Friday Night’s Music Break: Graham Nash’s “Chicago”

Considering the intensity of the political moment and the fact my son’s current U.S. History project is on Bobby Seale, I thought Graham Nash’s “Chicago,” would be the appropriate song for this week’s Friday Night Music Break:

Vernon Jordan on Primus King, true courage, and the long road we’ve traveled

One of the greatest men I have ever known is Vernon Jordan, my former partner in Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP.  Newsweek recently ran an excerpt from Jordan’s new book, Make it Plain.  The excerpt makes as clear as is possible that legal progress requires imagination and, perhaps most of all, sheer courage: 

Primus King was my man.

Born in 1900 in Hatchechubbee, Alabama, the son of sharecroppers, Primus E. King grew up in Columbus, Georgia, where his parents had moved to escape the grinding oppression of the sharecropping system. King was unlettered—like many Southern blacks in those decades for whom the state and local governments made formal schooling an impossibility.

But Primus King well understood the denial of rights blacks endured. His determination to be as independent as possible of the South’s Jim Crow–rigged system of government and social relations showed itself early in his learning the trade of barbering. Later, in 1939, King’s religious faith led him to become an itinerant Sunday preacher, ministering as called by one of the many small black churches that dotted the Black Belt countryside in Georgia and Alabama. It was that faith, he later said, which fortified him for the task he undertook on July 4, 1944.

On that day, Reverend Primus King walked into the Muscogee County Courthouse in Columbus, Georgia, to cast his vote in the state’s Democratic Party primary election. Because the racist Democratic Party monopolized political activity in Georgia as it did throughout the South, the primary determined the outcome of the general election. For that very reason, the state Democratic Party barred blacks from voting in the primary. It was that travesty of democracy that King, quietly supported by the local NAACP, intended to change.

“I am a citizen of this city and this state,” he declared to the white election officials that day. “I own property. I pay taxes. I can read and write and do arithmetic, and I have not committed a crime of moral turpitude. I have come to vote.”

His words got King roughly escorted out of the courthouse by police officers. But King persisted, and with the prearranged help of two local white lawyers, filed a federal suit to outlaw blacks’ exclusion from the Democratic primary.

That brought a warning from party officials, who summoned King before them and bluntly told him that “if you don’t withdraw the lawsuit, you could end up in the Chattahoochie River.”

King, standing alone before the pillars of segregationist power, replied, “Well, if that happens, then at least I’ll be thrown in the river for something, as opposed to all the colored people who’ve been thrown in there for nothing.” And he walked out.

In October 1945, the Federal District Court in Macon, Georgia, ruled in King’s favor, striking down the Georgia white primary. In March 1946, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld that ruling, and the following month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Georgia Democratic Party’s appeal.

The all-white Georgia Democratic primary now officially stood where it belonged—outside the bounds of the Constitution of the United States.

Fred Baron, R.I.P.

I’ve been immensely fortunate during my career to learn from and work wth some extraordinary people.  One of them, Fred Baron, died yesterday.  According to the Dallas News,

Mr. Baron said a 1970 Ralph Nader speech in Austin influenced him to use the law to regulate business conduct in ways the government could not.  In 1977, Mr. Baron founded his Dallas firm, Baron & Associates, which became Baron & Budd, where he later was joined by his wife. Mr. Baron was highly successful litigating for plaintiffs injured by substances including asbestos, pesticides and lead.

Mr. Baron built a lucrative practice and shared his financial success with a host of causes from the arts to the Texas Democratic Trust, which he founded in September 2005.

“The party was literally broke,” Mr. Stanley said. “There was no energy, there were no funds. Fred enabled a structure to be rebuilt to support and elect Democratic candidates in Texas.”

Many credit Mr. Baron’s trust with giving Dallas County Democrats the wherewithal that led to their success in the November 2006 election.

“He contributed not only his money, but his time and his vision,” Mr. Stanley said.

Mr. Baron’s philanthropic efforts weren’t limited to the political arena.

The first floor of the Baron home was devoted to public charity.

“His house was open to any organization that wanted an event there,” Mr. Stanley said. The home was used for fundraisers for all kinds of Dallas religious, cultural and social justice organizations, Mr. Stanley said.

Mr. Baron was especially proud of the Baron & Blue Foundation, which is dedicated to eliminating homelessness and improving low-cost housing in the Dallas area, his wife said.

“I don’t remember … [the Barons] ever saying no to any request,” Mr. Stanley said. “He was just so generous and open.”

One word can make all the difference.

In July, Nebraska passed a version of what has become known as a “safe-haven law,” which allows a parent to surrender an infant without fear of prosecution.  Such laws were adopted by every state over the last decade after numerous reports of babies left to die in trash bins or plastic bags. But only Nebraska’s version, which took effect in July, extended the protection to “children,” meaning up to age 18, rather than specifying a maximum age of a few days or months.

According to today’s New York Times, this choice of language has provoked Nebraska’s governor to call call a special session of the state legislature next month, immediately after the elections, to rewrite the statute.  As the Times reports:

On Tuesday, a 17-year-old boy was left by his mother and stepfather in Lincoln, and a 15-year-old girl was abandoned by her father in Omaha. That brought the number of children left in state hands since Sept. 1 — usually by parents or guardians who said the child was uncontrollable and violent — to 24, including one who was left at a police station rather than a hospital as the law dictates.

“We all hoped this wouldn’t happen,” Mr. Heineman said of the continued drop-offs. “Now circumstances dictate that we act.”

The cost of a special session has been estimated at more than $80,000, and the state’s “citizen-legislators” will have to take time off from their private jobs.

Jurist – the oldest and still greatest legal news site

The page is designed to give our US and worldwide audience a space in which to share their JURIST experiences and their common interest in the legal news and commentary that we offer every day, while giving readers occasional behind-the-scenes peeks at law student staff operations here at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, JURIST’s host institution. After more than a decade of delivering content to hundreds of thousands of largely anonymous readers around the world, our staff is looking forward to seeing the faces and hearing the voices of the ever-growing number of JURIST readers on the Facebook service!

Not only is Jurist one of the Ancient Wise Oracles of the online legal world, it is a moment-to-moment legal media center.  Just to give two examples of particular concern to me:

As I wrote yesterday, Google seemed on the verge of settling the long-running and profound disputes concerning its Google Library Project.  Jurist now reports the settlement is final:

With respect to another profound concern of mine, military torture, Jurist reports that a federal judge has ruled that evidence obtained by torture cannot be admitted in the trial of a Guantanamo detainee:

A US military judge ruled Tuesday that a confession given by Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Mohammed Jawad [DOD materials; JURIST news archive] to Afghan officials following his capture in 2002 was obtained using torture and is therefore inadmissible at his upcoming military commission [JURIST news archive] trial. Army Col. Stephen Henley found that Afghan officials threatened to kill Jawad and his family unless he admitted to throwing a grenade that injured three US soldiers in Kabul in 2002. Henley ruled that obtaining a confession using threat of death amounted to torture, and that under Guantanamo trial rules his confession is therefore inadmissible. Reuters has more.

Jawad, who was transferred into US custody after the confession to the Afghanistan government, was designated an “enemy combatant” in 2004. He was later charged [charge sheet, PDF; JURIST report] with attempted murder and intentionally causing serious bodily injury for his role in the attack, which injured two US soldiers and an Afghan translator. The case against him faces growing problems. Last month, former military commissions chief prosecutor Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld resigned [JURIST report], citing “ethical qualms” with the military commissions’ defense counsel discovery procedures. In May, Jawad moved [JURIST report] to have all charges against him dismissed, alleging that he has been tortured in US custody and subjected to the so-called “frequent-flier program,” in which certain inmates are moved between cells at two to four hour intervals in an attempt to cause physical stress through sleep deprivation. Jawad, the fourth Guantanamo detainee to be formally charged with war crimes under the 2006 Military Commissions Act [text, PDF], is set to face military commission on January 5, 2009.

Settlement imminent in lawsuit against the Google Library Project?

I’ve long been fascinated by the Google Library Project, considering it one of the greatest boons to research since Gutenberg. I’ve written on this blog of my bafflement at its opponents, especially those authors who fear their inclusion within the project. I’ve written elsewhere at the utter misconceptions that govern some views of the project. (I have, however, been called a “dickwad” for pointing out these misconceptions, a characterization unsupported by reference to any law.)

The good news is that, as Open Access News reports, “Andrew Albanese reports in Library Journal, October 10, 2008, that Google and a group of publishers may be close to settling the publishers’ lawsuit against the Google Library Project:

Nearly three years after its initial filing, it appears a settlement may finally be near in publishers’ lawsuit over Google’s controversial program to scan books from library shelves. Although rumors of a settlement have flared up and died down intermittently over the years, sources wishing to remain anonymous this week told the LJ Academic Newswire and Publishers Weekly that talk of a final agreement has indeed heated up, with one publishing insider confirming that a settlement was “imminent,” although no solid time frame was known….

A settlement has long-been expected, as it would avoid what is setting up to be a messy trial. Industry-watchers have predicted the two parties eventually would reach some kind of blanket license agreement, noting that avoiding a court decision involving murky copyright and fair use boundaries is the logical, least risky-and least costly-option for both parties.

From the start, publishers have maintained that the wholesale scanning of copyrighted books from libraries is an unreasonable expansion of fair use, and that Google is creating a valuable asset without compensating rightsholders. Google has countered that its plan, which makes only “snippets” of copyright-protected books viewable online, is fair use, and that publishers, can also “opt out” of having their books scanned….

[T]he AAP suit, filed in October 2005 on behalf of McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, the Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley & Sons, does not seek damages. It seeks an injunction that would essentially declare that Google’s scanning of an entire book still under copyright without permission is infringement. . . .

20 Civil Liberties Laws Every American Should Know

From the Criminal Justice Degrees Guide, 20 Civil Liberties Laws Every American Should Know:

1. Fair Housing Act

2. Racial Profiling Laws

3. Same Sex Marriage Laws

4. Voter I.D. Requirement Laws

5. Americans with Disabilities Act

6. Equal Pay Act of 1963

7. Ledbetter v. Goodyear

8. Oregon Death With Dignity Act

9. Roe v. Wade

10. EC in the ER laws

11. Medical Marijuana Laws

12. Occupational Safety and Health Act

13. Parent-child custody laws

14. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act

15. Detainee Basic Medical Care Act

16. The National Security Act of 1947

17. U.S. Patriot Act

18. Freedom of Information Act

19. Extraordinary Rendition

20. No laws for the terrorist watch list

You should read the entire post — these are mere links to the subjects Kelly Kilpatrick, the author of the post, comments upon with a considerable degree of intelligence.

The most innovative lawyers in the U.K.

From London’s Financial Times comes this year’s list of the ten most innovative U.K. lawyers. “[T]he submissions showed that it is possible to overturn conventional notions of the role of the lawyer. The bold individuals who dreamt up a new scheme, persuaded colleagues of its importance, set it in motion and made a success of it can take ample credit in their achievement.”

Nevertheless, the judges who made the choices “were dismayed to find no women lawyers or members of ethnic minorities. This follows a report last month from The Lawyer magazine that women account for just 14 per cent of partners at the UK’s four leading or ‘magic circle’ firms. One judge commented that law firms claiming the mantle of innovation must surely show a greater commitment to diversity.”

Perhaps that’s why Marc Harding, General Counsel of Barclays, was selected for

leading the charge for the profession to step up to the challenge of diversity, helping the Law Society complete its first draft of a diversity charter. Mr Harding first demanded that his legal suppliers give Barclays diversity statistics in 2006. Not only must the seven key advisers to the bank deliver these statistics, he also demands them from the bank’s 10 specialist legal panels. The legal press have commented that his work in moving diversity up the agenda will have a lasting impact on the client-lawyer relationship.

Another interesting choice was David Gray, Chief Executive of Eversheds:

To demonstrate the importance of openness and accountability, Mr Gray created a mechanism to receive feedback from the firm’s partners. In a courageous move, he kicked off the process at a conference in 2006, where he stood in front of Eversheds partners and invited them to score him on his performance during his live presentation. The partners anonymously scored Mr Gray from 1 to 5 on specific questions via electronic keypads, with the results screened instantly for all to see. Mr Gray says it was “pretty terrifying”, but “I did it because I wanted to bring home to them that accountability had to start at the top”.

Mr Gray invites feedback via an intranet page, asking partners to rate him on communication, strategic decision making, motivational skills and general leadership.

Lawyers who want to be writers.

Eighteen years after Ben Fountain left Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP to begin his life as a fiction writer, he’s a success.  I left Akin Gump twelve years ago.  Does that mean six more years until I make it as a writer?

The Army said get information, and feel free to be creative in doing so.

At 30, Tony Lagouranis was bored and broke. But he was good with languages, wanted to learn Arabic, and figured the Army would teach it to him while he paid down his student debts. Even when he became an interrogator, his superiors assured him the Iraqis he questioned would be cooperative. During the First Gulf War, the Iraqi captives had freely volunteered truthful answers to the questions they’d been asked. But by the time Lagouranis arrived in Iraq, well after the 2003 invasion, things had changed, and his superiors’ instructions had changed as well. They gave him a list of authorized interrogation tactics, which Lagouranis describes as follows:

[I]t was also an open-ended document. It said explicitly that the interrogator needed the freedom to be creative. It said these [techniques -- the use of dogs, dietary manipulation, using sleep deprivation, stress positions and 'environmental manipulation' --] are only suggestions of what you can do. So basically there were no limits.

As The First Post further explains, Lagouranis realized the futility of his “interrogations”:

Lagouranis saw people crippled through prolonged use of the stress positions he forced them to adopt, and driven to the verge of insanity through weeks of sleep deprivation and psychological disorientation. But maybe it was worth it if it produced valuable intelligence in the fight against the insurgency? No, he says. As a method of getting intelligence it was useless. And besides, the aim of interrogations shifted subtly. “A lot of what we ended up doing was trying to gather confessions, not intelligence. I think that the commanders wanted to show that they were doing a good job and were picking up guilty people. But in fact we were just rounding up whoever was on the street. They just wanted us to force people to confess so that they could brief their commanders and say that they had captured all the terrorists.”

Lagouranis quit, managed to get an honourable discharge on the grounds that he suffered from an “adjustment disorder, and is now working as a bouncer in Chicago.

A Legal Guide for Bloggers

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “A Legal Guide for Bloggers”

We mere humans have let the financial geniuses down.

There’s nothing original in my critique of Alan Greenspan’s thinking, but it boggles my mind that a man who has been considered the financial genius of our recent times could engage in reasoning as fallacious as that described in the review of his legacy written on October 8 in the New York Times (emphasis added):

Chairman Alan Greenspan has fiercely objected whenever derivatives have come under scrutiny in Congress or on Wall Street. “What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so,” Mr. Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee in 2003. “We think it would be a mistake” to more deeply regulate the contracts, he added.

Today, with the world caught in an economic tempest that Mr. Greenspan recently described as “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” his faith in derivatives remains unshaken.

The problem is not that the contracts failed, he says. Rather, the people using them got greedy. A lack of integrity spawned the crisis, he argued in a speech a week ago at Georgetown University, intimating that those peddling derivatives were not as reliable as “the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician.”

How can anyone, much less one considered a genius, design systems intended to govern human behavior and fail in doing so to account for inevitable human weaknesses? And how can such purported geniuses persist in the face of overwhelming evidence of their failings as Greenspan has?  Yesterday, he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

I’m no genius, purported or otherwise, but I do remember back in the 80s, as I witnessed from up very close the demise of a financial institution that many believed had created a new market immune to every market’s eventual downward turns. It was then that I realized that at least some of the investment bankers with whom I was dealing were a different species of animal than I. I had the firm belief their visual fields, like the Terminator’s, provided continual digital readouts of relevant financial information about anything and everything they glanced at. Unlike the Terminator’s data streams, however, the digital readouts in the visual fields of the Financial Geniuses provided a continual updating of the price per share of whatever it was they happened to be looking at. Thus, for example, they could glance at the disclosures set forth in a bond offering and instantly calculate the impact those disclosure would have on the issuing company’s price per share. Worse, however, I was convinced they could look at me and instantly read their estimates of my own value. And believe me, that value was, at best, de minimis.

Litigants gone wild

Most legal disputes don’t become lawsuits. Most civil lawsuits (approximately 98%) settle before trial. Why? Once evidence and cooler heads come into play, reason takes over. Thus, most lawsuits that go on at any length, much less to or even beyond trial, arise for one of two reasons: (1) the adversaries each have reasonable grievances and legitimate grounds with which to press them, or (2) at least one of the parties is out of his mind.

An example of the latter type is described by MercuryNews.com and in its own farcical way brings to mind Jarndyce v. Jarndyce:

The case so far has spawned more than 53 court appearances and a stack of documents a foot tall. A judge was forced to withdraw in the middle of a key hearing; the matter has been appealed as high as the California Supreme Court; and the legal drama that just won’t die is still dragging on after three years.

An international identity-theft ring? Gang-related homicides? Some horrible child abduction case?

Not even close.

The case that won’t quit concerns two scratch marks less than 6 inches long on the rear door of a Toyota RAV4. Damage to the electric vehicle: $653.13. Owner and alleged victim: Silicon Valley tech millionaire Steve Kirsch.

Santa Clara County prosecutors say Kirsch’s involvement had nothing to do with why they accused two people in 2005 of felony vandalism – a stiff charge that carries a maximum penalty of three years in state prison and has set off the avalanche of legal maneuvers.

The car was keyed, prosecutors allege, in retaliation against Kirsch, an avid anti-junk-fax crusader who had taken one of the defendants to court for sending multiple unsolicited faxes.

This was more serious than your average vandalism,” said Deputy District Attorney Pinaki Chakravorty, one of several prosecutors involved in the case over the years. “Kirsch’s power, influence and wealth had nothing to do with it. They didn’t get what they wanted in court and they tried to intimidate the person who brought the case.”

Just one teensy glitch in the object lesson for would-be vandals: One of two defendants — Howard Herships — turns out to be a self-styled legal beagle who continues to deluge the courts with motion after motion.

Herships, 64, of San Francisco, said he’s been unfairly charged and vows to fight the case at the county’s Hall of Justice, which he calls the “Hall of Injustice.” The other defendant cut a deal without implicating Herships and had the charge wiped off the books.

“This case is insane,” says Herships. “It was only charged in the first place because Kirsch is very influential in Santa Clara County and probably worth about $200 (million) or $300 million.” . . .

A trial to resolve the matter is set for Dec. 15, but everyone involved with the case that won’t die is resigned to another delay. A judge last year reduced the charge against Herships to a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum of a year in county jail. But he’s more likely to wind up being put on probation — if a jury doesn’t walk Herships. Regardless, Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown, who’s now handling the case, says the county will not drop it as a matter of principle.

If you scam a villain, maybe you’re a hero.

Han van Meegeren is known as the boldest modern forger of Old Masters. In the current issue of the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldal reviews two books about van Meegeren. Among other points, Schjeldal points out that art forgeries are far more expressive of the times in which they are created than of the times of the artists they imitate: “The art historian Max Friedländer . . . said, ‘Forgeries must be served hot,’ and “promulgated a forty-year rule—four decades or so being how long it takes for the modern nuances of a forgery to date themselves as clichés of the period in which they were painted.”

One of the most remarkable things about van Meergeren is that among his customers for forged Vermeers (van Meergeren’s specialty) was Herman Göring. As Schjeldal explains:

This small point is notable because, in time, the fact that van Meegeren had scammed Göring helped him not only to evade charges of collaboration but to become a folk hero. Lopez demonstrates how evidence of the painter’s coziness with the Occupation regime got buried by the single question of whether he had sold Göring a patrimonial cynosure (potentially a capital offense) or a worthless fake. Early in 1947, a newspaper poll found van Meegeren to be the second most popular man in the Netherlands, after the newly elected Prime Minister.

I can’t help but take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite all-time novels, The Recognitions, by William Gaddis. As explained on the Gaddis Annotations website (a project with which I have been lucky enough to have had an insignificant role), Gaddis’s novel can be “summarized” as follows:

In a carefully wrought and densely-woven series of plots involving upwards of fifty characters across three continents, we follow the adventures of Wyatt Gwyon, son of a clergyman who rejects the ministry in favor of the call of the artist. His quest is to make sense of contemporary reality, to find significance and some form of order in the world. Through the pursuit of art he hopes to find truth. His initial “failure” as an artist leads him not to copy but to paint in the style of the past masters, those who had found in their own time and in their own style the kind of order and beauty for which Wyatt is looking. His talent for forgery is exploited by a group of unscrupulous art critics and businessmen who hope to profit by passing his works off as original old masters. As the novel develops, these art forgeries become a profound metaphor for all kinds of other frauds, counterfeits and fakery: the aesthetic, scientific, religious, sexual and personal. Towards the end, Wyatt wrenches something authentic from what Eliot called “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.” The nature of his revelation, however is highly ambiguous and is hedged about by images of madness and hallucination, which disturbs simple distinctions between real and authentic, between faiths and fakes.

ACORN ACORN ACORN ACORN ACORN ACORN ACORN

Registration Fraud? ACORN as the second coming of the Bolsheviks? Think again.

I’ve written already a couple of times about the hysteria being fomented over purported registration fraud purportedly being perpetrated by ACORN.

Here’s more:

The KLF knew bankers were pushers

Lawyers can be creative, and artists can have profound insights into matters legal and financial. An earlier project of mine on copyright and fair use grew out of a work by the KLF, a couple of musicians and artists from the U.K. who are worthy of even greater recognition than that they have received in their native land. Among other things, they wrote The Manual (How to have a Number One the Easy Way), a how-to guide on creating a number one pop hit. While The Manual is a work of brilliance at many levels, I was taken aback again today by the timeliness of one more aspect of the wisdom they impart therein:

Banks are in the business of making money by lending it. The more they lend the more they make. They want us, the punter, to become addicted for life to the false sense of security it gives us. Banks will go to extremes thinking up new and ingenious ways of getting us to borrow money from them. First and foremost they want us to get into property: “Buy a house,” because with your property as security they can always lend you more and more money. If things were to go badly wrong and you weren’t able to keep up the interest payments they can always force you out of house and home and get their money back that way.

Of course, it would be bad for the banks if they were seen to be throwing too many families onto the street or forcing businesses to the wall in order to redeem their loans. They would always prefer to lend more money so as to help pay off the interest on the earlier loans. Banks have spent millions over the past few years trying to destroy the public’s old impression of the bank manager in bowler, brolly and pinstripe, to the approachable and amiable sort of chap who will attempt at all times to say “Yes!”. They have only done this, not because they like being nicer, but to seduce you into coming in and borrowing more money. Remember, when you are going in to see a bank manager you’re going to see a pusher; a pusher dealing in one of the purest, most addictive drugs – money.

Creative law “enforcement” in difficult times

From the Chicago Tribune:

“Approximately 70 foreclosure orders that will not be served are displayed at the Cook County Sheriff’s office on Wednesday.

“At least it was until Wednesday, when Sheriff Tom Dart announced he wouldn’t do it anymore.

“Dart cited the growing number of evictions that involve rent-paying tenants who suddenly learn their building is in foreclosure because the landlord neglected to pay the mortgage. By refusing to do any foreclosure-related evictions, the hope is that banks will change their policies.”

(hat tip to MInor Wisdom)

Good lawyering means never being satisfied with one answer.

At Drinking Song, the blog of an advertising copy writer turned law student, John Johnson has developed a theory that proves to me he’s ahead of the game: “a good lawyer needs to do just as much-if not more-creative thinking as any Madison Avenue soap huckster.”  Even more importantly,

One of the things I learned [as an apprentice copy writer] was: Don’t stop at the first good idea you have. Keep going. Keep asking “what if . . . ” until you have a dozen ideas that might be something. But what you should never do is delude yourself that your first decent idea is enough, because chances are, it’s a fairly obvious one that pretty much anybody could come up with. This, it seems, is the very thing that hobbled my exam performance. And the reason I’m likely, as Al Franken/Stuart Smalley would say, to die homeless, penniless and twenty pounds overweight. I have a tendency to be what we in the law biz call “conclusory.” In other words, once I see a solution, (particularly under the fairly intense time pressure of an exam) I stop thinking about other possibilities. This is bad in advertising, but it can be fatal for a lawyer. In advertising, assuming you operate at fairly high level of conceptual sophistication to begin with, your one good idea might turn out to be the best solution and get you fame and awards and a coterie of nubile co-ed interns. And if not, no harm done; it’s probably still a serviceable solution and it moves the needle* for your brand. But for a lawyer to focus on just that one idea, he’s leaving himself (and his client) vulnerable to the other side by not seeing other ways an issue can be argued or the facts construed, not seeing how the other side can defend against his idea. I’m sure there are other possible permutations of prospective doom, but I’m too tired to think them all through just now.

I always tell my students: one good answer is a good answer.  Two good answers are better.  The more good reasons you have for you’re client being right, the better off your client is.  So if any of my students are reading: don’t be satisfied with the first half-decent answer you come up with.

Friday Night Music Club: Chris Whitley, Living with the Law

Chris Whitely, Living with the Law