Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

Is Readbility a Myth?

In The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky says that a book's "difficulty" is subjective. The opening might grab you--

What's the most difficult book you've ever read? For me, at least within recent memory, there's no question—the book that was hardest for me to slog through, the book that I would have put down if I didn't have to read it for work, was E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey.

Yeah, well . . . I don't think I'm buying this definition of "difficult." Among people who sit around writing essays about difficult books--by which they mean, right from the start, something that has some objective claim to merit, at least to others in that group--they are leaving commercial entertainment out of the discussion. To this group, that other kind of writing is "bad." And when they say reading that sort of "bad" entertainment is "difficult," they don't mean it's difficult for them to understand, but difficult to stomach.

That's my riff, in any case, on the first paragraph of Berlatsky's essay. It's an essay that I liked a lot, despite my questions about whether he's setting up a straw man by defining "difficulty" to mean something other than it normally does in discussions about books.

Full essay: "Readability Is a Myth," by Noah Berlatsky.

A Tip from the Machiavellian Lawyer

The Machiavellian Lawyer once said:

To excel in a law firm, make yourself indispensable. Start by identifying a type of knowledge within the firm that is highly-valued but in short supply. Exploit this shortage by making yourself an expert. Then leverage the value of your new knowledge by becoming involved in as many projects as possible.

After you have become an expert, think twice before teaching your skills to others. If you share your knowledge too freely, you will devalue the currency that has made you rich. When called upon to instruct others, learn the secret known to every Italian cook: share your recipe willingly, but omit a minor, yet important, ingredient. The cook’s students will be able to replicate the dish but will never be able to duplicate it. The cook will remain the master.

Publication note: Originally published 12/2/04.

Travel Blogging Through the Years

I took this photo of a lighthouse from a boat somewhere near Ushuaia, Argentina, in 2010. Ushuaia is near the tip of South America. In case you are thinking about a long trip to South America (and you should!), I posted some trip notes in "Notes on Our Trip to Ushuaia, Argentina."

Other travel blogging is buried deep in this blog's archives. Some past posts with photos that I unearthed--

Nine posts from a trip to Prague

Five posts from Mexico City

A return to Mexico City in two posts: one and two

Seven posts from Costa Rica with my son Austin--

One  Two  Three  Four  Five  Six  Seven

Six posts from my first trip to Buenos Aires in Argentina--

One  Two  Three  Four  Five  Six

Three posts from a return trip to Argenia--

One  Two  Three

 That's a lot of travel. On the other hand, this blog has been around for just about forever . . .

Your Daily Dose of Art History . . .

. . . and a chance to put some apples on the blog--

These apples are courtesy of Paul Cézanne. After you have had your fill, check out this article from Humanities, "Paul Cézanne Revered the Old Masters, yet Influenced Waves of Modernists as They Broke with the Past."

Lesson over, class dismissed, you're welcome.

Favorite Things: The Fender Jaguar Electric Guitar

It can shatter windows or render old people completely deaf with one screaming, extended solo in a minor key. It was Kurt Cobain's prize guitar, the one he carried from concert to concert and never smashed onstage. His was a 1966 model. Mine's a 1965 with sunburst coloring, just like the one in the picture. 

I bought my Fender Jaguar when I was a high-school junior, after having played guitar since second grade. That was in 1980. It was years before the grunge rockers "rediscovered" the Fender Jaguar. But its unpopularity didn't matter to me. It didn't matter that my friends gave my guitar funny looks and asked me why I hadn't bought a Les Paul or a Stratocaster. I liked it and it sounded good, even if I wasn't a virtuoso.

It cost $350, several months of working as a restaurant cook at $3/hour. It replaced a Gretsch 12-string that was on loan from a friend of my sister who one day, out of the blue, demanded it back. I didn't want a 12-string electric guitar anyway.

Since 1980, I've lived in a lot of places, but I've always found a place for my Fender Jaguar. I've changed amps, and I've played with lots of different people, but I've never changed guitars.

During the days when Kurt Cobain and others were repopularizing the Fender Jaguar, I saw the value of mine triple, then quadruple. It didn't matter, of course, because I wasn't selling. Too bad those high-school friends of mine had all scattered to the winds--I didn't get a chance to tell them I told you so.

It's also too bad I became a lawyer and not a rock musician. But sometimes these things don't work out exactly like we want them to. I can still pretend I'm a rock musician. I do it sometimes late in the evening when no one's around, and I'm on my third beer, and the amp's turned up as loud as it will go. Mine goes all the way to 11.

Publication note: Originally published 8/19/04.

Related posts:

1. "Favorite Things: Computers"

2. "Favorite Things: Drinking, Smoking & Screwing"

A Fascinating Interview with Robert Crumb

I'm a sucker for the pen-and-ink work of Robert Crumb. So of course I noticed when he was in the news a few days ago: "Legendary Cartoonist Robert Crumb on the Massacre in Paris."

R. Crumb, self-portrait

It's a fascinating interview, well worth reading, not only for Crumb's comments about the tradition of satiric cartoons in France, but also the process by which he created a pen-and-ink response to the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo.

Embrace the Cold

A view a few years ago near Two Tops Mountain in Idaho, taken from a snowmobile. Looking forward to doing it again next month!

UPDATE: On further review, I see I've posted about snowmobiling before--in 2009, 2010, and 2013. Sometimes I forget what's on this blog. (Although it's hard to forget my video-podcasting debut in 2006, from a ski slope in Colorado.)

Career Advice: Moving to a Plaintiffs' Practice

Publication note: This post was originally published 10/23/06. I think the advice and comments still hold true today. In republishing the post, I made only minor edits. Another note: my firm is now called The Schaeffer Law Office, P.C., rather than Schaeffer & Lamere, P.C.

What would you say to a lawyer with five years of defense experience who wants to open a plaintiffs' practice but is first considering a stint in a U.S. Attorney's office to get some additional trial experience? Is this a sensible way to make the switch from defense lawyer to plaintiffs' lawyer?

I recently got a question like this in an email. Here's my response. I think there are many ways to make the switch to a plaintiffs' practice. Taking a detour to get some additional trial experience certainly isn't a bad idea: real, solid trial experience is something that will set a lawyer apart from most others and make him or her employable at many different types of firms.

Of course, there is a huge difference between being employable as a lawyer and opening a plaintiffs' firm. It brings to mind the two stumbling blocks that keep most lawyers from starting a plaintiffs' practice--a lack of capital and a need for a steady income. Even with a low-overhead operation, many can't get by without a salary. You don't get a salary if you own the firm. It can be hit or miss for months or years.

A common solution to the problem is to find a plaintiffs' firm that's willing to pay a salary. This option allows a lawyer to reduce some of the downside risk of changing careers while being paid to learn the ins-and-outs of a plaintiffs' practice. In addition to a salary, many firms will also pay a portion of the fees a lawyer generates from his own cases. It's a sensible alternative to immediately hanging a shingle as a plaintiffs' lawyer.

It's more or less the route I took myself. After leaving a defense firm, I worked at a plaintiffs' firm for a few years on a salary. One thing that made my situation a little different is that I had the good fortune of joining two lawyers I already knew. Just a year before, we'd all worked together at the defense firm. When they left to start their own plaintiffs' firm, I stayed behind, in part because I needed a salary. A year later, they already had had enough success to be able to pay me one. I joined them in 1996. Eventually, I became a partner at the firm and we continued to do well enough that eventually, I was able to move on to a new opportunity. That's how my firm Schaeffer & Lamere came to be.

At Schaeffer & Lamere, I work on our firm's class action and personal-injury cases, but I also frequently join up with other plaintiffs' lawyers--including my former partners at the old firm--to work on various other projects, including the mass torts I often write about on this weblog. It's a sort of flexible deal-making--being able to supply both brainpower and capital to projects that are expected to pay in the future--that makes a plaintiffs' practice especially fun for me. By thinking of myself as a free agent, I can work on many different types of cases with many different lawyers. There's always something new to work on or something new just around the corner.

With this said, I certainly don't consider myself an expert on the right way to move from a defense firm to a plaintiffs' practice. Things worked out fine for me, but it was due in part to being in the right place at the right time. If someone has other solutions to the problem, please leave a comment.

A Quote for the New Year

Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.

              --Hunter S. Thompson (The Curse of Lono, 1980).

And with that, this blog enters its twelfth year!

Here's a bonus link to my first post, dated January 1, 2014: "EasyMusicDownload.com = Scam!"

In evidence that this blog peaked too soon, it has 293 comments, more than any other post since.