Elsewhere
A tour of my “Read First” list in Google Reader:
Stephen Gustitis comments on a post by Dallas lawyer Brian Cuban responding to this post on Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog. I’m not sure whether Brian’s point is really that he doesn’t give a shit (his words) about his clients or that most other lawyers don’t give a shit about their clients. It’s not entirely clear I’m guessing it’s the latter (and that the “I don’t give a shit” of the title is ironic), because he distinguishes between “kick ass” lawyers and “don’t give a shit” lawyers, and writes that the latter aren’t reading legal marketing blogs, which he is plainly doing. Anyway, nice move for Brian, who clearly knows how to “reduce his reputation value”.
Stephen also writes about fee setting. Never compete on price. If I’ve given the lowest bid for a particular job, I’ve screwed up.
APD asks if his home state, Fenwick, will ever get beyond the quick fix for its prison population explosion. All signs point to “no”.
ACDL promises to blog more. You and me both, brother.
Curia Advisari Vult has passed 30 days with no posts, and has been demoted from my “Read First” list. As has Malum in Se. I feel the loss. Criminal Defender is about to be dropped from my “Read First” list for violating the 30-day no-post rule.
Brian Tannebaum shares his view of Ben Kuehne’s money-laundering indictment: “As my friend Milt Hirsch said upon Ben’s indictment: ‘It’s official, it is now a crime to be a criminal-defense lawyer.’” To my prosecutorial readers: don’t be getting any bright ideas, now.
Hunter Biederman brings us criminal-defense lawyer John May’s statement in support of Ben Kuehne. “To target an adversary like Ben Kuehne, who is held in such high regard by the community and whose integrity is unquestioned, sends a message that any lawyer is at risk, even concerning previously unheard of prosecution strategies like those used here.”
Grits for Breakfast is conducting a “mini-campaign” to get two criminal justice-related resolutions passed at Texas precinct conventions on election night. Vote twice!
Under the category of “what the heck was Young Shawn thinking?”, he asked his insurance company if his car would be covered if it were destroyed in a terrorist attack on the Federal Building next to his building in Fort Worth. (Answer: No, terrorism is an “act of God”!) Shawn, you do know that you’re on all sorts of lists now that a good little Republican shouldn’t be on?
MacLitigator describes how to add a “recent documents” stack to your dock in OS X 10.5 (H/T Criminal Defense Law with a Macintosh for the link to MacLitigator).
Ken Lammers (Blogging Since ’73) has a paranoid labrador retriever.
Deliberations, the best jury blog ever, has discovered another good jury blog, Thaddeus Hoffemeister’s Juries. Thaddeus (query: real name or pseudonym?) tells us about a California lawyer who might face disbarment for actions he took as a juror.
David Tarrell sounds the alarm about the slow death of the exclusionary rule.
David Feige (whom I somehow conflated recently with David Tarrell; sorry David) is flying cross-country first class and driving around California in a convertible. Didn’t David used to be One of Us?
AHCL, of course, is writing about Harris County District Attorney politics. God bless her for providing all those scared ADAs a place to vent and praise themselves in comments.
Cool Tools reviews boots. I generally want to try one of everything reviewed on that site, but I’m not so sure about the zip-up combat boots.
Lifehacker has more lifehacking ideas than I can keep up with. That one requires frequent “mark all as read” operations.
Lemon Gloria, a classmate of mine from high school on the other side of the world, is engaged and shopping for cakes. Congratulations, LG!
In other non-law news, 43 Folders brings an introductory post on the best of GTD. If you’re a lawyer and unfamiliar with GTD, read about it.
Back to the law, Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer Randy England writes that Missouri’s proposed new death-to-cop-killers law, which essentially creates a (probably unconstitutional) presumption of deathworthiness for murderers of criminal justice officials, would probably make things easier on cop killers. Question: why aren’t criminal-defense lawyers — at least PDs — included in the list of criminal justice officials whom it is especially wrong to kill?
Philadelphia Criminal Defense Lawyer Mark Jakubik praises the federal government’s hounding of Roger Clemens. In related news, please see Houston media whore, sports fan, and, oh yeah, writ lawyer Brian Wice’s awards for participants in the Clemens hearing.
Simple Justice has posted 64 times since I began writing this post. He riffs on one of Young Shawn’s posts with extremely funny results; he also posts a cite to this Reasonable Doubts post about a judge wearing, beneath the robe, a cocktail dress, fishnet hose, and high heels … which might be a somewhat more appealing image had the judge not been a he. Boston, of course. (Denny Crane.)
Reasonable Doubts joins my “Read First” list this week, as do Juries and Ron’s Insanity, by anonymous Houston lawyer (but not criminal-defense lawyer) Ron.
About The Author
I’ve been ill, but I’m back now.
SCR, welcome back. I’m sorry to hear that you were ill, but glad you’re better.
It is once again cofirmed that attorney’s in general have no sense of humor, especially when ego gets in the way. I suspect your “reputation value” is “self inflated” on a daily basis.…..
It is once again confirmed that attorneys as a group have no sense of humor and certainly not when huge egos get in the way. Not to fret though.… I am sure your “repuation value” is “self-inflated” on a daily basis.….
You put something out there that you thought was funny. It wasn’t — not, at least, to some of the people who don’t know you. Inside jokes can’t really be expected to get a big laugh in the blogosphere. Get over it.
So I didn’t get it. So most people didn’t. Wah wah wah. It’s our fault? Talk about ego! You’re whining about us being “attorney’s” with “no sense of humor”? Sheeeeeiiiiiiiitttt.
Humor is communication. You don’t blame the recipient when he doesn’t get the joke. I’ve been funny once or twice; I’ve even made prosecutors laugh. When my humor falls flat, though, it’s my fault, not my audience’s. So whose ego’s getting in the way? I’ll give you a hint: look at the spoiled little child complaining that only the servants are laughing at his show! Grow up, little boy. Sometimes other people don’t think you’re as funny as you think you are.
You don’t know me, Brian. I know you (only from your writings, granted) as a self-important silver-platter wanker playing lawyer. So why you gotta come ‘cross the tracks to poop in this hardworking poor boy’s yard?
And why, for God’s sake, twice?
If Brian posts something that someone else finds to be unclear and potentially offensive and damaging, that gives him license to make an unwarranted and baseless attack?
I read Brian’s post. I believe I got his point, and frankly think he’s largely correct. But I also see how the post could be easily misconstrued and leave people to conclude that he’s on the bad side, not the good. It could have written much clearer.
And by the way, while a scathing commentary, there was nothing about it the required a sense of humor.
So Brian should feel free to clarify any misunderstandings, recognize that clarity was lost on his end, and address it like a human being. But to come here and attack Mark just marks him as a jerk. Would you like to write about my “self-inflated ego” too, Brian? Apparently, only you get a free pass.
To my last anonymous poster:
You’re welcome to come back when you’ve changed your screen name to something a little more family-friendly. After all, we do it all for the comments, which let us know that other people are reading our stuff!