Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

Types of Lawyers #7: The Modest Lawyer

Is the modest lawyer a myth? That’s the conventional wisdom. Yet once or twice each year, rumors begin to circulate of yet another sighting of this silent and mysterious man. Three years ago, he was spotted emerging from a portable restroom at a county fair. Another time he was seen helping a small child unhook a bluegill at a lake in Mississippi. Once he was seen high on a mountain in Colorado, searching for a pass during a thunderstorm.

Despite the frequency of the sightings, only three details remain consistent: the modest lawyer vanishes quickly, leaves no trace, and always remains nameless. Yet it’s possible to speculate about some of his other defining characteristics, and many have done so. There was a theory put forward by a professor at Harvard Law School that the modest lawyer probably graduated from that esteemed institution. Another theory held that the modest lawyer most likely hailed from Texas. Both of these theories were obviously flawed, but others have been less controversial: that the modest lawyer has never appeared on a cable TV news program, for example, or that he most certainly doesn’t have a blog.

Continue reading "Types of Lawyers #7: The Modest Lawyer" in the archives.

You're Not Perfectly Happy?

Here a few questions for you from Mari Ruti in her essay "Happiness and Its Discontents" from the Chronicle of Higher Education--

Why, exactly, is a healthy and well-adjusted life superior to one that is filled with ardor and personal vision but that is also, at times, a little unhealthy and maladjusted? Might some of us not prefer lives that are heaving with an intensity of feeling and action but that do not last quite as long as lives that are organized more sensibly? Why should the good life equal a harmonious life? Might not the good life be one that includes just the right amount of anxiety?

It's an interesting and thought-provoking piece. Link from Arts & Letters Daily.

More About Ed

Here's another good post about “Ed.,” the anony­mous edi­tor of Blawg Review, who died recently. It's from Mike at Crime & Federalism. (My own previous post about Ed is here.)