This Blog Has Flown

I’ve moved! After spending most of Sunday hunched feverishly over my laptop, I’ve migrated this blog to my Web site. The new version of the I Am Not A Lawyer blog is at http://www.wordofthelaird.com/blog. If you’re RSSing, and the blog stats suggest that somebody is, point your reader to here.
So I won’t be updating [...]

Two articles criticizing the culture of large law firms.

First, here’s an article on the movie Michael Clayton and its criticisms of law-firm life. The thing is, pointing out that large law firms make their employees miserable and sometimes have to turn a blind eye to their clients’ ethical excesses is such a cliche that I’m almost embarrassed by my urge to blog about [...]

Something fun for Presidents’ Day and Black History Month

Because it’s a holiday, I’m working on nonpaying projects today. And of course, I’m procrastinating furiously. So I followed a link to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s blog, which is a relatively new addition to the LA Times Web site. He has a post from Friday on Charlotte E. Ray, who was the first black woman to become [...]

When being interrogated, be very, very specific about demanding your rights.

This is another entry in the semantic-wonk category. A Ninth Circuit opinion (en banc) caught my eye today because it had four individual components — the opinion, a concurrence, a dissent and a partial concurrence/partial dissent. Oy! Anderson v. Terhune. The issue that stirs up all this controversy was a Constitutional one — the Fifth [...]

Help a Blogger Out

If there are any actual lawyers reading this, please consider bopping over to the California Blog of Appeal and helping a nice lawyer who’s helped me in the past. The blogger is Greg May, an appellate lawyer up in Ventura who gave me quotes for a recentish article (not yet published, unless I missed something). [...]

ERISA preemption heading for SCOTUS? Alphabet soup!

Via SCOTUSBlog, and in turn via Workplace Prof Blog, I have learned that The Golden Gate Restaurant Association has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the City of San Francisco from implementing a universal health care law. Whew — that was a loaded sentence. More is yet to come, my friends. To explain succinctly: [...]

Nerdy Valentine’s Day present from SCOCAL.

Just dropping by quickly to note that the California Supreme Court will be broadcasting oral arguments on same-sex marriage. That’s March 4 on the California Channel, which is somewhere on basic cable for most of us; follow the link for help finding it in your area. The cases are In re Marriage Cases, which grew [...]

Internet privacy rights in California

I don’t follow internet decisions closely, but only because I don’t have endless time. California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal handed a decision down yesterday that caught my eye anyway, thanks to Professor Martin at the California Appellate Report. In Krinsky v. Doe 6, the appeals court said internet message board users have the right [...]

Have They Seen a ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Commercial Lately?

I just saw this article in the Wall Street Journal on First Amendment challenges to how lawyers are allowed to advertise. In short, lawyers hold themselves to higher standards than most other professions when it comes to ads. I’m sure this was rooted in notions of propriety that go back a long way, possibly even [...]

Happy Super Tuesday! Here’s an obscure legal issue related to Indians!

Here in California, we’re voting on a few Indian gaming compacts today. (Among other things.) This got me into a discussion with a writer colleague who once worked as a reporter in Palm Springs, which of course put her near the Morongo casino. She questioned whether federal labor-rights laws apply to Indian tribes; her readers [...]