April 12, 2006

Jeremy Richey’s Blawg » Useful Book for New Attorneys

http://www.jeremyrichey.com/2006/04/11/useful-book-for-new-attorneys/ To be more precise, it sounds like a good read for lawyers in firms that require billing hours and which provide them an “assistant” and who need to be concerned about building a law practice. Law students who aspire to any of those things might like it fine, too, it sounds like. While this describes a large swath of law students and lawyers, many of us couldn't care less about billing hours, are unlikely to ever have an assistant, and may never really need to build a law practice, per se. In fact, some of us might be sick of hearing about those things, especially when they're discussed as if they were the elemental to the practice of law when they simply are not.

Posted by mowabb at 10:58 PM

March 20, 2006

divine angst: i knew it wouldn't be easy; now I'm sad about it, too

http://divineangst.blawgcoop.com/archives/2006/03/i_knew_it_would.html Don't be sad, K! Give the firms the finger and go do something else! Non-profits and other forms of public interest practice (i.e., gov't work) are much more family friendly -- no billable hours! You might not make a mint, but if satisfaction in your work is important to you, you apparently already understand that a law firm is not the place for you. p.s.: For those who are not subscribed to the NY Times, the article is still available here.

Posted by mowabb at 06:59 AM

March 19, 2006

The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer: Meaningless assurances

http://www.cathygellis.com/mt/archives/000701.html Yeah, I saw this, too, and thought it was totally lame. Maybe that's because I know how effective ethics training for lawyers seems to be. The question isn't really so much whether people in these professions must complete training, it's whether they actually behave ethically. Teaching ethical behavior does not necessarily produce it and I think most people realize that. I wonder how realtors are regulated. What happens if they are caught doing something unethical? Can you find out before you hire a realtor whether he/she has had any ethical complaints or problems in the past? Why don't they talk about that in their ads? And why don't lawyers do the same? of course, I know why -- neither profession is probably proud of what people would discover if they started looking into those records. Still, making these records more public might be one step toward encourging more ethical behavior in these professions.

Posted by mowabb at 11:54 AM

March 04, 2006

Not Guilty: That book is awesome!

http://notguiltynoway.blogspot.com/2006/03/that-book-is-awesome.html It's cool to hear about setting up your own firm -- please continue letting us know how it goes! Also, I wonder if you're aware of My Shingle, a blog by a solo practitioner for solos. I think you're starting up a small firm w/a couple of other people so it might not completely apply, but she does have a cool Guide to Setting Up a Law Practice that might have some good tips in it.

Posted by mowabb at 09:03 AM

February 25, 2006

Screaming Bean - Again, it's over.

http://babybean.blogspot.com/2006/02/and-again-its-over.html Hooray! You did it! Like LvL, I'm looking forward to hearing about your barnburning celebration in a couple of months when you get back that passing score!

Posted by mowabb at 12:06 AM

February 24, 2006

Mother In Law: S.D. House Approves Abortion Ban Bill

http://blawgcoop.com/lawmom/archives/2006/02/sd_house_approv.html So now the government can spy on anyone it chooses AND will soon be able to decide when women give birth. The Handmaid's Tale, anyone? Exactly. I never thought the spying would be allowed to continue but here we are, months after we learned about it, and it continues w/no end in sight. And w/our new High Court we've nearly gotten to the point where even a “regime change” in 2008 won't be able to redraw these boundaries to protect our civil liberties. Handmaid's Tale, indeed.

Posted by mowabb at 06:57 PM

February 22, 2006

Rename Podner - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/02/22/rename-podner/1#c1105527 I'm all for allowing Apple to defend its intellectual property, and its issue with “ipodder” I can understand, but this seems a step too far. How does “podner” infringe in any way on Apple's property? Does Apple now control anything with the word “pod” in it?

Posted by mowabb at 07:26 AM

3L Epiphany: Update to Blog Usurpation

http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/02/update_to_blog_.html#comment-14241928

This solution doesn't seem very workable. Once a judge writes an opinion, the court is basically finished with it. Perhaps a clerk will be charged with putting it on the court's  website or forwarding a copy to a publisher (courts have a duty to make their decisions public in some fashion), but that's it. There will be no "updating the case" later if something changes.

 This is another reason we need a publicly-funded legal research database that collects all of our law into one place that is freely-accessible to all. The public servants that maintain the database could easily keep URLs current. In addition, they could archive a copy of any cited material and incorporate that into their database and cite to that. Then there would be no worries of something like "URL usurpation," etc. In our current environment of for-profit legal research, Wexis (the most common source for case law) is not likely to take on this sort of work any time soon b/c it probably won't increase their bottom line.

Posted by mowabb at 06:56 AM

February 21, 2006

Objective Justice: Banning protests at funerals

http://objectivejustice.blogspot.com/2006/02/banning-protests-at-funerals.html Wow, it's hard to believe you can be so unreserved in your support of this. It seems like a fairly complex issue to me. What if you strongly believe that the way to a more peaceful world is to convince soldiers to put down their weapons and refuse to fight? Where do you reach those people to give them that message? One place might be a soldier's funeral where, presumably, there will be other soldiers and families of soldiers who could influence those who fight. It seems kind of likely that your protest would backfire -- the people at the funeral you protest would probably just get mad at you and refuse to listen to your perspective. Thus, this kind of activity might be politically unwise, but should we really ban it? On public property? And what about other funerals? What if it's not a soldier, but a political leader and all of his/her followers are there? Any sort of demonstration there should also be banned?

Posted by mowabb at 07:29 AM

February 20, 2006

Bad Glacier » But then how come I still use it over Lexis?

http://blawgcoop.com/badglacier/2006/02/06/but-then-how-come-i-still-use-it-over-lexis/ I loathe them both equally. And, in fact, anti-trust and copyright lawsuits have been filed against Wexis (aimed mostly at Westlaw, which is the bigger of the two monsters). They have largely failed. The current state of the law is that Westlaw controls via copyright the page numbers essential to legal citation. This was established by a settlement, if I agree correctly, so it hasn't been finally ruled on by a court. Well, it has been, but the settlement was the latest in the attempts to rein in the legal research duopoly we all enjoy so much today. I'll try to post more about this soon b/c the right of the peeps (you, me, and every American citizen) to their own law is a topic near and dear to my heart.

Posted by mowabb at 10:20 PM

February 17, 2006

tjic.com » Blog Archive » the presupposition behind every lawyer joke

http://tjic.com/blog/2006/02/16/the-presupposition-behind-every-lawyer-joke/ Over the top? Not at all! Hilarious? Absofreakinglutely!

Posted by mowabb at 12:03 AM

February 13, 2006

3L Epiphany: Electronic Footnote

http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/02/electronic_foot.html#comment-13939206 This sounds like a terrific idea. Your uncertainty about what might happen to this blog (and the URL you actually print in the published version of your note) suggests that what's needed here is a sort of permanent repository for these things. Something like SSRN might be able to host electronic footnotes, but it would need to be some established organization that can make the webspace available and guarantee it will be there for years to come. For your own purposes, how long are you really going to want to pay TypePad fees? Maybe it would be better to create a free blog on Blogspot for something like this -- then it could be online for free (to you) for as long as Blogger/Blogspot exists. I don't know if this is the best solution, but it's a thought.

Posted by mowabb at 09:02 PM

February 11, 2006

Jeremy Richey’s Blawg » Fewer Law School Applications

http://www.jeremyrichey.com/2006/02/09/fewer-law-school-applications/ Yeah. Same here -- everyone said “don't go!” So what this means is law students and lawyers are pigheaded idiots who won't listen to good advice. No wonder we are a reviled species.

Posted by mowabb at 07:33 AM

January 28, 2006

Jeremy Richey’s Blawg » Law Student Registration Application

http://www.jeremyrichey.com/2006/01/23/law-student-registration-application/ This is a scam, plain and simple. I know other states do simple things, but it’s ridiculous. At least that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

Posted by mowabb at 01:34 PM

October 24, 2005

Indefensible: Dumping on Africa Again

http://davidfeige.blogspot.com/2005/10/dumping-on-africa-again.html#comments This phenomenon exists in a legal world minature version, too: The clinic I work in has two good-sized offices crammed pretty much floor to cieling with obsolete computer equipment -- CPUs, monitors, keyboards, mice, and more -- that have been “donated” by big firms in the city. Most of these “generous” donations are obsolete and barely-functional crap the day they arrive at the clinic, and then it becomes the clinic's responsibility to figure out how to dispose of the junk. I guess the clinic accepts these donations b/c it usually gets a couple of usable machines out of the deal and it also has learned to salvage certain parts (e.g. network cards) that can be used in other machines or sold on ebay or whatever.

Posted by mowabb at 11:48 AM

June 27, 2005

The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer: Lexis is slow

http://www.cathygellis.com/mt/archives/000425.html Wexis blows. Get your new SCOTUS opinions fresh from the LII. I'm pretty sure they always have the opinions posted before anyone else.

Posted by mowabb at 06:06 PM

May 02, 2005

thisdarkqualm » Cavity Creeps

http://thisdarkqualm.com/index.php?p=173 You are not wrong, but there's probably not a lot you can do other than make yourself such a pain in corporate's ass that they just wipe away that little bill rather than have to deal with you. That might not be possible now that they're talking collections. Now you could wait for the stupid thing to go to collections; once you get a collections notice, you have 30 days to notify the collection agent *in writing* (preferably by certified mail so you can be sure they'll open it) that you dispute the charge; they are legally obligated to investigate and verify the charge and they are not supposed to report it as a bad debt (to credit reporting agencies, or CRAs) during that time. Some collection agents hate this process so much that they just send the debt back to the biller, at which point you would have created a pain for corporate and you could call every day and hassle them patiently until they see things your way. Oh, if you do this, call the collection agent frequently to check on the status of things; if they do send the debt back to the biller, you'll want to call the biller ASAP to try to get them to drop it. You could also take them to small claims court, but um, your time is worth more than that. Another response: Spread bad publicity all over Chambana about the way this business treated you poorly and make sure all of UIUC knows not to get work done there. ;-)

Posted by mowabb at 08:57 AM

April 09, 2005

Woman of the law: Welcome to the Monkey House

http://womanofthelaw.blogspot.com/2005/04/welcome-to-monkey-house.html

How about a BlawgCoop blog for $5/year!? I'd be happy to get you set up w/a test site (using either Wordpress or Movable Type) so you can see if you'd like it. (Movable Type is the software on which Typepad is based.) Categories, images, no more blogger outages, being part of a great little community of happy law-related bloggers, and cheap, too! What could be better?

I'm esp. eager for you to do this b/c I want to read every entry in your “What they don't tell you about PD jobs” category. I bet I'm not the only one....

Posted by mowabb at 02:16 PM

April 03, 2005

Blawg Review - the carnival of the blawgs and law blog reviews by legal bloggers

http://blawgreview.blogspot.com/2005/03/do-you-blawg.html

FYI: I tried to create a complete list of the blogs/bloggers mentioned in the article here. I don't know what you're talking about with all this “which other bloggers should have been mentioned?” stuff. I mean, my blog is mentioned, so it's got to be a great article, right? ;-)

Posted by mowabb at 01:08 PM