Today was not my day to do Blawg Review.  Some marketing guru-type signed up for the job, and then disappeared.  What a shock.  So the anonymous Ed, being the happy guy he is, decided to stick it to me publicly, knowing how much I hate doing Blawg Review. Nice guy.  

But then, it’s raining outside, my father-in-law stopped by unannounced for a visit, so doing a quick Blawg Review suddenly didn’t seem nearly as unpalatable as it normally would.  After a firm discussion with myself, considering what would Geeklawyer do if Ed did this to him, I realized: Sphincter Rules.  Wrapping my arms around a bottle of rioja, the only Atkins-friendly wine I know, I set to work.

Walter Olson at Overlawyered posts that school boys in Britain must now wear clip-on ties to avoid a potential choking hazard.  It’s not that he wants boys to choke, but that he gave Ted Frank a clip on for his birthday and now fears that Ted will take it the wrong way.  On a more frivolous note, Walter shows his softer side with a little poetry.

I think that I shall always rue
The day a tree got rights to sue.

A tree whose hungry lawyer’s plea
Is filed on a contingency…

 

Ridiculous.  No lawyer would take a case for a tree on contingecy.  Sphincter Rules.

In contrast, we have the kiss thrown by Adrian Dayton to our own Ed, thanking him for the opportunity to do Blawg Review (as if Ed wouldn’t have paid him if he held out), which follows his 10 Things Every CEO and Managing Partners Should Know About Social Media.  Just tell me one thing, kid.  Have you ever met a CEO or Managing Partner?  And you, Mr. Twitter-Maven, are going to tell them what they should know?  Maybe I should cut the kid a break, but I’m not as nice to the Slackoisie as the Texas Tornado, Mark Bennett, who has done a far kinder job of explaining work/life balance than I would. I prefer the Cher method from Moonstruck.

And if the young’ns don’t like it, they are always free to leave, unlike the prisoner who ended up getting screwed when the lawprof assigned to handle his appeal handed it off to a student to play lawyer for a day, per Mike at Crime & Federalism, only to find that the inchoate lawyer, as Judge Alex Kozinski held, “waived waiver” and blew the whole gig.  Would Judge Norm Pattis have done that?  We’ll never know, now will we. 

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions writes about how Beatty Chadwick, the lawyer who sat in jail since 1995 rather than comply with the court’s order in his divorce, was finally released.  His strategy was finally vindicated, and it only took 14 years of his life.  Great deal, though for only a few extra years, he could have comitted murder.  But at least Chadwick got his name in the paper, which is more than can be said for Brian Tannebaum, who starts by asking why journalists love prosecutors, and then has to explain why his own name was left out of a big story when the writer was a personal friend.  Maybe he should take kiss throwing lessons from Adrian?

Eric Turkewitz at New York Personal Injury Law Blog figures out that you can pretty much get any personal information you want about a person by just going through the court record.  And that goes for lawyers’ social security numbers too. Lest this upset you. Marc Randazza at the Legal Satyricon has some good news about porn law, that DOJ has agreed that it’s wrong to prosecute a New Jersey pornographer in Montana just because the latter smells better and no one at DOJ has an appropriate wardrobe of doubleknit suits.  You can get a lot of personal information by watching porn as well, by the way, though Randazza doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about it as Turk does.  Sphincter Really Rules.  Scratch that image.

Seth at Quizlaw posts about the drunk kid who was told by a Milwaukee cop that  he couldn’t just sleep it off in his car, forcing the kid to move along.  Of course, the kid was then immediately busted for drunk driving.  The Wisconsin Court of Appeals decided that this time, the Sphincter didn’t rule in the end.  But  as Patrick at Popehat posts, the same couldn’t be said for Antonio Love, deaf and mentally disabled, who was tased and pepper-sprayed for not responding when a cop knocked on the bathroom door.  Rule of Life: Whenever the word Taser appears in a story, you can rest assured that the Sphincter Rules.

At Above The Law, where Elie Mystal  recently showed why he’s writing for a blawg rather than practicing law, they’re hard at work coming up with alternative career paths for their now-unemployed Biglaw associate readers (to be distinguished from their readers under the age of 12), all of whom are named “anonymous”.  The latest idea is New England Innkeeper, for which they have slightly less chance of success than solo practice, but at least equal likelihood of competence.  Of course, their chances are better than Brandon Pereira, a passenger in the negligent car suing the innocent car because, as his lawyer Roland Hughes explains, “I’m trying to get compensation for my client anywhere I can.”  Hughes is rumored to have Elie’s roommate in law school.

Over at Prawfsblawg, David Fagundes wants to know whether other lawprofs think it’s worth his while to keep his law license active, even though he’s now a scholar and he would have to pay the freight out of pocket.  After all, it’s not like a lawprof should have anything to do with the law, right.  It’s yucky, and could get an academic’s hands all dirty.  Like those of public defender Skelly, at Arbitrary& Capricious, who’s grown weary of his blawging after five years, and has decided to take a breather, if not a powder.  I bet he wishes he had the chance to ponder whether he could give up the practice of law for the good life of the Academy, if only all those nasty indigent criminal defendants would stop demanding that he save their lives.  But nothing there to concern you, David.  You’re a scholar.  No need for you to, maybe, actually help someone with that brilliance of yours.

In a post ironically appropriate to both Fagundes and Skelly, Charon QC notes that The Law Society has launched a campaign to warn students to “think twice about embarking on a career in law,” which suits Charon just fine given his belief that those who can’t cut it should, perhaps, consider an alternative career path. (No, Geeklawyer, this was not about you.)  Maybe Innkeeper? What, you thought I was going to say blawger for Above the Law?  But hey, any profession beats the crap out of Congressman, the abuse of whom, per Reynolds, is the “the highest of for patriotism.”  I don’t know what that means either, but then I’m not a scholar, right David?  Of course, Sphincter Rules. Even Especially in the marble hallways of the Academy.

Which brings me to the Sphincter Rules Story of the Week, with Henry Gates playing Ward Cleaver, Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley playing Eddie Haskell, Barack Obama as June Cleaver, Joe Biden as Wally Cleaver and Lucia Whelan as T
he Beav.  Wendy Murphy does a cameo as Lumpy Rutherford. 

But Ed told me to lay off the whole GatesGate and Beer Summit posts, which of course are the really good stuff across the blawgosphere (and just about everywhere else) this week, as he was going to keep those for himself in order to make the point that there’s nothing involved in centuries of racial prejudice and discord that a few beers can’t solve.  I’m not even allowed to touch Rick Horowitz’s subtle hand pointing out that if Whelan is the darling of America (which she is, I might add), how do we explain Crowley’s police report laying the nasty racist stuff off on her?  Nope, I can’t touch it, not even to point out that how few have noticed that his official police report is the product of Sphincter Rules.

That out of the way, I close with one final thought.  I didn’t want to do this Blawg Review.  I never wanted to do another Blawg Review again.  And yet I did.  Sphincter Rules. And not a single mention of What About Clients?, since nothing Dan Hull has ever done falls under the rubric, Sphincter Rules.  Over to you, Ed.

Next week’s Blawg Review is to be hosted by BabyBarista (or who I prefer to call the prick blawger who didn’t send me a free copy of his book BabyBarista and the Art of War).  You can get instructions from Blawg Review how to get your blawg reviewed for an upcoming Blawg Review, just like I would have reviewed BabyBarista’s book if Tim Kevan sent me a free friggin copy (but he didn’t, that loser).