Blawg Review #166

It’s tra­di­tional to give thanks to the mys­te­ri­ous and sus­pi­ciously eva­sive edi­tor of Blawg Review for the priv­i­lege of danc­ing in the Blawg Car­ni­val. In the case of this reviewer per­haps not only thanks but apolo­gies & sym­pa­thy should be offered, and per­plex­ity expressed.

Geeklawyer says “sym­pa­thy” since his rep­u­ta­tion as a tabloid legal blog­ger may have led Mr Ed to believe that this will be wild-card review full of inap­pro­pri­ate vul­gar­ity, drunken foul mouthed rant­ing and incen­di­ary con­tent: i.e. a nor­mal Geeklawyer post­ing. Why risk such a thing? One can only spec­u­late — per­haps like many a sybarite Mr Ed’s deca­dent palette has become jaded: may­hap too many years of abus­ing serv­ing girls and sum­mer asso­ciates has taken its toll. No mat­ter, we will pro­ceed apace and to the devil the hindmost.

Apolo­gies are called for since the review is a few hours late, but with a really great excuse: Geeklawyer got smashed at the infa­mous hippy Glas­ton­bury music fes­ti­val (a supe­rior but con­tin­u­ing ver­sion of Wood­stock) that he attended with Ruthie. The time sort of slipped by. Con­trary to the dis­grace­ful slur by the edi­tor of Blawg Review Geeklawyer was not beaten up by Amy Wine­house (who was a crap act by the way), he was shag­ging her Greek style to con­sole her while her hus­band is the clink. As a result this may be the Blawg Review with the high­est num­ber of errors and the quick­est writ­ten ever: OK, you try writ­ing 1500 words in 2 hours after an hour’s sleep, 20 lines of coke, 2 tabs of acid and sev­eral gal­lons of cider.

July 4th 1776 — a day that will live in infamy
And why per­plex­ity? This Blawg Review will escape into the wild just in time for July the fourth. This date has become well known in the jour­nals of revi­sion­ist his­tory. Due to their egre­gious and fla­grant unwill­ing­ness to put all the required vow­els into words like ‘colour’ we British finally suc­ceeded in eject­ing Amer­ica from the Empire. The absurd lie was then spo­ken and has become embed­ded that it was we who were ejected. Man­i­fest tosh and pif­fle of course.

In the spirit of will­ing Geeklawyer has attempted to live down to his rep­u­ta­tion to please Mr Ed. Thereto, copi­ous amounts of cocaine have been snorted; entire flagons of mead have been quaffed; sev­eral under­age girls despoiled for their future hus­bands and an Amer­i­can dic­tio­nary has been installed in the word proces­sor so that Geeklawyer can remove all those chal­leng­ing vow­els.

Vile Euro­peans
I say “Amer­i­cans” of course even though not all read­ers will be Amer­i­can, but the web­server logs indi­cate that more USians read this blog than us limeys. And as for our con­ti­nen­tal cousins, not only are we not kiss­ing but we are barely on speak­ing terms. Indeed moves are afoot to run cheese-wire under our fair and sceptered isle to sever it from the Euro­pean con­ti­nen­tal shelf. Once that is done we shall pad­dle our way over the pond and anchor our­selves off Long Island.
So it can be under­stood that Geeklawyer will not bother with the flat­u­lent French, the bas­tardly Bosche, the bor­ing Bel­gians nor any other of our down-market neigh­bours to whom we have been shack­led by the vicis­si­tudes of tec­tonic whim.

Oh, why your author’s usage of the third per­son? We Brits have few virtues but pre­ten­tious­ness is one of them and your author aims to excel.

But con­cise writ­ing is, even after sev­eral eter­nal intro­duc­tory para­graphs, all. Let us, then, pro­ceed with Blawg Review #166 whose two themes, required by the tra­di­tions of Blawg Review, are the cel­e­bra­tion of Britain’s vic­to­ri­ous escape from the crush­ing bur­dens of own­er­ship of Amer­ica: “Inde­pen­dence”, and Eisenstein’s sem­i­nal lib­er­a­tion film “Bat­tle­ship Poty­omkin”.


“Men and Mag­gots“
One can­not begin to travel into the Blawg wilder­ness with­out paus­ing for vict­uals & light refresh­ment at the out­post known as “What About Clients”. What about clients indeed. This blawg is the van­ity Humvee of Dan.J.Hull of the bou­tique Penn­syl­va­nia firm Hull-Mcquire. From within the blawg’s armoured shell JD yells weird things at pass­ing web vis­i­tors in the hope that none pos­sess an RPG.

Dan’s cen­tral premise is that clients mat­ter above all else. It’s a sweet idea. And com­pletely fuck­ing nuts. Obvi­ously. Geeklawyer has berated him as much many a time and JDH has looked at him as though he had said “So, I hear your daugh­ter is a hot date. Can I have her cell­phone num­ber?” One sus­pects, indeed hopes, that this is no more than a cyn­i­cal mar­ket­ing ploy. The accu­sa­tion remains, nonethe­less, that Dan is a depraved evil socio­pathic neo­con ambu­lance chas­ing beast pre­tend­ing he loves his clients merely to get into their wal­lets. That may strike a chord with you and if so recall that the chord is, as math­e­mati­cians will con­firm, the short­est dis­tance between a lawyer and his punter’s wal­let.

Clas­sic expo­si­tions of his phi­los­o­phy are the 12 rules. If you believe all this ‘Client Love’ bol­locks then they are rules to carve on your children’s hearts; but even in a 7 point font ‘Rep­re­sent Only Clients You Love.’ doesn’t work for your author who is a mem­ber of the Eng­lish Bar where the Cab Rank Rule largely pre­vents one declin­ing pun­ters; our junior col­leagues, solic­i­tors, do have that lux­ury. The true view of a client is as that of a wolf for a lamb: a tasty snack that might just make a nice pair of mit­tens after the eat­ing. If you want a friend, find Jesus; but pun­ters are for bleed­ing.

“Drama at the Har­bour“
Vic­to­ria Pyn­chon at Nego­ti­a­tion Law has com­ments on nego­ti­at­ing with psy­co­paths. In our pro­fes­sion we fre­quently come across those peo­ple whose prime moti­va­tion is their self grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the inflic­tion of ran­dom pain on the unde­serv­ing, a total lack of empa­thy, a desire to tor­ture small ani­mals and a resilience to pun­ish­ment. But that’s more than enough about part­ners.

“A Dead Man Calls for Jus­tice“
Scott Green­field com­ments on Judge Alex Kozin­ski being caught with pr0n on his web­site. If there is any­thing more fun than watch­ing a car crash it’s watch­ing some­one famous hav­ing one. One can­not help but observe that, on the one hand, Alex is cast­ing around for excuses and mit­i­ga­tion like a man whose career is mor­tal peril:

“… he thought the site was for his pri­vate stor­age and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the pub­lic, although he also said he had shared some mate­r­ial on the site with friends.”

“Yale [errant off­spring] called and said he’s pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it,” Kozin­ski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news web­site. “I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don’t remem­ber putting some of that stuff there.“
While on the other, it’s a mat­ter of pretty lit­tle sub­stance and the reac­tion more one indica­tive of Amer­i­can puri­tanism. Man caught with porn. Wow. His only sin appears to be one of not being geeky enough to con­fig­ure an Apache web­server with­out his son’s aid.
In truth the cow pic­ture is very good, the polit­i­cal com­men­tary on Bush is ripe (three cunts on dis­play) and the aroused don­key bizarrely bad.

“Paul Revere Rides” (or “The sex­ists are com­ing!!”)
If you are a chick lawyer who rel­ishes eat­ing your own pla­centa, using hemp tam­pons and rail­ing against the vile hate agenda of the male oppres­sor, then boy, is there a blog for you: Fem­i­nist Law Pro­fes­sors. A blawg for wim­min’ by wim­min’ about wim­min’.

Geeklawyer tried to find a post there to set fire to, but frankly it was all so damnably dull he fell asleep: gem titles include ‘Gen­der and Copy­right’ ‘Pimp Empow­er­ment’. Right on sis­ter. On the plus side giv­ing these lit­tle girlies tenure does at least keeps them out of law firms; but really, they do need hus­bands to keep them busy.
As a fel­low given to nos­tal­gia Geeklawyer rather misses the 1980’s: Duran Duran, Min­ers strikes, Retarded Rea­gan, Cruise mis­sile protests at Green­ham Com­mon. *sigh*. It’s nice to see a lit­tle slice of it cling­ing on, limpet like, in the real­ity free envi­ron­ment of acad­e­mia.

“The Odessa Stair­case“
Of course not all law pro­fes­sors are a waste of space. While the fem­i­nist pro­fes­sors are busy star­ing angrily into their vagi­nas, over at the Volokh Con­spir­acy they are dis­cussing two year law degrees. To the eyes of a limey this looks a bit odd. We have to do a three year law degree (or 1 year post-grad con­ver­sion) and then a pro­fes­sional degree fol­lowed by a year on the job train­ing (AKA pupil­lage or a train­ing con­tract for bar­ris­ters & solic­i­tors respec­tively). Two years seems remark­ably thin gruel if US degrees also incor­po­rate pro­fes­sional train­ing as well as aca­d­e­mic, and it seems so. Jor­dan Fur­long has an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive that it may actu­ally be about recruit­ing the best can­di­dates from a lim­ited pool rather than pleas­ing law schools and law firms. Nonethe­less law degrees are fre­netic at the best of times so mak­ing the ham­sters spin the law wheel even faster seems cruel, albeit enter­tain­ing. Geeklawyer can’t say he’d want advice on con­tracts from a pre-pubescent yup­pie who’d crammed ‘Con­sid­er­a­tion’ into a three week slot just before Christmas.

The bat­tle of Camden

For non-Americans the obses­sion Amer­i­can chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist nut-jobs have with pre­serv­ing foe­tuses on the one hand and their right to ter­mi­nate them when they become a fully devel­oped ver­sion caught break­ing and enter­ing one’s house is amus­ing. The US Supreme Court’s minty fresh Heller deci­sion has been debated end­lessly on too many blogs to enu­mer­ate. The most inter­est­ing posts analyse the role of the judi­ciary in using flex­i­ble and tran­si­tional def­i­n­i­tions on a non-definitive con­sti­tu­tional text, a con­cept Geeklawyer has some dif­fi­culty with but which oth­ers seem not to. John Phillips at ‘the Word on Employ­ment’ reflects on the view that the judg­ment doesn’t appear, first appear­ances aside, to inter­fere with an employer’s right to pro­hibit guns in the work­place or the right to reg­u­late unusual or dan­ger­ous weapons. Which is a damned shame really because there is poten­tially noth­ing more amus­ing than a dis­grun­tled post­man with a flamethrower and a really huge sup­ply of petro­leum gel.

Bored with Themes now

There is no doubt about it: you are pretty hip dear reader. you wouldn’t be here oth­er­wise & most lawyers don’t under­stand blogs. In the US that won’t last much longer as they become just another tick box in the firm’s mar­ket­ing plan. Kevin O’ Keefe had the good idea of try­ing to mas­ter this explo­sion of blawgs with his newly born Lex­Mon­i­tor ser­vice. The idea is a good one but unfor­tu­nately Scott H. Green­field just leant over the side of the child’s cot and said “Christ buddy, that’s the ugli­est fuck­ing baby I ever saw”.

On this side of the pud­dle Geeklawyer will pre­dict a demon­stra­tion of the dan­gers of hav­ing your blawg run by a hot­shot lawyer who is the only on who ‘gets’ blawging. Award win­ning IMPACT was always a really good blawg but it was the bitch of Alex New­son who has just moved to Shoo­smith to spread the word. Geeklawyer sus­pects that like his own grand­mother IMPACT will now die a lin­ger­ing painful death: but he won’t enjoy this nearly as much. The UK needs more IP blawgers. In the Interim there remains the obscenely author­i­ta­tive IPKat from Pro­fes­sor Phillips and his mot­ley crew run­ning around in the Scooby-doo van res­cu­ing IP wher­ever it is found in dis­tress. One post that caught IP lawyer Geeklawyer’s eye was an impend­ing appeal to the Euro­pean court against the rul­ing that pubs have to buy expen­sive licences to allow soc­cer to be shown. Soc­cer is, of course, watched by chav scum and if that were all it wouldn’t mat­ter, but it may restrict pubs abil­ity to show the gentlemen’s game of Rugby Union which would be a dis­as­ter. What would one watch while drink­ing mead?

Would some­one please call an ambu­lance for Mr Ed? He appears to have become unwell.

You may fol­low Geeklawyer on Twitter/Geeklawyer

Too­dle pip.

update: Geeklawyer has had his ass handed to him in a sling by Mr Ed who is out­raged that Canada Day in Lon­don was not men­tioned. Mea Culpa. He did know about it and did intend to men­tion it but, well, you know his excuse if you read the review. Not only has Mr Ed ripped him a new one but antic­i­pated his Cana­dian Friends will too (hi Mary). for the record Geeklawyer is an unqual­i­fied fan of Canada: Amer­ica with­out the testoterone or Guan­tanamo; if only they could get rid of the retarded French speak­ing bit they’d be perfect.

favourite reviews:
Infamy or Praise :

“As a group, the Eng­lish are not gen­er­ally more pleas­ant than oth­ers, but at least when they’re unpleas­ant they tend to be more sport­ing about it … he’s the Squid­ward in our Bikini Bot­tom, the Grinch in our Whoville, the Blawg Review family’s black sheep who the judge swore wouldn’t be eli­gi­ble for work release before lit­tle Suzy’s birth­day party.“

Nego­ti­a­tion­law Blawg: Ter­rific car­toon! GW Bush meet­ing some­one with a lower IQ than himself.

Dan Hull at WAC?:

“Women, chil­dren, lib­er­als, con­ser­v­a­tives, Catholics, Pres­by­te­ri­ans, Bap­tists, Methodists, your Mom, Mor­mons, the reli­gious right, Mid­west­ern­ers, most lawyers and their spouses will not like it. Witty, Britty–and won­der­fully vile. It’s bound to be one of the most pop­u­lar and famous Blawg Reviews ever. Bravo. You sick pup.”

Nearly legal: swear­ing blind that road-kill is the best meat of all.

Medi­a­tion Chan­nel:

“And now, smash­ing into Blawg Review like a nuclear blast or a par­ti­cle beam death ray, comes Blawg Review #166, det­o­nated by an anony­mous Eng­lish bar­ris­ter known only as GeekLawyer. Replete with foul lan­guage and links to porno­graphic images, Blawg Review #166 recalls to mind the words uttered to red­bait­ing U.S. sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

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Blawg Review has infor­ma­tion about next week’s host who will post on time, and instruc­tions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcom­ing issues. Alas no tips on how to score weed or pull hot chicks. Damn.