Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

CHRIS WARE, "CARTOONIST" . . .


Here's an interesting essay about Chris Ware's Building Stories, as well as several other works, at the New York Review of Books: "A Triumph of the Comic-Book Novel," by Gabriel Winslow-Yost.

MEANWHILE, IN AUSTIN'S STUDIO  . . .

Here's a shot of the inside of Austin's studio in Kansas City, with scattered self-portraits in oil done for a recent assignment--

(See my last post for context . . .)

SELECTIONS FROM MY SKETCHBOOK . . .

I haven't posted much "artwork" lately, though I'm still in the thrall of a drawing compulsion, which began when conversations about art with my son Austin (of the trip to Costa Rica), who's a sophomore at the Kansas City Art Institute, began to spin out of control . . . Previously, I hadn't drawn much since high school.

I'm enjoying the sketchbook so much that it's become the new metaphor for Beyond the Underground. In my sketchbook, I can follow my whims and fancies where they lead--photo-realistic re-creations of B&W family photos with pencil one day, pen-and-ink sketches of trees the next, watercolor views of the neighborhood on the weekend, and so on. That also describes how I've been thinking of this blog lately, as a place to note whatever seems interesting to me at the moment. (By way of comparison, previous metaphors for this blog have been a daily magazine for lawyers, a promotional brochure for my law firm, a commonplace notebook, etc. -- more on this in another post, perhaps).

Anyway, on to the sketchbook.

 

Some leaves from the backyard, done in watercolor (click to enlarge)--

The dome of the New Cathedral in St. Louis (this page is seriously warped)--

 

The school where my son Sam is in third grade (not exactly to scale, but who cares)--

Meanwhile, Austin is urging me to "go larger," but I'm just not feeling it yet . . .

UPDATE: A view of the inside of Austin's studio in Kansas City.

TYPES OF LAWYERS #8: THE PARTNER WHO GOLFS . . .

Shhh! The partner-who-golfs is teeing off, and he never likes it when you chuckle during his backswing. So you don't. Instead, you stand quietly as he adjusts his unorthodox stance, takes two painful-looking practice swings, and then gives it all he’s got with his new Titleist Titanium 983K driver.

Oh, too bad. The partner-who-golfs didn’t quite make it across the lake. As he reaches into his bag for another sleeve of Top Flites, you bite your lip.

Continue reading "Types of Lawyers #8: The Partner Who Golfs" in the archives . . .

THANKS TO MY POLISH READERS  . . .

According to the firm Wozniak Kocur ("Probably the first Polish law firm on Facebook"), Beyond the Underground is "a legal blog that is a good read. A rarity."

Nice of you to say. (And I hope you'll buy my book!)

How to Choose a Lawyer Based on TV Advertisements: A Guide for Discriminating Consumers (Part 2)

When I concluded Part 1 of this guide, we were faced with a dilemma. What if you find not one but several lawyers advertising on TV for the type of injury you've suffered?

Let’s imagine that after your house was destroyed by a creeping mold, you fell victim to your insurance company’s too-quick and too-paltry settlement scam. After you failed to get full value for your house, you decided to sue your insurance company.

So far, so good. But when you watch TV to find a lawyer, you see an unending stream of commercials for lawyers calling themselves “Your Too-Quick and Too-Paltry Settlement Scam Specialists.” What do you then? How do you choose which too-quick and too-paltry-settlement-scam lawyer to call, based on nothing other than a TV ad?

While many commentators suggest flipping a coin, my advice differs. All of the lawyers who are advertising on TV will undoubtedly be “experienced” and “competent” and “attorneys you can trust." So far, so good. But I still think you should consider a few other factors.

While the thumbs-up sign displays a can-do attitude, this lawyer's hairstyle could be a warning sign

Since lawyers who advertise on TV don’t generally disclose information about themselves other than the type of cases they handle and their phone numbers, your options for comparing one lawyer to another are limited. Even the names of the lawyers flash by so quickly that you can't be expected to read them.

But you do have options. In choosing your lawyer from TV ads, why not consider the lawyer’s hairstyle and eye color? Since hairstyle and eye color are often altered by stylists, I’d also consider the lawyer’s height and weight.

How does this work in practice? Pretty well, actually. Most commentators agree that lawyers with blue eyes and neatly-combed hair should be selected before lawyers with red eyes and long, unwashed hair. As for height and weight, lawyers usually achieve better results if they stand more than four feet tall and weigh less than 350 pounds.

But I realize there’s a problem with my advice. How can you use hairstyle, hair color, height, and weight as selection criteria if you don’t know what your lawyer looks like?

Lawyers don’t usually appear in their own TV ads. Even if you do get a glimpse of your lawyer in the ad, how can you determine whether what you’re seeing is real? Couldn’t that silver-haired, smooth-talking “lawyer” be just another local actor taking a break from community theater, or perhaps a federal judge who likes to spend his lunch hour trying to recall what it's like to be a regular human being?

After further consideration, I’m going to change my strategy. Go ahead and hire the first lawyer you see advertising on TV. After all, life's a crapshoot, isn't it? It’s not called “jackpot justice” for nothing.

Just hope your new lawyer has been licensed more than six months, knows something about the law of your state, and values good hygiene--especially if you ever hope to meet him in person.

THE LAST INTERVIEW? . . .

From the New York Times: "Goodbye, Frustration: Pen Put Aside, Roth Talks," by Charles McGrath, in which Philip Roth talks about his decision to quit writing --

Mr. Roth is now in excellent health, after back surgery in April, and exercises regularly. But he said: “I know I’m not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration — it’s daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It’s just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.” He went on: “I can’t face any more days when I write five pages and throw them away. I can’t do that anymore.”

If he's like a lot of bloggers I know, Roth will be reconsidering his decision to quit very soon . . .

"I KNOW I CANNOT PAINT A FLOWER" . . .

"I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time."--

Georgia O'Keefe

"KEEP FEAR ALIVE" . . .


Stephen Colbert's October Playboy interview is available in full at the Playboy site.

It's interesting to hear Colbert deconstruct his character "Stephen Colbert" without irony, e.g.--

We create our own reality on the show. I’m in a cocoon of the character’s creation. Even within that reality, he’s in a cocoon. Unless I’m doing something like the Correspondents’ Dinner, testifying before Congress, doing the rally or something where I’m purposively injecting myself into a story, there’s no benefit to pushing him up against reality. While I’m an improviser and enjoy discovery, the show follows a script. I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. It’s a very crafted, controlled environment.

Recommended.

How to Choose a Lawyer Based on TV Advertisements: A Guide for Discriminating Consumers (Part 1)

In the past few years, lawyers have become increasingly slick and sophisticated in the production of their TV advertisements.

Don’t let this scare you. It simply means that in selecting a lawyer based on TV ads, you’ll have to spend a little extra time actually watching and evaluating the ads. This easy-to-read guide will help you do just that.

In selecting a lawyer to hire for your legal case, you should never call the first phone number you see flashing on the screen. Instead, you should sample a variety of lawyer ads. Not two, not four, but several.

To get a good variety, try this simple trick. First, set your alarm for 2 a.m. That's when lawyer ads are as thick as mosquitoes in the dankest Southern swamps. Next, turn on all the TVs in your house. Tune them to different channels. Finally, run from to room to room watching lawyer ads until the sun comes up.

As you’re running from room to room, use a notebook to record the type of cases the TV lawyers are soliciting. Do the lawyers specialize in medical devices like hip or knee replacements? Is their specialty pharmaceutical drugs that cause liver failure, heart attacks, or even death? Do they work on trucking accidents, the bloodier the better?

Make a complete list of lawyers and their specialties. In the morning, match the type of lawyer with the type of injury you’ve suffered. If you’re suffering from debilitating breathlessness when you clean the gutters, for example, you don’t want a lawyer who specializes in cases of unanticipated indigestion caused by misprints in cookbooks. What you want is a gutter specialist—ruling out, of course, any lawyers who are actually “in the gutter.”

What if you find not one but several lawyers advertising for the type of injury you've suffered? This is where things gets tricky. Perhaps you've developed an unsightly skin rash from overindulging in Sinfully Rich & Nutty Ice Cream—and all night long, you see commercials for lawyers calling themselves “Your Sinfully Rich & Nutty Specialists.”

What do you then? How do you choose which sinfully rich and nutty lawyer to call, based on nothing other than a single TV ad?

In Part 2 of this guide, which is coming soon, I’ll tell how to do exactly that.

UPDATE: Here is Part 2.