the Zealous

The sea squirt is an animal that begins life with a brain and a tail. Immediately after it is born, it uses its brain and tail to propel itself through the water until it finds some rock to attach itself. Once it attaches itself to that rock it consumes its brain, absorbs its tail, and thereafter never moves again; it lives out its remaining life as a brainless water filter.

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Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, since the belief was that Islam forbids women to serve as judges, I and other female judges were dismissed from our posts and given clerical duties. They made me a clerk in the very court I once presided over. We all protested. As a result, they promoted all former female judges, including myself, to the position of “experts” in the Justice Department. I could not tolerate the situation any longer, and so put in a request for early retirement. My request was accepted. Since the Bar Association had remained closed for some time since the revolution and was being managed by the Judiciary, my application for practising law was turned down. I was, in effect, housebound for many years.

[T]he firm’s partners had elected me to membership. The good news came with a curious proviso, words that have stuck in my mind. “It’s clear that you won’t stay in private practice forever,” George [Pavia] said. “We know you’re destined for the bench someday. Dave [Botwinik] is even convinced you’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court. But with this offer, we ask only that you remain with us as long as you continue in private practice.”

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480-300 BCE
The earliest describable class of people as lawyers were likely "orators" in ancient Athens, but a true profession could not take hold or flourish then due to a ban on charging fees for such services. The Athenians believed that citizens should actively participate in their own legal affairs and be responsible for their actions. Hiring a representative would undermine this principle.

41-50 AD
The Roman Emperor Claudius lifted the ban on fees and legalized advocacy as a profession—but with a lifetime fee cap of 10,000 sesterces, or about US$5,000 today. This cap was too low to enable a true profession to flourish.

Slip and Fall Lawyer
Carl Reisman

I am becoming
an acolyte of the slip
and fall;
slips on water,
over concrete blocks,
on icy walks. My family
fed by falls.

The film Flight is the story of commuter airline pilot Whip Whitaker (played by Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington). Spoiler alert: I’m about to describe some of the plot and the ending.

Whip is an accomplished veteran pilot. He’s also an alcoholic and a cocaine freak. One morning, after a sleepless night of rowdy flight attendant sex, heavy drinking, smoking bud and snorting coke, Whip shows up for work to pilot SouthJet Flight 227* with 102 souls on board.

The plane encounters nasty turbulence, but Whip masterfully flies through the chop without so much as breaking a sweat. As he is speaking to the passengers over the intercom to calm them down, Whip secretly mixes vodka with orange juice and consumes two of those before going back to the pilot’s chair and taking a nap.

r/AskALawyer 29jul24 post by reddituser elbodelbo

Okay, it makes sense not to represent yourself if you aren't a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer so I'd do a shitty job representing myself since I don't know the law that well.

But if you are a lawyer, and you're on trial, why would representing yourself be a bad idea?

Stanford Study Reveals hallucinations in Lexis & Westlaw Tools

Read the whole thing here. Key takeaways:

US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts' annual report to Congress noted "disturbing" reports of "hallucinations" of false or worse non-existent legal authority cited in legal briefs.

Lexis and Westlaw tout their AIs as being hallucination-free and reliable.

Only 36% of surveyed legal professionals, including lawyers, who are ages 18 to 34 said work had a positive effect on mental health. The percentage increased to 43% for those ages 35 to 44, 50% for those ages 45 to 54, and 62% for those ages 55 and older.

The impact of poor well-being is far reaching, according to the study, The State of Wellbeing in Law 2024. Nearly 19% of work time is affected by poor mental health, resulting in an average well-being loss of more than $33 million per firm.

The study is based on responses from 4,448 legal professionals in nine firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. The firms, identified as midsize in the study, had head counts ranging from 600 to 2,400.

Other survey findings:

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On this day in 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In a speech in Hawaii in 1987, commemorating the bicentennial celebration of the US Constitution, Justice Marshall spoke of his rejection of the view espoused by his more conservative colleagues that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the founders' original understanding and intent:

Lawyers drafting online terms of use/service and privacy policies are well-advised to establish a record that allows the client to demonstrate the existence of such terms and the date they were in effect. Such a record will prove quite handy in future litigation. See, eg, Kinney v. YouTube, LLC (Cal. Ct. App. 2018) (YouTube forced to rely on sworn testimony of engineer responsible for posting YouTube terms of service to prove that plaintiff click-accepted a version of the YouTube terms that included a synthetic one-year statute of limitations).

The word "shark" entered the English language in the 1560s, well after professional lawyers emerged in the thirteenth century. The term "shark lawyer" has been used to describe lawyers for centuries and has multiple origins. Google Gemini Pro AI has this to say in response to the prompt, "Explain how lawyers came to be known as sharks":

r/Ask_Lawyers 12.07.2024 post by reddituser bettyx1138:

Why do lawyers prefer to be called attorneys?

NAL, I work amongst them. Is there a difference between the terms lawyer and attorney?

Imho it’s shorter to say a two syllable word than three syllables and it’s less letters to write 🤷🏼‍♀️ am I insulting lawyers/attorneys by calling them lawyers?

Principle: If your lawyer makes more money off of your investors than he does from you, he’s not really your lawyer.

If someone made you an offer to buy your home, but suggested that you use their real estate agent in the process, you’d hopefully immediately notice a problem with such an arrangement.  Most people would.  That being said, here’s a very common scenario in the early stages of a startup:

Investor (to Founder): Hey, we’d love to work with you guys on a possible investment, but first you need to get your legal stuff cleaned up.

Founder (eager to get investment): Awesome. But I don’t know any good startup lawyers.

Investor: No problem, I know a great startup lawyer, [X].  We’ve worked with him on several deals. I’ll put you in touch.

The problem with this scenario? When things go sideways.