, forgery, and uttering (attempting to actually use forged documents). I'd never heard of the crime of uttering before, so that was perhaps my first lesson.

Many of the other lessons so far have been in the realm of criminal procedure, which I sorely wish I'd already taken. I learned what "advisements" are (initial hearings where the accused is advised of charges and rights to defense in open court), and watched some preliminary hearings. It's one thing to have a vague understanding of the major steps in the criminal defense process, and another thing to understand the subtleties and strategies required to represent a client to the best of your abilities at each stage. But while the learning curve in the next few weeks is going to be steep, I imagine CrimPro will much easier when I finally do take it. (Maybe I should rearrange my schedule to take it in the fall rather than the spring....)

Other than that, it's hard to get used to the idea of having people's lives in your hands. Reading a case file means reading about a real and unresolved issue that you may help resolve. It's intimidating, but watching the attorneys at work in court (which I did for about two hours yesterday) reminded me that these are just normal people who sometimes forget what they meant to ask witnesses and stumble through cross examinations, just like I did in mock trial and certainly will again if I'm ever in their shoes. Ok, not just like, but still. They're human. They do the best they can for their clients. I can do that, too. I hope.

Posted 05:41 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer

Beginning Advice

I start work today. I'm excited to finally begin getting some "hands-on" legal experience, but it's bittersweet as well because who wants to go to work? Summer should be about books to read, trails to hike, great roads and trails to bike, and I hope it still will be, but those things will now have to squeeze in sometime before 7:30 a.m. or after 6:30 p.m., or on weekends. But that's how "normal" people live, isn't it? I realize I've led a charmed life in that I haven't had to report to a real "9-5" job since 1999. In fact, I probably haven't spent much more than two years of my life thus far obligated to a real 9-5 schedule. That doesn't mean I haven't been working, but my work—leading bike tours, laying out newspapers, teaching English classes—has generally been time-flexible, project-oriented, and not necessarily tied to an office. For the next 13-14 weeks, that will change. It should be interesting.

I'm lucky to begin with a nice bit of advice from a rising GW 3L who spent last summer working the same job I'll be doing this summer. In an email he advises:

just go in there and soak it all in. keep in mind also that you don't know anything. this, however, doesn't matter, as long as you know that it's true. ask a lot of questions, make sure you're doing things right, and within a few weeks you'll be in total command of everything that comes your way. they won't give you enough rope to hang yourself, for the most part.

make sure that when you talk to clients you realize (1) they are all crazy, more or less, (2) they are all lying to you, more or less, and (3) you must treat them with respect if you want to get anywhere with them, notwithstanding (1) and (2). and also (4) that you probably wont get anywhere with them.

Sounds great: I know nothing. I'm good at asking questions. I'm used to being lied to. I plan to get nowhere with anyone. Ready, set, go!

Posted 05:51 AM | 1L summer

MT Options

After the weekend's furor over Movable Type's new licensing plan, the dust seems to be settling a little. For now I plan to stick with MT, and will probably buy the individual license.

Meanwhile, the furor has encouraged a lot of discussion around the web of alternatives to MT. This can only be a good thing, because it gives exposure to other developers and even if MT remains the preeminent blogging platform, it will have to stay on its toes to remain competitive. New options I've found (many from this mefi thread) which I may consider sometime in the mythical future when I have time for such things include:

Nucleus CMS eXtreme Edition
WordPress and TextPattern, both of which I mentioned before.
Pivot
blosxom (free, open source)
b2evolution (free, open source)
WebGUI (appears to be more general CMS than dedicated blogging platform, but I'm sure it could work)
PHPX (free, open source)
rb.log (free, open source)
Discloser (free, open source)
Exscribe (still in infancy, it seems)
dixit.net
Absolut Engine
e107

Many of the above are packages released under the GPL, which sounds great after reading Mark Pilgrim's convincing argument in its favor. But like I said, I have neither the time nor really the burning desire to make a big switch now. If I start any new blogs from here on out, they might use another package, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Posted 05:47 AM | Comments (3) | meta-blogging

Remodeling Postponed

I had big plans to do a little housecleaning and remodeling here at ai before I started my summer job, but the time has slipped away and I guess the housekeeping will have to wait. For now, "ai Quick & Dirty" (right column) has become "ambivalent bits," or "ambits" for short. The booklist should be updated a little, and a new countdown is up. Nothing too exciting so far, but I do hope to introduce a fun new feature sometime in the next few weeks, depending on how that tricky balancing act of work and play goes.

Just for the record: According to this tracker, yesterday ended a streak of 25 straight days on which ai received 100 or more page views. That may not sound like much, but it's a record for this humble blog, and its author thanks you for stopping by.

Posted 09:10 PM | Comments (4) | meta-blogging