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Ain't I A Lawyer?
Ok, I'm not, but I really think I will be soon, and a public defender too, I hope, so you can understand why I find this little story so simultaneously sad and funny. If you don't laugh you might cry, right?
And you know, there's a reason people have this misperception that public defenders are not lawyers, that they're “public pretenders,” and/or that they are somehow complicit in trying to punish their clients. That reason is that prosecutors and most legislators and public figures don't like public defenders. Defending criminals is not popular with voters, its importance doesn't fit easily into soundbites, so it is always, always dissed. And so our cultural is drowning in the message that public defenders (and all other indigent criminal defense attorneys) are somehow either incompetent or ineffective, when most of the time just the opposite is true.
Stories like The $40 Lawyer (which I will post more about soon) don't exactly help, but they present the chicken/egg question: Does media coverage like that make people think less of PDs, or does the fact that people already think less of PDs simply encourage stories like The $40 Lawyer?
Posted 11:32 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | 3L crimlaw
Top-40 Flickr Interestingness Is Mine!
I was happy to discover late last night that my recent photo of the Washington Monument and its reflection made it into the top-40 on Flickr's “interestingness” scale yesterday. The screen capture at right is proof! If you look through those “interestingness” pages right now the photo has fallen to around 75 and will probably keep sinking, but it's just nice to see it getting so much attention.
For you non-Flickerites, “interestingness” is some amorphous measure of how many times a photo has been viewed, commented on, and made a favorite by other Flickr users. So it's both a measure of popularity and of an image's ability to spark conversation or elicit a response.
My ambivalent images project will hit its 2-year mark on March 10, 2006. I wasn't really sure how long I would continue it when it started, and there have been times when it has just seemed silly, but it has also been a fun diversion and I'm really glad to have the odd sort of record it provides of life in the last two years. I started trying to cross-post some of the “best” shots (the ones I liked or ones that other people commented on) on Flickr both to give them a wider audience and because it helps me connect w/other photographers (both casual and more professional) and gives me inspiration by giving me a chance to check out what other people are doing. The only problem with Flickr is that it's like a very deep well and once you start looking in you have to be careful you don't fall in and get lost fo hours. I just today found out about all these great Flickr Toys and I can already see I'm going to waste a lot of time playing with them sometime soon.
Anyway, once I'm finished with school it's kind of up in the air whether I'll be able to continue posting a photo every day, but we'll see. For now, I hope you see one occasionally that you enjoy!
Note: If you've ever wanted to have a screenshot of an entire webpage rather than just the bit that fits into your screen at any one time, check out Papparazzi for Mac OS X.
Posted 09:58 AM | TrackBack | life generally mac geek meta-blogging
Being Honest About Bush's Domestic Spying
Thanks to Seth Abramson of Suburban Ecstasies for both the most hilarious and possibly the most incisive little critique I've read of Bush's domestic spying program. A taste:
Thank God 50% of mainstream media journalists suffered immediate braindeath shortly after securing their present employment--otherwise Bush's domestic spying scheme would be the biggest impeachment cluster$*@% in the history of the U.S., instead of, as it now stands, a charming little Big Brother bloc party which makes the mainstream media want to squeeze and hug and kiss and pinch the dimpled cheeks of our adorable little President, who's totally super and cares about us so very very much! Yay Mr. President! Yay Mr. President! Yay! Yay!
If you're offended by vulgar language, you probably won't enjoy it the rest of the post a great deal, but that aside, I highly recommend it. And thanks to Lyco for the suggestion.
Posted 09:43 AM | TrackBack | general politics
Job Application Insanity!
Check this out: If you want to apply for a job as a public defender in Cook County, Illinois, the job description says:
Yeah. So I called the human resources office:
me: The job description says the application has to be turned in in-person. Is that really true?
them: Yes.
me: . . . No mail?
them: That's right.
me: So, since I don't live in Cook County, could I have someone walk in the application for me?
them: Well, no. Maybe. It depends on what job you're applying for. Some jobs require identification.
me: Just to apply?
them: Yes. What job are you applying for?
me: Assistant Public Defender.
them: Yeah, that should be ok. You can have someone bring that in for you.
Wow. I just can't believe it. In person? What is the purpose of such an insane rule? Crikey.
Obviously I'm coping less than optimally with this whole job application thing. So much to complain about, so little time!
Posted 11:25 AM | Comments (15) | 3L
Georgetown Law Isn't Buying the Spying
Law students at Georgetown, including our very own Scoplaw, turned their backs on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday as Gonzales attempted to defend Bush's domestic spying program. Check out Scoplaw's account and photos of the protest to see how much it rocked. Listening to the constant barrage of talking heads trying to say this program was “legal” and/or “necessary,” and that “the American people want us to do this”—such perfidy makes me furious. Hoorah to these Georgetown law students who sent a very clear and high profile message that there are many of us who just aren't buying the spin.
Posted 10:13 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack | general politics
Illinois Bar Ripoff
The February 2006 edition of the ABA's Student Lawyer Magazine features a directory of state bar exams. It's helpful, and it clarified something for me. Long ago I heard someone mention that Illinois law students often start their bar applications in their first year. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why. What could the application possibly require that would take three years to complete? The answer is: Nothing. It's not a question of time required to complete the application, it's a question of money: If you “register” by March 1 of your first year of law school, you're going to save $450. Awesome.
Jerks.
Oh, but Illinois doesn't stop there with its attempts to woo new lawyers to its bar: When you don't register in your first year, the fee is $700 if you register by Feb. 1 this year. If you miss that deadline, the late fee is $250 if you register by April 1. And if you miss that deadline, the late fee goes up to 750 freaking dollars if you register by May 31. After that, dude, you're outta luck.
Can you say cartel? I knew you could. My levels of resentment and animosity toward bar associations are rising.
Posted 12:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L
Criminal Justice Web Imbalance
Searching for jobs I can't help but notice that no matter what city or county website I visit I can always find information about the prosecutor for that jurisdiction. The prosecutor may be called a “City Attorney” or a “County Attorney” or a “District Attorney,” but his or her office always has a website and it's always very easy to find.
On the other hand, if you want to find information about that jurisdiction's public defender or other system of indigent criminal defense, well, good freaking luck. Just another sign of Gideon's Broken Promise, I guess.
Ok, I understand that even where there's a healthy and well-funded public defender's office, most of the people who will benefit from its services are not going to go looking for its website. Yet public defenders are public servants every bit as much as prosecutors; if one needs a website, so does the other. And that's true whether the jurisdiction has an actual public defender or whether it fulfills its Constitutional obligation to provide indigent criminal defense services via some other means. In other words, it should be just as easy for a person to learn about a jurisdiction's prosecuting function as it is to learn about its defense function, yet there's virtually no information about that defense function available for most jurisdictions.
On a personal note, this stinks especially if you're trying to find a defense job somewhere other than one of the major PD markets!
Posted 09:13 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack | 3L crimlaw
Update: Montana's Public Defender System
Montana's new, “model,” statewide public defender system is still gearing up for a July 2006 start-date. I've been following the progress through the new State Public Defender webpage where the Public Defender Commission has kindly been posting the agendas and minutes of its monthly meetings. At the December meeting, the Board discussed a state attorney general's decision that their enabling legislation allows them to retain current state and county employees, but does not require them to do so. That means they could, theoretically, be replacing some attorneys or hiring new ones for whatever reason, and that would be good for me. Still, hiring new attorneys wasn't on the agenda of their meeting yesterday so if they plan to do that I guess it will be in the future.
One other tidbit I just noticed: The last sentence of this article about the appointment last October of Randi Hood as the new Chief Public Defender says “She is married to John Connor, the chief criminal prosecutor in the attorney general’s office.” Huh? Is there really no conflict of interest there for either of them?
Past Blast
Looking at Bar applications means looking at your past. It's something I don't do that often, really, and wow, what a crazy trip. I've apparently lived at 19 different addresses during my life, but only 16 of those have been since I turned 18. Why does the Bar care about all my addresses since I was 18? Does anyone know?
It's a bit of a challenge to try to track down addresses like this. For example, when I spent a school year on student exchange in Tampere, Finland, I just lived in what to me was a dorm. I know I had an address, but I have no idea what it was. A little research reveals that it must have been Pellervonkatu 9 (“katu” means “street” in Finnish, but the rest I have no idea) because that's the address for Uusi Domus (new dorm). Just seeing that picture sort of makes me heartsick and it's not even a very good picture. (I have wished a thousand times that I had been doing my photo-a-day project while I was in Finland. Now that would have been cool.)
My time in Finland was more than 10 years ago now and even though that's a long time, the distance between then and now seems more like a million years and miles. If you had told me then, in 1994, that in 2006 I would be graduating from a law school in Washington, D.C. I probably would have hurt myself I would have laughed so hard. Or maybe I would have punched you for insulting the future me like that. I don't know. I certainly wouldn't have believed it. I'm not sure I do now even though that very event is supposedly just months away.
Life truly is stranger than fiction. Truly.
Posted 07:43 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L
Public Defender Retreat?
I just learned there's a “6th Annual Public Defender Retreat” coming up in March in Las Vegas. Does anyone out there know anything about this?
UPDATE: Sanchovilla, the Public Defender Investigator, knows something about this conference. He writes:
World Defender Poker Championship? Sounds very tempting, but I think I'll wait until I'm actually a defender before I try to buy in.
Posted 08:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L crimlaw
Grammar Peccadillos
Reading through a group of “notes” by some of the 2Ls on my journal staff reminds me of being a grader in grad school for both my own students and the students of actual faculty. I'll save those reminiscences for another day, but they also remind me of how much little writing quirks can get to me. Here are three of them I've just seen:
- “Lessen” is a word I wish was not a word. In almost every context you can find a better replacement to express your meaning, usually reduce or decrease. “Lessen” is just a week verb and it obviously sounds like the much more common “lesson” and hence causes confusion, at least for me.
- “Loosing” is not a word, but many people seem to think it is. Try “losing.”
- “Irregardless” is also not a word, but again, many people seem to think it is. “Regardless” is what they are looking for.
On a happier note, I've finally finished reading all of these “notes” and therefore my work for the journal is nearly done. Now there's that little matter of finding a job still hanging over my head. Ugh.
Posted 03:32 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | 3L
I am the Rule of Lenity
Via Divine Angst via Citations, Which Canon of Statutory Construction Are You?
Big shock there, huh? I'm not sure “soft on crime” is a fair way to put it. How about “more concerned with fairness and due process than illusions of public safety”?
Posted 02:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | crimlaw
