Weekly Report #21: The Rule of Lawyers

This week, as the new baby continues to order Andrea and me around like a federal judge, I missed a trip to Aspen with a group of lawyer friends who went there to celebrate some good news. (Don't worry, it wasn't news of a new frivolous mass tort or an undeserved class action fee.) I'll tell my friends again here: I'm sorry I missed the trip, and I hope you all return safely. Well, most of you.

Meanwhile, I received my copy of Walter Olson's The Rule of Lawyers, now out in paperback. If you didn't know it from Olson's overlawyered.com, he doesn't have much professional love for plaintiffs' lawyers like me, so reading his book will be a little like getting a tongue-lashing from Simon Cowell of American Idol. Still, I'm always interested in learning new ways of assembling polemical arguments from writers as skilled as Olson. After all, assembling polemical arguments is what I do when I write a legal brief advocating a particular position.

I'm also interested in learning why advocates of tort reform have been so successful in getting their dangerous, big-business-friendly ideas embraced by certain segments of the population. That's the sort of thing I need to know to conduct a successful jury selection at trial.

Leave it to Walter Olson to keep a plaintiffs' lawyer on his toes.

Related Posts:

1. The Experienced and the Law Student Debate Overlawyered.com

2. The Experienced Lawyer and the Law Student Debate Class Actions

3. Beware the Cynic Incubators

4. The Tort "Reform" Category--all tort-reform-related posts

And from the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog:

1. The "Voir Dire" category--all posts relating to jury selection