Top ten tips for new lawyer mentoring . . .

The Oregon State Bar, funded by generous and mandatory attorney dues and CLE purchases, has come up with yet another grand scheme.

It's new lawyer mentoring. 

Since newly graduated attorneys can't seem to find that big-bucks job they always assumed would be waiting for them at the end of the bar exam, many are choosing to go into practice solo as rank beginners.  But they don't quite know how to practice law because law school doesn't teach how to be a lawyer.  It teaches how to pass tests on the law, stressing retention over application.  (Except where the law school has a legal clinic intended to permit law professors to enjoy the illusion that they can practice real law.)  So, experienced attorneys, who won't or can't hire beginning lawyers, will nevertheless teach rookies the ropes, as it were.

Yeah, that's what I would want to do if I were an experienced attorney who was still practicing law.  I'd want to train up my competition for the same scarce client dollars. 

I'm not in practice now and I won't be asked to mentor anybody.  But if I was still in practice I'd want my new competition to keep the following top ten tips in mind. Yeah, that's the ticket. 

• Always address the judge by his first name.  Clients love insiders.
• No matter what, always pay your malpractice insurance premium unless you need to pay your bar bill instead.
• Develop a network of people who can refer clients to you, like hair dressers and cab drivers.  Pay them a cash "gift" for every paying sucker they send you.
• Find a bar close to your office where you can spend three or four hours every afternoon and evening, developing client contacts.  Run a tab if they let you.
• Once you've got the retainer, don't be in too much of a hurry to close the case.  You might screw things up and lots of times things just work themselves out if you let them.
• Get a gimmick to develop recognition.  Sure you'll look silly going to court in a batman costume, but client's love that sort of flash.
• Go ahead and commit to the most expensive office space there is.  The money will show up to pay for it.
• Don't be afraid to lie.  They expect it and will be disappointed if you don't.
• Use double entry book-keeping.  One book for you; the other for IRS
• Ethics are for suckers.

Hopes this helps

How to avoid going over budget . . .

The Democrats are in charge in the Senate.  Surely, they could get a budget passed because they have the votes.   But they haven't.  For the last two years!  They aren't even trying. 

Note that in recent years it's been Senators running for the presidency: Gore, Kerry, McCain, Obama. 

Really showing some leadership skills, there, guys.  Way to round up that budget problem.  What say you remind us of how you bravely resisted the urge to do your Constitutional duty to pass a budget the next time you need us to vote for you for anything.  Both parties!

So, this sucks . . .

So it looks like the much applauded, elusive mystery recovery isn't happening yet.  We keep getting all sorts of news about the state of the economy, all of it bad and all of it "unexpected."  Unemployment got worse, not better.  Industrial orders fell lower, not higher.  Confidence deflated, not grew.  Maybe there wasn't a recovery on the horizon, after all,despite pronouncements that things had turned around.  It's kind of like the Iraqi news spokesman for Saddam announcing that U.S. tanks were nowhere near Baghdad, as they were drag racing outside the ministry where he was.

Hope and change?  I haven't seen any of the hope part, and the change part really blows backwards.

I don't know if the situation is the result of incompetence or deliberate sabotage.  But I know it isn't simply bad luck.  There's deliberately selected policies at work.

The next revolution . . .

It occurs to me -- it's become a fairly commonplace and untested belief that we, here in the United States of America, have become too rich, too well-educated, too civilized, and just beyond that sort of thing, for there ever to be another civil war or revolutionary war or serious armed rebellion.  Not now, in the 21st century.  And certainly not with guns.  There will be no fighting to the death over politics here.  Our polity has grown beyond all that icky conflict.  It's no longer a matter of whether there should be a social preference for the ballot over the bullet.  The question now is whether it will be the ballot or the bribe that decides our collective situation.

And it occurs to me that if it is true that it is flat impossible to present a serious armed challenge to the government, then it is only a matter of when, and not if, the constitutional guaranteed limits on government becomes a mere historical fun fact, having no contemporary meaning at all.

Government is all about regulation, control, power, and the dependency of the governed on the government for whatever security the governed may get out of the deal.   People being what they are and government agencies being what they are, government involvement in one's everyday life will necessarily increase right up to whatever limits on its growth might exist.  Without at least the possible chance that government could be overthrown by force, there is no effective limit to the growth of government.  The government busies will always find it necessary for yet another regulation, yet one more punishment, another license to be obtained and another agency to be consulted, all for the so called common good.  They can't help themselves and it isn't reasonable to expect that they could ever resist the temptation, once the notion occurs to them.  Most of them do their job sincerely intending to provide a benefit when passing a new law or making a new regulation.  It's just that consequences are frequently unintended and unanticipated.  There is no "too much" built into our system of government as things now stand, and mistakes can and do happen frequently.

So, am I advocating armed rebellion?  Oh, for heavens sake of course not.  That would be horrible.  It's just that when armed rebellion truly becomes unthinkable -- then we've all lost the liberty that this country reached for in 1776.   

I simply think it would be healthier if we decide that rebellion is far from  necessary, for now, for the time being, and not that rebellion is totally unthinkable.  

Oh, and once in a while tar and feathers should be applied, simply for purposes of improving the breed, so to speak.

Today's question . . .

What kind and how good an education do you think you are going to get when your college instructors can't -- not won't but can't -- distinguish between ideology and information?  It's all the same to them.

Illegal alien problem solved . . .

A whole bunch of Tunisians are skipping out of Tunisia and ending up in Italy. Italy feels overwhelmed and is asking for help from the European Union -- you know, their federal government. The E.U. says that Italy may not deal with the problem on its own, and also, that there isn't going to be any help from the E.U. These are refugees fleeing violence and civil turmoil.

Sound familiar? A whole bunch of Mexicans are skipping out of Mexico and ending up in Arizona, which is forbidden by the federal government from doing much -- the feds are suing the state-- and the federal government isn't going to do anything effective about it.

But these Mexicans aren't refugees like Tunisians. They are undocumented immigrants. They used to be legally described as illegal aliens, but that hurt the delicate sensibilities of the college educators, assorted wannabes, pseudos, dipshits and undocumented journalists who objected to the terminology. So now they're immigrants, simply yearning for freedom, a place in the sun, and a chance to cut grass and do jobs Americans won't do, and also to sell drugs.

Anyhow, since we are already going to mess with the language with no sense of shame, why don't we just call the Mexicans who have arrived here without due process something else? They can be refugees. That makes them sound even more desperate, needy, and pitiful and less likely to be deported. You'd have to inhumane to deport a poor, wretched refugee, right?

You'd have to repatriate them.

Things you probably should never say to people. . .

I'm curious. Are you a moron in real life, or is it that the demands of your job require you to behave like one at all times?

They like me, they really like me. . .

Well, I'll just be dipped. It turns out that my call is really important to them, and they would like me to please stay on the line a little longer so that my call can be answered by an operator in the order in which it was received. It is a real comfort to know that I'm cared about, and I'm especially reassured when I hear that same message repeatedly while I wait interminably, like about forty times.

Without receiving that message about forty times before talking to a live person, I might have thought they didn't give frozen gilded moose turd about their customers one way or the other.

My bad.

Somebody needs a life script . . .

Alicia Silverstone, a celebrity who I'm not sure I recognize, has named her baby "Bear Blu." Honestly, these people celebrated for their attractiveness and whose whole life is built around their appearance need to have a script written for them by somebody else, so as to avoid doing or saying anything stupid. Bear Blu! Good luck with middle school, kid.

She also said she was destined to be a mother. Yeah, that kinda comes with having ovaries and intimacy. But it's okay, Alicia, Sweetie. If you want your biological determination to be a destiny, you go right ahead. Just, maybe, check with your scriptwriter before saying things in public.

Oh, maybe I'm being a mite harsh. It's not as if she's doing a Lindsay Lohan or a Charlie Sheen, both of whom evidently could be much improved by having both scriptwriters and keepers.

Sunday reading confessional . . .

Just finished Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth; Evidence for Evolution. Now half way through The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Part I, and just started Epstein's How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution. What are you reading?

If we can't screw our customers, well, who can we screw?

I heard on the news this morning that a big-time national bank has scrapped its plans to raise its fee for using their ATMs by out of system customers from $3 to $5. They evidently did a test, and people stopped using their ATMs. For $5, people are willing to drive to an ATM in their own banking system -- the cost outweighs the convenience of using the nearer ATM for an out of system charge. Imagine that.

Of course, I remember when the banks were trying to encourage the use of ATMs. It was pretty obvious. If they only could get people to use ATMs, they could dispense with hiring tellers some of whom were actually paid more than minimum wage. Providing ATMs relieved the banks of the need to offer customer service.

Yeah, I can remember going into a bank and standing in a long line waiting for my turn at the teller's place, and while waiting having a bank employee come up and offer to show me how to use an ATM so I didn't have to stand in line so long. But I knew how to work the ATM; it was raining out there and the ATM was not sheltered. Thanks for your offer, lady, but this is Oregon and it rains, here. How about getting your sweet little banker butt behind the counter and serving customers instead of pushing them outdoors into the rain.

Now that the teller staffs have all been successfully reduced in favor of ATMs, the banks want to act as if the ATMs are extra special conveniences that the bank offers at great expense and difficulty. Accordingly, we should be grateful for ATMs and willing to pay extra to use an ATM services if we aren't one of their loyal customers.

Oh, bless you, bankers! If I couldn't do my bank business at a machine without human warmth or understanding, I just don't know what I would do.

Loyalty. Yeah, right. One of my banks reminds me from time to time about the great deal on a bank card they would like me to have. I would be charged 0% interest on charges for the first 6 months. Of course, if instead of borrowing, I loan the bank money by leaving it on deposit, what do they pay me? Maybe 1% annually. What do they do with my money? Lend it out to credit card holders for 0% interest for the first 6 months, and then 20+% on the unpaid balance thereafter. And they charge those credit card holders an ATM access fee on top of it, all using my money at 1%!

Yeah, I'm happy to accept their 1% on my deposits so that they can make 20%. That 1% they pay makes me feel like they really appreciate me and not like a sucker at all.

Sounds like a license for banks to print money, doesn't it? Laws have been passed to permit them to do business in this fashion. But then, even with this sort of advantage it's possible for banks to screw up. And when they do, what happens? The government bails them out, using guess-whose money.

I think they may be in cahoots.

Osama Bin Fishfood

They say his body was buried at sea with appropriate wrappings to be respectful of Islamic custom, and so as not to give offense. Of course, they, when they have a body of one of ours, drag the body triumphantly and with cries of jubilation all around the town square for a few hours, so as to avoid giving us offense.

The cult of the pirate . . .

Here's an interesting take on piracy, going back to the Barbary pirates, and European colonialism. Worth thinking about.

Inappropriate content . . .

Went to a store today and while there, my wife wanted to look in the book department to see if there were any interesting books. While looking around I saw that the store had posted a little note stuck on the bookshelf, titled "Inappropriate Content." It said something like the following:

Sometimes some publishers publish content that some people believe is inappropriate although others do not consider the content inappropriate. Our customers are always welcome to call to our attention content that they feel is inappropriate. We would never like for our customers to view content which they believed was inappropriate. We fully support the right of our customers to decline to purchase books that contain content they believe to be inappropriate.

I think that translates to if you don't want to see it, don't buy it, but if you think we are going to let perpetually offended dipsh*ts decide what others may or may not read, you can go pound sand and bark at the moon, for all we care.

So now we all know where we stand and I'm good with that.

This will work . . .

President Obama has said that shutting down the government for absence of a budget would be inexcusable. He has also said that if the House passes a bill to keep the government open for another week to continue negotiations, and if the Democratically controlled Senate passed it too, he would veto the bill thus causing the shut down. Why? Because all this talk about trying to get a little extra time to work out budget details was a "distraction."

Kicking the Imam's butt . . .

Take a look at this Pakistani actress kicking butt. The back story is that her accuser is a high member of the Taliban and had sent her a warning that she is going to be punished for making Pakistan look bad by going to India. You know what punishment that means. Remember, they made good on their threats to kill Indira within days after she returned to Pakistan, and she had already served as President of the country once and was an international figure. Of course, merely "punishing" this actress isn't enough. The purpose of her television "interview" was to scare the uppity out of any other women who saw the interview. She's in more danger than ever; she likely didn't change any minds who matter to her continued security.

Hope she makes it out.

Tsunami!

Horrifying amateur video of Japan's tsunami.

Those poor people!

Choosing sides . . .

What we saw in Wisconsin when the government wanted to cut back employee unions' influence over the budget looks a little bit like what we are now seeing in England, when the country is trying to bring some balance to the budget. Demonstrations, intimidation, and riots. In either case, the government has been handing out increasingly generous benefits which now appear to be unsustainable. Same thing all through the U.S. and Europe.

Western governments, state, federal, European, whatever, are powerfully committed to the status quo, troubled only by the need to raise ever-increasing amounts of cash to meet the ever-increasing commitments to government entitlements/handouts. For example, I read somewhere where our current administration is considering a tax based on how many miles you travel in addition to the already high taxes, state and federal, on fuel.

If you are on the "gimme" side of the government/citizen relationship, you are in favor of government as it now stands. If not, your opposition to government by handout could likely lead to threatened mass street action, intimidation and property destruction to accompany the massive disturbance of the peace such demonstrations require. Somebody had a line I read, I wish I could remember who so I could attribute it, where the left has given up on trying to convince based on the force of their logic, and is now working on developing conviction through the logic of their force.

So, here's the question. Are you in favor of increased government taxes to support government checks? Are you a member of a public employee union, getting government assistance, going to school and living on government student loan money, getting aid for your dependent children, sucking up Social Security? If it comes down to fighting in the streets, will you be in favor of increased taxation to support continuing your government checks? If so, I figure you are what is classically called. . . a loyalist. But if you think about the difference between what our constitution says, and what's going on presently, and figure we should return to the old, pre-Wilson notions of federal constitutional limits you are . . . guess what. . . a rebel.

Choose.

Internet Exploder 9 . . .

This is just great. I updated Internet Exploder. So what's changed? Well, when I compose a post for the blog in blogger/blogspot, I can't post it. Either nothing happens, or up comes the print options. Everything else works just fine, except for the part where I put the post out on the web.

But blogger still works in Firefox. So I know what I must do, now.

Way to go, Microsoft. Did somebody say, "This isn't a bug; it's a feature?"

Virginity tests. . . .

Yeah. Virginity tests. Because everybody knows that if you are a protester and not a virgin, the conclusion that you are a prostitute is inavoidable. And everybody knows that if you are a prostitute, you are in need of torture and humiliation.

What a fine people. Let's invite them to join the country club.