Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

FROM THE ARCHIVES . . . "The Collected Four-Part Examination of the Lawyer's Briefcase, One of an Ongoing Series of Essays on 'Things Important to Every Lawyer.'"

As one commenter said, "This piece reached new hilarity-inducing heights of slapstick comedy. Thanks!"

WRITE . . . "How to Write a Bestselling Business Book," by Eric Spitznagel at Bloomberg Businessweek.

PARANOIA? . . . "Facebook’s Copycat Tendencies: A Sign of Strength, not Weakness," by Sarah Lacy--

Mark Zuckerberg is a classic wartime CEO, even though it may appear he’s long since won this war. He is clearly intensely paranoid, perhaps the most paranoid CEO we’ve seen since the legendary Andy Grove. He might as well have a $60 gillion valuation. He operates the company as if it could crumble at any moment. And that’s why, to date, no social network has come close to toppling it.

A good analysis of Facebook's business strategies . . .

NAVEL-GAZING . . . From Slate's Browbeat: "Why Does The New Yorker Publish So Many Pieces About The New Yorker?" by Aisha Harris and David Haglund--

You can label this self-reflection or self-regard, but either way such pieces certainly help preserve the institutional memory of the magazine. Indeed, one argument that runs through many of these pieces is just what sort of magazine the New Yorker is.

Maybe I have no taste, but I sort of like those types of New Yorker articles . . .

WHAT I'M WORKING ON TODAY . . . Details at my other blog, The Trial Practice Tips Weblog.

TRANSITION . . . AT the New Republic, Michael Kazin on "Why Businessmen Don’t Get Elected President"--

[A] talent for developing private companies and making big profits seldom translates into wooing a majority of voters or governing a contentious republic. It may, in fact, blind one from recognizing critical differences between those equally difficult endeavors.

In Kazin's article, examples follow . . .

PROPHECY FAIL . . . At the Motley Fool, "Histories of Things That Never Happened," by Morgan House--

In a world of breathless predictions, the most valuable tool might be Google Archive, which allows you to go back in time and see how old prophecies fared. We don't do this enough. The ultimate value of any forecast isn't whether it sounded nice. It's whether it eventually becomes correct. Spend some time in Google Archive, and you can't help but notice that the vast majority of forecasts about the economy or the stock market are utterly wrong in hindsight.

True. The idea applies not only to investing, but to politics. Predictions about the future make up about 95% of what passes for "news" on cable TV. Not what happened, but what might happen. Such predictions are utterly pointless, even moreso when you realize that the people doing the predicting often have an undisclosed financial interest in a particular outcome.

Only on ESPN can I stomach predictions . . .

SKY, FALLING? . . . From CNN Tech, "Four ways the Internet could go down," by David Eagleman.

DATA . . . An interview with Stephen Wolfram in The European: "What we are trying to do with WolframAlpha is to create custom-created reports to answer specific questions."

FROM THE ARCHIVES . . . "An Introduction to Lawyers for Those Who Have Not Yet Had the Pleasure of Being Introduced: An Essay in Four Parts."