Today's New Blawg

Wow! A full seven years in the making and seven volumes in length, Bill Patry's Patry on Copyright treatise is now available. (At $1,498.00 for the whole shebang, at least West gives you free shipping! I'll have to start saving my pennies.) There can be no doubt it's a treasure trove; you can get Bill's full rundown here:

I have also tried to place copyright issues in the personal, social, and political contexts in which they arose: there are anecdotes aplenty and enough references to other scholars and disciplines to give a generation of law students ideas for law review notes. I have also drawn on my eight years experience in the legislative branch of government into how problems are identified, debated and ultimately resolved or not at the policy level. . . .

Perhaps best of all is the news the work will update twice annually (this may be difficult to grasp in the context of a blog post, but a twice yearly update to a legal treatise is way up there on the frequency scale), and that it has its own blog, the Patry Treatise Blog:

The purpose of this blog is to begin to break down the one-way nature of legal treatises. I am interested in dialogue, and in improving my own understanding. Usually, one person gets the ball rolling, and that's how I regard the treatise: it was a way for me to organize and discipline my thoughts. . . .

I want it. (It's less sleek than an iPhone, but no doubt just as useful.)

Today's New Blawg

I can't quite remember if Court TV's Jami Floyd (more, from Wikipedia) was a classmate of mine or my husband's at Boalt (I believe the latter, so that would make her class of '89), but congratulations go out on the launch of her new blog, Best Defense. It's the companion to her daily show of the same name on the Court TV network. Says Jami:

Best Defense seeks to place the presumption of innocence front and center, in a humble but much-needed effort to recalibrate the coverage of crime, justice and the courts in America. I perceive a critical need to restore balance, considered judgment and sensitivity to crime and trial coverage in the news media, in general and the broadcast media, in particular.

A noble goal to say the least, and another blogging Boaltie, w00t! (Note to Court TV: give Jami's show its own link/page, why dontcha?)

What Lawyers Appreciate...

Julie Fleming-Brown and Stephanie West Allen have a bit of a meme going in the blawgosphere (and far be it for me to let a meme go un-participated-in). They've asked us to offer "any kind of content at all" on the subject of what lawyers appreciate.

Lots of people have talked about how much and in what ways lawyers appreciate clients. This is the first year in a long time I have not been affiliated with a large law firm at the close of the year, but memory still serves enough to note that lawyers at such firms in particular appreciate clients who bring their outstanding accounts current by year end. By and large there's enormous pressure (translating to various strong-arm tactics, both inside law firms and outward to clients) to make that happen.

Me? I've never been able to discern why December 31 was should be a day any more magical for collection purposes than any other day of the year. And moving away from how much we appreciate our clients (whenever and however they compensate us), I think lawyers who *are* with firms appreciate the ones that recognize a person has yet to emerge from law school with the goal of subordinating their existence to that of a firm. (A client? of course, and frequently; but not a firm.) Today's law firms face a considerable challenge, because there is no such thing as a typical lawyer, and no cookie cutter answer as to what those in the profession will consider worthwhile and fulfilling over the long haul. The only way of meeting that challenge is by offering a lot of options — something clients, incidentally, appreciate as well.

Though there's not much time to get in under the December 31 deadline appointed by the mistresses of this particular meme, I'd certainly enjoy hearing what Howard Bashman, Ruth Edlund, and The Anonymous Lawyer have to say on the subject.

[tag: lawyers appreciate]

Food In My Family

There's a Raffi song that begins with the lyric, "All I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, and love in my family." Tyler tends to transpose the words a bit, but it's a sweet song and I have the feeling his version will be as accurate a description as any of the next couple of weeks for us, which will involve lots of family and probably very little blogging. Here's hoping you have a wonderful holiday season and New Year's, and a very lucky number '07!

Blogtagged

David Weinberger recently spread the blog tag meme my way, and I have found it best to take a subservient chicken approach to any of David's edicts. To play along I have to blog five things most people don't know about me, then tag — in worst possible chain letter manner — five further victims. (Whoever came up with the notion of asking bloggers to disclose five things people don't already know about them is brilliant, by the way. It prompts the tag-ee to either say something they've probably made it a point not to say, or come up with something new or unique they haven't got around to yet, or both.)

Five things you probably don't know about me:

1. I played the tuba fairly capably in our elementary school orchestra.


2. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings cover to cover every summer from 1974 - 1980.


3. For reasons I ascribe variously to divorce, death, and not ever being able to return to childhood, music from The Kingston Trio, George Winston, and The Little Drummer Boy will inevitably, even during the happiest of holiday seasons, reduce me to tears.


4. There's a better than 50-50 chance I'll wind up doing a stint as a yoga instructor during the next decade.


5. On the parent paranoia scale, I'm not so bad I insist on not flying with my husband, but bad enough I made Tyler get off the Newport Pier yesterday because the railings were too far apart.

I hereby tag:

Kevin Heller

Lisa Stone

Evan Schaeffer

Colette Vogele

Sabrina Pacifici

Tag: blogtag