Denise Howell is a seasoned appellate and intellectual property litigator based in Los Angeles. Denise writes one of the first and most popular law-related blogs, Bag and Baggage, coined the term "blawg" and helped pioneer podcasting for lawyers. Microcontent obsessed since 2001, she is frequently quoted in the media on legal issues involving intellectual property and technology law. "Sound Policy" is Denise's show at IT Conversations, and it's also what she hopes results from the briefs she submits to court. Email Denise at dhowell@gmail.com.
Dennis Kennedy is a computer lawyer and legal technology expert based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author, a frequent speaker and a widely-read blogger, he has more than 300 publications on legal, technology and Internet topics, many of which are collected in his e-books. Dennis has been described as someone who knows almost every rock song in existence and, more importantly, how they apply to technology and law. Email Dennis at his gmail address.
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He has published the Internet Legal Research Weekly newsletter since 2000 and blogged about the Internet and legal technology at Inter Alia since August of 2002. With Tom's singing, Ernie on guitar and Dennis' encylopedic knowledge of rock music, we may have the beginnings of a good band, if this whole blog thing doesn't work out. Email Tom at tmighell@swbell.net.
Marty Schwimmer left a partnership in the largest trademark practice in the world and founded Schwimmer Mitchell, a full-service IP micro-boutique in Westchester County, New York, where he represents owners of famous and not yet famous trademarks. He founded The Trademark Blog, the first IP law blog and the one with the most pictures. He is the first to come in and the last to leave in his firm. Email Marty at marty@schwimmerlegal.com.
Ernest Svenson practices law with a mid-sized law firm in New Orleans, specializing in business-related lawsuits. Most of his practice takes place in federal court, especially the Eastern District. He is best known for his weblog Ernie the Attorney, which he started as an experiment. Like many experiments it got out of control. Nevertheless, he continues to practice law and, occasionally,
to seek enlightenment. Email Ernest at esvenson@gmail.com.
About this blog
Between Lawyers provides just-in-time group commentary on the issues
raised when technology, culture and the law intersect. We take you
behind the firewalls and conference room doors to show you how
experienced lawyers deal with these issues and help you prepare for
the new challenges we all face. For more, see our introductory post.
A Reason for Lawyers to Podcast Their Oral Arguments?
An interesting post from Rees Morrison talks about clients who want to hear recordings of lawyers in action before deciding which lawyer to hire as a trial lawyer.
It does make sense. If you are hiring a lawyer for his or her advocacy skills, wouldn't you ideally like to hear (or see) some examples of the lawyer in action? Event planners routinely ask for samples from prospective speakers.
Might a podcast be a way to create that kind of "sample of work" for prospective clients?
Dahlia Lithwick, Revenge Of The Nerd:
"He is like a very, very smart rock."
Also: "Anyone can manage to be boring on boring subjects; Alito has seemingly perfected the art of being boring on controversial ones."
In honor of the Alito confirmation hearings, remember to answer Marty's question: "What experience/qualities would you like to see in a Supreme Court justice?"
Now that we are not talking about any one in particular: What experience/qualities would you like to see in a Supreme Court justice? Rank in order of importance. What would you add?
Judicial experience at the appellate level.
Provided legal services to underserved populations.
Bar Association experience.
Law review authorship.
Blogging (heh).
Judicial experience at the trial level.
Teaching.
Fitness (recall Bush's first remark to Roberts).
Judicious.
Membership in an evangelical church.
Private lawyering experience as a litigator.
Ownership of dogs.
Private lawyering experience as an appellate advocate.
Good with numbers.
High number of CLE credits.
Good Martindale Hubbell AV rating.
Owns spiffy 'litigation briefcase'
Will vote the way you want.
Earlier this week, Professor Bainbridge (and others; see the links at the end of the good Professor's post) blogged a conference call to which they were invited, featuring RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman on the Harriet Miers nomination. From Professor Bainbridge: "It was a lot of assurances but not a lot of facts. And facts are what we need." From the Financial Times: "Within minutes, bloggers posted their reaction to the call: most were unpersuaded."
'Of the 80 cases before the Supreme Court last term, 25 involved questions directly affecting businesses, according to data collected by Goldstein & Howe, a Washington law firm specializing in Supreme Court litigation. While 33 cases raised questions of constitutional law, 45 involved the interpretation of a law, one involved an interstate dispute and one involved a dispute between a state and the federal government.
That was a typical year, said Thomas C. Goldstein, a partner at the firm. The Supreme Court's caseload is made up of "relatively mundane questions of federal law, mostly about statutes, not the Constitution, that are important to little corners of the legal universe but are not on the hot-button social issues of the day," Mr. Goldstein said.
"It may be that abortion is the most important question that the court decides," he said, "but it's close to the least frequent."'
Via Volokh: Supposedly Senator Leahy asked Harriet Miers who her favorite Supreme Court Justice was and she says 'Warren' and he raises his eyebrows or something and she adds '. . .Burger.' That may not be what actually happened but this version sounds like the Ignatz Ratzkywatzky exchange from The Miracle of Morgan Creek.
Here's the Supreme Court Watch Podcast from Alliance for Justice, featuring (per its press release) "live blogging [of the Roberts confirmation hearings] to provide response and commentary in real time, as well as daily wrap-up podcasts to provide further in-depth discussion and analysis available to listeners at any time, anywhere."
For those who missed it, Nico Pitney of Think ProgresscapturedSenator Grassley's comments about the nefarious blogosphere and its, in his mind, unfortunate but now unavoidable role in the judicial confirmation process. Good for a laugh. Sez Nico: "Bloggers, always characterizing documents and opining! Why won’t they just stop paying attention and let Senators hold the trite 15-minute hearings they really want?"
Slate.com article and WSJ Online article on whether Judge Roberts should have participated in the Hamdan appeal while he was being actively interviewed for the Supreme Court position. Judge Roberts was 1 of a unanimous 3 judge panel ruling in favor of the Government several days after he was interviewed by several senior Administration officials).
The Slate article, authored by Professors Gellers, Luban and Lubet, contains an extensive discussion of the caselaw of the 'appearance of impartiality' standard.
Volokh Conspiracy raises the interesting point that Justice O'Connor's resignation is effective pending confirmation of her successor. As Judge Roberts has now been 're-nominated' to succeed Justice Rehnquist, not Justice O'Connor, she may need to go back to work for a while.
President Bush's selection of Judge Roberts for Chief Justice removed a potential scheduling problem for Congress. Had the president nominated a sitting Associate Justice for the position of Chief, that Justice would have had to have hearings, and the nominee for that vacant seat would have had hearings, so there was the potential for three confirmation hearings at once.
Search and analyze the published opinions of Supreme Court nominee, Judge John G Roberts. On July 19, 2005, Judge John G. Roberts was nominated by President George W. Bush to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Roberts has helped decide about 120 cases and written 49 published opinions.
I'm all a-tingle about this one because it's a brilliant marketing move if, like askSam, you offer information management tools, and because it fills a gap in access to and searchability of these opinions. To the extent judicial opinions are freely available online, they're generally PDFs or Word documents. As far as I know this is the first time someone has aggregated all the published Roberts opinions and made them freely and easily searchable.
A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $2000 for the raw material for the drug and charged $20,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $10,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So the husband got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have done that?
Today we see that 'plaidgate' has been linked to by Instapundit and by the Washington Post's media critic who characterizes the transformation as 'an overheated interpretation of some mostly tongue-in-cheek posts' but nevertheless quotes the Charmaine Yost piece verbatim (keeping links intact).
Wikipedia's bio of John Roberts indicated that he went to an all-male boarding school, and was on the wrestling team.
Manhattan Offender, which appears to be a small personal blog, points this out, along with the fact that he took French and sang in the choir, and jokes that he might be gay. At least it is my conjecture that in this context, it was intended as an ironic remark, and that readers of a Manhattan gossip blog will perceive it as such.
Wonkette cites the Manhattan Offender joke and adds that Roberts must be a flame-thrower because he edited the school paper, The Torch. To add to the joke, she cited a NY Times piece entitled 'Court Nominee's Life Is Rooted in Faith and Respect for Law' for the bit that Roberts had played 'Peppermint Patty' in a high school play.
Ann Althouse a law professor, reads Wonkette's piece, notes that she had come to the same 'conclusion' that Wonkette did, and therefore she concludes that the NY Times had intentionally placed the bits about Peppermint Patty (and a photo of Roberts in a 'all-male wedding photograph' (as in photo of the groomsmen)) to plant the notion that Roberts was closeted.
Charmaine Yoest, an author and policy consultant, cites Manhattan Offender, Wonkette and Althouse's posts for the proposition that the 'left' has begun a whisper campaign against Roberts. She suggests that the left are homophobic.
Powerline , a high-profile conservative blog, in a piece entitled 'They Were Already Beneath Contempt,' cites Yost for the proposition that the 'Democrats' are hinting that Roberts is gay. He also adds that the Democrats were in favor of slavery.
Gordon Allport, in the 'The Psychology of Rumor' describes the manner in which rumors are transmitted (I'm using Malcolm Gladwell's summary of Allport from his book 'The Tipping Point'): The story is leveled - details essential for understanding (such as the fact that Wonkette is a humorist) are removed. The story is sharpened - the source of the 'facts' are no longer Wikipedia and the NY Times but 'the left' and 'Democrats.' The story is assimilated - the story is changed to make sense to those spreading the rumor.
The Democrats are spreading a scandalous rumor about the innocent nominee for their own purposes - that story will make more sense than the story that someone made a not particularly funny joke about Roberts being on the wrestling team. At least it will make more sense to those who will link to the Powerline without checking the links back to Manhattan Offender and Wonkette.
Denise Howell
Dennis M. Kennedy
Tom Mighell
Marty Schwimmer
Ernest Svenson
