There’s a good reason for the maxim, stercus accidit.  Despite best efforts, careful preparation and thoughtfulness, sometimes something undesired, unanticipated occurs.  And the honorable thing to do is to come clean, acknowledge that it happened and follow the rules.  And for being honorable, for having no improper intent, for doing absolutely, positively nothing wrong, yet honoring he compact, you will be thanked, appreciated and, in a perfect world, get a balloon or some similar reward, right?

Not in Buford, Georgia.  Via  11 Alive (not the dead one, but the living one):

Thirteen-year-old Jack Persyn was at chess club before the start of classes at Lanier Middle School in Gwinnett County when he discovered an inch-and-a-half long knife in a bag he brought to school. The military style bag was given to him as a Christmas gift from his aunt, who bought it at a yard sale.

The disciplinary report written by administrators at Lanier Middle states that the 8th grader “accidentally” brought the knife to school and that he “immediately self-reported” the weapon to his teacher.

Still, Jack was punished with four days of in-school suspension.

It’s always the quiet ones in the chess club.  But it’s not like Jack wasn’t “rewarded” for his honesty, coming forward to tell his teacher that he found a tiny pen knife in the bag he was given for Christmas.

Several years ago, the Gwinnett School System altered its policy to allow consideration of self-reporting. Prior to that, cases such as this one would result in a minimum 10-day out-of-school suspension.

That’s six days saved by self-reporting. Kinda warms your heart to know how much the school appreciates its students doing the right thing. 

So is this yet another example of the mindlessness of schools adopting a “zero tolerance” policy toward weapons, the sort of policy designed to thrill grocery clerks at the expense of anything remotely resembling reason?  Absolutely not, the school proudly proclaims.

The Gwinnett School System insists their policy on weapons in school is not zero tolerance, yet a school spokesperson said any student found to have a weapon at school will face punishment even when a student self-reports accidently having that weapon.

“We can’t ignore the fact that there is a weapon on campus somewhere that someone can use,” said system spokesperson Jorge Quintana. “This is obviously to keep the safety of our students in our schools.”

“Obviously,” a student who accidentally brings a tiny pen knife to school, through no fault of his own, and immediately gives it up, tells his teacher, must be punished for the safety of the students.  Obviously.

Of course, schools are all about teaching children important lessons, and what happened here most assuredly taught Jack some big ones.  Never, but never, trust your teacher or school officials. Never give yourself up.  Never admit to anything, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. Never expect life to be fair or to be rewarded for honesty.

The only surprise here is that the school administrators haven’t applauded their diligence and efficacy for finally teaching a student critical life lessons, that they aren’t to be trusted with the care of students.  If they had given this greater thought, and figured out how to turn this absurdity around and take credit for teaching Jack a thing or two about how to deal with grocery clerks and school administrators, they could throw a party and give themselves balloons for a job well done.

H/T Radley Balko

They went in for battle in Ogden, Utah, and that’s what they got.  Radley Balko gives the TL;dr version:

But the gist is that a veteran who apparently grew marijuana to self-medicate for anxiety and depression apparently shot and killed one cop and wounded several others during a nighttime raid on his home. This is the same narcotics task force, by the way, that shot and killed a man wielding a golf club five seconds after breaking down his door during a botched meth raid last year. That cop was forgiven for his mistake. Heat of battle, volatile situation, mistakes were made—you know the drill.

“It’s not a legalization issue, it’s not an immigration issue, it’s a public safety issue. If someone is willing to shoot it out with police, who is self-medicating on marijuana, what’s to say he’s not willing to walk out his house and start shooting his neighbors?” Smith says.

“This is a very significant event, something that I don’t know that the state has ever experienced something of this magnitude,” Smith told reporters. “There’s a lot of lives affected, a lot of families affected.”

Stewart will be charged with capital murder, which could lead to a sentence of death following a conviction, the prosecutor said.

He will also face eight counts of attempted aggravated murder and a charge of cultivation of marijuana, after he is released from hospital and booked into jail, Smith said.

Investigators have confirmed explosive materials were found inside the home of Matthew Stewart over the weekend.

On Saturday, investigators came across some sort of bomb while searching Stewart’s home. The materials could not be removed, so officers detonated the materials Saturday evening.

“It was a really big boom,” said neighbor Kevin Wood. “I definitely heard it, and you knew it was something more than just the backfire of a car, or something falling over.”

Bombs = terrorist.  Terrorist is the most evil thing the government can call someone, and shuts down all reason immediately. Perfect. They don’t even have to call Stewart anything, because everybody knows that normal people don’t have bombs.  Except:

An ATF spokesman out of Denver told Fox 13 the materials found would not be classified as a bomb.

And yet the lede is that it’s a bomb.  One that made a really big boom, likely from the explosives used to blow up the “bomb” that wasn’t a bomb. 

What’s remarkable is that for all the damage, for all the harm, for all the blood spilled, we know almost no facts about why this happened, what happened, and what any of it means.  The little we do know is Matthew Stewart was growing pot in his him and otherwise minding his own business.  We know that latter because if he wasn’t, it would be a headline. If he posed any actual threat to anyone, the government would be screaming it from the rooftops. They aren’t. He didn’t.

Instead, we have the government dancing as fast as it can to justify the fact that there is a dead agent and four wounded agents all to shut down a guy growing marijuana for his own use.  And, of course, it’s all that bombing shooter Stewart’s fault.

A number of individuals were wounded as they were giving aid and trying to remove fallen officers from the scene,” Smith said during a news conference.

Despite rumors, he said he has seen no evidence to suggest any of the six officers were wounded by “friendly fire” or by fellow officers.

At least the widow of the fallen agent can take comfort that her husband was a hero.  And the public can sleep soundly at night knowing that they’ve been protected from the likes of Matthew Stewart.

Update:  And the plot thickens, as photos emerge of Stewart dressed like a terrorist!

“They also found a picture of the suspect dressed as a terrorist,” he said. “He was posing in a suicide bomber’s vest.”

Ha!  But,

But Stewart’s father said the photo actually shows his son in a Halloween costume that he wore three or four years ago.

“He was going to the party as Osama bin Laden,” the father explained.

If only Stewart had dressed as a gay Osama.  The possibilities are endless.

I was talking to a cop.  Yes, I talk to cops. In fact, I know quite a few, and have some I count as friends. This will not only come as a shock to some, but will repulse a few.  They’re the enemy. They’re evil.  Maybe not as people, out of uniform and playing ball with their kids, but strap on a gun and shield and they’re the personification of a blue monster that subjugates ordinary Americans.

By reducing police to caricatures, we diminish ourselves and our ability to make any headway on changing a troubling situation.  Back in the 50’s and early 60’s, the public saw cops as Andy Griffith and Barney Fife. Sheriff Andy was wise and caring, invariably honest and trustworthy.  Deputy Barney was a lovable imbecile with a heart of gold.  Then came the protests of Vietnam, the Yippies, and cops earned a new name: Pigs. 

Neither was quite true, yet neither was entirely false either. Like judges, like lawyers, like everyone, cops are people. Some are quite smart and caring. Many aren’t the sharpest knives on the Sam Browne. But what distinguishes them is that they embrace a culture that includes one certainty, that no one understands the job of a cop except another cop. 

As I spoke with this cop, someone I had known for many years and with whom I shared some yucks in the past, the subject turned slightly unpleasant.  It was about expectations, whether he had done his job well enough.  I suggested he hadn’t. This made him angry.  I apologized for “hurting his feelings,” which he vehemently denied.  “You can’t hurt my feelings,” he responded.  Of course, I did, but by denying it, he could avoid dealing with the issue.

We talked about good cops and bad cops, and about good cops who close their eyes when other cops do bad things.  We talked about how a good cop does something bad.  We talked about how hard it is to get rid of bad cops. We talked about responsibility to the public.  He explained to me how nothing is as simple as non-cops thought it was. To hear him, the police were as close to sainthood any anyone with a gun could be. “Not perfect,” he conceded, but as nearly perfect as any human beings could be by his characterization.

I challenged this assessment.

After going around the block a few times, and accomplishing nothing, he finally told me that I was just a cop hater.  A cop hater?  By saying that, an ad hominem in the logical fallacy sense, he was able to dismiss anything I said, any argument I made.  The discussion was at its end.

Not long ago,  Brian Tannebaum called for a national conversation on law enforcement.   Mirriam Seddiq demonstrated how the situation has gone on for too long, without improvement.  In my little way, I tried to have this chat with one cop, and it didn’t go well.  Rather than discuss the good and the bad, I ran head first into the wall of “cop hater.” 

Many have given up hope of change, screaming at every opportunity about how cops are evil.  What would they do?  We need police. There are bad people out there and, most of the time, the police serve to protect us from them.  They do so at personal risk, even though we can excuse that as being part of their job.  Would the screamers get rid of cops?  That won’t work out well.  The police exist for a purpose, and that purpose has to be served.  We need police.

Just as people see only the cop who beats the guy for nothing, or arrests someone for  standing too close to a subway door, they are blind to the cop who helps someone, or who protects the person in need.  What haters refuse to see is that it’s the same cop, the same person.  One day, you thank him. The next day, you curse him. And when you scream your hatred, he only hears the shriek of a cop hater. 

What was clear is that the cop wasn’t going to accept me as a voice worthy of questioning him.  I wasn’t a cop. I didn’t get it. I could never get it in his mind.  So anything I said, no matter how reasonable or true, could be dismissed as the words of a cop hater.  He was happy to listen to me compliment him, thank him, but there was no way he was going to accept my criticism or question. 

It occurred to me that the only way any conversation could be had was one cop to another.  Only then could the facile ad hominem be refused.  A cop can tell me I don’t get it, but he can’t say that to another cop.  Or a former cop, though I’m not entirely clear that cops accept the idea that a former cop, the minute he puts in his papers, loses all memory of the job and all credibility.  There may be a precipitous drop as soon as a cop hangs up his shield, where he goes from “us” to “them” in a flash.

I know there are cops who see the problems, who feel the pain people suffer at the hands of their brethren.  You join LEAP.  You have blogs. You speak out here from time to time.  Cops won’t listen to me. The screamers make the situation significantly worse, adding to the polarization of the respective interests.  But you, officer and detective, you can speak out.

They can’t say you don’t get it.  They can’t call you a cop hater.  If you believe we have a problem that needs to be addressed, then it’s time for you to say something.  Maybe they won’t listen to you either, but you need to try because they will never listen to us “cop haters.”

In the New York Times, Lakhdar Boumediene tells of the seven years he lost in Guantánamo for nothing.

In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”

Yes, the government makes mistakes. And now, the  NDAA institutionalizes the government’s authority to be wrong, without anyone to question or challenge.

The reaction to a headline of police killing a middle school students is visceral. No reasonable person reacts well to a child being shot dead. But it isn’t always that simple.

In Brownsville, Texas, police  shot and killed Jaime Gonzalez.

Police shot and killed an eighth-grader in the hallway of his middle school Wednesday after the boy brandished what looked like a handgun and pointed it at officers. It turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing.

Fifteen-year-old Jaime Gonzalez “had plenty of opportunities to lower the gun and listen to the officers’ orders, and he didn’t want to,” Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said.

Shortly before the confrontation, the boy had walked into a classroom and punched a random boy in the nose for no apparent reason, police said. Investigators did not know why he pulled out the weapon.

Since this news broke, it’s been suggested that the reason Jaime brought a pellet gun to school was that he was being bullied.  What this means isn’t clear. Whether it’s true isn’t clear. Regardless, bringing a gun to school, even a pellet gun, is not the way to deal with bullying.

The reaction to this tragedy, and it is always a tragedy when a child is killed, is mixed.  At This Can’t Be Happening, Dave Lindorff writes:

Let me say unequivocally from the outset that, yes, whatever police authorities may say about “justified use of force,” the cops in this instance used excessive force (American cops these days are in military mode, and justify just about any firing of an officer’s weapon). Unless there were other children who were being held hostage by Gonzalez (there were not), or who were near him and being threatened (there were not), the police had no reason to kill him. For one thing, a pellet gun has such a tiny muzzle opening it would be pretty hard to mistake it for the muzzle of a Glock, as police are claiming, unless Brownsville police have very low vision standards. Furthermore, there is the question of why three shots were fired, why they were fired at the chest of a child with clear intent to kill, and of course, there’s that shot to the back of the head, which is simply unjustifiable under any circumstances.

I want to agree with him. I can’t. While the desire that police perform with the scripted precision of an action movie is understandable, there is a line, bound by realistic human limitations, beyond which no one can be held. Not even cops. 

Jaime Gonzalez was terribly wrong and foolish to bring a gun to school, and yet, no matter how wrong he was, it’s not something for which we can ignore the tragedy of his death.  He was terribly wrong not to drop the gun upon command of the police, and there is no question in this instance based on witnesses that he was told to drop the gun.  He didn’t.  Even more foolishness. He might have frozen, unable to process the words or the situation. Stuck, gun in hand, trying to figure out what was happening around him.  Maybe a few more seconds and it would have clicked. The gun would have fallen from his hands, and no child would have died.

These are the sorts of things we think about in trying to make sense of tragedy, excuses and rationalizations of what might have given rise to it.  The next thing that kicks in is how it could have ended differently.  The cops could have shot the gun out of his hand, like they do in Westerns.  They could have gone for a non-lethal, shot, his legs perhaps.  If they had just winged him, then he would have been hurt but still alive.

In every potentially lethal confrontation, there are an array of variables that might have altered the outcome.  Because of our hope that no child dies this way, we painstakingly parse the details to try to find a way that it wouldn’t have happened because we dread it happening.  And yet, as tragic as Jaime’s death is, this time the police weren’t at fault.

The police were confronted with a person with a gun in a school.  It’s possible that they might have noticed it was a pellet gun rather than a Glock, but to expect that degree of nuance under the circumstances is too much.  As I’ve been told many times, very real guns come in all manner of sizes and shapes, and we cannot demand the police to wait until its bullet strikes someone to figure out how lethal it is.

The police commanded Jaime to drop the gun.  He didn’t, at least not quickly enough.  Perhaps, had they waited a bit longer, he would have. Or perhaps he would have fired while they were waiting. 

The police are trained that if they are authorized to use deadly force, they are to shoot to kill. This isn’t a movie. Few people are so skilled that they can shoot the gun from a hand, or wing a person sufficiently to end the threat.  And if the attempt to do so misses, the next shot may come from the other direction and hit its mark. If they shoot, the police shoot to kill.  If not, they shouldn’t shoot at all.  The notion that guns rightly fire but in less than lethal ways is a fantasy we harbor in the hope that the least possible harm can be accomplished.  But guns are real, and they are used in terribly real situations. 

The police are trained that once they start firing, they do not stop until the person at whom they’re shooting cannot do harm.  There was a bullet that struck Jaime in the back of the head, which Lindorff describes as “simply unjustifiable under any circumstances.  If the police stopped, walked over to a fallen boy and pumped a bullet in the back of his head, it would be an execution, But that’s not what happened.

Once the shooting begins, bodies move, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not. Bullets end up in places that weren’t the target at the moment the trigger was pulled.  When a person spins, or falls, or twists, it could cause a properly aimed bullet to strike an inappropriate place.  It happens in the heat of the moment. It happens even though it shouldn’t.  It happens.

A hundred different things could have altered the outcome in the hallway of the Brownsville middle school, and Jaime Gonzalez might still be alive.  I wish they had.  I wish he was. 

But the police did not use excessive force.  The police did not engage in misconduct. Not this time. They did what we ask of them, and still a tragedy occurred.  Sometimes, tragedies happen at the hands of police, but there is no blame to be imposed.  This is one of those times.

It’s a big internet. Really big. Big enough to have room for pretty much anything and everything that wants to be here, and that means the good, the bad and the ugly all have their place.  It’s a feature, as well as a flaw. For those of us who spend a decent amount of time here, it presents a dilemma.

Yesterday, Ken at  Popehat wrote about the Ashton Lundeby lie, the one where a fairy tale was manufactured about how a kids was supposedly secretly detained under the USA Patriot Act, and used to demonstrate how sinister the government is. Except it didn’t happen.  Conspiracy theorists seize upon stories like this to prove the evils of the government. Their opponents seize upon the perpetuation of the lie as proof that there’s  nothing sinister about the USA Patriot Act.

Youtube is  replete with videos of isolated incidents of police misconduct, but the  government is busy trying to force Google to take them down, if they can’t  arrest the miscreants before they put them up. While studiously seek to be  above reproach in the accuracy of their posts, others couldn’t care less about truth when it comes to promoting their cause. Causes are big on the internet.

Dan Solove explained the impact of the internet on Individuals’ reputations in his book, The Future of Reputation. Since then, an  industry arose to “fix” people’s online reputations. For a fee, they claim to be able to make the lies disappear. Or a fiction grow. 

The most effective tool is for lawyers to establish their online reputations before they are attacked, Dozier said. His law firm, for instance, pre-emptively bought 3,000 domain names to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. It also operates 100 Web sites and a dozen or so blogs, and participates in social networking sites. “All those give indexed results that are positive,” he said.

It’s ironic that Dozier is offered as a protector of reputation, when his own reputation, called “infamously thuggist,” has been called into question. With 100 websites and a dozen blogs, one would think he could manufacture any reputation he wants.

As new lawyers seek to enter the internet with running start, they hire businesses like  Yodle and  Findlaw to create their presence.  Failed lawyers recreate themselves as gurus to teach new lawyers how to create fake internet personas to turn them into experts in six months, while others proclaim the glories of marketing as the magic bullet to success.  Some  bolster the crap while others fight it.

The examples never stop, but I will.

The “solution” offered by many strikes me as facile, “the cream will always rise to the top.”  I sweet maxim, but hardly a guarantee.  There’s far more chafe than wheat, far more lies than truth, far more crap than substance.  Those of us who have spent a great deal of time on the internet believe we can distinguish the difference. I still find myself learning, often to my chagrin and embarrassment, that something I thought was accurate wasn’t, that someone I thought was legit isn’t. 

I would like to think I’m fairly skeptical and knowledgeable about how the internet, and more particularly, the blawgosphere, works, and yet I keep finding mistakes on my part.  If someone with my familiarity can’t manage to get it right, what is the likelihood that someone new to all this is going to be able to separate reality from fiction?

Aside from my persona as curmudgeon of the blawgosphere, having the willingness to write unpleasant things that others never would because it would interfere with their interest in being loved and adored, it’s been my purpose to be an  honest broker in the blawgosphere. The pitfall is being applauded when I’m critical of something they hate, yet castigated when I’m critical of something they love. We’re all geniuses or imbeciles, according to whether you meet with the approval of each individual with a keyboard.

It’s a big internet.  The place I occupy is minuscule, and in the scheme of an animal so huge, so varied, with so many heads and tentacles, I’m puny.  As a vehicle of commerce, its merit is proven and undeniable.  As a vehicle of thought and information, the jury is out. 

The more I read, the more I try to come up with an answer to how we can distinguish the good from the bad, the truthful from the false, the manipulations that alter reality and create a fiction that is presented so well that it’s more real than IRL.  I’ve come up empty.  I want to be sanguine about it, like many others in the blawgosphere whom I respect, but I just can’t muster the smile.

That it behooves us, lawyers, humans, to be honest, accurate, informative and bold on the internet strikes me as something too obvious for words.  And yet, I’ve come to realize this is a distinctly minority view.  No matter how much room there is on the internet, or how full it becomes, its value is only as great as the merit of its content.  If the content is crap, than it’s a monstrously huge pile of crap.

Postscript: Whenever I post something meta like this, someone speculates about my motivations. My motives aren’t particularly hard to figure out, at least this time. I awoke this morning to more than a thousand new emails. The majority were spam comments. Then there were the press releases, some from worthy causes, some from nutjob websites, some so unbelievably trivial as to make my head explode (The law firm of Schmuck, Douche and Dickwad announced that they’ve just rented 37 square feet in a tenement in Brooklyn!). There were the invitations to join “the most respected group” of lawyers on a website that’s been live for three hours, the requests to write guest posts for FREE!!!  Of course, I got the “Beloved” emails from Nigeria, and the girls of Kazakhstan who saw my bio on the internet and want to be “deep friends” with me.

I had a dozen emails about sales being run by businesses I’ve never heard of, who inform me that I opted into their advertising, and another dozen from businesses I’ve heard of and from whom I’ve unsubscribed.  There were the link exchange emails, the emails from people who read things I’ve written and want to tell me they love/hate what I wrote.  And a few friends who offered some links to interesting things they found on the internet that might interest me.

But what got to me this morning was an email from someone who found me on the internet, who had a very serious problem which he explained to me in inappropriate detail, and then proceeded to tell me how he’s tried desperately to figure out what to do, reading websites, blawgs, articles, everything he could find on the internet, only to realize that he’s now more confused, more lost than ever. “What should I do,” he asked.

In all the self-promotion, puffery, agendas, lies, scams, schemes and crap, very few seem to remember that there are real people who think they can find answers on the internet, and instead find the garbage lawyers float in its place.  We’re filling their heads with nonsense. We’re killing them with empty words. We swore to help them, and instead we’re killing them.  If we can’t manage to do better, then we don’t deserve the internet.  We’ve squandered this gift on crap, and it occurred to me that no matter what I do, what I say, it’s likely that it will continue and few of you will give a damn as long as you think there’s something in it for you.

When one takes the helm of so august a group as the American Bar Association, it’s wise to pick one’s enemies carefully.  It’s not like there aren’t plenty of darn fine choices, assuming getting invited to  official cocktail parties isn’t your primary goal, in which case the enemies list gets much smaller.

However, one group of people that you really don’t want to piss off is, well, lawyers. In particular, young lawyers.  Even more particularly, young lawyers who are feeling particularly crappy at the moment for having taken on a ton of debt to become lawyers.  And if we could put a head on it, the ones who can’t find a job in the law, despite their expensive edumacation, ton of debt and vision of a long life of misery ahead of them.  Yet this is who William Robinson, President of the American Bar Association, chooses to blame.

From an interview with Reuters :

Robinson, a lawyer in Kentucky, said anyone entering law school has already completed an undergraduate degree or more.

“It’s inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago,” he said.

Not as opportune?  Well, that’s a nice way to say it’s in the toilet, with ABA approved law schools dumping about  15,000 new lawyers into a market that can’t absorb them.  But what about the ABA, Will?  What about its role in this fiasco? What about the studies showing that the ABA’s “management” of law schools has been a primary cause of their absurdly high tuitions, and cause for the huge debtload carried by new lawyers?

“None of the studies show that the ABA rules of certification are what’s responsible for the cost of legal education,” he said. Other factors, such as competition for professors, are driving the increase in cost, he said.

Robinson recalled his own experience paying for law school at the University of Kentucky, where he got a degree in 1971.

“When I was going to law school, and I sold my Corvair to make first-semester tuition and books for $330, a sizeable portion of the faculty had tenure. They had tenure then and they have tenure now,” he said.

That Corvair was one cool car, gas tank issues notwithstanding.  But still, Will, shouldn’t the ABA do what it can to smooth the profession through tough times?

“I should take the lead in telling these schools that they should reduce their tuition to $25,000 a year? No, I don’t think I should do that. I don’t think it would be purposeful. I don’t think it would be meaningful. I don’t think it would accomplish anything for me to do that,” Robinson said.

He said “it’s a complex question as to whether the cost is higher than it should be or is justified.”

Yeah, Corvairs were really cool back then, before Nader went and screwed them all up with that unsafe any any speed crap.  And William Robinson’s insensitivity and crass denial of responsibility is outrageous.  It’s complex?  Great! You’re the President of the ABA, presumably capable of dealing with complex issues. Deal with it.

Is there some merit to the “they should have known better” argument? Sure. Some. But his overt disclaimer of ABA responsibility isn’t merely wrong, but offensive.  Too many law school with too many seats pushing out too many lawyers whose primary purpose for being there is to take their rightful place among the wealthy and important in society.  Too many law professors doing too little teaching and too much whining, getting paid more than they would if they had to  work for a living on the backs of students fed doctored stats by law schools in their glossy, 17-color law porn.

Anything in there strike you as curious, Will?  You know, like something the ABA could have an impact on?

Naturally, disaffected young unemployed lawyers have  not taken well to Robinson’s comments:

ABA President William Robinson is stupid, a dick, and a big stupid dick.

And persuasive voices like this can’t find work?  Inconceivable!  Yet Robinson’s knee-jerk defense of the status quo is not merely equally unconvincing, but utterly wrong.  Sure, there’s some blame to be levied on the young lawyers for closing their eyes and diving head first into a pool of feces.  But that’s your pool of feces, Will. Don’t deny it stinks. Clean it up.

You took the reins of an organization that putatively reflects the voice of the legal profession. The job is more than going to official cocktail parties and getting a plaque at the end of the term.  The job is more than insipid defense of the way things always were, and shifting blame to the victims.  

Lawyers see what’s going on, and we realize that we’ve got an untenable system. At best, we can call it structural unemployment. At worst, we’re running a scam.  Regardless of how it’s characterized, we know it’s a disaster.  Are you seriously claiming that you, Mr. ABA President, don’t see a problem here?

These young lawyers, for better or worse, are the future of our profession.  They’re turning to mush before our eyes. They consider our ethics and obligations archaic remnants of the once-noble profession because they are being crushed by their current circumstances.  Desperate people don’t have the latitude to worry about which club tie they wear; they’re hungry.  And you, Will, are telling them to eat cake?

Much as I hate to use such profane language here, there is no escaping one conclusion based upon the myopia and insensitivity reflected in these statements.  William Robinson is a stupid dick.  More importantly, his thoughts do not reflect those of any lawyers I know, who fully recognize that the ABA is a primary source of  the problem, and thus a primary source of solutions.  

And instead of trying to fix the problem, the president of the ABA blames the victims.  What a disgrace.  What a stupid dick.
 

Utah Lawprof Michael Teter posted something funny over at PrawfsBlawg.  The title was Campos is Right, but it has absolutely nothing to do with scamblogging hero Paul Campos.  It was just to troll.

I’m going to let you in on a secret.  Those of us who guest blog here measure our success by one criterion alone:  whether we get the mainstays of the Prawfs family to comment on our posts.  Only when we see the likes of Dan Markel, the two Ricks, Howard Wasserman, and all of the other folks listed to the immediate right, in the comments do we know that we’ve truly arrived.  And let’s not forget Orin Kerr.  I won’t hide the satisfaction I felt upon seeing that my first post on Prawfs drew a response from Orin himself.  A day late, sure, but that only adds to the power and mystique.  The comment was succinct and witty – pure Orin Kerr.

On the topic, I should note that I’m meeting with a tech guru soon and I’m thinking we might create a special passport to commenting on posts, if that’s technically feasible. The idea would be only pre-cleared commenters would be able to comment, sort of similar to the way facebook allows you to comment on things without intermediation, but only b/c the poster knows who’s commenting. Anyway, we’ll see, discuss and explore. Stay tuned.

Posted by: Dan Markel | Jan 5, 2012 6:04:13 PM

I feel that this post is just sad. In its own way, it bolsters Campos’ argument that it is nearly impossible to get most legal academics to see the human and financial toll of the law school crisis facing most recent graduates – particularly those at 3rd and 4th Tier Schools.

Instead of taking a stand – one way or the other, right or wrong – on Professor Campos’ work, the author uses the post as an obsequious ode to the “LawPrawfs” who run the blog. No opinion is even ventured about the state of legal academia or the sustainability of the current educational/financial model at schools ranked lower than the Top 50. Hell, even the candid perspective of a junior faculty member entering academia at a time of such uncertainty over the efficacy and viability of the current US News-driven business model would be helpful. After all, in a time of contraction, wouldn’t the untenured be the first to go? Those of us outside the Ivory Tower, would find your thoughts on this quite illuminating.

I do not mean to single out Professor Teter here, but isn’t this emblematic of the go-along-to-get-along culture in academia – particularly among junior faculty seeking tenure? It seems that junior faculty are given a long leash to critique many subjects, but there is an unspoken rule to stay away from examining the stability of the Langdellian mothership.

My frustration extends beyond the junior faculty (who at least have the power dynamic of tenure status to explain their behavior). The uncritical examination of the status quo is also endemic to senior tenured faculty. I am especially frustrated by many of the 50, 60 and 70 somethings that comprise the remnants of the “critical legal studies” movement. If the law school “scam” (I use the term as a colloquialism, not as a statement of fact), isn’t a ready-made issue for CLS examination, what is? It’s got all the elements that should theoretically spur CLS inquiry. It hasn’t. The silence of the CLS community also reveals that in most quarters of legal academia, it’s safe to rail against many things – just not the structure of legal education itself.

Finally, I take a far less charitable view of Professor Markel’s censorship than Professor Teter does. In my limited and admittedly brief time reading this blog, I find that Professor Markel’s “quick draw” efforts to delete posts and close comments unsettling. I don’t know why he finds differing opinions so unsettling, but he does. His recent decision to delete a benign (and on topic) comment questioning the ethics of faculty accepting free food and drink from fourth tier Drexel Law School stands out to me. Of the “regulars”, he stands out as especially dismissive of any concerns raised by recent graduates and that is unfortunate. Dismissing the viewpoints of others grounded in personal experience/tragedy is unfortunate, but heavy-handed aggression towards those with different viewpoints is especially problematic. There is a special irony that this censorship occurs on a blog purportedly dedicated to “intellectual honesty.”

Posted by: Voodoo94 | Jan 5, 2012 8:22:42 AM

Mere hours into a new year, and spit is shooting from  Brian Tannebaum’s mouth.

But yesterday, the first day back for most lawyers, brought out the rash of shit that is the failed and former lawyers, and those with no business advising anyone in the legal profession, going on and on about why lawyers need to “get on board,” with social media and shiny toys. It was like they were holding their breath for 3 weeks and just couldn’t take it anymore. The flood gates opened – where was their next desperate lawyer looking to “harness the power of social media?” Where was the next broke lawyer looking to learn which Apple product they were required to have to “survive?”

Adam Wagner refers to the Orwell Prize.

The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing. Every year, we award prizes for the work – the book, the journalism and (since 2009) the blog – which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’.

Ironically, the only way to win an Orwell Prize is to enter and promote one’s own work, a notion that would make Orwell’s head explode, as my  Brit pal CharonQC delightfully notes.  Inkster applaud’s Wagner’s honesty, if not his direction. He is a flawger, and darn proud of it.

Antonin Pribetic, who offered the original definition of ‘flawg’ and ’flawger’, considered 2011 to have been “a banner year for Flawging” in his recent post: Flawging a dead horse. 

Will 2012 see more lawyers coming out of their Chambers as flawgers? Perhaps it will be the year when that Elephant in the #LawBlogs Room is no longer ignored.

Back at home,  Ken at Popehat (yes, we know who Ken really is, but he will forever be enshrined in the Pantheon of Blawgers as Ken at Popehat) screws with the industrious marketers who function under the belief that lawyers are all, deep in their dark hearts, flawgers. 

My new pal Feculent is right about one thing — our firms have not met. That’s because my firm is a law firm, and his firm is lodged, like a partially absorbed suppository, in the legal referral industry.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Ken has a particularly keen olfactory sense, which manifests itself in his descriptions.  Mark Bennett, having  played  this game with  marketers  many times in the past, never wrote about the smell.

Many of you reading this, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, have no interest in flawging (and why you’re still reading is beyond me), as the last thing you need is more business.  For lawyers with a payment due on the Ferrari (which looks remarkably like Hyundia) and mouths to feed, the silent telephone is breaking their hearts. And for the new lawyers, wondering what the chances are that a job is going to appear on Skyrim as they sit on the old couch in their parent’s basement, flawging may be their only hope.

To the chagrin of the smiling marketers, the SEO salesmen, the schemers who claim they have big money cases just waiting for you to sign onto their network, the lawyers online are still a small group.  It’s not that the rest of them don’t have access and a keyboard, but they have yet to jump on board.  Each day, a few more close their eyes, hold their nose, and take the leap.

These are the n00bs targeted by the snakeoil salesmen, and they haven’t grown inured to the schemes and scams.  The fresh blood is targeted, and easily taken in by the former lawyers and their cohorts whose own financial security is dependant on the foolishness and ignorance of the desperate. 

With each new year, and each hungry mouth, a lawyer finds his way to the gutter of the web, where he’s promised success and prestige if only he buys the magic secret answer.

And with each new year, someone has to warn off the n00bs, repeating what has been said before, that there is no magic secret answer.  Will 2012 be the year that Flawging becomes respectable?  Will this be the year when the bulk of lawyers, finally realizing that they have to “get on board” or die, walk down the internet boulevard in their newly purchased hotpants?

Those of us who have been around for a while, and whose eyes (and nose) aren’t shielded by self-interest and rationalization to justify why we’ve been wallowing in the gutter in the vain hope of making that nasty old phone ring, engage in a battle for survival.  The public may have little respect for lawyers, but lawyers have little respect for themselves, earning the public’s disdain.  So we fight to stop the slide into the gutter. We write to tell the hungry and desperate that they are being sold a lie.

Someone, today, will read this post who knows nothing about the blawgosphere, but has heard that if he starts a flawg, his phone will ring and his children will be fed.  Maybe he will be persuaded to read Tannebaum’s post, dodging the spit, or Ken’s post (holding his nose), or Bennett’s post (with no body part necessarily involved) and realize that going down the path of flawging won’t make him a success, but will cost him his dignity, and contribute to the disgraceful conduct of lawyers on the internet.

Maybe. It’s worth a try.  It won’t get you any new readers, or any new business, or any awards, or likely any friends.  It might save some poor schmuck from pissing away his last few dollars.  It will certainly be a laboring oar in the effort to maintain the last vestiges of dignity of lawyers on the internet. 

Don’t let 2012 be the Year of the Flawg.  It won’t save your practice or feed your children. It will bring our profession into further disrepute.