Today's New Blawg

Transmogriflaw is the first AOL blogger to be featured at B&B. And though she's far from the first law student here she's among the most level headed, having rightly discovered that Labor Day Weekend is not about studying or stress, but better suited to learning how to cope with indiscriminate poison oak and rein in indiscriminate law talk. [Thanks JCA, who notes "how this year's 1Ls are so much more chill than we were."]

Key Dates For The California Election

Probably owing to the expedited nature of the upcoming California recall vote, I've received none of the usual preelection information from my local Registrar. If you're in the same boat, here are the critical deadlines:

• September 22, 2003 is the last day to register to vote in order to participate in the October 7, 2003 election.


• September 30, 2003 is the last day to file applications for absentee voter ballots.

I also just learned you can now apply to become a permanent absentee voter; handy if, like me, you work outside your county of residence.

Just In Time To Stave Off Withdrawal Symptoms

Howard's back from vacation and off and running with September's installment of 20 Questions, featuring Judge William Curtis Bryson of the Federal Circuit. Among many other things, Judge Bryson addresses the unique jurisdiction and role of the Federal Circuit, and offers tips for increasing one's briefing and argument skills. Not to be missed.

Ms. Haps

Ms. Magazine has a new editor, new publisher, and new digs in Beverly Hills, according to a Los Angeles Times Magazine story from yesterday. Ms. also has a new-ish blog. While the article mentions a rift between prior editor Tracy Wood and those more rooted in the women's movement over things like whether the term "grrl" is empowering or sexist—"to women who had come through the movement and fought the battles, they didn't care how you spelled it, it was still the word 'girl.' And they had had such a fight against that word."—it's interesting to note both "grrls" and "girls" are represented on the Ms. blogroll. (However, the "Girls Rock!" t-shirts in the online store come only in child sizes.) It seems the magazine today is striving to reach a modern audience while remembering its history. Says new editor in chief Elaine Rafferty in the Times piece,

I want 20-year-olds to read this magazine, but I'm not going to tattoo myself and put a safety pin through my nose and go on the cover. On some level we're your mother's Oldsmobile. But your mother's Oldsmobile had some really good things to it.

I can respect that (though I'm far on the downhill side of 20...), and think it's smart too that the magazine not only is blogging, but tapped Christine Cupaiuolo, editor of the savvy online magazine PopPolitics, as its blogger in residence.

Today's New Blawg

Lawyers of the World, Unite! seems an appropriate enough blawg to highlight on Labor Day. Like the holiday itself, author William Shears is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of certain workers (lawyer type ones)—and to providing a complement to Shears' book.

"William Shears is a pseudonym for two lawyers who are older, wiser, richer, and more powerful than they were when they started out," reads the back of the review copy of The Young Lawyer's Guide to Money and Power I received awhile back, scheduled for an October 31, 2003 release. Since it's not every day I'm asked to review a forthcoming book I was intrigued, and surmised the mysterious authors might be blawgers. If they weren't before, they are now. Their inaugural August 28 post kicks things off with a poetry contest "about our worst experiences with the law!" (Back in my days as an English major, we would have called this a "dark genre").

I started the book over the weekend, and so far I Like It Quite A Bit. It's full of common and uncommon sense about how to approach a legal career, Apple/1984 iconography applied to educational norms, and cleverly accurate observations:

Sooner or later, you will run into one or more lawyers who are psychopaths ... Such people often do quite well in the legal profession. They treat clients well, win victories for them, and maintain their reputations through deception. If there's a metaphorical string of bodies behind them, they somehow manage to convince the world that the victims were suicides.

So far the only thing that has made me cringe too much is the title—but then, maybe I'm not giving the authors enough credit for a heaping dollop of postmodern irony. In any event, I'm honored to have been asked to review the book, and will do so here in greater detail before its release.