Do you get social anxiety thinking about networking at big events? Is it hard to make connections with other lawyers? Focus on what you can learn about others, rather than telling people about yourself, business development coach Larry Kohn tells the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward.
If you’re attending the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago this week, you may be able to put some of these tips into practice. Click here to find out more about the 2015 ABA Annual Meeting. And if you have go-to icebreakers of your own, share them in the comments.
Do you get social anxiety thinking about networking at big events? Is it hard to make connections with other lawyers? Focus on what you can learn about others, rather than telling people about yourself, business development coach Larry Kohn tells the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward.
We’d all love to be able to unplug completely while we’re on vacation, but for many lawyers, it’s not that simple. Meeting your duty to your clients might mean that you can’t just leave your phone at home. But how can you keep distractions to a minimum and make the most out of your time off? The ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward gleans some tips and tricks from Jones Day partner Lawrence D. Rosenberg.
We’d all love to be able to unplug completely while we’re on vacation, but for many lawyers, it’s not that simple. Meeting your duty to your clients might mean that you can’t just leave your phone at home. But how can you keep distractions to a minimum and make the most out of your time off? The ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward gleans some tips and tricks from Jones Day partner Lawrence D. Rosenberg.
It’s a federal offense to grow, sell or use marijuana, but a growing number of states have laws permitting its use under specific circumstances. In Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, Washington and the District of Columbia, the product is available for recreational use. In Colorado and Washington, it may be sold commercially, and is taxed and regulated by the state. The University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law has started to offer classes in marijuana law. There’s a need for lawyers to represent cannabis businesses. But how can you advise these clients and develop this as a specialty while remaining on the right side of legal ethics?
In this month’s Asked and Answered, Seattle lawyer Ryan Espegard chats with the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward about how he advises the marijuana industry—being mindful of state and federal regulation—and what sorts of business development activities have worked for him.
Have you ever daydreamed about having a career abroad? Before saying bon voyage, you should know what’s involved. In this month’s Asked and Answered podcast, moderator Stephanie Francis Ward will speak with an attorney who’s done it and get his tips and advice on developing a practice beyond U.S. borders.
Mary Norris has been a copy editor for The New Yorker since 1978. In her new book, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, she offers clear and understandable grammar lessons for some of the most common conundrums faced by English speakers. Along the way, she also lifts the veil on the editorial process for the famed magazine and describes the meandering career path that led her to The New Yorker.
In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Norris and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss lawyers’ affinity for language.
“It is true that the legal profession has a lot riding on usage and punctuation,” says Norris.
Norris also sheds light on the little-known legal ambitions of Noah Webster, the father of American lexicography.
“He meant to be a lawyer,” Norris says. “He went to Yale, and he graduated from Yale during the American Revolution intending to be a lawyer. But he went back to West Hartford, and his father more or less cut him off. His father was all tapped out; he’d mortgaged his farm to pay for Noah to go to Yale in the first place.
“So Noah Webster went to work as a schoolteacher, and it’s because he was so appalled at his students’ pronunciation that he compiled The [American] Spelling Book, his idea being to break words down into their syllables and use spelling to teach pronunciation.”
Listen to the podcast for a list of Norris’ favorite grammar guides for additional reading.
Updated on May 1 to remove a comma.
If the unthinkable happens, will your practice be ready for an intermediary to take over or help with a transition? Do you know what would happen if you–-or one of your colleagues–-should suddenly die or become incapacitated? The ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with two experts about tools and systems you can put in place to give you and your clients peace of mind.
With such a stressful profession, many attorneys face addiction and other mental health issues. If you find yourself struggling–or know another lawyer who is–what resources are out there? Does admitting a problem have to harm your career? What are your ethical duties if you do know that a colleague is battling an addiction, or suffering from mental health problems?
In this month’s Asked and Answered, the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with Patrick Krill of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s legal professionals program to find out more. Krill is currently finishing a study in conjunction with the ABA to research substance abuse, depression and anxiety in legal profession.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “Lawyers who self-medicate to deal with stress sometimes steal from those they vowed to protect”
In the wake of divorce, many families find themselves emotionally and financially devastated. If you’re in the heat of a legal battle, it’s easy to go too far and create acrimony with your ex-spouse which can poison any chance at a cordial future relationship–and drain both sides’ bank accounts to pay for attorney fees. But what if if didn’t have to be that way? In this month’s Asked and Answered, moderator Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with Rebecca Love Kourlis and Melinda Taylor, who hope to change the way people approach the divorce process through the Honoring Families Initiative.
Read more about this initiative and its pilot project, the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families at University of Denver, in this month’s ABA Journal magazine: “Model program brings holistic solutions to divorce”
In the wake of divorce, many families find themselves emotionally and financially devastated. If you're in the heat of a legal battle, it's easy to go too far and create acrimony with your ex-spouse which can poison any chance at a cordial future relationship–and drain both sides' bank accounts to pay for attorney fees. But what if if didn't have to be that way?
In February 2011, an Ecuadorean court found the Chevron Corporation liable for environmental damage caused by oil-drilling activities in the rainforest region El Oriente in the 1970s and 1980s. Chevron, which in 2001 purchased Texaco (the company which had actually operated the oil wells), was ordered to pay $19 billion to the class-action plaintiffs who brought the suit. These plaintiffs, a collection of small farmers and indigenous peoples, had the support of a team of Ecuadorean and American attorneys, including the charismatic Steven Donziger. Donziger, a media-savvy graduate of Harvard Law, had helped them gain the support of variety of environmentalists and celebrities.
Although it is tempting to fit this into a simple narrative–either “scrappy band of lawyers wins enormous victory for oppressed people against an evil corporation” or “responsible corporation preyed upon by voracious plaintiffs attorneys over scurrilous accusations”–the truth just isn’t that simple. And the $19 billion verdict was far from the end of this story.
“When you combine the rainforest, multinational oil company and indigenous tribespeople, most people think they know the story with just those three facts,” said Paul M. Barrett, author of the new book Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win. “Life is always more complicated than that.”
Barrett first reported on this case when he wrote a profile of Donziger for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he is assistant managing editor and a senior writer. In this Modern Law Library podcast, he discusses with moderator Lee Rawles the wild twists and turns this case has taken, both before the verdict and afterwards.
As of this publication, legal battles are still being fought as accusations of fraud, forgery, bribery and conspiracy have been leveled against Donziger and the rest of the plaintiffs’ legal team. And as Barrett explains, the result of those battles could have severe and wide-ranging effects for all class-action lawsuits against major corporations.
Reviews:
AM Law Litigation Daily: “The Global Lawyer: A Review of Paul Barrett’s ‘Law of the Jungle’”
New York Law Journal: “The Law of the Jungle”
San Francisco Chronicle: “‘Law of the Jungle,’ by Paul M. Barrett: review”
Kirkus Reviews: “Law of the Jungle”
Related articles:
Fortune: “Chevron and Ecuador: 2 books and a smear campaign”
Politico: “The Fall of the House of Boggs: The bizarre Ecuadorean lawsuit that destroyed a Washington institution”
In this month’s Asked and Answered podcast, moderator Stephanie Francis Ward talks to Linda Greenhouse and Jonathan Turley about the past, present and future of legal journalism, and how it has influenced courts. Greenhouse reported on the U.S. Supreme Court for the New York Times for four decades, and is now the Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law and Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at Yale Law School. Turley is an attorney, legal scholar and professor at George Washington University Law School and is a legal analyst for several media outlets.
Looking back on the ABA Journal's century of legal journalism, we were interested in examining how the relationship between the Third Branch and the Fourth Estate has changed and evolved over the years.
In David Lat’s first novel, Supreme Ambitions, a young Yale Law School grad named Audrey Coyne lands what appears to be the opportunity of a lifetime when she becomes a clerk for Judge Christina Wong Stinson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Coyne sees this as the first step to her ultimate ambition: a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship, and the prestigious career which would be sure to follow. But what is she willing to sacrifice to achieve this goal? And is everything about this clerkship as it appears at first blush?
“I really enjoyed getting back into that anxious, ambitious mindset of my 20s,” Lat said. “It might sound strange, because the condition of being anxious and ambitious actually doesn’t sound very fun. But for me, I think, reliving that in writing this novel was again, as I was saying, therapeutic. It allowed me to look back on my former self with a greater sense of perspective. As some observers have noted, there are some similarities between myself and Audrey. And so writing about her story and her journey through the profession was in a way like looking back on my own years starting out as a law clerk and a young lawyer.”
In this episode of the Modern Law Library, moderator Lee Rawles chats with Lat about his novel, his career, and his time as the anonymous author of the sometimes-scandalous blog Underneath Their Robes. Supreme Ambitions is the first release from ABA Publishing’s new trade imprint, Ankerwycke, which was named for the tree beneath which the Magna Carta was sealed.
Reviews:
The New York Times: “Pleasing the Court With Intrigue”
National Law Journal: “David Lat Channels Law Clerk Experience in ‘Supreme Ambitions’” (reg. req.)
Hercules and the Umpire: “David Lat’s first novel, ‘Supreme Ambitions,’ deftly dissects judicial power, how to get it and how to use (and abuse) it”
The Volokh Conspiracy: “David Lat’s Supreme Ambitions”
Related articles:
ABAJournal.com: “ABA publishing kicks off new trade imprint with a novel by ATL founder David Lat”
ABAJournal.com: “What things do you consider before taking a case? | Bloggers review novel by ATL’s David Lat”
Social media is an easy (and often free) tool that litigators can use to share their clients’ stories. But how much is too much, and what if you post something that you’ll regret later?
In this month’s Asked and Answered podcast, we speak with Anthony C. Johnson, a plaintiffs personal injury lawyer who previously owned a search engine optimization and marketing company. He shares with moderator Stephanie Francis Ward some ideas about using Twitter, Facebook—and even Instagram—in a mindful manner.
Lawyers are often told how important professional networking is. But many find it so uncomfortable they feel physically dirty. Why is professional networking so distressing to so many? And how can you overcome it and be successful?
In this month’s Asked and Answered podcast, we speak to Tiziana Casciaro, one of the authors of a recent study, “The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly. She shares with moderator Stephanie Francis Ward some tips for getting past this mental block, and how to feel better about reaching out to potential clients and colleagues.
Do you have networking tales to tell? Share your experiences, good and bad in the answers to this Question of the Week: “Do you enjoy networking? Or does it make you feel slimy?”
Lawyers are often told how important professional networking is. But many find it so uncomfortable they feel physically dirty. Why is professional networking so distressing to so many? And how can you overcome it and be successful?
In this month's Asked and Answered podcast, we speak to Tiziana Casciaro, one of the authors of a recent study, "The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty," published in Administrative Science Quarterly. She shares with moderator Stephanie Francis Ward some tips for getting past this mental block, and how to feel better about reaching out to potential clients and colleagues.
Many young law grads are being urged to move out of large cities and into rural areas, where there aren’t as many attorneys competing for work. As we reported in the ABA Journal’s October cover story, there are many small communities in rural America that are woefully underserved, and access to justice is a real problem. It would seem a prime idea to hang your shingle in one of these small towns.
But what does it take to run a successful legal practice in a rural area? Asked and Answered moderator Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with Lorelei Laird, the reporter who wrote our cover story, and Bruce Cameron, who runs a solo practice in rural Minnesota.
The Amish religion is a branch of Christianity that adheres to a doctrine of simplicity, nonviolence and forgiveness. How then did a breakaway group come to be implicated in the first federal trial to prosecute religiously motivated hate crimes within the same faith community?
From September to November in 2011, there was series of five attacks against nine Amish victims in Ohio in which their beards or hair were shorn. Some were left bruised and bloodied. Several victims had their homes invaded in the dead of night, while others were lured to a settlement in Bergholz, Ohio, and then attacked. The alleged perpetrators were from a breakaway Amish community in Bergholz, led by a bishop named Samuel Mullet. Some victims were estranged family members of the attackers, while others had crossed Mullet in some way.
State officials called on federal prosecutors to take over the case and to try the alleged perpetrators under the Shepard-Byrd Act, a federal hate crimes law. Sixteen people were charged in the attacks in U.S. v. Miller, including Mullet. The jury found the 10 men and six women guilty of a total of 87 counts out of 90. But how did it come to this?
Donald Kraybill, a professor of Amish studies, was an expert witness in the trial. He has written Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers, to explain the history of the case, and the sociological and religious factors that led to the attacks.
Though the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions in a 2-1 decision, based on their interpretation of “but for” causation in the 2009 hate-crimes act, they allowed for a retrial.
Kraybill does not think that this will be the end of the case. In this podcast, he shares with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles the backstory behind the case; what it was like for him to testify; and what he feels the implications of the 6th Circuit’s decision will be.
Find out more about the Amish:
• PBS: American Experience: The Amish
• Amish Studies at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College: Frequently Asked Questions
• The Amish, by Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven M. Nolt
• The Amish and the State, by Donald B. Kraybill
• Amish America, a blog by Erik Wesner
This month, in connection with our Legal Rebels project, we wanted to look at the growing field of virtual law practices.
Opportunities are growing for lawyers to practice law in digital spaces. But clients still want and need individual attention. If you have a virtual law practice, how can you provide the hand-holding necessary for clients?
ABA Journal reporter Stephanie Francis Ward speaks to three attorneys–all ABA Journal Legal Rebels–about how they manage this.
Before their successful partnership on Hollingsworth v. Perry, the federal case that overturned California’s anti-same-sex-marriage law, the most prominent case Ted Olson and David Boies had been involved in together was Bush v. Gore. Olson, who argued on behalf of George W. Bush, prevailed over Al Gore, who was represented by Boies. But people who expected that the two would therefore be hostile towards each other were dead wrong.
“I think that’s an unfortunate conception that some people have, that because you’re on opposite sides of a case, you must dislike or disrespect your opponent, or treat the opponent that’s against you in the courtroom with anything less than full civility and full respect,” Olson tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles.
In reality, though they occupied opposite ends of the political spectrum, Boies and Olson were good friends. The two attorneys had often talked about working on a case together.
So in 2008, when Olson was approached by a group of Californians looking to overturn Proposition 8, Boies was one of the first attorneys he thought to reach out to. In June 2013, their clients prevailed before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The newly released book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality is the jointly written account by Boies and Olson of how that was accomplished.
“It was a story that we thought was important to tell,” Boies says. “We thought it was important for lawyers to understand how the case was developed and presented. But we also thought it was important for the general public to understand our plaintiffs; to understand what was at stake; to understand why we took the case; and ultimately, how the case was won.”
Several major LGBT advocacy organizations opposed the legal strategy Boies and Olson decided to take. Boies is quick to acknowledge that opponents of taking the case to the federal courts had their reasons. “Obviously, the people who opposed this, the people who had spent decades in many cases fighting for gay and lesbian rights, knew a lot more about some of these issues than Ted and I did. But we came at it from a different perspective.”
Boies outlines several practical reasons why they decided to go ahead with the litigation. But one reason was more emotional: “We were representing four plaintiffs who wanted to get married. And it’s very hard to tell a client that this is not your time. That there will come a time where you, or your descendants, will have equality, but you can’t enjoy the ability to marry the person that you love. And it’s very hard to tell an individual that, in the interest of a larger strategic judgment, they have got to wait for their constitutional rights to be vindicated.”
In this podcast, Olson and Boies go into more detail about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that was required to build the case, and they share what’s next for them.
Zero tolerance discipline policies were once all the rage in schools.
But instead of improving test scores and graduation rates, zero tolerance policies were shown to actually reduce them, says Daniel Losen, director of the Civil Rights Project’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies. Research also showed that in practice, many children—especially children of color and children with disabilities—were being suspended and sometimes expelled for extremely minor infractions.
So now that zero tolerance is falling out of favor, what does this mean for schools and the juvenile justice system? Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with Losen, an attorney and former teacher, about how school districts and lawyers can help plug the school-to-prison pipeline.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “Schools start to rethink zero tolerance policies”
Alafair Burke’s fascination with crime stories came far before her career as a novelist, or her work as first a prosecutor and then a law professor.
“When I was growing up in Wichita, there was an active serial killer there who called himself ‘BTK,’ which stood for ‘Bind, Torture and Kill,’ which is kind of not a good thing to hear when you’re 8 years old,” she tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. “And I was always obsessed with crime. I still am. At any given time, I’m watching some story on the news or following some case from afar—but at the time it wasn’t from afar, it was right there. And my experience of living in a place that you would think of as very safe and very quiet, that was actually a very violent place to live, becomes part of Ellie Hatcher’s backstory.”
All Day and a Night is Burke’s fifth book featuring Ellie Hatcher, a New York City police detective. When a murder occurs that is similar to those credited to an imprisoned serial killer, Hatcher and her partner are assigned to review the decades-old cases to determine if an innocent man is serving life without parole. And in a parallel narrative, Carry Blank, the attorney sister of one of the victims, is asked to serve as defense counsel for the imprisoned man, Anthony Amaro. A scene from Blank’s childhood in which her classmates discuss the killings on the playground was informed by Burke’s own memories. Nothing is necessarily as it seems, and people who may seem like stock characters turn out to be much more complex than at first glance.
In this podcast, Burke discusses her work as a writer, Hofstra Law School professor and former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon. She also shares a peek into her upcoming book project with one of the original titans of crime fiction, Mary Higgins Clark. And we find out what it’s like to write long-running series–in addition to the Ellie Hatcher series, Burke has written three books featuring prosecutor Samantha Kincaid–and how to deal with a fan base that develops decided opinions on what your characters would or would not do.
See also:
ABA Journal: “How the Cops Caught BTK” (2006)
Language is a living thing. New words and phrases—or even grammatical shifts—mean that a lexicographer’s work is never truly complete. This month, we’re speaking with Bryan A. Garner, the editor-in-chief of Black’s Law Dictionary, president of LawProse Inc. and author of the ABA Journal column Bryan Garner on Words. He’ll share with us what goes on behind the scenes to produce Black’s Law Dictionary, and give us some sneak peeks into what fresh material the newly released 10th edition has to offer.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “The tortuous tale behind the 10th edition of the most widely cited lawbook in the world”
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