When someone wants to learn how to do something today, all they need to do is Google it. That’s true of reglazing a broken window, unclogging a pipe or performing an impromptu appendectomy.  It’s overwhelmingly true of hiring a lawyer, and there are, at this moment,  more than 75,000,000 results to a search of this question.

For the most part, the results exist for the purpose of steering the ignorant and pathetic to websites that funnel potential clients to desperate lawyers, who fee-split share advertising costs with the website for the referral.  Savvy consumers, of course, ignore these links, recognizing them for the shams they are.  Instead, they seek out independent voices, people with no financial interest in their advice, such as people who appear to be legitimate media columnists offering what seems to be “common sense” advice.

And this is what made Carolyn Elefant’s head explode.  Some guy named Warren Boroson, who writes a financial column in New Jersey (oxymoron?) posted Why every middle-class family needs a lawyer.  It’s a silly bit of writing, reflecting the typical naivete of someone with limited math skills and disinclined toward thinking.  The column first explains the “why””

I was thinking of this the other day when I learned that a young friend of mine was unhappy about paying a $300 hospital bill. He had already paid a few hundred to physicians relating to the same incident.

Seems that he was eating out — and swallowed a bay leaf, which had been left inside a burrito. He was in such pain, he had to be taken to a hospital, where he was anesthetized and the bay leaf removed from his throat. He’s still paying the bills.

Yes, HE’S paying the bills! Not the damn restaurant! He never even contacted the restaurant about the matter. For all he knows, the restaurant is still slipping bay leaves into innocent people’s gullets. And he never even contacted a lawyer!

A lawyer, if he or she was any good, would have contacted the restaurant and demanded that it pay all the young man’s medical bills. And maybe suggested that the restaurant shell out something for the young man’s pain and suffering, too — based on what such cases have been fetching in recent years. I would guess: $50,000 at least. The restaurant no doubt has insurance to cover such contingencies. Of course, if the restaurant proved recalcitrant, the lawyer could actually have filed suit.

But no, the young man did nothing. He didn’t even have a lawyer.

When you PI guys are done chuckling, now you know why you got a call from Jersey yesterday from some nutjob who demanded his $50 grand from Taco Bell, and was doing you a huge favor by letting you collect it for him. 

Boroson raised a laundry list of trivial issues where a lawyer would come in handy. Indeed, few of us would argue the point of how handy we are.  On the flip side, he doesn’t seem to grasp that lawyers aren’t dying to fight that $127 repair charge for the KitchenAid mixer that leaked oil into your cupcake batter. Not even in the vain hope that next year, the client will sue his neighbors for making too much noise at night. This is one of the bizarre dreams of folks who don’t get the idea that lawyers work for a living.

So New Jersey’s most brilliant financial advisor offered a short list of things the middle class client should consider in finding a lawyer:

Some other advice about hiring a lawyer:

• Ask up front what he or she charges — and what his or her assistants charge.

• In general, avoid solo practitioners. Their ethical standards tend to be lower than those of lawyers in partnerships. (Comments the lawyer: “Many solos specialize in fairly narrow fields and opt to be independent.”)

• Complain if your lawyer doesn’t return your phone calls promptly, or in general doesn’t keep you informed. (Lawyer: “But be reasonable. If you lawyer-hop, no good lawyer will take you on as a client.”)

The parentheticals are some unnamed lawyer’s reactions to Boroson’s advice, as related by Boroson.  And no doubt you see what set Carolyn off.  What, you wonder, is the basis for such a remarkable assertion? While the column offers nothing,  Boroson’s comment to Carolyn’s post provides a clue:

Even among physicians, solos are less ethical–and more likely to have problems, because they aren’t working directly with physicians who could monitor their conduct.

This reminds me of the old joke about the client who paid in cash, and while counting the money, the lawyer found that two $100 bills were stuck together, giving rise to the ethical dilemma: Did he have to tell his partner?

The internet is lousy with insufferably simplistic, assumptive “advice” from people like Boroson, whose reach far exceeds their grasp. Frankly, I’m happy he didn’t tell his readers to only hire lawyers with iPads, because that means they’re “cutting edge” and cool.

But while his assertion is simply wrong, and his reasoning is fundamentally flawed, there is an aspect that can’t be so easily dismissed.  And as much as Carolyn, the foremost advocate for solo practitioners in the blawgosphere, tries to fight it, the fact of the problem can’t be denied.

What the heck are you talking about, you ask?

You’re inviting foolishness by writers like Boroson with deceptive legal marketing.  Every lawyer website claiming to be the best lawyer since Clarence Darrow, to be experienced despite being admitted yesterday, to puff our victories and ignore our defeats, feeds the perception that lawyers lack integrity.  And sadly, this is more prevalent with solos and small firms, who are struggling to create an internet presence that will bring them business at the price of honesty. 

It’s disingenuous to promote legal marketing with the proviso that it be entirely ethical and accurate, pretending that the race to the bottom isn’t happening and dismissing the dishonest as if what they’re doing doesn’t relate to the rest of the profession.  From the outside, we’re all just lawyers, and as some slime their way into the gutter, their stench attaches to all of us.  Expecting the public, or New Jersey financial columnists, to spend the time to differentiate the integrity on a lawyer by lawyer basis is foolish. They won’t spend the time. We’re not worth the time.

And so we’re painted with a broad brush, wrong as it may be, as lacking the ethical standards necessary to represent the guy who ate a bay leaf.  No matter how silly Boroson may be, we’re wrong to ignore how legal marketing has fed into this perception.  And if you don’t like being called unethical because some other lawyer has chosen to walk the boulevard in hot pants, then do something about it. 

Don’t blame Boroson (or any of the other clueless people offering ignorant advice on the internet) for assuming the slime of the legal profession reflect all of us.  That’s the view from the outside.  Either stand up and do something about it or don’t complain.

Via Jonathan Turley, counsel for a Gitmo defendant has raised a very curious issue, and engaged in what may be a dangerous tactic, by wearing a hijab before the military tribunal and requesting an order requiring other women do so as well.

Cheryl Bormann, counsel for defendant Walid bin Attash, has created a stir over wearing a hijab to the military tribunal and asking other women to cover up out of respect of the Muslim sensibilities for the defendants.

Bormann requested a court order for other women to follow her example, at least in dressing modestly, so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes “for fear of committing a sin under their faith.” She insisted that her hijab was necessary since, “[w]hen you’re on trial for your life, you need to be focused.”

However, regardless of the forum, I do not believe an attorney should accommodate a client’s beliefs to this extent. It is important for clients to understand the relationship with an attorney is a strictly professional one. Moreover, they appear in a court that reflects the values of a pluralistic society. While you are allowed to personally follow any set of moral beliefs and practices, you cannot force others to adhere to those values.

While this is certainly true, and a point that I’ve emphasized in the past in contrast to some lawyers whose emotional investment in a case impairs their professional detachment, I’m not entirely sure that Bormann’s choice, and bearing in mind that it’s entirely Bormann’s choice as no one is forcing her to don a hijab, isn’t quite a shrewd tactical move.



In essence, she has made herself into a walking witness for a critical aspect of the case, that her client’s perspective, his universal view if you will, isn’t that of a mall rat from Jersey, but of a Muslim.  Her attire is demonstrative evidence, and an ever-present reminder, that the trial reflects a cultural clash of massive proportions.  Americans have a particularly difficult time comprehending that our sensibilities aren’t shared by everyone else.  The hijab shows otherwise.

This isn’t to say that Bormann had any obligation to dress herself in a way that better suited her client’s religious beliefs.  As for his ability to “focus” without averting his eyes from his hot American lawyer, that’s hardly Bormann’s problem, or anyone else in the courtroom.  Regardless of whether he stands trial in Gitmo or the Southern District of New York, there was little expectation that it would reflect Muslim culture and religion. 

To a small extent, Bormann’s choice may present an issue as to whether she’s been coopted by radical Islam, wearing the hijab as a reflection of her own religious and political conversion.  Her credibility as counsel is a critical component of her effectiveness, and if the hijab gets in the way of her being taken seriously, then the tactic of being walking evidence is severely undermined.  It’s a risky move, for sure.

At the same time, her credibility as counsel will be based far more on what comes out of her mouth than what she wears on her head.  The hijab will fade into the background soon enough, as everyone gets used to seeing her attire, and then it will be up to her to provide the substance needed to defend her client.

The request that the tribunal order other women to wear a hijab out of respect for her client’s sensibilities, however. strikes me as a step over the line, both professionally and tactically.  That Bormann has chosen to do so is her choice. 

There’s a huge difference between making a voluntary decision and trying to ram it down other’s throats.  They tend not to take kindly to such efforts, and the argument in support, that an American tribunal (or courtroom) should remake itself to meet a defendant’s religious sensibilities.  It’s not just the fact that it’s a losing argument, but that it borders on ridiculous.

Orthogonally, Turley makes clear his objection to defendant’s being tried by Gitmo tribunals, which is clearly understandable from a doctrinal perspective.  And a while back, it wouldn’t have dawned upon me to question this.  But having learned a great deal from Eric Mayer’s  Unwashed Advocate (formerly Military Underdog), the seeds of doubt have been sown. 

There’s something to be said about a tribunal with so firmly entrenched a sense of honor that it isn’t necessarily trumped by outcome which makes me wonder whether, on a very practical level, the defendant doesn’t stand a better chance before a military tribunal than before a federal judge sitting in an American courthouse.  It’s not that the former is immune to bias, but that the latter is as well and lacks indoctrination in a culture where honor compels the trier of fact to make the hardest choices rather than the expedient ones.

This isn’t to suggest that the military tribunals in Gitmo are the proper way to go, or that this is a legally justifiable choice.  Rather, just a reflection of doubt about our legal systems strength of will when it comes to providing fundamental fairness to so hated a defendant.  Given the struggle to obtain due process and a fair hearing for the “ordinary” defendant, it’s hard to believe that alleged enemies of our nation will be given much of a chance at experiencing the greatest legal system there is (if we do say so ourselves).

There’s nothing like some media attention to get cops off their stools at Dunkin’ Donuts, so when the “dapper groper” case caught the attention of the press, someone had to be arrested.  That someone was Karl Vanderwoude, whose picture was smeared across the screen and tabloids.

As that bastion of journalistic integrity, the New York Post put it:

[Note: This isn’t going to be a funny or salacious post. The first half is pretty boring, and I beg you to get through it. The subject is important, maybe even critical, to our profession.  At least I think so. I don’t ask much of readers, but do me the courtesy of reading through to the end.]

On the surface, law schools today are thriving. Enrollments are on the rise, and their resources are often the envy of every other university department. Law professors are among the highest paid and play key roles as public intellectuals, advisers, and government officials. Yet behind the flourishing facade, law schools are failing abjectly. Recent front-page stories have detailed widespread dubious practices, including false reporting of LSAT and GPA scores, misleading placement reports, and the fundamental failure to prepare graduates to enter the profession.

 

Addressing all these problems and more in a ringing critique is renowned legal scholar Brian Z. Tamanaha. Piece by piece, Tamanaha lays out the how and why of the crisis and the likely consequences if the current trend continues. The out-of-pocket cost of obtaining a law degree at many schools now approaches $200,000. The average law school graduate’s debt is around $100,000—the highest it has ever been—while the legal job market is the worst in decades, with the scarce jobs offering starting salaries well below what is needed to handle such a debt load. At the heart of the problem, Tamanaha argues, are the economic demands and competitive pressures on law schools—driven by competition over U.S. News and World Report ranking. When paired with a lack of regulatory oversight, the work environment of professors, the limited information available to prospective students, and loan-based tuition financing, the result is a system that is fundamentally unsustainable.

Look past the occasional vulgarity and disgusting pictures. Don’t dismiss the posters as whiners. To a person they accept responsibility for their poor decisions. But they make a strong case that something is deeply wrong with law schools.

In most states, you can’t be a lawyer unless you graduated from an ABA-accredited school. Law professors have run the ABA accreditation process, however, and have done so in ways that ensure that all ABA-accredited schools treat professors extremely well and that law schools are quite nice places to work. This has led to a surprisingly uniform educational system in which nearly every school adopts a high tuition model that gives professors low teaching loads, nice salaries, and lots of time for research. Some professors work extremely hard and produce important scholarship, which is the goal. But many other professors just coast and take advantage of their good fortune after making it past the (typically low) tenure hurdle. And Deans generally can’t treat the hard workers and productive scholars better than the dead wood because Deans generally require faculty support to stay in office: A Dean who favors the productive scholars and top teachers too much may not stay in office long. So salaries for all professors are high and course loads are low, whether the professors work 80 hours a week or 20.

Few criminal defense lawyers give a hoot about the demise of the once-glorious white shoe law firm, Dewey Ballantine (whose name was changed in 2007 to Dewey LeBoeuf to make it sound more international).  Biglaw’s problems aren’t ours, right?

Putting aside the schadenfreude of another Biglaw collapse, coupled with the salaciousness of watching wankers scramble for a new corner office in a down market, there was a paragraph in this  New York Times op-ed by James B, Stewart that’s worth some thought:

When I was a young associate at Cravath, one of my tasks was to compile the detailed billing records, organize them and submit them to the senior partner. What emerged for the client was a one-sentence bill in calligraphy on beautiful stationery: “For professional services rendered,” followed by the time period covered and a large number with a dollar sign. So far as I know no client ever objected or asked for a more detailed explanation, and had they done so, I suspect the senior partner would have deemed it a grave breach of trust.

In the years of writing about law schools and legal education, I’ve only mentioned  Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, a few times.  It’s not that I like or dislike the school, as I really don’t know much about it beyond what I read.

Cooley’s claim is that it produces practice-ready lawyers rather than scholars.  I  take no issue with that purpose, though I have no clue whether it’s true or just a cool slogan.  But somebody at Cooley, in response to a dubious lawsuit alleging fraud in the inducement of inchoate lawyer to pay a lot of money to some day become a lawyer, thought it was a smart idea to shut up one of its critics by smacking him with a subpoena. If that’s their idea of practice-ready, then it’s time they met Streisand.

From Paul Campos at Inside the Law School Scam :

The Thomas M. Cooley Law School served me with a subpoena yesterday afternoon, commanding me to produce certain documents purportedly relevant to this civil action.  The documents in question include all my communications with the defendants, and “all documents and communications . . . that you had or exchanged with any person regarding how (i) Thomas M. Cooley Law School reports its post graduation employment rates or (ii) your communications with David Anziska regarding any inquiry or investigation he discussed with you about how law schools report post-graduate employment and salary data.”

Seriously?  There isn’t a legitimate argument of which I can conceive to justify serving Campos with a subpoena, and as Campos responds, there’s essentially nothing he’s got to discover.  The only explanation for this subpoena is that the Brain Trust at Cooley thinks this is a fine tactic to shut its critics up, and so they’ve chosen to go on the offensive after their critics.

They chose poorly.

Not only have they brought their scheme to the attention of the blawgosphere, with Paul Horowitz at  PrawfsBlawg and Orin Kerr at  Volokh Conspiracy raising the secondary alarms, but they pushed their primary blawgy nemesis, Campos, to lay it all out on the line:

I haven’t warned people about the dangers of enrolling at Cooley for the same reason it would be a waste of time to warn a parent that it’s a bad idea to hand a 15-year-old boy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and the keys to a new sports car. Some things are so obvious that it’s pointless to belabor them.

Ouch.

After all, in the context of the gathering disaster that is contemporary American legal education, Cooley is without question the prime example of a shameless diploma mill that would be shut down immediately if American law schools were subject to more than the most cursory regulation by either the ABA or the federal government, which through its no-questions-asked student loan programs pays a large portion of Cooley’s operating budget.

Double ouch.

Graduating class of 2010:

Percentage of graduates who obtained jobs with law firms of more than 25 attorneys:

Cooley: 1.1%

Stanford: 51.1%

Percentage who obtained federal clerkships:

Cooley: 0.0%

Stanford:  29.3%

Percentage who were unemployed nine months after graduation, or whose employment status was unknown:

Cooley:  34.4%

Stanford:  0.6%

Percentage who were employed and reported a salary:

Cooley: 6.5%

Stanford:  88.5%

And so on.

Well, nobody said Cooley and Stanford were drawing applicants from the same pool, but then, even the raw numbers from Cooley, well, suck.

While much of Campos’ pedantic defense, not to mention his blog on the whole, conclusively demonstrates why some people made a wise choice in getting tenure rather than stand in the well, and as much as angry unemployed young lawyers adore him for validating their victimhood and narcissistic lack of responsibility for their poor choices, there’s one point that can’t be denied.

Cooley’s real problem has nothing to do with supposed defamatory claims on what, until it filed this suit, was a profoundly obscure blog, and everything to do with what has been dubbed the the Streisand Effect.

To the extent that lawyers really didn’t know much about Cooley, it not being Stanford excepted, we now know two things.  First, that it’s considered a “diploma mill” within the academic community, and second, that if this is any indication of what it considers “practice-ready” lawyers, it sucks.

And before anyone belabors the obvious, it’s certainly true that lawprofs, rallying against this SLAPP tactic directed at one of its own, remain as disingenuous as ever, as they want the blawgosphere to rise up against Cooley and decry its effort to silence its critic, even though no lawprof would spill a word in defense of a practicing lawyer against whom the same occurs.  Yes, they’re disgraceful, cowardly, self-absorbed hypocrites, who couldn’t care less about anyone outside their effete little pond unworthy of their intellectual attention.

But then, that’s what distinguishes real lawyers from scholars. We can afford to stand up for what’s right, and have the guts to do so while lawprofs either can’t be bothered or wouldn’t take the chance of standing up for anything that doesn’t elevate their sniveling self-importance within their pretentious community. 

So, Cooley’s tactic of subpoenaing a blawger to shut him up and send a message that anyone who disparages the school can expect to get SLAPP’ed is going to backfire.  And even though the lawprofs don’t deserve having practicing lawyers come to their defense, do it because it’s the right thing to do. Plus, it provides a bit of fun to seize the opportunity to remind ourselves why we work in the well and not in the marble hallways of academia.

My pals at  Avvo must be feeling really silly right about now.  Their big internet marketing conference, Avvocating, just concluded, and they’re probably wondering how to explain my absence as the keynote speaker.  Talk about a screw up.  If you see some red-faced guy cowering in the corner, that’s Mark Britton, Avvo’s CEO, trying to come up with an excuse for this huge mistake.

I’ve been dutifully checking the mailbox for days, awaiting my first class plane ticket to Seattle so I could take the stage at Avvocating.  As the mailman stuffed inconsequential things into the box, you know checks and legal papers, I would immediately rifle through the pile in search of my ticket.  The disappointment on my face when there was no ticket to be found was palpable.

But I like Mark, and Josh and the rest of the Avvo gang so much that I feel their pain about this horrendous screw-up.  While it’s hardly the same as being there, at least I can provide the insight here that I would have if I stood boldly in overcast Seattle.  I’m here for you, brothers.

What is Avvocating?

 Two days jam packed with advanced online marketing training for lawyers and legal marketers. We’ll have technology leaders discussing a range of topics including social media, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, reputation management, website analytics and much more. We’ll also invite other web-savvy lawyers to share what strategies and tactics have worked for them.

The digital marketplace is changing rapidly and more competitive than ever before – hear the latest trends that are impacting the legal industry and learn the skills to enhance your online presence, stay one step ahead and ultimately drive more business to your firm.

My dear, sad, pathetic brothers  and sisters in the new world of law on the internet.  I feel your pain. Your practices are dead and your children are hungry.  How do I know this? Because you’re here rather than in your office working hard for paying clients.  Busy lawyers don’t attend conferences on internet marketing because they’re busy.  You, my friends, are the misfits, the losers, the desperate.

I have a blawg called Simple Justice. It’s pretty well-known and a lot of people read it.  I tell you this not to make you feel even more pathetic about your lives, but so that you will understand that I have a clue what I’m talking about.  I’m “real” on the internet, for better or worse. I “engage authentically.” I do what all the other speakers here are busy telling you to do, except for the fact that I’m not busy kissing every baby-bottom that follows me on twitter or posts some brilliantly absurd comment on my blawg.  But the give back for being a curmudgeon is that people know I’m honest.  After all, nobody would be dishonest by screaming at kids to get off my lawn.

So here’s what I’ve learned after a bit more than five years and many thousands of posts on the internet.  I never gave search engine optimization a chance, yet I have Google pagerank of 6. What that means is I can get stuff on the first page of Google pretty much any time I please.  You would have to hire half of Bangalore to get ahead of me, and that half of Bangalore would spend all night trying to leave spam comments on my blawg to get the benefit of my Google juice.

To get Google juice like me, you have to write a lot of stuff and get a lot of people to read it.  Can you do that? Maybe, but not likely.  Anybody can be a blawger, but everybody can’t. Few of you will have the interest or the patience.  Fewer still have the chops. Fewer still have the balls. And fewer still have the tenacity. I’ve been at this blawging thing for more than five years, and I’m still waiting to see that ROI start flowing. How long will you do it before walking around in a sandwich sign instead?

And what does all my effort get me?  Here’s my rule of thumb: For every thousand people who contact me because of my fabulous social media presence, there is one case, one case, that has potential.  You will hear from those who are trying to sell you something, whether it’s their services, products or agenda, about the anecdote of the guy from Iowa who got a seven-figure case from twitter.  Maybe it really happened. Who knows.  And it could very well be true, because there is always the one in a thousand good case that somehow finds its way into a lawyers hands through social media.

But it’s like winning the lottery.  We don’t all win. The vast majority lose.  The story about the one guy who does win fills your hearts with hope.  If that’s what appeals to you, then keep playing the lottery. You never know, and you gotta be in it to win it. 

In the process, however, you still have the 999 phone calls that have to be answered. About half are from people who “just have a question.”  Their question will take a half hour to ask, and if you try to interrupt them, they’ll get really angry with you, maybe even cursing and screaming at you.  The reason is that you’re a lawyer, and all lawyers love to answer questions for free.  And it’s their right to ask and your duty to answer. They know because Avvo Answers tells them so.

Another thirty percent are seriously looking for a lawyer. They have a whole list of conditions, as they want only the best lawyer possible and have the most important case ever.  At the very bottom of their list, the final criterion you must satisfy, is that they don’t have a pot to piss in and need you to represent them for free. Some will call it pro bono, while others will promise huge recoveries due to the vast injustices done them. Whatever it’s called, the point is clear: they can’t pay you a dime because they’re dead broke. 

What’s interesting about this group is that they’ve already spoken with every lawyer in town, and have been unceremoniously tossed out the door.  They’re a bit sensitive about the whole inability to pay thing, and have reached the conclusion that lawyers are scum who only care about money rather than them. Don’t you care about them? When you apologize about not being able to take their case, they’re not going to like you or appreciate the hour you just spent on the phone with them.

And the final fifth are the ones who should have called a lawyer before they closed their eyes and dove in.  And now, they’ve completely and irreversibly screwed up their lives and they need someone to save them.  These are the most painful callers.  They have no money, but unlike the ones who just want a free lawyer, their lives are so terribly sad.  And there is nothing you can do.  These are the calls that make you wish you did something more fun and societally useful, like selling used cars, for a living. 

Still want to be on the first page of Google, keeping a step ahead of the competition for these fabulous phone calls?  Well,  your competition isn’t taking it lying down.  The kid who just got his ticket three weeks ago says he’s tried 247 cases and regularly receives calls from the media.  I think he’s referring to the newspaper calling to find out when he’s going to pay the past due balance for home delivery. 

Sure, the kid doesn’t say that he graduated law school last month, but he claims to have won the National America Greatest Lawyer of All-Time Award.  And he may have, considering that he gives it out. What are you willing to do to beat this kid in the race to the bottom? Put on some lipstick and hot pants?  Call yourself America’s leading trial lawyer? Claim to be the only lawyer besides Gerry Spence who never lost a case?  I don’t know where the bottom is, but eventually someone will find it. Will it be you?

So you want to compete via social media, which is why you’ve scraped together your last few pennies to come to Seattle.  You will hear enthusiastic voices telling you that this is the future. You can hear how to achieve vast fame and success by the guys selling their internet guru services. You can hear how to carefully navigate your way to the first page of Google, slipping and sliding around your competition with only a few little tricks that others, ignorant jealous haters, may call outrageous lies. 

But what you won’t hear is me, telling you to work hard, put clients first, be honest and if you’re any good at being a lawyer, earning your reputation in the real world. 

East Patchogue’s voice in the New York State Legislature, Dean Murray (if that’s his real name), saw his chance and took it. Cyberbullying, the bane of the internet, is the hottest ticket around for politicos, and New York’s legislators are nothing if not happy to jump on the bandwagon. 

From Murray’s press release at the New York Exchange :

(Long Island, NY) Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C-East Patchogue) held a joint press conference today with state Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C-Big Flats) and several of his colleagues in the Assembly to unveil the Internet Protection Act (A.8688/S.6779). The legislation would combat cyberbullying by allowing the victim of an anonymous website posting to request that the post be removed if the anonymous source is unwilling to attach his or her name to it.
 
“While the Internet is a wonderful resource for social networking, sadly it can also used to anonymously bring harm to others,” said Murray. “My legislation addresses the dangers of cyberbullying and protects the victims of this offense. By demanding these online abusers come out from anonymity and identify themselves, they will hopefully think twice before posting harmful comments about others.”

1. Definitions. As used in this section, the following words and terms shall have the following meanings:

(a) [“]Anonymous poster[“] is any individual who posts a message on a web site including social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.

(b) “Web site administrator” means any person or entity that is responsible for maintaining a web site or managing the content or development of information provided on a web site including social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages, accessible via a network such as the internet or a private local area network.

2. A web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. All web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted for such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.

The bill is unconstitutional, see Talley v. California (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n (1995); the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has held, protects anonymous speech (except in limited conditions related to election campaigns). The proposal is thus a fitting bookend to the four Democratic New York Senators’ paper on, among other things, how “[p]roponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege — a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated,” though more New York Republicans are on board this bandwagon than New York Democrats were on board the other one.

Free speech is my right to say stuff you don’t like. Hate speech is my right to make you stop saying stuff I don’t like.

Whenever an awkward comment is left behind at SJ, I try to take a look at who wrote it and why.   This comment was particularly odd, so I checked out the website included in the link to see what the writer could possibly be thinking when he decided that linking his name to a peculiar comment was a good idea.

The “about” link at his website caught my eye, where he wrote that he started his firm without a single client and now had 500 in a mere few years. Obviously, he believes this to be the sort of thing worthy of promotion or he wouldn’t mention it. 

Cars are often advertised on television as being the “most popular,” apparently intended to convey the message that if lots of other people like it, you should too.  Sure, it will chase away the buyer who wants something different, or the buyer whose purpose in life is not to be one of the crowd. But most people aren’t unique, and want nothing more than to be utterly common.  That’s fine. If it were different, it would be impossible for others to stand out.

But does asserting that a lawyer has 500 clients serve the same purpose?  It immediately said two things to me. First, that the lawyer is high volume, low price.  Big numbers only appeal to someone for whom volume is seen as a positive. 

The other message it sent to me was that this lawyer had so many clients that the time he could give to any one was extremely limited.  That, of course, is the low price give-back for high volume, there being only so many hours in the day and too many demands on one’s time. It told me that this was the lawyer to use if I wanted my matter neglected.  I’m not saying this lawyer neglects matters, but that this was the message he was sending.

There are some historic notions about volume.  If memory serves, it was Tom Waits who wrote the immortal words:

Gonna go to McDonalds Hamburgers
Gonna wait on line
Gonna order me a million burgers
Watch ’em go outside and change the sign

The bill came in again yesterday, just as it has monthly for decades. The New York Times, the paper of record in New York and a couple of other parts of the world.  I’ve been getting home delivery for longer than many readers have been alive. 

It’s hard to say why yesterday was different than any other day the bill arrived, but I called the New York Times home delivery people and told them that I had enough.  For those who don’t get it, the monthly home delivery price is $42. Certainly not an earth-shattering price, but more expensive than my other dailies and, when combined with the multitude of other monthly costs that have arisen since I first started home delivery (like cable TV, internet, cellphone) it adds up.  The couple of “must-have” costs have multiplied into a half-dozen, and that’s only because I don’t use a smartphone.

So I told that gal on the other end of my landline that I was canceling my home delivery.  She made a sound of sympathy that comes easily to really good customer service representatives, and told me they were sorry to see me go after so many years.  I waited.  Then she told me not to let the door hit me on the way out.  It was done.

On the New York Times website, I searched for the button to push for serious blogger to get complimentary access to the Times. I couldn’t find the button, which apparently is only visible to people the Times loves more than me. 

In my twisted thoughts, it struck me that I’ve been pretty darned good to the Times over the years.  I’ve been paying for delivery long enough to build up some decent equity.  I get calls from their reporters pretty regularly, sometimes for background and sometimes for quotes. They’ve written stories about me and my cases, and I’ve rarely called their reporters bad names for getting it wrong (though it has happened).

At SJ, I link to the NYT regularly, as it’s the paper I read the most. I send a few readers their way. Maybe more than a few.  They get some free publicity from me as a credible source.  Sure, some criticism as well, but even in the criticism they enjoy attributed credibility.  After all, if they didn’t count, they wouldn’t be worthy of criticism.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve been pretty good to the New York Times over the years. I’m not saying they haven’t been good to me as well, as the paper arrives most days on my driveway as expected, and when it doesn’t, they are appropriately contrite if otherwise unhelpful.

But after a few decades, and under the circumstances, it struck me that they ought to show a little love in return and let me in for free.  I called them back and spoke with a young lady named Genay, who informed me that I was not eligible for a complimentary subscription. I asked her if, maybe, she wanted to know why I was asking for one before she told me to drop dead. No, she responded. It didn’t matter why.

I asked my pal David Lat, whose far more popular  Above the Law is a major jumping off point for readers to be sent elsewhere. whether he gets complimentary access to the Times.  He told me that he not only doesn’t get a free ride, but happily pays as one of the few patrons of dead tree media left.  I told him he was a better man than me, and obviously not nearly as cheap.  Then again, he doesn’t have a kid to put through MIT, and his blawg makes money as opposed to the mine, a sink hole despite the promise of internet marketers that blogs are the font of fabulous wealth and success.

As a last ditch effort, I sent the New York Times an email tell them what a dear friend I’ve been all these years, but that it was time for them to return the love.  I’ve checked my inbox a few times since then for their response.  Nothing.

In a few days, I’ll get a call from someone at the New York Times who has a question about a case or a post I’ve written, or needs a quote to fill out a story.  Before I respond to the question, I’ll ask them about my complimentary access, and they’ll tell me that they don’t know anything about stuff like that, and that belts are tight all around the paper, with great reporters and columnists being laid off right and left, and the remaining few being forced to write twice as many words a day.

And I’ll feel bad about being such a selfish person and give the reporter whatever they need.  But if you don’t see me linking to the New York Times here anymore, you’ll know why. I don’t feel that badly.