Blawg Review

It's not just a blog carnival; it's the law! ~ a fool in the forest

Howell-o-ween II



We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho


Blawg Review #81, hosted by Denise Howell, at Bag and Baggage.

Trick or Treat


Denise Howell, lawyer, blogger, podcaster, and mummy, is busy getting ready for Halloween. As your editor has said before:
It's obvious why this blawg diva with self-effacing style, Denise Howell, has been asked to reprise her own Blawg Review #30 with a sequel, Howell-o-ween II. Denise is not alone among the many previous hosts of Blawg Review who have had so much fun hosting their own blog carnvial for law bloggers that they have eagerly signed on to host again in the months ahead.
If you want to go out with Denise Howell for trick-or-treat next week, be sure to submit one of your best recent posts for the next special Blawg Review #81: Howell-o-ween II.

Grand Rounds on a Law Blog

Grand Rounds, the blog carnival for healthcare professionals, is alive and well and hosted today on a Health Care Law Blog.

Today's host, Bob Coffield, is an experienced blog carny, having hosted Blawg Review #44 earlier this year. Obviously immune to pain, Bob is already signed up to host Blawg Review again next year.

Check out the roster of future hosts in the sidebar on our home page to see who else is on the list, and if there's a date available that interests you. We'd be interested if a mediblogger with experience in medical/legal issues wanted to host Blawg Review, too.

CotC #159 @ Blawg Review


Welcome to the 159th CotC: Lawyers are Capitalists II

We're hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists here on Blawg Review as our way of giving back to the CotC, the business blog carnival that inspired our own Blawg Review, the carnival of law bloggers.

Running their own small businesses or large professional consultancies, and serving their business clients, lawyers have a interest in the subjects regularly covered by business bloggers featured in the Carnival of the Capitalists each Monday.

Next week, the CotC will be hosted at The Pine Needle Lawn, a weblog many overworked lawyers and entrepreneurs would be wise to visit before it's too late.

We've encouraged our regular contributors to Blawg Review to recommend something this week for our Carnival of the Capitalists, and to participate in future editions as well. It's a great way to get a law blog seen by business blog readers. So, let's see what is featured on this business blog carnival.

Business Blogfathers

Rob May, the Business Pundit who co-founded the Carnival of the Capitalists three years ago, is flabbergasted at what's going on at Starbucks.

Jay Solo, the other co-founder, hosted an amazing 158th Edition of the CotC last week, featuring many of the best posts of the past three years. So, if you're new to the Carnival of the Capitalists, the historic Third Anniversary Edition is a great place to get all caught up.

The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere!(TM)

This week, and every week, check out On the Moneyed Midways, the web's weekly round-up of the top posts from the blogosphere's major business and money-related blog carnivals. This week's award goes to Why Study the "Fundamentals"? where the ValueBlogger shows not just why fundamental analysis should play a large role in your selecting stocks for your investment portfolio, but also why you shouldn't rely on "professionals" to do it!

And while you're visiting Political Calculations, one of the best business blogs anywhere, imho, be sure to read Ironman's own post titled Making Waves at the Multiplex.

Editor's Choice

Carmine Coyote, at Slow Leadership, argues that many of the ethical problems afflicting business today are due to clever, ambitious, arrogant people, who hold the view that they’re way smarter than your average Joe, even the average Joe in the boardroom. For them, the ends justify some very dubious means.

Disorderly Submissions & Recommendations

If you’ve decided that you want to try to solve a legal problem without using a lawyer, to learn about an area of the law before deciding whether to hire a lawyer to work on all or part of an issue or case, or simply to be a better-informed client, there are a lot of resources available to assist you in your task, and a good place to start is this law blog -- shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress.

Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity asks, "Is good old fashioned boot-licking dead?"

Talk about capitalism! Low supply and high demand at airport security. Exclusive story at fivecentnickel.

Michael Wade at Execupundit.com gives ten reasons why managers give inflated, inaccurate, performance evaluations.

James Hamilton of Econbrowser says, "Mixed signals this week leave Bernanke still needing to earn his pay."

"The more you address your prospect's underlying business driver, the better your chance of gaining a new customer, says Jim Logan, adding, "Your speeds-feeds-features-functionalities only matter to the extent they prove your ability to fulfill on your stated benefits and ability to address your prospect’s business issue.

Neal Phenes at Et Tu Bloge says, "Bono, the famous lead singer for the rock band U-2, may practice a misguided form of economics with his renowned world aid program but at least his business management understands the subject."

JLP figgers out How to Calculate Tax-Equivalent Yield at AllFinancialMatters, a personal finance blog dedicated to discussing such topics as budgeting, asset allocation, 401K, IRA, cash flow, insurance, financial planning, portfolio management, and other areas in personal finance.

Dan Melson posts an article about First Time Buyer Programs: The Mortgage Credit Certificate (MCC).

The Fresnel lens, developed in 1822, may help to significantly increase the efficiency of solar cells. Interesting stuff. You can read about it at Photon Courier.

Everyone speaks, often at the same time, no one listens to anyone else and then everyone agrees to everything on the assumption that it doesn’t matter anyway. Welcome to the Small Office.

"Instead of spending 'economic development' money on bribes and tax breaks, why not spend the cash on higher education?" Brian Gongol asks.

Chris Brunner at The Small Business Buzz offers good advice in the first of a four-part series of posts about Starting Your Own Business. There are links to all four parts in this series!

On his excellent business blog, Passion, People and Principles, David Maister writes about getting an organization to stretch.

Kate Zimmermann examines why Facebook is worth $Billions this Holiday Season.

"PayPerPost has been heating up the blogosphere by offering a market for "purchasing" the influence of bloggers," say Michael Cage of the Aggressive Small Business Marketing blog. "Is it really an insidious new threat or does it only make explicit what has been going on in different forms for some time?"

A viral marketing campaign in support of the small business economy of the Gulf Coast is being launched by the Carnival of Hurricane Relief. Check it out and see how you can help.

Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World tells us what to do with problem customers.

Pawel Brodzinski at Software Project Management has offers some advice on how to plan a career.

Leon Gettler at Sox First looks at stock option backdating. The Securities and Exchange Commission is now examining whether directors who sit on more than one company board may have spread the practice of backdating stock-option grants with research showing that 40 per cent of the companies under scrutiny have common directors. This is all part of the “six degrees of separation” theory of corporate governance.

Announcing the nominees for the CreditCard.org Lemon Award, the Prince of Thrift offers advice on Becoming & Staying Debt Free.

"We're here, we're queer, and we aren't going shopping without coupons" proclaims the tagline of the Queercents personal finance blog, where Nina posts an interesting little story about God and the Million Dollar Bill.

Is it worth taking a $10k pay cut for a job you love? FreeMoneyFinance considers money versus fulfillment in your career. What's the trade-off?

Johnny Debacle at Long or Short Capital posts Four Simple Steps to Becoming a Billionaire.

Vihar Sheth at green|rising changes the tagline of his blog to "Common Sense for the Common Good" and asks What Drives Effective Policy?

Lawyers Are Capitalists Too

Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends says virtual businesses are on the rise and that there's a New Growth Trend: Businesses that Serve Virtual Businesses.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says a robust virtual economy has blossomed on SecondLife as well, pointing to the upcoming launch of Crayon, a virtual consulting company that claims to be the first company to be launched in SecondLife.

Wordlab, the free business resource for naming and branding, takes a poke at a website for lawyers, showing that it's all about the benjamins.

Speaking of naming and branding, Anthony Cerminaro, a trademark lawyer, makes note of some points to think about when naming your business.

Mark at SportsBiz asks, "Will Dr. J Buy the Sixers?"

Patent Baristas, who have hosted previous editions of the Carnival of the Capitialists and Blawg Review, might send this post to Grand Rounds, the carnival of the medibloggers: "Should Doctors Be Paid To Give Inside Info To Wall Street?"

Emily Campbell, at PHOSITA, discusses The Philly Cheesesteak Family Feud.

Ron Coleman has a post titled Emerson InSinkErator trash compactors will mangle your hand if you stick it in one of them.

Even portly people have protections, as a little-known Michigan law is being used to punish employers that let them go. InsureBlog's Henry Stern weighs in with the full story in a post he titles Legal Heavyweights.

Peter Lattman reports on the WSJ Law Blog that Lawyers Call Grasso Ruling "Stunning" and "Extraordinary". A New York Supreme Court judge ruled former NYSE chief must repay certain payments and interest he got during his tenure at the Big Board--about $100 million of it.

Dale Oesterle, at the Business Law Prof Blog, takes a look at executive compensation and government regulation and finds there's a connection.

Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle asks lawyers, "Do you eat your own dogfood?"

Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity has an excellent post about business lessons learned from conflict.

Steve Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA who has for three years published one of the most eclectic blogs anywhere, has grown tired of political punditry and his own eclecticism. So he's reconstructing his famous blog at ProfessorBainbridge.com, and "repositioning it as what it started out to be; namely, a niche blog focused on business law and economics." That's good news for fans of the Carnival of the Capitalists, which he hosted in 2003, and for Blawg Review, too, which Professor Bainbridge will be hosting soon.

Moving on now, from one business law prof to another we segue to the carnival of law bloggers, Blawg Review #80, where Professor Kingsfield, the iconic law professor who taught contracts at Harvard Law School in the book, movie, and televison series, The Paper Chase, is our special host this week.

Blawg Review #80

I'm Professor Kingsfield, and I'll be the host of Blawg Review #80. Let me say at the outset that it is a privilege for you to be here. We have a number of business school types sitting in with us today, just to see what it's like in law school. An expert in the law of contracts, and a professor at Harvard, I'm particularly fond of business law; biz students, not so much.

The way law school works is that the professor asks questions of students who are expected to have an answer ready from the legal scholarship and case notes they've read the week before. If not, they can make up a response on the spot or point to something they've read on a law blog. We'll see how far that takes them.

You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer. Today, we have to cover a broad range of legal topics in a very short amount of time, so let's get right to it. Let's start with something that anyone should be able to answer, shall we?

Is it against the law for a licensed midwife, with the permission of the mother, to take a placenta from the hospital to bury it in her garden? Anyone?

Excuse me young man, is that a coffee you're drinking? This is not a cafeteria. Unless you can tell us how that cup you're reading there has something to do with law, I'll have to ask you to leave the class. What's that? You have a case note on point? Very well.

Speaking of franchise expansion, what do you think of big law firms going global? Mr. Hull

What about the ethical considerations of lawyers flogging, excuse me, I think these notes say "blogging" their expertise? Mr. Stein You wanted to say something, Mr. Pasquale? Does anyone else have something to add, for the business bloggers with us today? Mr. O'Keefe

Is it gross negligence to have lit candles when there is a cat prowling the premises? Mr. Maule

Everywhere I've ever taught there's been a "class clown" or two. My approach is to give them a little attention early in the lecture, and then they're usually less disruptive. Would you two who've been laughing, while others are trying to learn something, like to share with everyone what you think is more important than my lecture? Mr. Lat And you there, you've been surfing the Internet all through my class. Don't think I haven't noticed. Yes, I mean you! This is why I tried to get laptops banned from the lecture rooms. I don't find computers very lawyerlike. Would you like to share with the class what you're laughing at now? Yes, you Miss, with the brown hair.

Legal thinking has changed a lot over the years, certainly since I started teaching law. How do you think legal scholarship has changed, and what are the causes of those changes? Mr. Oman

What about this so-called "judicial activism" we hear so much about these days? How does that square with the concept of independence of the judiciary? Mr. Adler

How are the checks-and-balances of the Constitution changing in a post-9/11 America? Mr Lederman, and you wanted to add somethig, Mr. Tamanaha

Has anyone been reading about what's going on in Iraq? Mr. Reynolds I understand some of those military bloggers are lawyers, too. Can anyone here speak from personal experience in Iraq? Mr. Carter

Let's take a short break from the heavy stuff, shall we, and talk sports with lawyers. Are there any sports fans here today? Is anyone sorry to see the Yankees out of the World Series this year? Ms. Monica Bay And you're awfully quiet, Mr. Schwimmer. Oh, I see, you're a Mets fan. Well, enough about baseball. What about football? Ms. Simon I don't see that having anthing to do with football. Any lawyers following hockey? Mr. Karcher Okay, enough of the fun stuff, let's get back to serious legal issues.

Wait just a minute. What's that I smell? Is someone smoking in my class? Ms. Margolin, what do you have to say for yourself? I don't care who your father is. He could be the Governor of California and you still wouldn't be allowed to smoke in class. Not at Harvard, anyway. You should know that.

Speaking of Harvard Law grads, whatever happened to the lawyer formerly known as David Giacalone? A while ago, I heard he became a Japanese poet, or Tibetan monk, or something. Is he doing anything with his Harvard law degree? Oh yes, I think it was reported in last week's Blawg Review #79 that the shlep is showing people how to solve their legal problems without having to pay lawyers. I guess we won't be seeing him in Hell, after all.

What's that noise? A cell phone in my class! Don't you know we have new rules governing ringtones? Mr. Patry

Just what sort of legal training should business lawyers get in law school? Mr. Smith

If all else fails, do you need a law license to be a GC, a General Counsel employed by a corporation? Mr. Ambrogi

That's probably a good place to end our presentation today. I'd like to thank our visitors from the Carnival of the Capitalists, who sat in on our class today. Hopefully, these law students are learning something ... Oh yes, the young lady with her hand up there--I almost forgot--you had something you wanted to announce about TWiL and also about next week's Howell-o-ween get-together at Blawg Review.

Monday Blog Carnival Madness

The Carnival of the Capitalists is coming here on October 23rd. Blawg Review hosted Carnival of the Capitalists #107 a year ago to the very date, on October 23, 2005, so we're promoting our next CotC as Lawyers Are Capitalists II, the sequel.

Business bloggers who follow the CotC regularly will find a complete presentation of submissions, plus a few from business-minded lawyers who take this opportunity to submit something good for the best carnival of business and economics. After all, lawyers are capitalists too.

Also on Monday, we're hosting Blawg Review #80, our own carnival of law bloggers, which promises to be an entertaining look at the best recent law blog posts of interest to everyone concerned with the laws affecting our lives. As is often done with Blawg Review, the selection of law blog posts will be presented in a theme. This week we'll have Professor Kingsfield, the famous professor in The Paper Chase, to thank for his unrelenting use of the Socratic method on his students as the inspiration for our presentation.

Professor Kingsfield Returns

Professor Kingsfield has agreed to be our special guest lecturer next, drawing his Blawg Review #80 lessons from the law blog posts that come to his attention throughout the week.




Those who neglect to hand in something before the deadline will be called upon often. Gunners might fire their best stuff in early hoping to be spared the professor's derision. Come prepared to be challenged, and for gawdsake don't be late.

P.S. Professor Kingsfield will not grant "canned immunity" to Mr. Volokh and his friends, who are apparently thinking about creative ways to avoid having to participate.

Lawyers Are Capitalists II

Rob May is hosting the Third Anniversary Edition of CotC this week at Business Pundit. Check it out.

Among Rob's favorite posts this week is one from China Law Blog explaining the legal basics of reducing risk when outsourcing to China. China Law Blog, which focuses on business law in China, is written by Dan Harris, an international lawyer based in the United States and Steve Dickinson, an international lawyer based in China. Dan and Steve are both members of Harris & Moure, pllc, a boutique International Law Firm.

Next week, the anniversary celebrations continue with CotC co-founder Jay Solo's anniversary edition hosted at Dispatches from Blogblivion.

Then, the Carnival of the Capitalists is coming here to Blawg Review on October 23rd. Blawg Review hosted Carnival of the Capitalists #107 a year ago to the very date, on October 23, 2005, so we're promoting our next CotC as Lawyers Are Capitalists II, the sequel.

Brit Blawg Review

Justin Patten is hosting Blawg Review #78 this week at Human Law, an affiliate of the Law.com Blog Network and the first British lawyer to host the official blog carnival for everyone interested in law. Blawg Review is posted early this week, in part because of the time advantage across the pond, but mostly because Justin is so well-organised and he started early this week to pull together his excellent overview of law blogs from England and around the world.

Justin Patten is a Solicitor and a Technology Catalyst who's recently been commissioned (signed a book deal) to write a book called "Blogging and Other Social Media: Technology and Law." So he knows who's who and what's what in Brit blawgs, and a whole lot more.

This week's Blawg Review has a distinctly British flavour, but includes a number of excellent posts from some of the Colonies, as well, including Australia and Canada, and the United States. From the USA, a post from Bruce MacEwen, who notes on Adam Smith, Esq. that 98 of the Global 100 law firms, ranked by revenue, are from the former British Empire. MacEwen asks, "Can this be accidental? If not, why such a concentration? Is something going on here that we can say anything meaningful about?" Bruce's thoughts on this subject were not lost on Justin, who wisely included that excellent law blog post with others of interest to the global readership of Blawg Review.

MyHq Blawgs List

An article in the National Law Journal notes that "hundreds of law blogs" are listed on MyHq Blawgs by the editor of Blawg Review.
In addition, the blog myhq.com lists hundreds of law blogs maintained by lawyers and scholars and allows bloggers to add their sites to its "blog roll." Some of the blogs on the list are Blonde Justice, China Law Prof Blog, Dark Goddess of Replevin Speaks, Election Law Blog, Antitrust Review and Mommy Blawg.
The idea is to provide one handy link that can be added to any law blog to complement each blogger's selective blogroll with a more comprehensive list of blawgs for readers to explore. For many law bloggers, it's a convenient link on their own blawg from which to browse many new and undiscovered law blogs.

We're continuously adding to this list of law blogs, which gets better with every addition. Send us a link if your blawg is not yet on this massive blogroll of blogs by lawyers, law professors, law students, librarians, consultants, and others in the legal community. Who knows;-) your law blog might also get mentioned in a major legal publication!

Law Professors Blogging

Professor Daniel Solove, who recently hosted Blawg Review #75 at Concurring Opinions, has now posted the latest comprehensive survey enumerating over 300 law professors blogging.

Since the last census in March 2006, there are 77 new bloggers and 6 departed bloggers, increasing the blogosphere from 235 bloggers to 306 bloggers – an increase of about 30%. Of the bloggers, 72 are female and 234 are male. Thus, about 24% are female and 76% are male.

This is an open invitation to law professors, looking to gain a higher profile for their law blogs in the larger community of law bloggers, to consider hosting Blawg Review, as many have already done.

As we've noted before, professors blog real good.