Q: How many lawyer jokes are there?

A: One.  The rest are true stories (hat tip to Rosann Auchstetter for the joke).

As we move to the end of the semester and finals appear just over the horizon, I thought I would provide a list of websites which would offer comic relief when you need one and a brain break from studying.  For those who prefer to consume their media in printed form, the law library offers myriad books on legal humor. Below, I’ve summarized my favorite places for a legal humor fix.  If you just want a quick list of lawyer jokes though, allow me to recommend the Canonical List of Lawyer Jokes.

Q: Have you heard about the lawyers’ word processor?
A: No matter what font you select, everything comes out in fine print.

There are several lawyers, law professors, and law students who maintain funny legal blogs.  Here are some of my favorites:

•  Legal Humour specializes in funny stories with a law component.
• Bitter Lawyer offers light humor, dark humor, and career advice.
• Lowering the Bar has a lot of funny legal stories, occasional substantive posts, and the best disclaimer I’ve ever seen.
• Legal Antics is a photo blog of funny legalesque pictures.
• The Namby Pamby is a very funny blog about practicing medical malpractice and personal injury law in Chicago.

Q: What’s the problem with lawyer jokes?
A: Lawyer’s don’t think they’re funny, and no one else thinks they’re jokes.

There are many really fabulous legal comics on the web. Queen’s Counsel has lots of great legal comics from a UK perspective.  Law Comix aggregates law comic strips from blogs and other sources all around the internet.  I particularly recommend  the ones from Legal Pad Comix.  I also recommend  Legally Drawn which has great one panel comics, including one involving Angry Birds.

Q: What do you get when you cross a librarian with a lawyer?
A: All the information you need, but you can’t understand a word of it.

There are actually, believe it or not, people who research legal humor.  They have funny websites too.  My two favorites are McClurg’s Legal Humor and the Green Bag.  McClurg is a law professor at the University of Memphis who maintains a very active law blog that contains strange judicial opinions, law school humor, a column from the Green Bag, and what he calls “legal oddities.”  We have McClurg’s book 1L of a Ride in the law library (highly recommended) and his new book, The “Companion Text” to Law School: Understanding and Surviving Life with a Law Student, is arriving early next week. Green Bag is a law journal that continues a combination of legal humor and “short, readable, useful, and sometimes entertaining law scholarship.”

Q. Why won’t sharks attack lawyers?
A. Professional courtesy.

If you’re a fake news fan, you may want to check out Turnip News, which is the Onion for lawyers or LoLawyer, which reads like a news magazine.  Magazine fans may prefer Big Legal Brain, which reads like Cosmopolitan or Esquire for lawyers. TV fans may want to watch Mr. Law School, who is graduating this year.

There are also some great websites that use real life (or TV) to add some humor to their discussions of the law.  The Texas Bar maintains a list of short bouts of true courtroom stories.  Those of you studying for Employment law exams may appreciate “That’s what she said” where Ford & Harrison talk about how the employees in the TV show “the Office” could best sue their employer.  Anticipate This!^TM blogs about amusing and bizarre patent applications.

Finally, if none of the above give you sufficient stress relief, I recommend the virtual  bubble wrap website.  It’s almost as satisfying as popping the real thing.

Virtual Law Practice CALI-Style

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is offering a FREE online course called Topics in Digital Law Practice.  Taught by North Carolina-based attorney Stephanie L. Kimbro, the first session took place on Friday, February 10, 2012.  You can view the video and slides at http://tdlp.classcaster.net/

Two copies of Ms. Kimbro’s book Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online are available in the LLTC’s collection.  Kimbro also blogs at the Virtual Law Practice.

Weekend Reading/ Viewing: The Lincoln Lawyer

The Lincoln Lawyer is the highly charged story of criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller and his battles within the Los Angeles court system.   While the movie has yet to appear on any 25-Greatest-Legal-Movies-Evah lists, I contend that LL could be a strong candidate for inclusion on future lists despite the dog-eared adage that “the book is always better than the movie.”

In the book, author Michael Connelly paints protagonist Mickey Haller as a free-wheeling, free-dealing criminal defense attorney who, rather than pay overhead for a fixed office space,  does business out of the back of his late-model Lincoln Town car.  His standard run-of-the-mill clients are petty thugs, drug dealers, and prostitutes.  The action heats up when Haller agrees to defend a rich young man from Beverly Hills charged with attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault and battery.

The son of legal legend Michael Haller, Mick is a creature born and bred to the L.A. Superior Court and former-police-beat-reporter-turned-novelist Connelly doesn’t disappoint readers, providing a vivid insider look at the City of Angels.  As his protoganist tears up Highway 5, oiling the wheels of the American criminal justice system, Connelly’s writing is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler which is unsurprising since he decided to become a mystery writer upon discovering Chandler’s works while studying at the University of Florida.

Trivia sidebar:  About 10 years after moving to the West Coast, Connelly literally followed in the footsteps of Chandler’s hard-boiled PI Philip Marlowe by renting the unit in High Tower Apartments where the famous character lived in The Long Goodbye.  Director Robert Altman also filmed portions of The Long Goodbye in the same location.

While the movie takes liberty with the written word, The Lincoln Lawyer succeeds as a film due to its ability to convey the book’s nuances within the hour and a half allotted by director Brad Furman.  The film excises a great deal of the material relevant to the intricacies of legal profession, but the star-studded cast, featuring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, and Michael Peña, meshes well, keeping the audience engaged in each character’s role as the script’s plotlines converge.  Their collective performance is offset by a slick soundtrack and terse dialogue that evokes the drama and action inherent to high-stakes cases in the courtroom.

The Law Library & Technology Center is proud to count both the print and film versions of The Lincoln Lawyer among its holdings.  The book is shelved at PS3553.O51165 L56 2005 in the Law and Popular Culture Collection (2nd Floor) while the DVD resides at PN1997.2 .L553656 2011 in the Media Collection.  The Sherman Library also offers additional formats of this title, such as audiorecordings on CD-ROM and Blu-Ray as well as the other five books in the Mickey Haller series.

You can also watch Michael Connelly and Matthew McConaughey talk about both works while on the set of The Lincoln Lawyer via the author’s official website.  So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

Book Reviews: Forensic Oratory

Bradshaw, Brad. The science of persuasion: a litigator’s guide to juror decision-making. Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, 2011. ISBN 978-1-61632-989-1

Mathis, Laura. Acting skills for lawyers. Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, 2011. ISBN 978-1-61632-932-7

Both of these recent ABA publications address the subject of forensic oratory, and while they stress many of the same points, their approaches are very different.

Mathis is an actor, not an attorney (although she is married to one!) In her preface, she draws a parallel between actors and attorneys: “Both actors and attorney are expected to entertain, to inspire us to look at life a bit differently, and to share a story that has not been told” (p. xi). Her book offers an amusing and instructive overview of the tools attorneys need to meet these expectations, and thus to best represent their clients. Her focus is on physical presence, demeanor and appearance, with advice on relaxation, breathing, diction and body movements. Mathis likens taking depositions to being a talk show host (p. 57), and preparing witnesses to being an acting coach (p. 97). Quick tips (e.g., “Depose your coffee maker or potted plant”) and exercises, both physical and mental, are presented in text boxes throughout the book.  She even devotes a chapter to advice on the perfect photo shoot.

Bradshaw is a trial consultant with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, and the emphasis of his book is on the psychological aspects of oratory.  It has a more serious tenor than Mathis’s book, but it is not at all a dry scholarly tome. He says in the preface that he wants to reach as broad an audience as possible: “… law students, experienced litigators, and everyone in between” (p. xiii). The book’s opening chapter presents the basic elements of persuasion: credibility vs. likeability, “reading” an audience, and framing an argument to fit that audience’s beliefs. The following chapters work through a linear progression from trial preparation through jury deliberations. Text boxes throughout highlight practical advice; e.g. “Make sure your witness is comfortable with silence” (p. 64). The final chapter of Bradshaw’s work is an extended exercise, entitled “Putting it into practice”. It presents a fact pattern, and then suggested lists of questions covering depositions and voir dire, plus opening and closing statements for both plaintiff and defendant.

These two books make an outstanding combination, and all but the most seasoned litigators are sure to find something useful in each of them.

Libraries of the World: Amsterdam

You know you’re a librarian when you routinely make touring libraries in foreign locales a top priority of every vacation.  Over the years, I’ve accumulated a large cache of pictures and memorabilia from different libraries I’ve visited, but the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (Public Library Amsterdam) deserves a special shout out.

OBA is the collective name for all public libraries in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The first library opened in 1919 at the Keizersgracht.  As of 2007, there are 28 public libraries and 43 lending points, such as hospitals. In 2005, OBA had 1.7 million books with 165,000 members and lent out 5 million books  in Amsterdam.  Impressive stats!  I want these guys on my Fantasy Library League Team.  Seriously.

During a recent trip to Amsterdam, I managed to take a few interesting outdoor pics of Centrale Bibliotheek (Central Library), the largest public library in Europe.  According to Wikipedia, the complex has a floor surface of 28,500 m², spread out over 10 floors, 1,200 seats, of which 600 with Internet-connected computers, and a staff of 200.   Now that’s what I call a LIBRARY.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to view the inside (hard to do that when you’re being ferried away in a speeding canal cruise boat) but here is an interior shot to give you an idea of the vast space and lofty beauty of this facility.

And I was also delighted to discover the Airport Library at Schiphol.  Enjoy, fellow library lovers!

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NY Library builds itself a Fab Lab

In March, MAKE’s Phil Torrone argued that libraries should retool to become hackerspaces. The Fayetteville Free Library in Fayetteville, NY is doing just that. Here’s the story from KQED’s Mindshift:

 

Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine’s Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking “Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make ‘techshops’?” In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created and become “hackerspaces” or “makerspaces”?“Yes!”, says librarian Lauren Smedley, who is in the process of creating what might just be the first maker-space within a U.S. public library. The Fayetteville Free Library where Smedley works is building a Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — that will provide free public access to machines and software for manufacturing and making things.

So far, the Fab Lab is equipped with a MakerBot, a 3D printer that lets you “print” plastic pieces of your own design. The potential for 3D printers to revolutionize manufacturing as we know it is huge: imagine being able to design and then manufacture — or “print” — whatever you want. Moreoever, imagine the tools of manufacturing being in the hands of everyone, not just giant factories (and remember, since this is a public library, this is really putting the technology in the hands of everyone, not just those that can afford a membership at a traditional hackerspace).

 

via Audrey Watters@KQED

“The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today”: the inside story of McCollum

Commonly recognized as one of the most important and landmark first amendment cases in U.S. history, McCollum was the first United States Supreme Court case to clearly define the separation of church and state in a public school setting.  Specifically, the People of the State of Illinois ex rel Vashti McCollum v. Board of Education of School District No. 71, Champaign County, Illinois, et al. (333 US 203) addressed the power of a state to utilize its tax-supported public school system in aid of religious instruction insofar as that power may be restricted by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution.  

In her historic mandamus action, plaintiff Vashti McCollum successfully challenged the constitutional validity of the sectarian “released time” program that had been implemented in her son’s school.  Because the program used public school resources (namely hours and facilities) to inculcate the religious tenets of Christianity in children whose attendance in the Champaign district public schools was mandatory under state law, Mrs. McCollum believed the program to be unconstitutional.  Furthermore, she charged that the pressure to participate in religious instruction classes by his teacher and classmates was so great as to be socially and psychologically detrimental to her eldest son, James Terry McCollum.

In his book The Lord Was Not on Trial: The Inside Story of the Supreme Court’s Precedent-Setting McCollum Ruling, Dannel McCollum recalls the tumultuous events of 1945 to 1948 and the trial’s lasting impact on his family.  Similarly the film The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today tells the personal story behind the case, recounting what Vashti McCollum later described as “three years of headlines, headaches, and hatred” which eventually led to a decision that still resonates in the church-state conflicts of today, more than 60 years after the original decision.  Available in the law library’s collection, both the book and movie provide an intimate perspective of the parties involved in McCollum vs. Board of Education.

“Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.”

http://www.cato.org/jwmediaplayer44/player.swf
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