The American Bar Association this week asks: “Do you apply lessons you learned playing sports to your work in law?”
I was pitching in a youth-league baseball game when events turned out of my control.
From the sideline, Mr. Kluxen yelled at me, “Concentrate.”
If you called my office the last couple of days, you got a recorded message saying you reached a number that is no longer in service.
That’s true — it is no longer in service. Temporarily anyway, until Comcast fixes a problem that did not exist for the first 17 years Steven R Merican has been operating.
The details give us agita. But rest comfortably with assurance that SRM, publisher of this blog, continues its appellate practice, and at the moment intends to do so for at least another 17 years. (We’ll re-assess then.) We hope, with the same telephone number.
Paralyzed by that white screen mocking you? Close your eyes for a few minutes and let this piano massage your brain. Then write your appellate brief like Earl Fatha Hines moseys along the Santa Fe Trail.
“Hey, c’mon Sr. illinoisappellatelawyerblog.com. Two months between postings? How do you expect to keep your readers? We’re writing briefs. We need all this stuff you write about. Nobody else does it, at least not like you. What’s your excuse now?”
“No excuses, none that are worth talking about anyway. Stick with me, my friend. I’ll do better.”
Suffering from writer’s block? Low energy day?
Shake up your axons and dendrites. This video is better than caffeine.
Write your appellate briefs like Dona Oxford boogies.
Love at first cite. Thanks to FutureLawyer.com and cartoonist Charles Fincher at Lawcomix.blogspot.com.
Mutual Management Services took an assignment of debts Richard and Kimberly Swalve allegedly owed to three medical providers. Mutual sued the Swalves for the money. But the Swalves asked the court to dismiss because, they asserted, facts existed that undercut Mutual’s complaint as a matter of law. The trial court agreed, and dismissed because Mutual did not give proper notice of the assignments.
Mutual appealed. There are two appellate lessons in this case.
(1) The Swalves asked for dismissal because the facts showed Mutual did not give proper notice of the assignment of debt. But when they got to the appellate court, the Swalves argued their factual motion should be characterized as asking for dismissal as a matter of law, irrespective of facts outside the complaint. The Second District Illinois Appellate Court disagreed, and ruled it would consider the Swalves’ request on the same basis as the trial court. Here is the appellate court’s reasoning:
Okay, I have a unique position for a paralegal, not necessarily a position for a unique paralegal, although uniqueness doesn’t disqualify you.
This is a part time position with flexible hours. Most of the work will be done remotely, with just a bit of on-site work necessary at World Headquarters in the west Chicago suburbs.
Call or email for more information.
A couple of hundred years ago when I was a Big Law associate, a Big Law managing partner told me to “Toot your own horn, because nobody else will.” I thought of that the other day when I got a memo from the grand poobah of the Steven R Merican Unashamed-Toot-Your-Horn-Marketing Department. Although I’ve never seen him, so I can’t absolutely confirm this, I’ve been told the memo-writer over there wears particularly green eyeshades and is a resident of Chicago, although he lives elsewhere.
The memo directed all employees to toot whenever possible. “But,” I told Green Eyeshade, “tooting is not in my bones. I would rather talk about the law.” No matter, Green Eyeshade memo’d me. In a law firm the size of SRM, you must do your own tootin’. “So go toot.”
Well I’m a company guy, so here goes. ♪♪♪ The other day when the Chicago Tribune needed to understand the appellate process surrounding the Rahm Emanuel mayoral-candidacy lawsuit, the paper turned to the author of this fine appellate law blog for answers. You can read his nearly prescient observations here. And when KWQC HD television in Davenport, Iowa wanted to explain to its viewers what was going on in the appellate courts on the other side of the Mississippi, the station interviewed that same fellow. Demand for the interview is exceeding all expectations, and a digital version has unexpectedly become temporarily, Green Eyeshade hopes, unavailable. The station is searching the bowels of its archives for the interview. Illinois Appellate Lawyer Blog will post it upon receipt. (YouTube? YouTube? We don’t need no stinkin …)
Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article questioning the enormous loans many students need to get through law school, and how law schools game the school ratings. That’s news? Here is a letter to the editor I wrote today, suggesting a radical fix:
To the Editor:
“Is Law School a Losing Game?” begs the question: what do we do about the foolish amount of debt students must absorb to get through law school? The answer is: change the structure of law school and the requirements one must meet to practice law.
Illinois Appellate Lawyer Blog