Today's New Blawg

Bryan Gates, an attorney in North Carolina, writes I Respectfully Dissent [via Ernie Svenson]:

The great dirty secret of the corporate world is that whatever time they don't spend whining about frivolous lawsuits filed by consumers is devoted to suing each other over trivial things.

Bryan has a separate page ("Ask The Law Guy") where he answers reader questions about the law, the legal system, and legal problems, and also has an apparent fondness for both Atticus Finch and pugs. (Can it be long before the B&B blawgroll needs a Practicing, With Pugs sub?)

Paper, Or Paper?

Jeremy Blachman discusses "the myth of the paperless office," and much more, in his A-to-Z Guide to Callback Interviews.

Boo

The Halloween Moblog, from Textamerica (featuring the Confidential pumpkin).

That's Hard Time

Frank Field has the skinny on this week's South Park episode (#709), in which Kyle, Stan, and Kenny get busted for illegal music downloads. As the FBI tells them, "That's hard time" (.wav).

Librarily We Roll Along

I've had a few interesting library tidbits sitting in my in-box and on my desk; putting them here, of course, gets them out, off, and in front of you :).

• On next Thursday, November 6, the Los Angeles County Law Library is being renamed in honor of the late Justice Mildred Lillie, who served over 55 years as a California jurist and authored more than 3,000 appellate opinions. (More here.) Chief Justice Ronald M. George of the California Supreme Court will deliver the keynote.


• Through January 4, 2004, the Los Angeles Central Library is host to American Originals, an exhibit of items from the National Archives including "25 documents, ranging from Thomas Edison's patent application for the electric light to the Louisiana Purchase Treaty and Germany's surrender in World War II. Many of these priceless treasures have never traveled outside of Washington D.C. Other milestone documents on display for the duration include [the] Official voting record of the Constitutional Convention, 1787, [the] Louisiana Purchase Treaty, 1803, [and] President Kennedy's inaugural address, 1961." More from Business Wire.


• The November issue of the Los Angeles Lawyer includes a useful Carole Levitt article on "How to Access Public Library Databases for Research Purposes: Attorneys can use library databases to find what they might otherwise have to pay for." It's not yet up on the County Bar site, but I'll try to remember to update this once it is. [11/4 Update]: Here's the article (PDF).