Today's New Blawg

The Sound and Fury only is new to Bag and Baggage's blawgroll, not to the Web by any stretch. I've heard from time to time that Max Power was a lawyer, but just saw it confirmed recently in his straightforward advice for interviewing law students. Item "3a" in particular made me chuckle: "I'm sure you want to do appellate work. I want to do appellate work. . . . If you really wanted to do appellate work, you'd be doing something else besides interviewing with us."

Heh. I can say things are a little different at our firm, in light of the fact we have a separate and steadily growing appellate group. While a full-time appellate case load for a junior associate is unusual, it's not unheard of. The more common path for recent graduates with an interest and talent in that area is to start out in trial or do a mix of trial and appellate work. Direct experience in the trial courts can only help your skills as an appellate lawyer, and it becomes apparent before too long where your best fit might be. (Sorry, no offices in Hawaii. . .wait, does Newark count?)

Doorbells And Sleighbells And Schnitzel With Noodles

Some of my favorite things, courtesy of the Today Show and its Web site:

• Computers: unfortunately there's no Web story to link to, but Al Roker interviewed someone with great toys this morning about the best computers on the market now for kids. Featured were the LeapPad (which was, truth be told, my whole motivation for getting pregnant), a tablet PC sporting Microsoft's OneNote 2003 (take notes simultaneously integrated with an audio recording of the speaker—sweet!), and the Microsoft Office X Student and Teacher Edition (the full Office suite at a much reduced price). Software piracy on the Today Show?? Not quite, but that last product did prompt Roker to speculate aloud about inverting the traditional student/adult purchasing gambit.


• Shoes: "The Ultimate Shoe Guide, Fall 2003." Need I say more?


• Al Franken: "Fresh from his legal victory over Fox News and his appearance on NBC's Today show, Al Franken joins MSNBC.com chat to talk about his new book, 'Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.'" The live chat with Al will take place tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. (Eastern, I assume).

Put That On Your Hard Drive And Sue About It

In the wake of last week's wormy weather, Declan McCullagh reports at c | net News.com on products liability claims and software, "A legal fix for software flaws?:" "Liability exemptions for software vendors have survived despite persistent bugs and increasingly severe consequences." (Speaking of Declan, his grueling travel schedule is keeping Politech on hiatus until September. My email economics post went out to the list and produced some lively responses—spam removal lists? not so popular—so instead of waiting for the Politech follow-up I'll try to post about them here soon.)

c | net also reports that Maxtor is releasing a new external backup drive. There's nothing not to like about these things, they work with Mac or Windows and it looks like the pricing keeps coming down as the drive sizes go up ($399 for 300GB, $199 for 120GB). Hey, you've got to put all that spam somewhere, right? You never know when it might come in handy. ("All was koyaanisqatsi.")

Today's New Blawg

Russ writes Legal Memo-Random, "Legal bits in non-legalese bites." While Russ is not your lawyer (I don't think so anyway), from his disclaimer we can reasonably deduce he is one of the damned. That, and he can write about the Simpsons and Miranda in nearly the same breath, which generally is a dead give away. Russ reports that the U.S. Supremes will be reviewing the Miranda warnings—"I did not know that"—and predicts the Court will decide to allow a certain amount of "deceit" in delaying the warnings in hope of getting a confession. If you too enjoy predicting the behavior of the U.S. Supreme Court, you should also visit Jason Nemes' Fantasy Justice and Sean Carter's Fantasy Supreme Court League.

Of Bunners, Bens, And Bedsworths

Phew, today has been a long day of tie-ups on other things. No time to pay attention to Bunner (PDF), just catching up. Here's how:

• Dan Gillmor


• Mary Hodder


• Eugene Volokh


• Kevin Heller


• Seth Finkelstein


• Greplaw


• EFF


• Slashdot


• Google News

I can tell you Ben Affleck's video interview segment on file sharing is quite good, nongratuitous Adam Smith reference and all.

Hey, how about some comments below for Justice Bedsworth, huh?? (Drag yourself out of your aggregator and over here, it'll be fun. Or maybe it'll just be—it's been that kind of day.)