sometimes the old remedies are the best

Some of you may recall the saga of the Trail King Drop Deck Trailer regarding which I filed an action in replevin late last year.

I am pleased to report that my client has her trailer back in her possession (I barely restrained myself from titling this post The Return of the Trail King). And I got it the old-fashioned way.

I settled the case.

striking a blow for professionalism

Resolved: to stop borrowing the CD player of the hapless associate in the office next to mine, who has been stuck Bates-stamping documents since I lent my Bates stamper to her boss yesterday. She needs the tunes more than I do. I do question why she has to stamp things when we have a copier that ought to print ditigal Bates stamps on the copies but...maybe no one here knows how to do that.

My erstwhile assistant managed to talk me out of ordering the Hello Kitty CD boombox I had my heart set on, so I settled on a sober (by my standards) blue-and-chrome unit.

It's just no fun being a grown-up some days, is it?

goddess chats

(with apologies to Nicole Hollander) I was emailing my big sister, the ultimate computer geek, who remarked in passing that it was a little disconcerting that her little sister had turned into a goddess. When I pointed out to her that there was no reason that she couldn't be, say, The Daemon Empress of COBOL, hooboy did my lack of knowledge of the relative status in the geek world of legacy programs get me into trouble.

I was advised in no uncertain terms that, and I quote, "I would rather be called a sleazeball of a 'ho than an Empress of COBOL. I realize that no one understands what I do, but hexadecimal and assembler are my toys of choice."

Well.

I am pleased, therefore, to announce that henceforth I am proud to be the sister of the Aphrodite of Assembler. Even if I don't understand what she does.

the great tape caper

There are few experiences in the midst of trial that compare to listening to your client review a declaration, on cross-examination, that you have never seen before.

I didn't say it was a good experience, mind you, just incomparable.

During my last trial, which dragged on for six weeks before the judge finally put it out of its misery, I had just that experience. On her second day of cross, I learned that my client had made an audiotape of certain threatening messages left by the opposing party and one of her henchwomen at the start of the litigation. As the third attorney on the case, I'd not seen this declaration before. I had been blissfully unaware of that tape, and had failed to produce it.
Four days later, after searching every night after a full court day, my client finally found the blasted tape, and brought it triumphantly into my office. She had listened to it once at home, and said that it was pretty good stuff.

You know what's going to happen next, don't you?

We pop the cassette into the player, hit play, listen to an ominous few moments of message and then--squeal! flapflapflapflapflap!--the tape breaks.

One panicked hour later we have located a shop a few blocks from my office that repairs and duplicates audio and videotapes, no less, for the courthouse set. Another ten minutes, and fifteen mere dollars, later, I have a repaired original and four copies of the tape to produce all around.

The obvious moral of the story, other than keeping google at hand at all times? Copy your evidence before you put it in a tape player. It is much easier on the nerves.

blogger user profile survey

Since it's been a while since I've hung around blogger a lot (in fact, very little since google bought them), I figured I should take the survey. Nothing is as helpful as ignorance, right?

Geez. I'm still reeling from the fact that I have to check the "45-49" age category, which seems to be ancient for a blogger. Tempus fugit.

replevin rides again!

Demonstrating once again that there is no specialty in law that is too goddamn obscure to be developed, I am about to replevy another piece of heavy equipment.

Wait, that's not entirely correct. The writ for the first piece of heavy equipment still lies in my file unexecuted because the eighteen-wheeler is still on the lam (unlicensed, I might add).

Stay tuned, however, as the exciting tale of pursuit of the missing Sport King Drop Deck Trailer develops.

Wednesday update: An interesting Freudian slip appears above. The trailer is a Trail King. My .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol is a Sport King.

silence of the mutton

Damn.

Between joining a new firm and the release of Time Matters 5.0, there's been no time left to blog, which sounds a bit like a song by the Guess Who, but isn't. Free associating here, I am a bit in overdrive right now.

broadband rules!

In the course of establishing myself in my new office (note to the typing weary--Kinesis keyboards are the caterpillar's boots) I have now obtained broadband access.

Oh man.

No more dependency on The Evil Empire for a meager trickle of Net.

I may never live in the real world again.

the end of an era

Some philosophical musings, no links today.

So I have joined an actual law firm, effective today. The timing has perhaps not been ideal. Some of my colleagues who are more keenly aware of my sense of whimsy have refused to believe that I am seriously making this switch. For this, I have only myself to blame.

Nevertheless, I have now left the ranks of solos and joined a firm, so I took down most of the content of my solo site this morning, and converted the remainder into a campaign site for the minor Bar office I am pursuing.

It was like watching the carnival being knocked down at the end of its stay in town. Really, I am proud of the content I developed, and it made me very sad to take it all down.

another example of the prisoner's dilemma in real time

If you believe that the correct philosophy is to cooperate, not to defect, you might be interested in Swappingtons.

If the preceding paragraph makes no sense to you, you might be interested in an introduction to the Prisoner's Dilemma (trolled up almost randomly through Google), a facet of game theory which I believes explains almost all social interaction. Well, I exaggerate. But not by much.

great, great resource for solos and small firms

I've been very impressed with what I have seen so far at myshingle.com, which is as my heading describes it. Moreover, Carolyn Elefant's style of writing is informative, but with a light touch. Dennis Kennedy's new blog, though just as informative, reads like an appellate brief.

question for my reader(s)

Does the community of blawgers, taken as a whole, constitute a k-log? Comments invited. I'm still mulling this one over.

i'd like handicapping these thoroughbreds

You have to be a licensed attorney to play in the Fantasy Supreme Court League, so the site owner is thinking of starting a law student league too. This tidbit comes from the print version of Law Office Computing, the only paper technology magazine I still buy and worth every penny. Their website, however, is uninspired.

the tragedy of the common man

I absolutely love it when life imitates logic, though some dead guy said that the "life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."

An application of this principle can be seen in the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement currently being flogged in newspapers and on the Net.

The more consumers filing claims in this settlement, the lower the recovery to each. Each additional person signing up produces a marginally worse deal for those who went before him. If enough people sign up, all the money will be subject to cy pres distribution, which in less technical terms means nobody gets nuthin'. I note, by the way, that although I think of cy pres as a reasonably obscure legal term, a google search of the term got me 2,510 hits. Replevin weighs in at a corking 10,900 hits, but I like to think that's because of my blog.

In any event, the problem is allied to the logical dilemma sometimes described as the tragedy of the commons. A commons is any resource used as though it belongs to all (the classical illustration is sheep grazing a meadow and breeding until they all starve), and a commons is destroyed by uncontrolled use. If you believe in the tragedy of the commons you are less likely to believe in the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. And vice, of course, versa.

Another way to look at the dwindling CD settlement is to view it as a multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma, one of my favorite facets of game theory. From the point of view of the person sitting at the computer screen pondering whether to apply for a refund, however, the choice is between having a chance at some free money or having no chance at all (if s/he doesn't apply). Because this is not an iterated game, there was only one logical course of action. At least that was my experience.

more mailing list sins

Lawyers who respond to an entire 112 KB digest of 25 messages by hitting "reply" should not be allowed to post messages to mailing lists. Sheesh.