f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

What do you get when a controversial, tort-reforming, conservative member of the legal establishment files a One Million Dollar personal injury lawsuit? You get a lot of what is the best and the worst about the world of weblogging — first come both kneejerk attacks and blindly loyal rebuttals (mostly in Comment sections, from anonymous and angry ideologues, reacting to blurbs done without much reading or reflection), but eventually the adults take over and produce thoughtful responses on the law (substantive and procedural), the policy and ethics of the situation. This is how Eric Turkewitz of the New York Personal Injury Law Blog describes the less than edifying portion of the response to Judge Robert H. Bork’s complaint against the Yale Club:

“Due to his prior advocacy for tort reform, he has been lampooned, mocked and otherwise pilloried for having engaged in excessive claims over what appears to be a routine trip-and-fall action at the Yale Club.”

The case is Bork v. Yale Club, 07-cv-4826, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The WSJ Law Blog has posted the complaint, and has a discussion on June 7, 2007, which explains that the now 80-year-old Bork “was at the Yale Club last June to speak at an event sponsored by The New Criterion, a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life. According to the suit filed in federal court in Manhattan, the club failed to provide steps and a handrail to climb onto the dais. Bork fell backward as he was attempting to climb the dais, striking his leg on the stage and his head on a heat register, the suit says” — resulting in severe injuries that required lengthy rehab. Learn more about it in Turkewitz’s earlier post “Robert Bork Brings Trip/Fall Suit for Over $1M, Plus Punitive Damages And Legal Fees,” which links to many other web sources (and see Overlawyered.com and LegalBlog Watch; plus the updated account from Bloomberg News).

Bork, is of course, the namesake of the verb “to bork,” due to the rejection by the U.S. Senate in 1987 of his nomination by Pres. Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. (see The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Ed.) As explained at Worthless Word of the Day, bork is “[an eponym from Judge Robert Bork] U.S. political slang to defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usu. with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way.”

Today’s post at NY Personal Injury Law Blog eschews “mockery or political criticism” and instead asks what Bork should do next, “given the error-riddled Complaint that has contributed to the scorn.” (“What Should Bork Do Now?,” June 11, 2007) Eric makes many good points, including the dropping of the silly punitive damages claim, and the reminer that “The New York State Trial Lawyers Association has over 4,500 lawyers. Hire someone that knows what they are doing with this area of law, not a white collar criminal defense or securities lawyer that can’t draft a simple trip and fall complaint. And remember also that you don’t need a BigLaw ‘litigator’ that probably hasn’t tried a case in years. And you do need someone that knows how to move a case efficiently.”

Prof. Yabut also wants to remind Judge Bork — since the NYS Trial Lawyers almost certainly won’t tell him — to brush up on the Injured Consumers’ Bill of Rights for Contingency Fees (you can negotiate and needn’t accept the local standard contingency percentage), and to check out prior posts here at f/k/a, such as this and that.

Meanwhile, you’ll find a series of posts about the Bork lawsuit by several of the contributors at the Volokh Conspiracy. In Bork and the Barbary Pirates, David Bernstein has some choice quotes from Bork in 1995, when he attacked “Our expensive, capricious and unpredictable civil justice systems.” Berstein concludes:

“I don’t think that someone with such views is in any way barred morally or otherwise from using the tort system to redress an injury, but as a prominent attorney himself, Bork could instruct his attorneys not to assert ‘far-fetched legal theories’ (e.g., punitive damages for a routine negligence case), or to request a ‘lottery-like windfall’ (over $1 million in damages).

Bernstein’s co-Conspirator Ilya Somin then looks at The Ethics of Benefiting From Policies that You Oppose, with the “The bottom line: Not all people who benefit from policies they oppose are inconsistent or hypocritical. It depends on the policy in question, and on the reasons for their opposition to it.” Prof. Eugene Volokh also weighs in on the apparent weakness of some of Judge Bork’s claims. Along with the VC posts, you will find both thoughtful and sadly inane comments from the peanut gallery.

The haiku fan in me can’t help but note that Robert H. Bork’s middle initial stands for Heron. That’s not a word that I have often seen as a name — at least not for a person, as opposed to a distinguished haiku journal. It would be interesting if, in addition to our shared interest in antitrust law, Judge Bork’s name led him to appreciate haiku and senryu. Mention of haiku reminds me that I had originally intended to make this a quick posting today. My plan was to tell you that summer “officially” started for me on Saturday evening, when the season’s first swarm of mosquitos found me on my front porch and chased me (and my copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion) indoors. Then, I would merely type up a batch of mosquito-related poems, post them, and get back to some serious horizontal punditry. Judge Bork’s travails soaked up a lot of very good naptime this afternoon, but I’m not yet cranky enough to deprive my readers of their haikai [nor to forget to point you to Blawg Revew #112 at Justia]. Without further borkification, I beg you to enjoy some pesky offerings from f/k/a‘s Honored Guest Poets:

porch dinner
a mosquito feasts
on my date

……. by Yu Chang – Upstate Dim Sum (2001/II)

getting drunk
on my arm
the tavern mosquitos

backyard moon
mosquitos
rush the poem

……. by David G. Lanoue – from Haiku Guy

Mosquito netting
rises and falls —
the clarity of dusk

…….. by Rebecca Lilly – Mainichi News (Aug. 2006)

short flight
hungry mosquitos
front porch and back

hand-in-hand
until
the mosquito mugging

…………………………….. by dagosan

see the related haiga first posted at MagnaPoets: Japanese Form (May 24, 2007)

photo: Arthur Giacalone

I entrust my home
for the night
to mosquito-eating bats

curling to sleep–
in the mosquito-netted window
a sickle moon

……….. by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

dozing off–
the soft drone
of mosquito flutter

…………………….. by jim kacian from Chincoteague (Red Moon Press, 2000)

  Apologies. Mea culpa. My bad. If you took my advice two days ago and clicked on the link to NOBC-APRL’s Final Report of the Joint Committee on Aging Lawyers (May 2007), you may be cursing me for wasting your time or creating undue expectations. I must regretfully plead guilty. Having now read the entire body of the Report, I’ve concluded there is not much there for anyone wanting useful guidance on how the legal profession and its ethics system should deal with age-related lawyer impairment [which we first discussed in the massive posting “The Graying Bar: Let’s Not Forget the Ethics,” in March 2007, and continued in “No Senior Discount at the Senior Bar,” in the July-August 2007 “graying lawyers” edition of The Complete Lawyer] . You really won’t find a lot of substance in the Report beyond the outline given in the accompanying press release (“National Committee Urges More Action on Senior Lawyer Issues,” May 31, 2007).

The Good News: The two national lawyer organizations most directly interested in legal ethics and professional responsibility — the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC, which focuses on the prosecution of ethical violations by lawyers) and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL, which focuses on the defense of lawyer grievance charges) — were concerned enough about the “potentially serious impact of increased numbers of aging lawyers who remain in the active practice of law” to appoint a joint committee, in August 2005, “to study the challenges raised by aging lawyers and propose solutions and best practices for attorney grievance committees, bar associations, courts and the Bar.” With that ambitious mandate, the Joint Committee then worked for nearly two years to produce the proposals and Final Report. That’s the Good News.

The Bad News: Although “intended to be a helpful resource and guide to best practices which may be tailored to individual jurisdictional needs,” the Final Report on Aging Lawyers contains nothing more than a list of “advice sound bites” on the very general tasks that need to be done to protect the public from and preserve the dignity of age-impaired lawyers. There is no guidance on how to accomplish those tasks, and not a hint — despite promising us “best practices” recommendations — about who has existing expertise or how it is being utilized. Instead, the bulk of the Report (and the entire 60 pages of Appendices) is aimed at a “related concern” that the Report admits “is not limited to senior lawyers” — the sudden incapacity or death of a lawyer who has not made adequate preparation for the continued representation or protection of clients.

Even with ironic grading, the Final Report on Aging Lawyers (which would have been a letdown even as a Preliminary Report) doesn’t deserve more than a D grade. If I were an advisor for a term paper or supervising attorney reviewing an Advice Letter, I would send it back and insist that some meat be put on the skeletal proposals — which are quite obvious, and surely could have been written after a brief brainstorming session by such a distinguished Committee. Here are some of the reasons it is so disappointing for any one interested in the legal profession’s dealing with age-related impairment in lawyers:

Although 85-pages in length, the “Final Report” contains fewer than a dozen pages actually addressing age-impairment, and many of those pages are outlining the general issue, and the demographics behind delayed retirement and a graying bar. Instead, treatment of the valuable (but far from new) idea of having a designated successor lawyer and preparing for sudden incapacity, and the smiley-face tasks of patting older lawyers on the back for their contributions, suggesting nifty new titles and discounts for them, and discussing programs for unimpaired, still-competent lawyers, crowd out the urgent task that required creation of the Joint Committee.

The so-called Best Practices proposals are the most anemic I have ever seen. My idea of a Best Practices report includes the notion that either 1) a survey is made of current relevant programs and practices, with the most effective or exemplary ones being described in some detail; or 2) if such programs do not already exist, or additional solutions are generated, detailed recommendations are made on how to achieve the desired results — often, with appendices chock-filled with the best thinking of committee members, with practical suggestions, and suggested wording for protocols and rules. Instead, in this Final Report we get one-and two sentence directives and appendices focused on the sideline issue of successor attorneys (using pre-existing documents that could have been readily accessed with a hyperlink).

[Whoops — After hours spent writing a lengthy discussion of the Report’s recommendations and its failure to provide practical guidance or mention important facts and problems (for instance, the differences between Lawyer Assistance Programs dealing with substance abuse impairment and undertaking age-related impairment duties), I have just lost the bulk of this posting, while attempting to publish it. I apologize for the inconvenience (and any similarities to the unfinished work of the Joint Committee on Aging Lawyers), but I’m not able to reconstruct this piece today. As mentioned above, check out the press release issued by NOBC for a list of recommendations on age-related impairment in the Aging Lawyers report. There’s nothing additional in the Report that will assist you in getting from the stated recommendation to its actual accomplishment.]

plum blossom scent–
a hazy memory
of my nanny’s house

with the old pine
the two of us…
forgetting the year

cuckoo
what did you forget?
retracing steps

comparing my wrinkles
with the pickled plums…
first winter rain

tired of walking
my wrinkled arm
the flea jumps

……………………….. by Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

p.s. I knew the Aging Lawyers Report was going to get off track, when I read the very first footnote. Footnote 1 accompanies a sentence that deals with the bar, courts and disciplinary agencies addressing “what is likely to be a significant challenge for the legal profession in the next decade.” It states:

1] Many bar leaders are actively engaged in meeting this challenge head-on. For example, ABA President Karen J. Mathis initiated the highly-successful “Second Season of Service.” This month’s issue of Your ABA, an on-line ABA publication, reports on just some of the accomplishments of the “Second Season of Service” initiative.”

Second Season may be a fine organization, helping many older lawyers find post-retirement pro bono opportunities. But, it deals with still-competent, unimpaired lawyers, not impaired lawyers who remain in active practice.

   In yesterday’s New York Times article “Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist” (May 20, 2007), Charles Duhigg tells the shameful tale of how “Large companies are selling vast databases of personal information to thieves, despite evidence their services are used for fraud.”  More often than not, the fraud is aimed at the elderly, who tend to be easy to find (at home), too-trusting, lonely enough to actuall enjoy chatting with telemarketers, and a little bit too desirous of striking it rich.   The NYT article deserves a full perusal.  You’ll learn how information brokers like infoUSA make millions of dollars selling information about people like you and me to shady characters seeking lists of victims.  Indeed:

“Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.”

In case you think the information-sellers don’t know how the information is being used, consider this paragraph from the article:

 InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

You can get helpful information for yourself or your beloved elders about telemarketing fraud and scams and what to do about it at the Federal Trade Commission website and the Federal Consumer Information Center’s Consumer Action Website. (The FTC seems to lump anyone over 55 into the “older American” category that is particularly vulnerable to telemarketing fraud!) Here are a couple of places to look:

1. FTC brochures on Telemarketing and Telephone Sales
2. Consumer Action’s General Tips, discussion of existing federal Rules, and info on Vishing — using fraudulent phone calls to coax information that can be used to access your banking accounts and steal your identity.
3. Putting Telephone Scams — On Hold, from the FTC tells you what to look for, how the elderly are victimized, how they hook you (travel prizes, lotteries, charities, fund transfer, and more), what to do about it and more.

park bench   
an old man slips deeper
into his dream

morning mist
a bent back sweeps
yesterday’s blossoms

 

picking strawberries
grandma’s rolled up sleeves reveal
pale tattooed numbers

 …………………………………… by Roberta Beary 
“park bench” – Hermitage 2006
“morning mist” Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival 2006
“picking strawberries” – Commended, Basho 300th Anniv. Intern’l Haiku Contest (1994); HIA (1996)

old passport
the tug
of my father’s smile

early bird special
rubbing elbows
with a stranger

 

around and around
learning the names
of one way streets

………………………………….. by Yu Chang 
“old passport” – Upstate Dim Sum (2001/II); The Loose Thread: RMA 2001
“early bird special” – Upstate Dim Sum (2004/II)
“around and around”  Upstate Dim Sum (2001/II)

early Alzheimer’s
she says she’ll have . . .
the usual

….  by John Stevenson – Quiet Enough (2004)

    p.s. I like the quote from Sgt. Yves Leblanc of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: “Only one kind of customer wants to buy lists of seniors interested in lotteries and sweepstakes: criminals.”   Sgt. Leblanc reminds me to wish a Happy Victoria Day to all my good haijin friends in Canada.  If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d find a few fireworks haiku to help you celebrate (click here for a few).  Here’s one from Torontonian George Swede:

long after

the fireworks

        a shooting star

   George Swede from Almost Unseen

 

      The article “The Future’s Bright…but Not For Lawyers and Accountants,” from the May 9th edition of London’s Daily Telegraph, has some law webloggers worrying about the outsourcing of legal jobs to low-cost countries.  Justin Patten of Human Law Mediation predicts “Long term some lawyers face the destruction of their jobs” (May 8, 2007) and Carolyn Elefant at LegalBlogWatch asks “Which Law Jobs Are Vulnerable in an Electronic Age?” (May 15, 2007).  In a rather superficial article, the Telegraph notes:

   “Lawyers involved in family disputes, and criminal lawyers – they’ve got to stay around. But lawyers that write contracts, and lots of accountants, maybe that kind of education is not such a fabulous idea.”  

Patten observes: “Soft skills will come more to the fore. Welcome to the era of the cuddly lawyer. If everything is being automated you have to distinguish yourself somehow from the competition.”  I hope someone comes up with a far better notion than being “cuddly” as a way to differentiate one lawyer from another.  Most clients would prefer a lawyer to be efficient and reasonably-priced rather than touchy-feely.  

 Note: It is a little strange that “lawyers involved in family disputes” are singled out as being safe from the effects of outsourcing and digital communication.  In this country, as many as 70% of parties to family and domestic relations cases have no lawyer.  Courts across the nation are working to accomodate that reality with Self-Help Centers and pro-se-friendly procedures and forms.  Lawyers should, too.  Go here to find links to divorce and family-law self-help materials.

       We’ve been talking about outsourcing at this weblog since the days of ethicalEsq – -see “Corporate Outsourcing May Bring Trickle-Down Competition and Options in Legal Services” (Dec. 9, 2003); also this post and follow-ups.  I believe, however, that the biggest threat to lawyer livelihood is the growing realization by more and more average citizens (not to mention corporate giants like Cisco) that they can competently handle a very large portion of their legal needs with little or no assitance from lawyers, thanks to a great extent to advances in computer/digital technology.  As I said on the About page at shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress:

By combining the existence of a literate public with the power of computer technology, with a judiciary that understands that our court system exists for the public (rather than for judges or the bar), and with lawyers willing and able to “unbundle” their services and perform discrete tasks for clients who want to handle their own legal matters, we can now make it possible for self-help to be a viable option for solving most of the legal problems of most Americans.   Of course, those who want to hire a lawyer, or who have issues that can only be adequately handled by a professional trained in the law, should be able to find reasonably-priced, competent legal assistance. 

Far more than adjusting to a loss of business to outsourcing, the legal profession should be ready to downsize, and to greatly streamline services and reduce fees, in response to the following trends:

1. Unbundling (Limited Scope Representation), in which the lawyer and client agree that only a limited number of services will be provided by the lawyer in a particular matter, is allowing consumers to keep better control of their cases and their costs. California and a few other states already allow unbundlng in all civil matters. See this shlep posting for more information.   
2.   Automated Document Creation – intelligent software that uses an interview with the consumer as the basis for creating a sophisticated legal document or pleading — will allow many average Americans to resolve legal problems without using lawyers.  See this discussion at shlep of the National Public ADO (Automated Documents Online, or NPADO); and this shlep description of LegalZoom and similar online for-profit services.
3. Improved and Expanded Self-Help Centers in Courthouses: Across the nation, judiciary systems (and legislatures) are adjusting to the necessity or desire (and the right!) of individuals to appear in court and participate as parties without a lawyer.  At the National Center for State Courts, you can use their Self-Help/Information Resources and Centers webpage to find out the kinds of services available in your state.  You can find much more at the shlep website.

     As I said here, when local politicians become smart enough to see the need for more and better courthouse centers to help the unrepresented litigant, and when they are savvy enough to know that such support can have political advantages, we will see much more being done around the country to give the public the kind of accessible court system that they deserve.  Consumers and their advocates need to take this message to their legislators.  It is a win-win issue for the public and political leaders who join the cause.  It will, however, mean that lawyers will have to make major adjustments in how or whether they offer related services.   Let’s hope the legal profession does not respond by attempting to stifle innovation and competition (see guide or guild?), but let’s be ready if/when they do.    

  Outsourced Haiku?  As big sky: The Red Moon Anthology 2006 (Jim Kacian, Editor in Chief, Red Moon Press, 2007) proves, Japan has outsourced much of the world’s supply of haiku to English-speaking countries over the past half decade.  And, quality has not suffered.  Here are a few more haiku from big sky written by members of the f/k/a family of Honored Guest Poets:

a bare space
under the willow
overdue books

…………. by DeVar Dahl – big sky; rain song

northern lights . . .
the distance between
words

 

………………………… Laryalee Fraser – big sky; Hermitage III

night on the town–
how beautiful the girl
my wife finds fault with
………………… by Lee Gurga – big sky; Frogpond XXIX: 3

among the splashes–  
a toy bucket of ocean
dumped back in
………………….. by Gary Hotham – big sky; Presence 28

no ketchup–
I wish things had gone
the other way
……………………… by Peggy Willis Lyles – big sky; Modern Haiku 37:3

deep woods
a sapling with one leaf
changes color

……………………… by paul m.- big sky; The Heron’s Nest VIII:4

   Who You Gonna Call? The Ghost Cabinet: From The Barrister Blog‘s Tim Kevan comes news of a group weblog being launched tomorrow (May 17) in the UK — The Ghost Cabinet, which promises to be scarier than a Shadow Cabinet.  Organized like the British Cabinet, the team has appointed popular bloggers with a strong interest or expertise in the given policy area to be Ghost Ministers.  Each Ghost “vows to haunt the relevant government minister on a regular basis” and will “eschew normal political conventions by presenting ideas that will actually improve the country.”  Tim says that he is “delighted to have been asked to be the Ghost Attorney General and will take on the name of the Ghost of the Common Law!”   Our Prof. Yabut has offered to haunt the Ghost AG to make sure he lives up to his spectral vows.   

day at the zoo —
the elephant’s shadow
in a small place

more darkness
more fireflies–
more darkness than butterflies

 …….. by Gary Hotham 
 “day at the zoo –” –  The Heron’s Nest (March 2005)
“more darkness” – breathmarks: haiku to read in the dark

autumn light–
the smell of tomato vines
on my fingers

frozen pumpkin-
the little ghost’s
parka and mitts

……….. by DeVar Dahl    
“autumn light” – 1st Place Tie, Shiki Kukai (Nov. 2006)
“frozen pumpkin” – Shiki Kukai Halloween contest (2001)

tourist motel
the pattern of the bedspread
on your cheek

summer sunset—
baby finds his shadow
on the kitchen wall
………. by Lee Gurga  – Fresh Scent: Selected Haiku of Lee Gurga

Life is short. Get a Divorce. [big]   

 The legal profession’s Dignity Police are scandalized again.  This time their focus is the billboard [tiny image above; click for large version in color] that went up on May 1st in Chicago for the “boutique” divorce law firm Fetman Garland & Associates. Besides showing teats-n-abs, the advertisement sports the slogan “Life is short. Get a Divorce.” (via Robert Ambrogi at LegalBlogWatch, “The Beefcake Approach to Marketing,” May 9, 2007, and Larry Bodine’s Law Marketing Blog, “Using T&A” to sell Divorce)  An outraged Chicago alderman has already had the billboard torn down (video), saying the necessary permit had never been obtained.  Of course, I’m more interested in the legal community’s response.  An ABC News report quotes John Ducanto, past president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers:

“It’s grotesque. It’s totally undignified and offensive.”

According to ABC News:

“Ducanto called on the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee of Supreme Court of Illinois to sanction Fetman. “I don’t think they’ll just let this pass,” said Ducanto, who seemed genuinely hurt by the ad. “I have been in practice for 52 years, and I’ve worked my ass off to change the image of this particular area of the legal practice, and to see some punk try and pervert the whole image in the interest of lucre. … Sure, she’s got a lot of attention, but it’s like a guy who spits on a table — you got the attention, sure, but what kind of attention is it?”

  Happily, the same news report added: “But the ARDC’s deputy administrator James Grogan told ABC News that traditionally Illinois has been reluctant to sanction lawyers for anything short of false or misleading advertising.”  We shall see whether pressure makes the Grievance Committee decide it has to take action against the Fetman firm  As might be expected, Karen Enright, president-elect of the Women’s Bar of Illinois, agreed with Ducanto, saying “It’s actually a disappointment to the profession and to the institution of marriage, which is something our community holds as sacred.”   Enright added:

“Our profession, and lawyers in general, have been under attack for advertisements similar to this and I think,” she said, pausing. “I think that it’s not in good taste.”  

  I was amused and disappointed to see that famous divorce lawyer Raoul Felder — who was recented defended here at f/k/a against New York’s Dignity Police, who want his hide for writing the book Schmucks — said the ad was a new low for the profession:

“This has to be the Academy Award of bad taste,” Felder told ABC News. Fetman is “not your run-of-the-mill Perry Mason lawyer,” he opined. “Hell, that’s not even ‘L.A. Law.’ It’s bizarre,” he said. “I don’t think anybody walks away from that ad thinking more of the legal profession that they did before they saw it.”

The billboard’s sponsor, saucy Corrie D. Fetman had a fitting response to the critics.  ABC News explains: 

But Fetman defends the billboard, almost gleefully. Recycling popular catch phrases seems to come naturally to her. “Lawyers don’t cause divorces. People cause divorces,” she said. “If you think somebody’s going to look at a billboard and go out and get a divorce as a result, you’re insulting the intelligence of people. If that’s the case, our next billboard is going to read, ‘Gimme Your Money.'”

 Fetman had, in fact, issued a press release the day before the billboard went up, touting the new ad campaign.  Excerpts:

    “Our “Life’s Short. Get a Divorce.” advertising campaign . . . is true to who we are, namely Aggressive, Non-Judgmental and Strategic.  The ad portrays what we believe which is that everyone deserves happiness.  In short, we believe that life is too short to stay stuck in an unhappy marriage.” 

     “The future of our ad campaign will also include other marketing tactics centered on the promotion of happiness without judgment.”

    “We think our advertising is fantastic and innovative and look forward to hearing your opinion.”

Clicking around the Fetman Garland website, I discovered that Fetman was featured in a Chicago Tribune article in 2003 about women coping with the male environment at big law firms — by starting their own firms.  “Leaving is the Best Way of Achieving,” Aug. 13, 2003.  It is worth clicking this link just to see the photo of Fetman and Lady Justice.  The article notes:

“A man also answers the phone at Corri Fetman’s Chicago Women at Law Ltd., a matrimonial law firm she started in 1995, after practicing law at several firms. She left the last one, she said, because she experienced sexual harassment, salary inequities, and what she described as a demeaning environment.  In contrast, she said she tries to create a comfortable environment for her two female associates and two male paralegal/secretarial workers.”

It seems to me that life is far too short for scare and underutilized lawyer discipline resouces to be used to shore up the profession’s image.  Some quick thoughts:

1.      As stated repeatedly here, it is the self-important, self-appointed role of Dignity Police that makes the profession look bad in the public’s eyes — Americans do not like hypocrisy and putting on airs.  (see our prior post)  They also really dislike having their intelligence underestimated.
2.    Americans have the right to a divorce and lawyers have the right to remind the public of the availability of the law and their services.  If we are going to start telling lawyers they may not promote the use of certain legal rights that are deemed antisocial, I’ve got a few other places to start.
3.   A profession that gives you the next lawyer’s name on the list, when you call a Lawyer Referral Service, has no place telling lawyers in good standing with the bar what factors are deemed “relevant” in a client’s selection of a lawyer. 
4.  The public can’t tell much at all about the quality of a law firm from its ads (nor from an interview at a firm).  But, it can at least learn a bit about a law firm’s style and attitude from the ads it chooses to run.  Some people will be attracted to the Fetman ad and others repulsed.  That’s a lot more info than we get by pictures of Lady Liberty and the scales of justice in stock lawyer ads.

Life is indeed too short.  The Dignity Police need to get a life.  If they truly care about the profession’s image (not to mention the interests of their clients), they should concentrate on their own competence, diligence, service, commitment, and integrity. 

  Possibly-Related Inadvertent Searchee Adventures:  Search engines pointed their querists to f/k/a this past week thousands of times, but here are a few I found amusing or bemusing (and even strikingly relevant to this posting):

1.     Speaking of dignity, our presentation of Pape & Chandler’s defense of their pit bull logo was the #3 result in a search on Google for /logo representing dignity/.  [the first results two related to gay pride Dignity Day] 
2.    Whoever was looking to learn about /abstinence after marriage/ was probably led astray by our blurb on teens using Clintonian loopholes when promising to abstain.  Google made that post its #2 result, when we mentioned poor St. Joseph, who we dubbed the Patron Saint of Involuntary Celibates. 
    
3.    Someone Googled /specious and example/ and the #1 result was a posting about irresponsible bar advocates in Massachusetts.  
4.    Another searcher wanted /churchill liberal heart brain/ and the #2 Google result, out of almost 400,000 was our piece asking “did Churchill coin that over-30 maxim?“.  We hope the quest brought our visitor to f/k/a’s 21st Century rewrite on political maturation over age 30.
5.    A budding linguist Googled “greek word for dog” and clicked on the #2 result — our explanation that the word “cynic” comes from the Greek word for dog [”kunos”].
6.     Sadly, we only came in 4th (out of more than a million results) in the Google query /are lawyers, liars/.  Let’s hope the visitor was duly edified by our look at the subject, which included a discussion of the Bar’s scandalous misinformation about Shakespeare’s quote on killing all the lawyers.

   Thanks to arts patron (and haijin extraordinaire) Roberta Beary, I came into possession this week of big sky: The Red Moon Anthology 2006 (Jim Kacian, Editor in Chief, Red Moon Press, 2007).  The RMA series “is a celebration of the best haiku and related work published in English around the world each calendar year.”  It contains  “Nearly 200 works of haiku, haibun, renku, criticism and analysis.”   There is a rigorous process and a board of distinguished editors who make the selections, and it is an honor to have even one poem included in the Anthology.   f/k/a‘s Honored Guest Poets can be found throughout each edition of RMA.  Each year, only a handful of especially fine poets have three of their haiku chosen for RMA.  This year, almost all of the haijin with three poems in big sky happen to be among our Honored Guests — allowing me to share their poems with you.  

  I’m most pleased, therefore, to present the chosen works from big sky: The Red Moon Anthology 2006, of w.f. owen, John Stevenson and Yu Chang.  To help soothe dagosan‘s unselected ego, John and Yu allowed him to win a game of bocce this afternoon at Schenectady’s lovely Central Park.  dagosan is still hoping that John and Yu’s poetic muses will occasionally visit him. 

unstrung pearls
the children divide
her estate

city folks
the farmer gives directions
in the dirt

 

early spring
checking the balance
of a new hammer

…….. by w.f. owen  from Big Sky: RMA 2006 
“unstrung pearls” – Modern Haiku 37:2
“city folks” – Shiki Kukai January 2006
“early spring” – Mariposa 14

Christmas party
an old friend empties
my wine glass

small town
my accents starts
a conversation

 

starlit sky
are you sure
we are alone

 ……… by yu chang
“small town” – Frogpond XXIX:1
“Christmas party” – Upstate Dim Sum 2006/1
“starlit sky” – The Heron’s Nest VIII:2

 

cold moon–
a moment of hestitation
years ago

midnight sun
I know for a fact
the bottle’s half empty

 

almost spring
she tells the whole story
in a single breath
……… by John Stevenson 
“midnight sun” – Modern Haiku 37:3
“almost spring” – The Heron’s Nest VIII:3
“cold moon” – The Heron’s Nest VIII:4

   Finally, I’m happy to see that the governor of Washington State signed the nation’s first ban on driving while texting this week.  “Hands on the Wheel, Not on the Blackberry Keys,” New York TImes, May 12, 2007.  It is a little discouraging, though, to read that states taking action against phoning while driving are still only banning held-held cellphones.  Listen up, legislators: The problem is having too much attention on the phone call, not having only one hand on the wheel.