Welcome to the Wednesday, June 6, 2018 edition of Lawyers & Liquor, your home for the very best in profane commentary on a variety of legally related matters. I’m the Boozy Barrister, and you assholes need to stop taking yourselves so goddamn seriously.
Turn the fuck back now. I’m warning you.
Continue reading “Stop Being a Reptilian Overlord – Lawyers Can Be Human”
Years ago I sat in my Dad’s office after email had really just become a thing. I was a kid at the time, but I remember distinctly my father talking to a divorce client who was, as divorce clients normally are, pissed off. However, this divorce client wasn’t only pissed off, they were technologically literate, something that my poor father most definitely was not. You have to understand, up until recently, and even now, lawyers are like the most technologically backwards people in the world by necessity. Part of this is because the courts are technologically backwards and keep insisting we do things in certain ways, and part of it is the cost of an update is prohibitive because developers of software that’s really only used by the legal field are all like “Lawyers have money! Bleed them dry!”
But I’m getting off track a bit, aren’t I? We were talking about Dad and the fucking Bill Gates of divorce clients. Anyhow, Dad had gone through his normal spiel about not contacting the soon-to-be-ex, you know, “don’t call them,” “don’t ask friends how they’re doing,” “don’t leave nasty notes,” “don’t try to burn down their new lover’s car with lighter fluid while sobbing ‘WHY DENISE? WHY?’ into the night.” The typical stuff. The client, part of the way through, said “What about email?” After a suitable amount of time in which the client explained to Dad that email was “electronic mail” and, assuredly, was becoming all the rage and not at all the work of the Devil, Dad nodded sagely, leaned back, and said words that I’ve never forgotten:
“If you don’t want it read back to you in court, don’t fucking send it. Period.”
Continue reading “The Internet Is Real Life: How A Lawyer Will Track You Down”
Boozy’s Note: Today I welcome back our prior contributor, Bill M. Hours, the insurance defense attorney who’s come in from the cold to talk about the asinine predictions his law professors and classmates made regarding the practice of law in the future.
I like Bill. Bill has the requisite amount of snark. I’ll just shut up and let him show it off for you.
It’s been a long time since I had to censor a post title. I don’t tend to place curse words in the post titles simply because it’s bad practice, and it decreases the number of lawyers and legal folk that will promote, retweet, or link to the post in the long run. Some people care about what their social media displays, because they’ve linked the social media accounts to their professional image and firms and can’t really promote stuff that blatantly curses out others. It’s bad form for a lawyer to be professionally retweeting stuff about bondage gear and the like, and it’s bad form for a lawyer to be promoting blog posts that contain a string of curse words.
But Avvo, the legal website that lets people ask questions for free and allows lawyers to answer those questions for free, has drawn the anger of a drunken litigator for the last goddamn time. I’ve had it. I’ve had it up to my fucking throat in relation to this cesspool of legal marketing disguised as an “access to justice” resource for the general public and their “gun to your head” tactic of recruiting attorneys lockstep into their site. It’s time, motherfuckers. It’s fucking time for the reckoning of the angered lawyer to come down upon you with the full fucking force and let you know exactly how fucking much most practicing lawyers hate your exploitative asses.
Cover your goddamn ears, ye of big firm connections, because today Lawyers & Liquor is lashing out for the little guy who doesn’t have the goddamn time to answer the phone and explain for the 15th fucking time to some faceless rep that they have no goddamn interest in buying a promoted listing from you.
Today, we’re the Avvo-fucking-Avengers.
So this week, as this post is being typed and going live, there’s a conference full of lawyers going on in New Orleans. Called “Clio Cloud Conference,” it’s as if decades of governmental corruption, a goddamn hurricane, and having a dozen people bet they can tell you “where you got them shoes at” wasn’t enough punishment for choosing to live in the original city of perpetual sin (seriously, that place has all of the Big 7 available within easy walking distance from your hotel), an internet lawyer company decided attorneys should descend like locusts from the heavens on the fair city for a few days. Of course, this doesn’t include yours truly. Because yours truly can’t justify taking off a Monday and Tuesday to fly down to New Orleans, wear horribly loud Hawaiian shirts, and “network” with people like Keith from Associate’s Mind or any of the other legal luminaries that will be rampaging around the Quarter.
Instead, I’m in my office with a desk overflowing with files, bad fucking music playing in the background, and a cup of coffee as black and bitter as my goddamn soul is.
But I’m not bitter about the fact every other goddamn lawyer on the internet seems to be gathered in a cesspit of fun and depravity. Not at all. Why would I be bitter about that? Shit, I can even give you four good reasons why I totally don’t even fucking care that I’m not at the Clio Cloud Conference in New Orleans!
Continue reading “Four Reasons I’m Totally Okay With Not Being At Clio Con.”
