Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

New York Times Reporter Wants to Talk to Lawyers and Law Students About Anonymous Lawyer

I can't claim all the credit for this bit of buzz-creation, but through a back channel I was put in touch with Sara Rimer, a reporter for the New York Times who is very intrigued by the Anonymous Lawyer weblog and wants to do a story about it.  She asked me if I could put her in touch with others who would talk to her, so with her permission I'm going to try to accomplish that goal with this post. 

If you fit the following criteria, please send Sara Rimer an e-mail today or tomorrow: (a) you're a lawyer or law student who reads Anonymous Lawyer; (b) you have an opinion about the weblog; and (c) you are willing to talk to Sara using your real name.  She's especially interested in talking to anyone who has left comments on Anonymous Lawyer, but she still wants to talk to you if you haven't.  Just mention this post and the Anonymous Lawyer in your e-mail and you'll be all set--and you might be quoted in the New York Times.

Sara's e-mail address is rimer@nytimes.com.

Meanwhile, thanks to these webloggers who followed up on my post yesterday about Anonymous Lawyer with thoughts both pro and con:

• Mackenzie's Weblog
• Preaching to the Perverted
• The Electric Commentary (Paul Noonan)
• Transblawg
• RawLaw
  
• Stay of Execution
• Al Nye The Lawyer Guy
  
• The Neutral Zone Trap
• Barely Legal Substance
• Running with Lawyers
  
• Soupie's BBQ and Daycare

Thanks also to all those who commented on this weblog.

UPDATE: Other posts from Discourse.net, Jeremy Richey's Blawg, Will Work for Favorable Dicta, Ex Mea Sententia, Neo Tokyo Times, Buffs Law, RiskProf, and Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil.  And more from RawLaw.

A Giant Brain, One in an Ongoing Series of Essays on “Things Important to Every Lawyer”

By necessity, all lawyers must have a giant brain, a point that is best illustrated by the story of a lawyer I'll call Dan.  An overweight but nimble man of 350 pounds, Dan was a lawyer without a giant brain.  Sure, he was bright enough—he passed the bar exam, for example.  But even so, Dan’s brain was just too small for him to excel in the legal profession.  How did I know?  I knew because of something he told me just after he became a licensed lawyer: namely, that after twenty-six years of being teased about his weight, he was looking forward to the way everyone would now be able to look past his rolls of fat and admire and respect him simply because he’d become a lawyer.

How ironic, I remember thinking, that such a gigantic body could be home to such a tiny brain.  Admire and respect him because he was a lawyer?  When Dan uttered those words, I had to chew on my knuckles to keep from laughing.  Then my knuckles gave way and I really did laugh.  But my hand was still in my mouth and Dan thought I was trying to retrieve a bit of a chicken wing that had become lodged in my throat.  If I hadn’t have come to my senses and stopped him before he tightened the grasp he had assumed around my chest, Dan would have killed me with the Heimlich maneuver.  But I broke free, and it only made me laugh some more.  Dan, on the other hand, didn’t laugh at all.  For such a jolly-looking fellow, he never really did have much of a sense of humor.

The Tuesday Morning Stock Market Minute: Why the Market's Going to Crash

Figuring out when the market is going to crash is simply a matter of understanding what makes the market work: it's the moon, of course.  Once you understand that, you'll understand that a market crash is imminent because "all of the largest stock market crashes in history have been 'triggered' by lunar eclipses."

The quote is from J. Adams, who wrote in the same piece that "between Labor Day and Thanksgiving of 2004 there is an extraordinarily high possibility for a stock market crash and global panic."  It seems like J. Adams got it wrong, but that's probably because he meant to say 2005.  Market predictions are like that--very dependent on getting the year right.

Of course, there's a force other than the moon working on the stock market, and that's the Book of Revelation.  T. Chase knows all about it, and that's why he's able to predict, with great certainty, the following: "the U.S. will see economic instability in 2005-2007, but I think much of the rest of the world, in particular Europe, Asia, Japan, and Latin America, will see economic recession or depression and stock market chaos 2005-2007."

Don't be lulled into thinking that the moon and the Bible explain everything, however.  They don't.  There's also the simple fact that bad stuff tends to repeat itself.  Have you ever thought about the parallels between today and 1987--I mean, with the dollar spot index and the S&P index and those sorts of things?  W.S.J. has--and it's not pretty.

I could go on and on, and I probably will another day.  In the meantime, don't forget: as sure as your mother's foul temper, the market's going to crash, so you may as well sell some QQQs short now.   After you've done it, spend a little time reading the Stock Market Crash! Blog, which will give you that warm feeling you get whenever you think about how everyone else is going to lose all their money.

Finally, don't pay attention to physicists from UCLA.  They don't know shit about the stock market.

News about Anonymous Lawyer: Will You Do Your Part?

He’s the most notorious law-related blogger in the blawgosphere: the Anonymous Lawyer, whose weblog I critiqued and “deconstructed” in a post of my own here.  The post attracted a lot of attention, primarily because Anonymous Lawyer is a very popular weblog.  Its popularity, in fact, inspired others to join in my critique: Dennis Kennedy and Rufus of Running With Lawyers, for example, did posts in a similar vein.  Even Professor Bainbridge joined in.

I chose to write about Anonymous Lawyer because I think the weblog accomplishes, through humor and its author’s wry point of view, something that should be welcomed by all lawyers: a much-needed critique of the "quality of life" at the big law firms.  As a veteran of big-firm life myself, I can attest that when Anonymous Lawyer tries to make a point about what’s wrong with that culture, it's dead on.  (As an aside, when Dennis Kennedy suggested in a tongue-in-cheek way that I might be the author of Anonymous Lawyer, I was flattered.  But I’m not, as I said here: it’s not my style to be anonymous, for one thing.  And there’s no way I could ever bring myself to write without paragraph breaks--I’m way too much a card-carrying English major for that, though I don't object to the mannerism in others.)

So what’s the news about Anonymous Lawyer?  A few weeks ago, I saw an unusual post that appeared there for only a few hours.  It concerned the author’s desire to turn the weblog into a book, and it asked for help from any of his readers who had contacts in the publishing industry. Most people didn’t see the post: oddly, it was removed from the weblog almost immediately.  But I saw it, and I liked the idea.  I e-mailed the author of Anonymous Lawyer at the e-mail address provided on the weblog to find out what had happened to the post.

To my surprise, I received a frank response the next day: the author of Anonymous Lawyer said that in writing the post about the book idea, he’d “broken character.”  It’s my term, not his--and though I'm using the pronoun “he,” for all I know, the author is female.  Anyway, he thought he’d made a mistake speaking in the voice of the author directly, after spending almost a year speaking exclusively in the voice of the “Anonymous Lawyer.”  In the comments, some of his regular readers seemed very disappointed about the post, so he decided to take it down.

It presented an interesting problem, but I had a solution: "Use my weblog," I said via e-mail.   "Let me post about your desire to turn your weblog into a book, and perhaps the community of people who read my weblog (or weblogs once or twice removed) will respond by posting something on their own weblogs.  If all the people who are supportive of the idea of Anonymous Lawyer--and I know there are many--post about the book idea on their own weblogs, we might be able to create enough buzz get a publisher interested in a book version of the weblog."

The author of Anonymous Lawyer agreed with my idea.  The result is this post.  While he said that he was also exploring more traditional routes to publication--a book proposal, letters to publishers, that sort of thing--he said he would be grateful for any help he could get from other webloggers.

So if you like Anonymous Lawyer and aren't the sort that gets jealous about another writer's success, here’s what you should do: simply post about the book idea on your own weblog.  (This means you, you, and you; and you, you, and you. And you and you; plus you, you, and you.)  Spread the word that the author of Anonymous Lawyer wants to put some variation of his weblog between covers, and that he’s trying to interest publishers in the idea.  Meanwhile, anyone with ties to the publishing field or with feedback about the idea can contact him directly at anonymouslawyer2004@yahoo.com.

Neither of us is sure what’s going to happen after I post this post.  Maybe nothing at all.  But we both thought that it was worth a shot, and it should be interesting to see what happens.  I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: A reporter from the New York Times is mulling a story about Anonymous Lawyer.  If you're a reader, she might want to talk to you.  Details here.

Weekly Law School Roundup #37

This Week: The Something-for-Everyone Edition, In Which an Assortment of Posts Are Collected for Your Amusement and Delight, All Completely Free of Charge

Don't Make Us Wait for You, You Selfish Twit  Thoughts on being late versus being early.  [Lonestar Expat]

What Three Years With Money-Hungry, Over-Anxious Creeps Will Do To You  Another law student is cured of all desire to be a lawyer.  [Deb, Hatched]

She'd Rather Be Eating Microwave Popcorn  A mother strikes fear in her daughter with two short words: turkey soup.  [Just Playin']

Grandpa Spatula and Molly the Satanic Dog  She drove for hours through ice-covered mountains for this?  [Will Work for Favorable Dicta]

It's Not a Rocker, But It's Not Bad  A review of U2's new album.  [Ichiblog]

Do It With a Look of Pride  How to read porn in the computer lab.  [Metaphors of a Magnifico]

"There Are Ants In My Kitchen!"  An extraordinary tale of one blogger's attempt to avoid studying evidence.  [Biting Tongue]

A Glimpse into the Future of the Internet A post about "massively multiplayer online games."  [Chris Rush Cohen]

Weekly Report #45: Thanksgiving Week

I like being at the office at times when the phone isn’t ringing--early in the morning, say, or on the weekends.  I’m not admitting to doing it very much, but it’s always nice to have some uninterrupted time to get things done.

I put this theory into practice yesterday by heading to the office for a few hours to do some long-range planning.  It’s been a busy couple of months for Schaeffer & Lamere--lots of new projects, lots of new clients, lots of inquiries from other lawyers about getting involved in their cases.  The new business has come at the right time, since we recently settled our two longest-running class actions in addition to a products-liability case that would have been the next to get to trial.  It means that things are really humming along, which is a good thing despite the added pressures that more work brings.

Happily, these pressures weren’t anywhere in evidence yesterday, which made it almost a pleasure to be at work.  Of course, maybe that was because I stayed only for a few hours and was on my way to having a long lunch with some friends.  You didn’t think I’d work all day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, did you?

Advice to Law Firm Partners #6

Dear Mr. Schaeffer:

I should have thought twice before becoming managing partner of a 550-lawyer firm.  But I didn’t think twice.  Instead, I said yes even though it’s well known that our firm has been cursed since the mid-1930s.  It all started with the Flood of 1935, which destroyed our entire building and swept five secretaries to their deaths.  In 1947, just after the firm had recovered from the flood, there was a fire that gutted the firm’s second building.  Although no one perished in that tragedy, the entire law library went up in smoke, not to mention a huge hoard of Cuban cigars and a world-renowned stamp collection owned by the head of the firm’s trusts-and-estates department.

Though the flood and the fire were bad enough, the curse was just getting underway.  Since 1947, there have been three earthquakes, a rat infestation, a bout with dysentery that felled three senior partners, several typhoons, an instance when all the secretaries became pregnant at once, and a near miss with an out-of-control meteorite.  The meteorite struck only last week: it busted through the building’s top three floors with a bang like a nuclear explosion and didn’t stop until it came to rest in the middle of the 67th-floor conference-room table during a meeting of the firm’s executive committee. 

No one was hurt, and that’s what really has me worried.  That damn space rock was supposed to kill us all.  But now we’ve angered the fates and there’s no telling what will happen.  On Monday morning I called a meeting of the entire firm in order to sound the alarm.  In very strong terms, I encouraged all the members of the firm to wear their seatbelts, discontinue jaywalking, and think seriously about purchasing bicycle helmets to protect their valuable heads.

Did they care about what I had to say?  No!  I could hardly get a word in edgewise.  You know what they wanted to talk about instead?  The woman who’s in charge of the phones kept complaining that her name doesn’t appear on the firm’s website.  The IT people kept butting in to say that we should quit using the word “solution” when talking about legal technology.  As for the partners, if they said it once, they said it a hundred times: they all want to move beyond the “eat what you kill” philosophy to a more “collaborative, corporate-modeled culture.”

What’s gotten into these people?  The world is coming to an end, and all they’re worried about are these insignificant things that would only matter to complete numskulls.  Is it any wonder that I’m thinking about jumping from the 67th floor to my death? 

Signed, Standing on a Ledge in Los Angeles

This Thanksgiving, Give Thanks for Tort Reformers

Give thanks for tort reformers?  No, not really--it's just a little holiday humor.  Rather than giving thanks, spend some time this weekend reading an informative piece from The Nation, reprinted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Tort reform advocates play fast and loose with the facts"--

The numbers show that lawsuits are an insignificant cost both to businesses and to health providers, for whom they represent less than 2 percent of spending. In short, the lawsuit-abuse crisis is a hoax. Yet the Republican right has launched one of the great propaganda blitzes of recent American history to yank the teeth from the civil jury.

The article's author is Dan Zegart, who also calls the tort-reform movement "a 30-year-long war by the ultraright to disembowel the civil-justice system and make the United States safer for companies to work their unfettered will." 

You don't think you're being hoodwinked by the tort reformers?  You will after you read the article.  But if you read it and still find yourself in a foul mood about lawyers, finish off your holiday lesson with an example of "underlawyering" from Denise Howell: "Ties That Bind."

Final Score: High-Flying Casino Execs, $0.00; Owner of Virgin Mary Cheese Toast, $28,000

Following up on a previous post, the cheese toast bearing the image of the Virgin Mary (or someone quite like her) has been sold on eBay for $28,000.  The buyer, an online casino, plans to use the Virgin Mary cheese toast to raise money for charity.

In an odd twist, $28,000 is exactly the amount of money recently swindled out of an insurance executive at a New York strip club, as reported in this post.

Coincidence--or miracle?  You decide.

Why Are Lawyers So Unhappy?

by John J. Carey of Carey & Danis, LLC

I have been a lawyer for 17 years now and, believe it or not, I still enjoy being a lawyer. However, based upon informal conversations I have had with a wide array of lawyers from all over the country (i.e., plaintiff’s lawyers, defense lawyers, small firm lawyers, and large law firm lawyers), it is becoming painfully obvious that I am part of a small minority of persons in our profession who actually likes being a lawyer. Which brings up the question, why are lawyers so unhappy?

I attribute lawyer unhappiness primarily to four factors, which I discuss separately below.

The first reason why many lawyers are so unhappy is because they went to law school for the wrong reasons. For example, law school has long been known as a default choice for young college graduates who simply do not know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. By enrolling in law school, they can extend their adolescence for three more years while they make the difficult choice of how they will make a living as an adult. Many operate under the delusion that armed with a law degree the world will suddenly present a cornucopia of opportunities to them. The problem lies in the fact that prolonging adolescence comes at a steep price: not only is law school exorbitantly expensive, the ambivalent law student has foregone three years of income from real, gainful employment that their non-lawyer peers have enjoyed. In the end, the law school graduate discovers that the vast array of career opportunities are simply not there and, if there are career opportunities, the law school graduate cannot afford to take a low-paying entry-level corporate job because of their burdensome student loan debt. And Presto: you have a person that never really intended to practice law entering the legal profession out of sheer necessity.

The second reason why lawyers are so unhappy, especially older lawyers, is because lawyers don’t make as much money as they used to make. Many smart, bright-eyed people who once thought that a law degree was a ticket to riches soon face cold reality. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of lawyers are not rich, and many are struggling to even make a decent living. The reason for this is simple: supply and demand. There are many more lawyers chasing virtually the same amount of business. Moreover, because it is clearly a “buyers market,” large clients can successfully negotiate downward a lawyer’s hourly wage or contingent fee. The lawyer then faces the Hobson’s choice of either having no work to do or having work to do, but at a greatly reduced rate of pay.

Third, anyone who has been practicing law for more than 15 years will acknowledge an appalling decrease in civility in the legal profession. This not only applies to lawyers on opposite sides of litigation or a transaction, but to all aspects of the profession. Every lawyer has stories about the hard-ball tactics employed by adversaries, but some of the most difficult lawyers I have ever worked with are co-counsel, that is, lawyers who are supposed to be on the same team as me. Also, something that is rarely discussed is the lack of civility judges demonstrate toward lawyers practicing before them. Court opinions are now rife with derogatory and personal criticisms of the lawyers involved in the case, rather than the issues. Not surprisingly, the lack of civility, and sometimes downright rude behavior of other lawyers and judges, leads to lawyer unhappiness.

Finally, the fourth reason why lawyers are so unhappy is our profession’s negative public image. Sure, in order to be a lawyer, one has to be thick-skinned and I, for one, enjoy a good lawyer joke as much as anyone. However, it has now reached the point that one cannot watch television or read the newspaper without some criticism of lawyers. A certain political party has virtually characterized lawyers as the tools of the “Devil.” Indeed, Karl Rove has demonized lawyers with such great success that others are following suit, while others run away from trial lawyers as fast as they can (i.e., the Democratic Party). The truth of the matter is that our negative public image has led to self-loathing, which certainly leads to unhappiness.

Despite everything written above, lawyers SHOULD be happy. They are part of a distinguished profession that forms the foundation of a country that enjoys the most freedoms and privileges of any country in the history of the world. So the next time you are feeling blue or depressed, simply pop a pill (Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin or Xanax will do) or have a beer (my personal preference), and GET BACK TO WORK!!  As they say in the Bahamas: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

About the Author:  John J. Carey is a founding partner of Carey & Danis, LLC.  His professional resume can be found on his firm's website, which states that his firm has recovered "$677 million for [its] clients, including individual settlements of over $10 million and class-wide settlements of over $90 million."  John was last mentioned on this weblog here.--Ed.