Remember the Department of Justice’s much-criticized $16 muffin? How does that compare to a $19 joke (and not a very good one at that)? A recent opinion from Judge Posner gives us reason to ask.  The Wall Street Journal Law Blog explains:

Last week, the good folks at Above the Law and How Appealing put us on to an opinion by Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit in which he compared a Houston lawyer to an ostrich.

The money quote: “The ostrich is a noble animal, but not a proper model for an appellate advocate.” To illustrate his point, Posner included an image of one of these noble animals with its head buried in the sand. Below it, he added another photo of a guy in a suit with his head buried in the sand[.]

The Law Blog shows a picture of “guy in a suit,” but I’m not going to show it here. Why? Because I don’t want to pay the royalty fees, as the suited man picture is apparently a stock photo. So that means one of two things: either Posner is a copyright pirate (unlikely) or he went out and bought the right to use the picture just to make the joke. Assuming he doesn’t have a Shutterstock membership, that means he plopped down $19 for the pic.  Interestingly, however, Posner may have thrust the picture into the public domain by using it in his opinion, as judicial opinions themselves are uncopyrightable and exist in the public domain.

Regardless, I continue to insist that Posner’s best use of a picture in an opinion is (and forever will be) this one [see footnote]. If he paid money for that one, I forgive him.

-Michael

But it’s an interesting thought experiment, isn’t it? If we were to find ourselves with a glut of unemployed lawyers (hypothetically, of course), what could we use them for? Perhaps:

• Janitorial services: Lawyers are comfortable cleaning up the messes of others;
• Librarians: Lawyers are at home amongst large collections of books;
• Bloggers: Lawyers are skilled at writing rambly (often incoherent) pieces of writing read by few; or
• Telemarketers: Lawyers love to talk.

Any other professions that could use the services of reformed attorneys?

-Michael

Unrelated note: Newt has an interest in international law! As part of his “Day One” plan, Newt emphasizes that “[e]ach sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own Capital.”  Ummm … interesting.

A Richmond criminal attorney, Horace Hunter, ran (and continues to run) a blog. He wrote about things he knew: the law, the news, and, perhaps misguidedly, his own cases. The Virginia State Bar evidently didn’t care for Hunter’s writing, smacking him with a formal misconduct charge premised on his website. Among other things, they faulted Hunter for failing to include a disclaimer when he talked about prior cases. (Virginia felt he should include the ordinary stuff along the lines of, “Prior results do not guarantee future success.”) Today, the misconduct charge was upheld, evidently finding that the blog was indeed meant to market the firm and therefore amounted to advertising.

Some people are going to take this case and extrapolate big things from it. The bar is going to come after lawyers who blog! It’s the end of social media for lawyers! Delete all the blogs! But I think we needn’t panic yet. The ruling only covers blogs wherein an attorney talks about his own cases, which realistically can raise a number of issues even absent the VSB’s ruling. (Client confidences, anyone?) And Virginia’s disclaimer rule only seems to reach those “prior case” posts, so everyone else should be ok.

Still, I think this case provides another reminder that lawyers should think carefully before jumping into the social media frenzy. It seems a lot of lawyers–especially lawyers my age–think social media is the gravy train to success. Mr. Hunter’s unfortunate case reminds us that some caution might be in order before hopping on.

-Michael

Judge Richard Posner, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, commenting on judges

Text: Expert Tetris Player wanted for 30 minutes — $10

-Michael

Apparently, the rationale in a guy’s mind is that if some jerkhat client is going to make him sit around waiting for turned documents at 9 p.m. when he could otherwise have been sitting at home watching The Little Chocolatiers, the client would have to pay, and pay DEARLY for it. Punishing a client by padding hours is one form of “revenge,” but the other and ostensibly more common variety is to charge the client $30 – the absolute limit – for dinner every night. And so begins the “spiteful” $30 sushi orders, the seven extra Snapples, and the gratuitous bags of jelly beans “for later.” It all adds up to a half-assed Biggest Loser audition tape and a form rejection letter in the mail saying that you’re fat but didn’t have a compelling story.

Hmmm . . . an interesting theory.   But my chub rub doesn’t come from getting back at the clients, because I’ve never actually charged a single dinner to my firm.

ATL’s Elie Mystal, a fellow prince of pudge, provides another explanation:

Was my aging metabolism just catching up with me?

No. I think it was the infinite sadness. I believe that happy people naturally get more exercise than sad people. You say “it’s a nice day, I think I’ll walk to work.” You say, “sure buddy, going to Chelsea Piers sounds like great fun.” You just do more things when you are in a good mood. And you eat less. When you are in a bad mood, you kind of sit there, angry, and waiting for the opportunity to go home and sleep. At the firm my lifestyle was wake up and sit down, travel in a moving chair to my office where I’d sit. Sit all day until it was time to call for another moving chair which would take me to my door. Go to my bedroom and sit for a bit, then eventually pass out. Shoveling food and drink into my mouth at every opportunity. It’s no way to live, and it puts on a lot of weight.

Ah ha!  Now that sounds more like my lifestyle.  The strange thing about law practice is how draining it can be; the often frustrating work, the boredom, the stress, and the time suck all congeal into one very blob-like associate.  In law school, I found working out was a great release for my frustrations.  After joining a firm, that work out time is just less time in my wonderful, comfy bed. When I’m awake and upright, I’m often sitting at a table at a mid-scale* restaurant.  My colleagues often come to me for restaurant recommendations, suggesting I either (a) have good taste or (b) have “restaurant butt.”  (Oddly, the Zagat guy once worked my firm.)

So what’s a young guy to do?  Unfortunately, ATL offers lots of snark but no easy answers.  Many of the commenters suggest the only way to smaller pants is a job at a smaller firm.  Maybe I could buy myself a treadmill desk?

Whatever.  I’m going to go have some cake.

-Michael

*I say mid-scale because they’re not quite upscale.  I do have law school loans, after all.

I’ve been encouraged by the number of folks (liberal and conservative) who have come to the defense of these lawyers.   Sadly, however, there are still those who essentially argue that the lawyers are guilty of treason.  Take, for example, the views of Andrew McCarthy, a National Review editor (of course) and former federal prosecutor:

Here is the legal profession’s message for the American people: “We’re just more important than you are.” Members of any other profession or institution would be indicted for coming to the enemy’s aid during wartime. Lawyers not only demand immunity from the ordinary duties of citizenship, but they insist that you admire them, or, at the very least, regard them as above criticism for volunteering their services to those trying to kill Americans.

McCarthy contends that enemy combatants have no right to a lawyer — so pro bono lawyers are essentially going out of their way to provide comfort that is not required by the Constitution.  But even assuming McCarthy’s premise is correct, when did the Constitution become the limit to human compassion?  And why is the aid given by lawyers any different than the “aid” given by chaplains, nurses, cooks, and other “care” providers at Gitmo?

McCarthy tries to distinguish this aid by arguing lawyers “assist[] the enemy in lawsuits against the American people during wartime.”  That necessarily assumes that long-term internment with no defensible legal justification is in the “American people’s” interest.   We need defense of enemy combatants for the same reasons that we need defense of the more common criminal — that defense is the only obvious way to restrain an overly aggressive government.

Even some defenders of the “Al Qaeda 7″ seem to ignore that such a check is necessary in every circumstance.  Stephen Gillers of NYU Law tries to distinguish what he perceives as acceptable forms of lawyer representation (e.g., representing detainees) from unacceptable representation:

I would criticize a law firm that chose to work for South Africa during apartheid and helped the regime stay in power. And I would criticize a lawyer who helped a drug company export to an impoverished nation products banned as unsafe in the United States.

But doesn’t the drug company need a defense, too?  Lacking that defense, how do the facts of its malfeasance get challenged, tested, and then publicized?  As an empirical-ist, I believe that something can only be true when it is tested and challenged (through experimentation or trial).  Without the opposing view (drug company good), we can never test the view held by Gillers (drug company bad).   The same is true in the terrorist context, as noted by one astute commenter at the NY Times:

I want accused terrorists and accused war criminals to have attorneys. How else will I be sure (at least more sure) that the true culprits have been apprehended and the government is not railroading someone while they try to hide the evidence of the truly guilty.

It would be nice if we could assume infallibility in our government, and trust that the right people are in Gitmo.  If we had that, I might agree that there is no requirement for lawyers.   Lacking that infallibility, we need the crucible of a counsel-based system.

-Michael

Update: The always awesome Orin Kerr agrees.

The complete chainmail lawyer collection.

It’s all about the Abrahams. This lightweight, durable wallet comes complete with card holders and notepad. Try using the chainmail pen below to write in it.

This dragonscale tie is not just fashionable — made of steel and copper, and coming in at a total weight of 1.2 pounds, the tie easily doubles as a short range weapon, ideal for repelling any nun-chuck wielding ninjas that may attack a courtroom in the midst of oral arguments.

Guarding the pocketbook is a timeless concern. With this European style chainmail covered checkbook, your negotiable instruments are safe from stray bullets and/or meat cleaver strikes. Plus, in a pinch, when unfolded, this checkbook doubles as a 8″ x 7″ chainmail shield and/or bludgeon.

What corporate warrior would be complete without a set of business cards?

Not having any colored rings, my initial plan was to either use a sharpie on or paint individual rings and build the writing into the weave itself. I was deeply annoyed to discover how bloody hard it is to color aluminum rings yourself — the sharpy ink rubs off immediately, and if you paint it with enough coats for it to not be rubbed off, the rings become too warped for a snug weave like this business card uses.

My annoyance later evaporated, however, and I became deeply grateful for how easy paint comes off of chainmail, when I made an extremely unsuccessful attempt to paint “ViewfromLL2.com” on the card. And it turned into a gigantic painty mess. So I doused it in hot water, cleaned it up, and went with a simple “LL2″ written on it instead.

Finally, there are few things more precious to a lawyer than their blackberry. How else will they know at 11pm if an unhappy partner needs them to come back to the office immediately? Plus it is only one eighth as lame as all those other cellphone holsters on the market, so if you must advertise the fact you are a complete tool by carrying your phone about on your belt, at least switch to a chainmail pouch.

Here you can see the blogyer (blogger/wannabe-lawyer) in her native habitat — the desk where she applies to jobs from. With her sturdy lawyer armor, she can battle against any judge or tortfeasor that dares to get in her way.

Although lawyer chainmail armor is intended to intimidate legal opponents, as demonstrated by this photo and the previous one, it does carry the risk that you could be mistaken for a waitress who does not know how to center her tie, or else a parking enforcement officer that you really do not want to mess with.

Next: And for more chainmail, check out Chainmail for the Medieval Kitten.

-Susan

Chainmail Stats
I only started chainmailing a few weeks ago, so most of the items in this post were learning experiments that I did to get a feel for how some of the basic weaves work. I’m happy with the way some of the projects turned out, but pretty much all of them have some major issues that I’ll now know not to do again. So I wouldn’t really recommend making anything the way I made it. However, in case anyone else out there is interested in chainmail and curious about how these things were done, I included the descriptions below.

Wallet: Body is 14g, 7/16″, aluminum rings, done in King’s Mail 9-in-1 with a twist. To make it stiff, I skewered each column with kabob sticks, except for the columns on either side of the spine. The internal chain used to hold in the cards is a jens pind chain made of 16g, 3/16″, copper rings. The outer stripe for decoration/clasp holder is made of bronze rings, 18g, not sure of the ID, done into a half persian 3-in-1 chain.

BlackBerry pouch: 16g, 1/4″, galvanized steel body topped with copper rings of the same size. European 4-in-1 weave, with a very poorly constructed bottom. And okay, fine, it was actually intended to be a dice bag, not a blackberry pouch, but by pure chance it fit my phone perfectly.

Tie: The main part of the tie is dragonscale, done with 16g, 3/8″, galvanized steel for the large rings, and 16g, 1/4″, copper for the smaller. I would not recommend trying this — done with the same metal for both scales, it is very tidy looking, but done with the copper, the pieces don’t quite fit together right, so the rings do not overlock into each other as smoothly. Still has a nice scaling effect, though. The knot of the tie is made of two half persian 3-in-1 sheets, one right handed and one left handed, and joined in the middle. [Close up on the knot available here.] The neck of the tie is kind of shoddily put together, just European 4-in-1, but you can’t really see it when it’s on, so I didn’t want to put any more time in it.

If I were to do it again, I would definitely change how I hooked up the tie to the knot. The way I did it causes the whole thing to buckle weirdly when worn as a tie, so I used a few rings to jury rig it into staying down. So it works now, but it’s not as clean as I’d like it to be.

Also I would have made sure I had large copper rings left over to use in the knot so it wouldn’t be a different color from the rest of the tie.

Checkbook: The checkbook is just one sheet of 16g, 5/16″, aluminum rings, woven into European 6-in-1. The kabob skewers used in the wallet were originally used to jabs holes in the check book. My original plan of weaving the entire sheet into the checkbook faltered when I discovered I was incapable of making rows of holes even enough to build the weave into. So I opted just to link in about eight rings, and it works well enough.

Pen: Not too happy with how the pen turned out, and I would most definitely find a new way to do it next time around. I was trying to give it a “pencil” look with the tapered copper end, but it ended up looking like test tube beaker. It was also the biggest pain in the ass to make of all of these items; closing the silver tube and getting the top to clasp the copper point took forever.

The silver part is 16g, 5/16″, aluminum rings. Weave is a twisted King’s Mail 9-in-1 done into inverted round. The point is 18g 9/64″, copper rings, made into European 4-in-1 inverted round,  topped with two rows of 20g 1/8 copper rings to give it a very tiny opening.

Business card: 18g, 5/32″, aluminum, European 4-in-1. This one will be tried again when I get my hands on some anodized colored rings, and can try weaving the writing onto the card itself.

He is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme involving investments in legal settlements. Investors were asked to make an upfront payment, supposedly to a lawsuit plaintiff expected a series of payments over a period of months or years. Later, the investors were told, they would get back the full settlement amount. “But it was all a scam,” according to the Miami Herald. “Federal prosecutors said there were no plaintiffs, no defendants, no lawsuits.”

To get a sense of what a weirdo this guy is, check out this video tour of his office.

-Michael

P.S. What’s with all the Ponzi schemes lately?

This story could turn out to be one of the most bizarre of the increasingly frequent law firm dissolution stories lately.

-Michael