Some notes from work this week:

Item: When I am appointed to a case, I send out an introductory letter to the client explaining how appointed counsel works, what I can and can’t do, and some tips to help them through the process (i.e., show up for court). Most of these FAQs are in response to actual frequently-asked questions. This week I had to update the letter with the following:

Due to my heavy workload and the number of clients I represent, I cannot help you with personal business, such as feeding pets, picking up your mail or newspaper, paying bills, or communicating with your landlord or utilities companies. Please arrange for a friend or family member to do these things.

Yes, someone asked me to feed their dogs and pick up their mail while they were in jail. And to get the paper, so nobody could tell that he wasn’t home and break into the place. More than one someone.

Generally I only have to add a paragraph to the letter when two or more people ask me to do something. Last month, I had to add a paragraph explaining that no, I can’t also handle your divorce for free. If one more client does it, I will also need to add a paragraph saying “Dress appropriately for court– this means do not wear a t-shirt that says ’shit happens when you party naked’ to your arraignment, especially if you are facing sex-crime charges.” (Yes, this happened– also a pot-leaf t-shirt on a MIP).

Item: All law offices get free magazines in the mail. Publishers send the magazines to convince you that you need to subscribe to them to set on the coffee table in your waiting area to amuse your clients and take their minds off the screaming coming from the conference room. Most mainstream publications do this– National Geographic, TIME, Juggs– but a profusion of highly-specialized publications have also started sending our office trial issues of their journals, leaving us with an odd assortment of magazines like Christian Juggalo, or Arizona Gynecologist Gazette. Yesterday a divorce client was thumbing through an article in Walleye In-Sider magazine with a strange look on her face– turns out Walleye obsession was a trait that broke up the marriage.

Item: I’m looking forward to Monday’s arraignment schedule, following our National Holiday. I expect several new juvenile cases. Last year, the number of MIP appointments who also had bandaged and seared fingers and hands was astounding.

Item: On a sad note, my laptop is dead. Many of you remember my ultra-classy, wood-grained Dell Inspiron from lawschool. After nearly six years of faithful service, the hard-drive crapped out and it now makes a very worrying grinding noise upon startup, and tells me that it has no hard-drive. I shouldn’t be surprised, but the thing did serve me very well for longer than any other computer I have ever had. I am now writing this blog from work. I plan to get a netbook in the near future, and a desktop in the near-but-not-as-near-as-the-netbook future.

PRO: All Westlaw Marketing Executives
EX: Jovial Counsel
RE: Advertising and Pricing

Why can’t you just tell me how much a monthly subscription to Washington state and federal authorities is? I’ve checked your website, which is utterly bereft of pricing information. Then when I try to call in for a quote, you try to upsell with the tenacity of a Turkish bazaar merchant on methamphetamine. Either post the prices of your jurisdictional subscription plans, or just tell me the god-damned price when I call, and do not try to sell me a book plan, Oregon and Idaho upgrade package, or access to Washington Practice. This isn’t a concession stand at the cinema.

You have a fantastic product that really sells itself; I would probably pay whatever price you quoted, but I need you to quote it before I can pay it.

That is all. As you were.

In Re: Custody of Dolores H.
Massachusetts Supreme Court, 2004
833 Mass. 401, 974 N.E.2d 404

Spina, J.

Petitioner/Appellee Humbert Humbert, a professor of comparative French literature currently on sabbatical, seeks to gain custody of his thirteen year-old stepdaughter Dolores H. Following the death of his second wife, Charlotte H., Prof. Humbert requested that the Massachusetts Family Court grant him custody, which they did. On this appeal brought by a third-party petitioner, whose petition for custody was denied by that Court, he requests that this Court uphold the decision of the lower court granting his petition.

While this petition has met with considerable outcry in the public media and popular press, we must not forget that a family has many definitions in this day and age. To say that a forty-six year-old, disturbingly-melancholic, European man, traveling the country in a station-wagon and checking into single rooms in tawdry motels with a thirteen year-old girl not his natural daughter (and for whom he seems to have a strange affinity) is not a family is to deny the very cornerstone of America; a family is love, and a family is security. Both of these things Prof. Humbert can provide for Dolores H.

Notwithstanding the various amici curiae briefs this court has received from both sides, from the ACLU, the Christian Coalition, The International Society for the Protection of Nymphets, to name but a few, all represented ably by counsel, this court is constrained by a deep sense of moral and emotional duty to uphold the decision of the Massachusetts Family Court and allow Prof. Humbert to retain custody of his step-child, who he intends to withdraw from public school and tutor himself whilst on the road. Not only is Prof. Humbert eminently qualified to take charge of Dolores’s education (he has already taught her near fluent French), a trip of this magnitude across these great United States will no doubt be endlessly broadening for a young girl of Dolores’s age. We therefore affirm the decision of the lower court.

Greany, J., Dissenting.

Though far be it from me to declare what a family is and is not in this day and age, I agree with the majority to an extent: a family is love, and a family is security. That Prof. Humbert can supply love is not at issue here; however Prof. Humbert has been on “sabbatical” for some time and has not enjoyed gainful employment for many years. The large sum left to him by his “oncle [A]mericain” as his attorney, Mr. Nabokov’s brief so elegantly puts it, amounts only to some few thousand dollars a year. I would grant the petition of the Appellant, Mr. Claire Quilty, an eminent and distinguished American author and playwright, whose income easily exceeds that of myself and my brethren, and who owns a monumental home, Pavor Manor, one of America’s finest architectural examples of Victorian Gothic style. Mr. Quilty, though not related, has known Dolores H. for many years, his cousin being the town dentist. His interest and genuine caring for this child is a model of decent behavior to all of us, and his willingness to take in Dolores H. is nothing short of utter saintliness.

Ireland, J. Dissenting.

I’m can’t quite put my finger on why, but the phrase “small agile rump,” appearing on page 21 of Mr. Nabokov’s brief distresses me immensely, so I respectfully dissent.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to (temporarily) have income that outstripped my obligations, and I purchased the Most Awesomest Thing Evar– one of Romo Lampkin’s law books from Gaius Baltar’s trial on Battlestar Galactica. I even spent hours going through Episodes 3:18 and 3:19 on frame-by-frame to find it, sitting on defense-counsel table in front of Lee Adama in both episodes.

I can’t really overemphasize the coolness of this item. Take a gander:

This fantastic Space-Law book also came with a nerd-a-riffic certificate of authenticity (complete without corners, per Space-Law General Rule 12.3) signed by people I don’t know (because I skipped the last convention).

Feel free to envy me at your leisure.

I’ve been concerned for some time about the methods of advertising that my brethren in the Bar employ. There was a time, once, when lawyer adverts were not only considered to be in poor taste and frowned upon, but were also forbidden and could result in a one-way ticket to a career in used-car sales for the unwary practitioner.

One need only review Episode 110 of Green Acres (in which Lisa takes out an ad in the Hooterville and Pixley newspapers for Oliver’s fledgling law firm without his knowledge or consent, resulting in hilarious disciplinary hijinks) to see the evidence of this simpler and more discerning time.

Nowadays, however, one can’t flip on the TeeVee or open a telephone directory without being accosted by the smiling or scowling face of some attorney who wants one’s business and isn’t afraid to ask for it in tri-color, 3-by-5, pure, barratrous glory; and it seems with the passage of each year, the commercials get more and more brazen, the celebrity endorsements less and less dignified, the cowboy hats sporting snakeskin bands and pheasant feathers larger and larger. Promises of “big cash settlements” and the ability of a gentleman barrister (for lady barristers seldom deign to such ignominy, with one notable exception) to “make the insurance companies pay” are thick in the air, and often result in the penny-copper taste of sick in one’s throat and a general loss of respect for the legal community as a whole.

I’m happy to say that the firm I work for has never advertised– in fact, our phone number is unlisted. We rely solely on word-of-mouth recommendations, and we are not hurting for work. Someday, we may advertise, but when we do I hope it’s only with our names and contact information, maybe our fields of specialization and a nice clip art image of a sad clown. My boss offered to run an ad in the paper with the announcement of my hiring by the firm, but I firmly declined, remembering the announcement of the hiring of a former classmate that sent the members of my little law school clique into (perhaps jealous) fits of mockery amongst ourselves.

My friend Vinny has placed an ad in the local “Thrifty Bonus Nickel” type paper, and has had to endure our good-natured (for the most part) ribbing as a result. It does seem to have paid dividends as far as crack-possession and dependency cases are concerned, however.

The following are based on ads I’ve seen, and also on the behaviors of attorneys I work with every day.

(Click the thumbnail to see the ad in a size you can actually read)