Still in the running towards becoming*

Following a recent job interview comes this letter in the mail:

Dear Mr. Imbroglio,

Thank you for participating in the first step of our interviewing process. We are happy to inform you that you have been recommended for a second interview. Due to our lengthy hiring process, we may not be contacting you for several months (or longer) with regard to scheduling this interview. Thank you in advance for your patience . . . .

So... Great? I guess... They sure know how to make a guy feel special!

* Props to anyone who can tell me the origin of “still in the running towards becoming.” Double props to anyone who uses it as the name for their blog.

Posted 01:04 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack | 3L

So tired of Moveable Type!

This site and others living on the same shared server have been down much more often than usual recently. Last night I got an email from Dreamhost saying that part of the recent problems is that my account has been using about 120 CPU minutes/day—twice what Dreamhost considers acceptable for a user on a shared server. A quick look at the logs shows that something close to 80% of that usage comes from two Moveable Type scripts—the scripts for comments and trackbacks. Thanks to an array of plugins (so many I can hardly keep track of them all), I haven't seen much trouble w/blog spam for a while—almost none of it makes it through to the blog. Unfortunately, just because I don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. Thanks to MT 3.2's new “junk” system (in which comments get “junked” if they're spam, rather than being rejected), the spammers can still flood the system with comments and trackbacks. The filters will make sure I don't see it, but all that spam is still slamming the server.

So what to do? Close comments? Trackbacks are gone already. I've rarely found them very useful so I don't think I'll miss them. Close comments on old entries? Yes, ok, but the tools available for that all seem a little cumbersome for a blog w/1400 entries. Other than changing the name of the comment script on a regular basis (a hassle, at best), I'm just not sure what to do.

There was a time when playing w/all this blog stuff was just fun. When problems like this would arise I saw it as a little excuse to tinker and learn more about these things. But now I'm feeling a little more irritated by this sort of thing. Blogger/blogspot or even Typepad are looking better all the time. Is it time to move to WordPress?

Posted 10:20 AM | Comments (68) | TrackBack | meta-blogging

ABA Accreditation

Dave Hoffman has some interesting comments on Concurring Opinions about the ABA's role in accrediting law schools. The relevant part for me has to do with how law school accreditation interacts with the bar exam and professional discipline as mechanisms to ensure a minimum level of quality in the legal profession. Hoffman writes:

I'm unconvinced by the argument that we need accreditation to protect consumers from bad lawyers. This seems like an expensive way to work a consumer protection regime: why not just make the Bar harder to pass? (Yes, I know that I'm parting ways with Solove. But he is, I think, missing the trade-off problem here. We've three options: regulate law school so that it is hard; rejigger the Bar until it is a real barrier and skills tests, or changes the rules to make malpractice claims cheaper to bring and easier to win. Of the three solutions, making the Bar much harder is the most efficient by a mile. Screening is almost always cheaper than remedial action. Screening by a licensing exam is surely better than micro-managing the content of a legal education. The expensive version of the legal education is a signal to potential employers of diligence and acumen, not (really) proficiency in basic legal skills. )

Hmph. I'd say the expensive version of the legal education is a signal of great personal or family wealth or the foolishness of the law student who took on all the loans required to pay that bill. Diligence? Acumen? I don't see the relationship.

Perhaps Hoffman is correct that the most efficient consumer-protection regime would be to make the bar exam a more rigorous barrier and one that actually tests proficiency in basic legal skills. But even if that's true, how could the exam really do that? And even if it were redesigned, how much protection to consumers really get from the fact that each state has its own exam and that exams are only administered twice a year in each state? Consumer protection is one thing; creating great barriers to geographic mobility for lawyers is something else altogether.

And if consumer protection is really the goal of the ABA (and I'm skeptical that it's as important as they'd like the public to think), why not take all three actions Hoffman proposes? Make law school a greater barrier—not by making it more expensive, but by making it more educational (and thereby more rigorous). I would also shorten it to 1-2 years, as I've said before. Then make the bar exam more of a real assessment of basic legal skills, and make malpractice claims cheaper to bring and easier to win. The last reform would also need to include much less secrecy surrounding lawyer discipline; lawyer's disciplinary record should be free and easily accessible to the entire world.

But who am I kidding? I don't have much hope for serious change in any of the above. In light of that, perhaps the best thing about Hoffman's post is that it led me for the very first time to the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. That's where you'll find all the accreditation standards that ensure we all have to mortgage our futures to get a law degree. The site also has a collection of statistics about law school admissions, basic pre-law advice, and bar admissions information. Did you know that you do not need a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school in order to sit for the bar? I didn't, but that's what this chart (PDF) says. Now that I've almost earned just such an overpriced degree that information isn't very useful to me. I guess it's one of those things to file under “Know before you go...”

Posted 11:55 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack |

What's “must-see” in the mid-Atlantic region?

Hey traveling people, I need your help: What places and things should I visit in the next 5 weeks before I leave this part of the country for good?

See, it looks like we'll be moving at the end of May—where has yet to be decided. Yeah, we decided when to move before we decided where. Sound crazy? That's just how we roll.

But wherever we end up moving, it's going to be pretty far from the D.C. area, which means there's no time like the present to make sure we've done and seen as much of that area as possible. So I ask you: What mid-Atlantic places would you put on your “must-see” list? Things I know I still want to do before I go include:

1. Arlington Cemetery and the Iwo Jima Memorial
2. Baltmore—harbor, aquarium, and what else?
3. Colonial Williamsburg, VA
4. Some beach in Delaware or Maryland maybe (I haven't been to the Atlantic coast once since we moved here!)
5. ??

I'm obviously thinking of things that aren't too far from D.C. -- daytrips, a few hours of driving at most, probably. I was thinking about heading down to the lighthouses in NC but they are 300-400 miles away, which is definitely pushing it. Still, if there are must-see places at such distances from D.C., please let me know about them. We might be able to fit in a short multi-day roadtrip somewhere in there. And if not, at least we'll have a list of things to do some other time when we make it back this way. Thanks!

Posted 08:22 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack | 3L life generally

Another opening in Billings?

It seems the chief public defender in Billings, Montana, has decided to resign as of June 30, 2006. It seems like this can only be a good thing for me, considering that this resignation means there's one less lawyer who will be competing for a position in the PD's office in Billings and that's exactly where I hope to work.

The comments on the article about this are quite interesting. The first, from someone calling him/herself “Former Public Defender,” says that the woman who is resigning, Penny Strong, did not resign but was “forced out.” Someone called “Current Public Defender” responds with high praise for Strong, and a short exchange follows, with “Current” defending public defenders and arguing that it's no surprise that judges and prosecutors didn't like Strong, while variously-named interlocutors (who may all be “Former”) complain about Strong and public defenders generally. Based on this, it sounds like the Billings public defender's office has a lot of work to do in educating the public about its role in the criminal justice system. It also sounds like there's some controversy (possibly fringe) about the Yellowstone County Attorney; exactly what that's all about is unclear.

At any rate, it's all fascinating information for me, so thanks to the kind readers who sent me the link! As I mentioned previously, the Montana Public Defender Commission met this week to decide pay rates and hiring . . . at least I was told that's what they were going to talk about; the agendas are too vague for me to learn much from. Anyway, things are moving a bit in positive directions so my fingers remain crossed.

Oh, I also noticed that the Commission has put its Proposed Public Defender Standards online. I'll be taking a closer look at these soon...

It really is exciting to watch this new public defender system taking shape! And remember, “if it can happen in Montana, it can happen anywhere.”

Posted 12:22 PM | Comments (174) | TrackBack | 3L Montana