One of the “victims” of the USLaw.com fiasco is none other than copyright and trademark lawyer, not to mention lawprof, Marc Randazza.  He’s not pleased about it.  And more importantly, he’s prepared to do something about it, having the knowledge, experience and slew of eager law students at the ready.

Gregory Chase, or whatever name he’s using today, has had an opportunity to address his infringement of copyright and trademark across the blawgosphere since this matter first arose.  It appears that he’s hoping to ride it out, that the anger at his flagrant theft of the efforts of others for his own benefit will subside, and he can go on using content as if this unpleasantness never happened. 

Even with the things I’ve said to him, he continues to keep Simple Justice on his website, as if this never happened.  For many others who had no idea that this anonymous thief had included your blawg and was stealing your content, your outrage was palpable.  This doesn’t appear to be going away on its own.  Indeed, Chase put up a post (not that anyone would look for it on a website like his, but he did nonetheless) in which he promised an explanation for his conduct.  As of this writing, nothing further has appeared.

I’ve heard from many blawgers, both in comments and emails, who are outraged by what USLaw.com has done.  Many have sent Chase emails demanding that their blawg be removed from his website and that he stop stealing their content.  But mine remains, and continues to include his screen shot of Simple Justice with his USLaw.com logo superimposed on it.  Even those he’s taken down upon demand should consider that he has fed off their efforts, that the theft will live forever in cyberspace and that he’s likely to put them back up when we turn our attention away from this situation.

It’s time to take a stand, both for this mutt and any other who decides that he’s entitled to start a business based on our efforts. 

Randazza has offered to take this matter pro bono, but as we are all aware, the initial outrage that this has sparked across the blawgosphere needs to translate to a desire to follow through and deal with this once and for all.  It will not merely apply to USLaw.com, the current instance of some geek who thinks his version of life trumps your rights to your content, but consider its impact on future generations of online entrepreneurs who think that they too can take whatever they want.  Do we want to spend the rest of our blawging lives seeing our content stolen in its entirety and working for someone else’s profit?

Randazza has two conditions before plunging into this matter.  First, that it reflect the will and interest of a significant portion of the blawgosphere, meaning that enough blawgers sign aboard to show that the blawgosphere is behind this movement, supports it and is willing to stay with it until completion.  Not every blawger need sign up, but it really must reflect our commitment to protecting our copyright and trademark from infringement at will.  There will be no cost associates with his representation, but there must be a commitment to the concept.

Second, this will be a unified effort, meaning that Randazza isn’t going to waste his time herding the feral cats of the blawgosphere.  We all realize that our opinions, both legal and moral, differ.  Often vehemently.  But this litigation cannot be maintained if it requires accommodation of the thousand differing opinions we often bring to the table.  While each of us may have our own thoughts on what aspect is most disturbing, critical, immoral or illegal, the decision-making must rest with Randazza, who will be doing all the heavy lifting on our behalf.  We will need to leave our personal pet peeves behind and allow Randazza to serve the good of the blawgosphere as he sees fit.

The overarching point is that what happened with USLaw.com should not be allowed to fade into the background as we move on to other issues and concerns.  It was very wrong and remains very wrong, and as long as it continues, it presents a threat to each of us.

So the question posed is, who wants in to an action to put a stop to USLaw.com’s infringement of copyright and trademark?  This is the time to stand up and be heard, or never complain about someone stealing your content again.  Let’s hope that we, lawyers all, show the fortitude to do the right thing about this wrongdoing, and show others that we are prepared to come forward and put a stop to illegal conduct. 

Are you with us?

P.S. Spread the word so that anyone who wants a piece of this knows about it, and that every blawger whose content has been stolen has a chance to do something about it.

There’s an old joke about physicians: What do you call the guy who graduated last in his medical school class?  Doctor.  The part of this joke that matters here is that some people view those they hire to do a job as fungible; one as good (or bad) as another, and hence readily exchangeable. 

Some people want a lawyer.  Which lawyer they get doesn’t really matter.  Any one will do.  From the lawyer side, this is only a bad thing when people make a decision who to retain.  Once retained, however, lawyers are more than happy to make themselves interchangeable, so that whoever is available at a given moment can show up to represent a defendant, whether partner or associate, whether they know anything about the case and whether there is a personal relationship between lawyer or client.  The argument is that the client retains the Firm, and gets whoever the Firm sends.  How convenient for the Firm.

Carolyn Elefant, over at Legal Blog Watch, posts about a Maryland decision that addresses this practice, the old lawyer switcheroo.

A criminal defendant can’t be forced to settle for representation by his lawyer’s partner when the lawyer  he hired is unavailable for trial, ruled the Maryland Court of Appeals in Miguel Gonzales v. State of Maryland.  As the Maryland Daily Record summarizes, Gonzales’ attorney F. Spencer Gordon was unavailable on the day of trial, so Marshall Henslee, his partner appeared instead. Gonzales insisted that he was represented by Gordon, not Henslee, so the judge gave Gonzales the option of either going forward with Henslee or representing himself. Gonzales chose to represent himself and lost.

It’s one thing to show up for a “routine” court appearance and find some other suit standing where your lawyer is supposed to be, but trial?  Apparently the trial judge didn’t find this as big a deal as I do.  Or as the defendant did, offering the defendant the absurd choice of using the lawyer whose only virtue was presence or flying solo.  Nice choice.

Fortunately, that Maryland Court of Appeals (which has been issuing some bang up decisions lately) made a radical ruling, that defendants are entitled to the lawyer they retained.  Not the law firm.  Not whoever the lawyer sends on a day when he’s busy defending someone more important.  The lawyer they retained.  Ironically, Gonzalez may have rethought his choice after what happened to him, but his initial reaction remained valid.

Criminal defense, probably more so than any other practice area, is personal.  Your lawyer is a particular person, one in whom you develop and repose a level of trust and confidence that doesn’t transfer easily.  She’s the woman who looks into the defendant’s eyes, holds the defendant’s hand, hears the defendant’s voice break as he described what happened and how it will affect his life.  It doesn’t matter how many lawyers in a firm, or how vast the firm’s resources.  It’s one person standing next to you in court, shielding you from everything the government can do to you.

More to the point, it’s not up to a lawyer to decide that the client will be represented by whoever the lawyer decides.  This is a decision that belongs exclusively to the client.  He has chosen you, and for that you should be appreciative and honor his decision.  While I often hear from defendants that their decision was motivated by the “resources” a large firm can bring to a case, a concept I think is ridiculously misguided but one that persists nonetheless, the choice invariably comes down to the lawyer who will stand next to the defendant.  The defendant must trust that one human being in a pin-striped suit.

This, Carolyn explains, isn’t the Firm’s understanding:

One would think that the defendant’s lawyers would be excited about the decision (though apparently they did not argue the appeal) — but instead, Gordon’s partner Henslee expressed concerns over the court’s ruling. Henslee complained to the Daily Record  that the court’s ruling would force his firm to “reconsider the fairly established practice of having law partners stand in for each other at trial when the primary attorney is unavailable that day.” Gordon also commented, saying that the ruling will compel defense firms to make it clear to their clients that “it’s the firm that represents them” and that any attorney in the practice may handle the case.

I’m unaware of any established practice of having some lawyer  a defendant has never met before showing up for trial?  Is this a Maryland thing?  Being from New York, I can’t say, but I would have a hard time believing it.  Appearing for routine court appearances is understandable.  But trial?  That’s crazy.

Worse still is the focus of these lawyers: It’s all about what’s good for them.  Even “worser” is the notion that they can and should “exculpate” themselves from what is facially a scam by informing clients that they hire the Firm, not a specific attorney.  If any lawyer says that to you, run like the wind.  Away from that lawyer.  You’ve just been told that they will do what’s best for them rather than what’s best for you.

What’s deeply disturbing about this is that the defendant, who has met with a lawyer, decided that he is willing to stake his life on the person whose hand he’s just shaken, would get “played” by a facile and somewhat obtuse disclaimer by the very person who just sold his services based on trust.  Trusting the untrustworthy is hardly what a defendant has in mind, and clearly not a reflection of who lawyers should be.

It doesn’t matter if your lawyer is solo or one of a thousand.  Your lawyer is your lawyer.  When you arrive in court for trial, that’s the lawyer you expect to have standing next to you.  Anyone else is unacceptable. 

Every once in a while, a criminal defense blawger will post a metacognitive description of their work by analogizing themselves to something other than a criminal defense lawyer.  Today’s flavor is Remy Orozco at Hostis Civitas, and the ice cream parlor across the street is run by Mark Bennett at Defending People.  Remy posts about how to hire a gunslinger, and Bennett responds that Paladin doesn’t charge by the bullet.

We love the gunfighter analogy.  It suits what we do in so many ways.  Plus, it’s incredibly romantic and manly, which is what we wish we were if we hadn’t become lawyers.  It’s not a perfect analogy, but no analogy is ever perfect.  If we tried to use the gladiator analogy, some twerp would argue that we were suits when we fight, though Oscar Wilde would likely riposte that we’re intellectually naked.

As much fun as it might be to join in the sparring, that’s not the purpose of this post.  Rather, my use of these posts is to make an entirely different point:  We’ve been here before, yet when a new reader spies a new post, it’s new to her.  I can’t remember when Bennett first raised his thoughts on the subject of charging for trial insurance in his fee structure in order to avoid the problem of a client feeling compelled to plead guilty because he can’t afford the cost of a trial, but I remember writing about it at the time.  It was a very interesting concept, and a very thoughtful approach.  I didn’t agree with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

One of my readers sent me an email with a link to Bennett’s post.  I then read Remy’s post.  And I smiled to myself.  These were horses that I’ve beaten to death so many times already.  Yet I also know that someone will happen upon Simple Justice and never see these posts, never know that I’ve discussed what to look for in a criminal defense lawyer, how fees are structured and what’s right and wrong about varying fee structures.  It happens constantly that a reader will read a post and assume that it reflects the entirety of thought on a broad subject, unaware that there are a multitude of other posts on the subject that address the many nuanced aspects of the issue.

What to do?  It pains me to think that my thoughts are so misinterpreted because the reader hasn’t read every single thing I’ve ever written.  It would likely pain them to do so.  There are times I’ve reminded readers to take a look elsewhere and see that there is more to a topic than just the individual post that brought them here, but I certainly can’t demand that anyone be required to research my every post for others on the same or similar topic.

One alternative is to pull out my best posts, or perhaps my posts on the most basic issues, and repeat them from time to time.  If my purpose in writing was to promote myself, it would likely be in my best interest to do so.  I would look far better if I were to stick with the things that potential clients would be interested in, and fashion my blawg in a way that would highlight what a great guy I am, rather than prattle on about whatever strikes my fancy on a daily basis.  After all, my posts about the need for integrity in the criminal defense bar are certainly more likely to capture the attention of potential clients than my posts about why twitter isn’t the intellectual endgame of the internet.

But I can’t bring myself to do it.  It would be boring to me and would undermine the very reason for Simple Justice to exist.  So I offer no post today about whether criminal defense lawyers are gunslingers, or whether Paladin charges for 6 bullets in his retainer even if only one is needed.  I’ve already had my say on the subject, and am not inclined to repeat myself.

But instead, I will analogize myself to a nun, My faith in the law, for better or worse, was established long ago, and my choice to write whatever strikes my fancy each morning is now a matter of habit.  Yeah, it’s a horrible analogy, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that Simple Justice remains chaste. 

And if you want to know what I think about the subject of Remy’s and Bennett’s posts, they’re in here somewhere to be found by anyone who cares enough to look.  FYI, I like the Paladin analogy too, but it’s mostly for his business card.

The New York Times editorial urges Congress to provide meaningful funding for the Second Chance Act, passed last year by Congress as part of the President’s prisoner re-entry initiative.  That would be President Bush, by the way.

With the economy in recession, and prison costs rising, states that used to lock up as many inmates as possible are looking for sensible alternatives. President Obama has asked Congress to commit more than $100 million to prisoner re-entry programs, with three-quarters going to the Second Chance Act. That would be a good down payment, but only a down payment, on what is needed.

The editorial describes how two states, Texas and Kansas, both known for their deep and abiding concern for criminal defendants, have implemented aspects of this bill and had significant success in reducing recidivism.  In Texas, according to the editorial, a 25% reduction in parole revocations was achieved within two years of implementation, saving the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

But two years ago, we weren’t in a recession.  With people unemployed, services cut to the bone and businesses failing, the standard complaints will rear their ugly heads:  Why should the hard-earned money of good, law-abiding folks be used to coddle criminals.  Why help them get jobs when we don’t have them.  Why educate criminals when we can’t afford to educate our own children. 

The promise of a safer society and less expensive system in the future has been around for a long time, and even when times were flush, people had a hard time accepting the idea that prisoners were worthy of being helped to re-integrate.  If you think people don’t care much for criminal defendants, they really, really don’t care much for returning prisoners.

The complaints about funding programs to help prisoners return to society as productive, law-abiding citizens present some difficult questions.  Why do we deny education to poor people who’ve committed no crime, yet provide it those who have done harm?  It is a very good question.  We know how it will help the latter, but aren’t the former worthy of help too?  Perhaps even more worthy?

This year’s federal budget will emphasize the allocation of scarce resources, even more so than usual since so much money has already been spent on bailouts, wars and other dubious uses.  The pool is small, and legislators still have to feed though mouths of those who pull their lever in the voting booth.  Can congressmen and senators use this to their advantage?  Can they at least withstand the heat from their constituents?  Will they want to?

Over the past 25 years, society’s view of prisoners has gone from bad to worse.  At one time, a prisoner was someone who paid his debt to society.  Today, he’s someone who has more rights than law-abiding people, being released because of some ACLU conspiracy that prevented his well-deserved execution.   That would end the problem, right? 

Simple Justice, like most criminal defense blawgs, tends to preach to the choir, with only a handful of ignorant nutjobs sticking their two cents in to remind us that we’re evil, our clients are evil, and the country has gone to hell in a handbasket.  Most of the time, we can ignore these loony comments as the reflections of ignorant, self-serving, angry people who feel compelled to lash out at others to compensate for the misery they’ve made of their own lives.  I’m not entirely sure that’s the case when it comes to prisoner re-integration.

While the need and utility for the Second Chance Act is clear, and its benefits likely to far outweigh its costs, it does demand a value judgment be made between using current resources to help those who have committed crimes at the expense of those who haven’t.  A very good argument could be made that if the same resources were put into education, we could prevent many people from engaging in crime in the first place, thus reducing the need for prisoner integration by reducing the number of prisoners in the first place.  The cynical response is that we would never use funds this way; we only throw money at problems, not prevention.  While true, why shouldn’t this be the thrust of re-educating the voter?

We will never eliminate crime, and hence we will always be stuck with the problem of what to do with criminals.  This becomes more of an issue as we increase the number of crimes every time there’s a new name to pin to a law.  Make more conduct criminal and there’s a strong likelihood we’ll have more criminals to deal with.  But the fact remains that we have them now, and need to figure out a way to deal with them after they have completed their sentence and must return to society. 

Oddly, nobody seems to consider why the years of very expensive warehousing of prisoners doesn’t seem to do much to stop recidivism or help prisoners to return to society as productive and law-abiding citizens.  Perhaps the real trade-off is our societal love for retribution at the cost of free college for everyone.  Until we are ready for a serious re-evaluation of what the heck we are doing with prisoners (and I for one won’t hold my breath), the Second Chance Act is a necessary stopgap.  As I said, it’s a start.  And it’s got a much better likelihood of a decent return on investment than saving Chrysler.

Americans have two conflicting belief systems, and we can’t seem to accept the premise that they are irreconcilable.  Most of us belief in God, and identify ourselves with a religion.  Most of us believe in fairness.  Sorry, but you can’t always have both.

Turley posts about an awfully harsh consequence for a kid who attends a Christian High School in Ohio (need I explain this further?) who has been suspended for attending his girlfriend’s prom, where they (gasp) had music and danced!

Tyler Frost, 17, a senior at Heritage Christian School in Findlay, Ohio has been suspended for attending a prom with his girlfriend because the Findlay High School’s prom allowed dancing and music. This Taliban-like ruling is based on the Christian school’s policy that forbids dancing, rock music, hand holding and kissing.

The head of the school won’t cut the kid any slack.

Principal Tim England says that Frost was supposed to receive his diploma on May 24 but will now receive an “incomplete” on his remaining assignments. He absence will be hard to miss: he is in a class of four students.

England further threatens that, if he learns that Frost “is involved with alcohol or sex” at the prom, he will be expelled from Heritage.

Sounds ridiculous?  Outrageous?  Totally unfair?  Well get over it.  It’s not.  Not even close.  You see, this was a religious school, and it had rules.  The parents and students agreed, in this case they actually had to sign a contract with the school, to abide the school’s rules.  Nobody made the Frost family pick the Heritage Christian School as the place to send little Tyler.  Nobody told them they had to attend a school with ridiculous religious rules.  Apparently, they didn’t seem so ridiculous to the Frost family at the time they signed up.  Yet they made the decision to do so, and are now stuck with the religious precepts they agreed to.

Here’s the problem: We are entitled to pick our religion, whether it be stuck in the 50’s or avant garde.  That’s the point of the establishment clause.  We are each entitled to believe as wish.  If our beliefs happen to be bizarre and irrational, so be it.  This is America and no one can tell us what to believe.

But religion, by definition, is not modulated by reason.  It’s belief, and there is nothing fair about it.  Don’t like a religion?  Don’t be a part of it.  Don’t like a sect that holds music and dancing to be the devil’s work?  Find one more to your liking.  But once you’ve sign on to a religion, you don’t get to reinvent it when things don’t go your way.  Leave it, yes.  Disagree with it while remaining a part of it?  Nope.  Not your choice.

While denying Tyler Frost the opportunity graduate seems overly harsh and, frankly, unbearably doctrinaire, that was the deal when he and his parents signed up for the Heritage Christian School.  Don’t blame the school for being what it is.  And if you want fairness, then perhaps religious sects aren’t where you belong.  You can’t have a religion and then demand that it changes its precepts to meet your idea of fairness, no matter what you believe.

From our hinterlands correspondent, Kathleen Casey, comes this remarkable story of how Niagara Falls cops and a county prosecutor, Doreen Hoffmann, came up with a great way to have some fun with a defendant.

Ryan S. Smith refused a judge’s order last fall to give a DNA sample, insisting to police that he didn’t care what court papers said.

“You are gonna have to Taser me if you want my DNA,” an officer reported Smith saying.

So police did just that, jolting Smith with electricity before swabbing the inside of his mouth.

Can’t you just see the smile on their face when Smith refused to comply.  After all, how much better does it get, a DNA sample and a Taser all rolled into one!

According to police records obtained by The Buffalo News, officers involved had been told by superiors to “use any means necessary” to collect the sample.

The judge could have ordered Smith jailed until he gave the sample, the lawyers said, but police and prosecutors had no legal authority to force him to provide one.

“If someone refuses to give their DNA, then they can be held in contempt and be held in jail until they comply,” said Patrick Balkin of Lockport, Smith’s defense lawyer.

The judge who ordered the DNA sample, to replace a DNA sample that the cops lost (oops) isn’t pleased, and has ordered a hearing to determine how this happened.  But the best line in the case, where Smith supposedly tells Police Officer Ryan G. Warme that if he wants another sample, he’s going to have to taser him, may present a bit of a problem.

Balkin plans to call all of the officers involved to testify except Warme, who has been jailed and suspended from his job since FBI agents charged him in October with wire fraud, conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other charges.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?  But what about the role the county prosecutor play in this mess.  After Smith refused to cooperate by providing another DNA:

[P.O.] Galie then contacted Detective Lt. William Thomson and Assistant District Attorney Doreen M. Hoffmann, McDonell reported.

“It was relayed the officers could use any means necessary to secure the sample,” he wrote

Any means necessary?  And that was okay with ADA Hoffmann?  Defense counsel Patrick Balkin plans to have Hoffmann decide for herself what to say about it.

Balkin said he also plans to call Hoffmann to the witness stand.

“I’d like to give [Hoffmann] some credit in this case. I sure can’t picture any district attorney thinking that they would use a Taser,” Balkin said.

Hoffmann told The News that she will offer a very different version of what happened that day than Smith did.

My guess is we can bet on that one.  No doubt it was all a big misunderstanding, when Hoffmann told them to show Smith the love and they misunderstood that to mean taser the sucker.  It can happen like that, you know. 

Our hinterlands correspondent will follow up on the hearing, provided they don’t taser her for showing up in court.

Jon Katz at Underdog posts about a Maryland decision, This entry was posted in Uncategorized on May 10, 2009 by SHG.

Adrian Dayton, blawger and tweeter, is a great young man.  Happy, smiling, smart and engaging.  It was great to meet him on the way out of the Gen-Y Panel discussion at SuperConference. But poor Adrian, one of the small vocal group of millenials at the conference trying to defend their honor against the rash of senior lawyers (with one curious exception), suffers from the same disease that infects the Slackoisie: the inability to see life in terms of anything other than “me”.

Don’t get me wrong.  I truly liked Adrian, enjoyed meeting him and wish him the best in his new endeavor to teach lawyers to market on twitter, notwithstanding his being a lawyer for a total of 12 minutes and being successfully unemployed.  This alone, is an indication of the trend.  On the other hand, when it comes to being an expert on something twitterific, it’s quite likely that 12 minutes is all you need.  We are talking twitter here.

They have expertise that they believe to be worthy of the cash of others based upon nothing more than a belief in themselves.  It’s not like they’ve actually done much of anything, since they haven’t had time to achieve success, but that doesn’t deter them from seeing themselves as “experts”.  No longer must you achieve expertise.  You are an expert if you say you are, if you decide you are.  That’s the Gen Y vision.  Work has nothing to do with it.  If I say so, then it is.

Adrian’s retort to the Gen-Y panel is enlightening:

Partners, you don’t understand us.  Let me tell you a little bit about our generation (both X and Y).  We grew up in the suburbs.  We came home from school to empty houses.  You may have heard of us being referred to as the “latch-key” generation.  We had two cars, and in most cases money to buy all the food and clothes we needed.  We would have traded it all just to have parents that were around more.  We don’t want to make the same mistakes our parents made.

We are not motivated by money.  At least not as much as our parents were.  The currency we are most interested in is  lifestyle.  Some of us are brilliant and hard working, but you have to dangle the right carrot in front of us.

While I’m sure this wasn’t Adrian’s point, the message is clear.  The Slackoisie can’t comprehend that there are any valid concerns other than themselves.  We understand this.  We realize that your entire world is all about you.  What can we do for you? What can the world do for you?  How can we make you happier?

It’s fine to say that you don’t want to make the mistakes of your parents, though therapy might also be indicated.  There are a wealth of jobs out there in the world where expectations and demands of you are minimal, and they are otherwise so low paying and nasty that they’re hard to fill.  I’m sure these folks would be happy to accommodate your needs.  But you don’t get to be a lawyer, to take on “a responsibility to others” (a phrase that never finds its way into any thought in a Gen Y head), but only on your terms and when it’s convenient to you. 

The Gen Yers in the audience asserted that they could be reliable, but only if they deemed the reason they were expected to stay late or come in on the weekend worthy of their sacrifice.  The GCs, in the meantime, talked about how 5 o’clock came around and they found themselves alone in their office, with the Gen Yers gone, finishing up the work that remained.  The Gen Yers saw no reason why the work couldn’t be done “whenever”, and the fact that their bosses (a word used to compass the broad array of people who supposedly are in charge of the youngsters) told them to do it, but failed to adequately justify their orders, was facially insufficient.  Their bosses were only their bosses if they decided they were worthy, and the decision was invariably ad hoc.  “Want me on a Saturday?  Then tell me why and I’ll decide if your reason is good enough.”

They believed they were reasonable.  They believed they were hard working. They believed their work was competent. That no one else agreed with their self-assessments didn’t seem to phase them in the slightest.  They were right.  No one else mattered.  Me, me, me.  That was all they needed to confidently assert that they were the cat’s meow.

There was, however, one GC in the audience who had smoke on the roof but sided with the Slackoisie.  He, he claimed, agreed that work-life balance mattered.  “Would you care if your outside counsel wasn’t as concerned with work-life balance” Dan Hull asked?  “Yes, I would,” he replied, “and your firm wouldn’t be satisfactory.”  “And we wouldn’t work for you, if your expectation was that we would elevate work-life balance over excellent legal representation,” Hull concluded. 

Being a lawyer is different.  We have chosen a profession where we are responsible for the welfare of others.  Would our touchy-feely GC be as willing to put work-life balance ahead of excellence if a critical deadline passed unmet, his corporation was bankrupted by a massive loss, because the lawyers paid to represent them had something better to do that day?  That would never happen, you say.  Probably not, but then it only has to happen once.

Adrian’s post elicited a number of comments supporting him, with two notable common threads.  First, not a single commenter was a successful lawyer.  They were largely lawyers who didn’t practice and found alternative careers, where they could say they were lawyers without having any lawyerly responsibility.  They assumed that non-Gen Y lawyers (like Dan and I) had no lives and never stopped to “smell the roses,” a common, though erroneous, assumption.  We work hard, play hard, enjoy life to its fullest.  We just don’t do so at the expense of the people who put their trust in us.  The Slackoisie can’t comprehend this as being possible; pleasure is on their terms or can’t possibly exist.  Their myopic view is that everything in life is a zero sum game, rather than a spectrum of possibility.  It’s a common problem with children who see the world in black and white.

The second thread is that everyone else “must” change to accommodate them.  No explanation is offered for this demand, other than the fact that they are here, they aren’t changing and they aren’t going to do it our way. They’re wrong.  Not every Gen Yer is a card-carrying member of the Slackoisie.  Not every Gen Yer’s world consists of only what makes them happy.  There are millenials out there who are both capable of performing excellent work and desire to fulfill the responsibility they’ve undertaken.  These will be the leaders of the future, while the whiners can sit in their parent’s basement eating Cheetos and telling the world how wonderful and brilliant they are. 

The day will come when the Slackoisie won’t be able to feed off the hard work, success and efforts of those who came before them.  What the heck are they going to do when each of them demands that the rest of them change their world to make their life easier?  They’re going to run out of people to whine to, and then there will be nobody left to make their Cheetos.  And that’s the problem with a world that’s all about “me”.

Update:  Adrian has responded in a post entitled, So the Partners Think I’m a Slacker, explaining that we really aren’t different, but just have our own understanding of work-life balance.

You are completely satisfied with your life-balance.  So was Dan Hull.  When I spoke with him after he asked, “You don’t think I know the names of my kids do you?”  That’s not it at all.

You each have built great firms, provided great service to your clients, and apparently lived life to the fullest in the process.

We want to do the same, but for us “living life to the fullest” means something different.

Stephanie West Allen at Idealawg, a co-panelist at the SuperConference, read Adrian’s post as well.  She sums it up with a story that seeks to make the point:

Not long ago, the executive director of a law firm told me that her managing partner returned from a meeting of the women’s bar association (can’t recall the organization’s exact name) in shock. He said a hypothetical situation had been presented about the staffing of a case. The decision to be made was between a male associate and a female associate who was pregnant and would give birth about the time the case was set for trial. The debate was long and spirited. What puzzled the managing partner was silence about the best interests of the client. The word “client” was never mentioned.

Does this story help to clarify things, Adrian?  Or does it just sound pointless, since it isn’t about what’s good for the Slackoisie?

As the legal market hits the skids, and the marketers who couldn’t cut it as lawyers ramp-up their hype to suck in the unwary young lawyers who have bills to pay and mouths to feed, the stench of desperation floats around the blawgosphere.  But I read Seth Godin every day, and learn what distinguishes higher order thinking from the crass, demeaning, worthless baloney that threatens to suck the last breath from the desperate. 

Godin is a marketing philosopher, rather than shill, and to the extent your practice isn’t what you want it to be, your failure to read his work is a disgrace, and you have no one to blame but yourself.  Forget the magic bullet scammers who pervade the blawgosphere, and spend some time doing something completely different:  Thinking.

Seth’s post today is typical: clear and simple, yet brilliant.  He debunks the obvious reaction to a bad economy, which is to reduce price when business is down, by offering an equation.

Value = benefit/price

One way to alter the equation is to reduce price.  But that’s not the only, or best way.  He explains:

The thing is, there’s another way to make the value go up. Increase what you give. Increase quality and quantity and the unmeasurable pieces that bring confidence and joy to an interaction.

The law is a service profession.  We sell our time and effort to clients who require them.  Here’s a radical notion:  make the effort to be a better lawyer, provide better client service, fulfill your clients needs.  Do so at a cost commensurate with your benefit.

Being a cheap lawyer makes you, well, cheap.  Providing value makes you valuable to your clients.  Give your clients everything you’ve got.  Whether it’s a big case or a really itty-bitty case, treat every client as if he’s your only client.  All aspects of excellent client service must be part of the experience that you provide every client.

No, every client will not be thrilled, no matter what you do.  Outcomes remain problematic, since they are outside your control.  But your clients will know that you’ve done both everything you can, and that your work was superlative, even if the outcome is ugly.  It’s all we can do, but it’s what we must do.

Notice how I haven’t mentioned anything about how your can make millions with self-promotional blawgs or twitter your way to riches?  Notice how all the talk that demeaning yourself by acting like a shoe salesman hasn’t produced success.  And it costs nothing to read Seth Godin.  Think about it over the weekend, and on Monday, call all your clients and let them know that when they retained you, they obtained value.  Then give them value, and you will be appreciated.