The Legal Underground Word of the Week: Champerty

Today's Legal Underground Word of the Week, Champerty, is read by Kevin Heller, the Tech Law Advisor. You can hear the production as an MP3 or as a podcast by subscribing to this RSS feed with iPodder or a similar product. To learn more about Kevin, one of my best blogging-lawyer friends, see his recent biographical post, "900 Days and Counting."

The music was assembled with Acid Pro 3.0. If you'd like to participate in my audio-blogging word-of-the-week project, simply choose a suitable word from Black's Law Dictionary, record yourself reading it, and then send it to me in mp3 or wav format. I'll set it to music for all the world to hear--at no charge!

By the way, the Legal Underground's assorted audio posts are being collected in a directory at Podcast.net.

Comments

[Kevin Heller]

Evan,

I forgot to tell you the background story on this. The reason I chose Champerty is because I conducted about 40 hours of research on this topic for our mutual pal Professor Lester Brickman.

[Evan]

I knew it was some sort of set up!

I also did a lot of research on champerty, back when I was involved in trying to set up a sort of bank that would fund other lawyers' litigation. For reasons that would make a very good story, and which perhaps I'll tell someday (having to do with stock market problems in the US, but especially in Russia), it didn't get off the ground. Now, however, there are seemingly a hundred competitors.

I bet Professor Brickman was using your research for a very different purpose.

[Kevin Heller]

Even if I knew I'm sure I couldn't disclose it.

My stated goal was to determine the legality of champerty and maintenance in the 50 states.

Early feedback from one of my friends who listened to the mp3: "its just really bizarre ... kinda cool actually".

[Evan]

"its just really bizarre ... kinda cool actually?"

Did your friend mean champerty? Or Kevin Heller reading the definition of champerty to a pseudo-techno beat where a guy screams at the end?

[anonymous]

anon[DELETED BY THE EDITOR OF THIS SITE].blogspot.com

[Evan]

Dear anonymous: Your comment counted as bullshit comment spam, which is why I added the portion in brackets, and now I'm going to have to put you on double-secret probation. Had you been not been such a nitwit, you could have covered your tracks by making something up about how good Kevin Heller sounded reading the definition of "champerty." Then it would have looked like a real comment. But no--you just left a web address. Did you think that we would give a shit about you and your weblog? Well, we don't.

Well, maybe we do. Since I'm such a nice guy, I added a link to your site on my blogroll (it looked like a moderately interesting law-student weblog), just in case you had good intentions and simply committed an innocent blogging faux pas. But don't think I'm not going to be watching you! I also advise you to get a blogroll on your weblog and link permanently to both me and Kevin Heller (and Denise Howell too, since she linked to this post), in order to atone for your sins.

In the future when you want to publicize one of your weblogs, you can simply send me an e-mail. That's what other people do.

[JR]

Evan: Who put the scream in there, you or Kevin? For a second, I thought my neighbor was being bludgeoned to death. Perhaps it was your neighbor being bludgeoned to death. I will check the news at 10.

[Evan]

JR: Two words: sound effects.

[Kevin]

JR - That scream was my wife when she heard I was audioblogging.

Evan - the latter I hope. I especially liked the applause. I just wish I wouldn't have uh-uh-uh-ed at the end. Gotta work on that.

ALS - Anonymity is so 4 years ago -- didn't you read my 900 days and counting post that Evan pointed you too? And where's my link????

[sandy]

would like a copy of kevin hellers champerty research from 50 states emailed or posted, possible?

[Evan]

Sandy--I'd suggest emailing Kevin Heller about that.