Justice Scalia on Persuading Judges

The American Bar Association Magazine excerpted parts of Justice Scalia's book on legal writing and argument in Making Your Case. I disagree with most of Scalia's jurisprudence but his advice about writing is spot on:

Value clarity above all other elements of style In brief-writing, one feature of a good style trumps all others. Literary elegance, erudition, sophistication of expression—these and all other qualities must be sac­rificed if they detract from clarity. This means, for example, that the same word should be used to refer to a particular key concept, even if elegance of style would avoid such repetition in favor of various synonyms. It means that you must abandon interesting and erudite asides if they sidetrack the drive toward the point you are making. It means that you should never use a word that the judge may have to look up

One for the Lawyers: Adam Smith, Esq. on Knowledge Management

One of my infrequent posts on knowledge management (KM) and it comes originally from the Adam Smith, Esq. Blog. The following points are from An inquiry into the economics of law firms....

"But despite the (I believe) inarguable centrality of KM to what we do, there are three enormous problems with it:"

• Too many lawyers don't understand why it's of value to them, or, more precisely, why the return they could get out of it would exceed the investment they'd have to put into it. (Never mind the threat of "giving away" your core professional asset—what you know.)
• Too many technologists and IT types don't understand how lawyers work, and end up creating shockingly powerful but essentially useless applications.
• And even the most powerful and user-friendly system requires constant care and feeding because legal learning is in a state of constant flux: In a sense, pure white ignorance beats obsolete and mistaken knowledge.
  

(By the way, the link to videos in the original post did not work for me. You can reach the videos here.)

Even those of us with an interest in knowledge management face competition for our time from the present work paying the fees that keep our offices open and all the multitude distractions of life. I put off on a wiki project on Indiana mortuary law so that I can keep up with other matters.

Which brings me to the point I think inheres in the quote above and my own situation, knowledge management requires a merging of the qualities of a technologist with a lawyer. Lawyers having no experience with technology have no means of understanding how to save and recycle work product. The quote above describes the technologist side of the problem all too well but I would add the technologists see a technology solution for everything.

The British have a better idea. They have professional support lawyers:

The PSL role may also include new firm-wide role elements such as:

• Know-how, precedents and standard forms: drafting, updating, managing and disseminating documents, setting up or dealing with online document systems.
• Research: analysing new law and practice, researching points of law or directing fee earners to appropriate sources.
• Training: organising internal lectures or seminars for trainees, solicitors groups or firm-wide. Dealing with external training, building up relationships with speakers and event-support.
• Marketing and business development: producing newsletters for clients, arranging or assisting in marketing events, arranging client seminars.
• Information technology: working on IT-specific projects such as setting up internet dealrooms, creating and updating websites, developing a firm's information/knowledge base and/or Intranet.
• Dealing with fee earner enquiries: answering queries relating to maintained information, new areas of law, and complex areas of law / specialisms.
  

We have nothing like this over here.

Practice Management: Why Here Is There and There is Here

With the Internet and tools like this:

Google Apps is a cool way to collaborate on documents with co-workers and share calendars online. But up to now, you've had to go through the hassle of associating Google Apps with your domain if you wanted to have a set of documents and calendars just for you and others at your company. Today Google's launching a free service, Google Apps Team Edition, which lets you set up your company's Google Apps universe just by entering an e-mail address.

People soon will have the ability to work anywhere with anyone anywhere. I have only two reservations.

First, I am not sure about the security for this particular application. I am looking at Zoho and some other providers. See Google Makes it Easier to Share Documents with Co-Workers for more about how Google implements this app.

Second, I can afford to wait as either my clients - at this time - have either dial-up or e-mail suffices for their needs.

Electronic discovery - keeping records

The January 2004 Law Practice Today (yes, the issue has been around that long) has an interesting article on record retention policies. While geared towards lawyers, I suggest that business owners might want to take a look at the article. The writer outlines the importance of a record retention policy, the problems of retaining records and possible solutions. Here is the conclusion to the article:

Demonstrating to the Court the existence of a reasonable, well thought out, comprehensively distributed, and carefully adhered to and monitored records preservation and retention program with rigorously enforced penalties for non-compliance is critical in limiting the exposure of a client, its management, and its attorneys to potentially serious statutory and spoliation sanctions. A proactive records preservation retention program can also help prevent a potentially ruinous criminal prosecution for obstruction of justice and protect the organization’s outside counsel itself from claims of negligent representation or even malpractice.

For Attorneys: Online Date Calculator

The Marion County Courts has an online date calculator. One can Calculate difference between 2 dates and/or Calculate date by adding a time interval to a given date.

Online resources - Indiana courts

I am not sure how many lawyers are aware that information on Indiana's trial courts is available at this link. So I decided to trumpet its existence. The information varies from county but all have contact information for the county clerk and the courts in that particular county. Local rules and web pages are also available for those counties with local rules and web pages.