His career started out poorly, to put it mildly.
He studied law in upstate New York, at a law school no one I know ever heard of. He worked a few years at a small law firm in Albany, N.Y., and when that did not go particularly well, he moved to a small town in Wisconsin to practice. He practiced there for two years when his office building, containing his entire practice, burned down.
He moved to California to work in a retail store with some of his brothers, but returned to Albany when that did not work out. He went back to California a couple of years after that.
There was a quote I read on a friend’s loft in college that asked, “Are you the man the boy wanted to be?” This always struck me as an interesting thought, although I’m not sure I grasped its full meaning as a twenty-something know-nothing. But from time to time things in my legal career cause me to pause and to reflect on this question and ask myself whether I am, in fact, the lawyer the first year law student wanted to be.
Press releases or news releases are a standard way for a law firm, business or nonprofit organization to announce news and events to media outlets.
It’s a two-way relationship that is valuable for both sides. The group with news or information wants to get its message out. The media outlet wants to know what is happening and is always looking for good stories.
A good release takes a page from a Journalism 101 textbook and, in the opening paragraph, delivers Who, What, Where and When. It helps to work in Why and How, if possible.
“The Touch” is what my father called it.
Dad was in the furniture business back home, and in the old days he would come to the Southern Furniture Market a number of times of year. The best salesmen possessed that easy Southern way about them.
When one of them got to the crux of the issue, the real point of sale, the salesman would put his hand on my dad’s arm. The Touch, literally and figuratively, was the salesman’s signal as to which of my father’s conditions of the sale could be met, and which ones could not be met. Hard facts about what the deal required were softened by the charm of it all.
Long Islanders are a hearty lot, many of us having trekked here from as far away as Brooklyn and Queens without any sign of wear.
We carved suburbia from the wilderness of summer estates, built schools and way too many fire houses, then perfected the art of shopping. We’ve withstood gypsy garbage barges and Amy Fisher, the Shoreham debate and Bobby Kumar’s kidnapping.
Even today, we are a people that can butter a roll, apply makeup and tailgate, all at the same time.
Irene should have known better.
Every law firm is a business, and every business should know where it’s going. Like the driver of a car, a lawyer must look out the window to see what’s ahead (analogous to identifying new matters for generating additional revenue) while glancing at the dashboard to make sure all indicators (in this case, of financial performance) are positive.
Admittedly, today’s financial information systems and software can and do produce extremely detailed assessments of financial performance. However, many of these programs tend to provide far more data than can be assimilated intelligently.
“A first-year law student knows you can’t bolster the credibility of one witness with clearly inadmissible evidence.” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, United States vs Roger Clemens (July 13, 2011).
With all due respect to Judge Walton, I’m not so sure first-year law students would know this. But, they would surely know not to violate a judge’s prior ruling. Twice.
On July 25, the General Assembly voted to override Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of Senate Bill 33, a tort reform measure that places draconian limitations on the ability of medical malpractice victims to seek redress in court. The bill reads like a Christmas wish list for malpractice insurers, the state Chamber and the medical lobby: noneconomic damages capped at $500,000, virtual immunity for providers who perform vaguely defined “emergency” treatment, heightened requirements for expert witnesses and abbreviated periods of limitation.
It is 9 a.m., and Ms. Smith walks into your office to consult with you about her separation and divorce.
She has gone through a tough period. She was a homemaker with a current empty nest and a spouse who has left her. She is approaching retirement age and desperately needs to discuss the division of property.
In your consultation, she mentions her husband’s employment with the federal government and asks what rights she has to the federal retirement and how she might be able to retain a flow of payments after he dies. She also is concerned with health care coverage and life insurance.
It seemed doable to me.
My wife and I were adding a small deck on the back of our house. Our builder was a client with that easy country grace that is not as valued as it should be. But he also employed country frankness that sometimes stung when it hit the mark.
Before I left for the office early one morning during the construction, I had outlined my idea of what the deck could look like, and what I hoped was possible. But my knowledge of what was possible was limited because I had virtually no skill at building anything with my hands.
