The untethered lawyer

Cars: an unrequited love affair Most people love cars. So much of our persona can be wrapped up in the way we transport ourselves. Most males fondly remember their first vehicle. Even if it was a piece of turd. If you had a turd in high school, you were the boss. The Sunbeam Alpine became my first vehicle. Fire engine red with fins and a 1600 cc engine. An elastic held on the front bumper. Stopping suddenly meant that the bumper bounced up and down a few times. I cannot remember why I used an elastic. It was likely an emergency fix and it was all that I had around. Inertia prevented me from replacing the elastic with some wire which would have been a far better fix. I purchased a spirometer that allowed me to ensure the volume intake of both carburetors balanced perfectly. I did this religiously without knowing if this made any difference at all. It did not matter since I attended to what I perceived its needs were. We made each other complete. English cars do not fare w...

The Happy Hell of Other People I can easily recall the worst and best of times of my life. And they all involved other people. Some of the obvious picks are some people that are somehow in charge of some aspect of my life that I cannot simply get back. This mainly includes my surrounding environment. Such as repair shops. Or airline lost luggage counters. Let’s first start with Hell is other people. There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!  This quote comes from Satre’s play “No Exit”. Satre’s existentialist stance did not make him a people person. But he threw one hell of a party. Or rather, his parties were in hell.   I was trapped in a hellish situation one time. Like when I was trying to enjoy Avatar at the same time that the person beside me wanted to enjoy his fast food hamburger. The assault of all the senses over a period of an hour as he slowly relished his simulated food product (Condensed Reconstituted Artificial Product or “CRAP”)....

Cookie Law Conundrum: Do you know what your webmaster is busy baking? Karma. I may have been a scoundrel in a previous lifetime. As penance, I voluntarily reviewed ten webpage privacy statements from five prestigious law firms, four somewhat intrusive social media organizations, and one highly regarded national magazine for lawyers in Canada. Did I say well written? That too. Cookie policies range from the buried deep within the privacy cookie jar to the flashing K-mart end of aisle cookie sale. Cookies refer to the little crumbs of text file code that websites place on users’ browsers that land on the organization’s webpage. These cookies do not contain any coding themselves, so they cannot transfer any viruses or other types of malware. But like real cookie packaging, you must read to the bottom of the ingredient list to determine what your system ingests. Cookies come in two major flavors. Session cookies store information about user page activities so that users can easi...

GoogleLaw and Creative Destruction of the Legal Profession Google and Artificial Intelligence may not be the end of the legal profession, but boy, can you see it from here. I anticipate encountering what Schumpeter euphemistically called creative destruction. Innovation destructs archaic business models and creatively releases capital to be deployed elsewhere. A benign description of being out on the street with your law degree. Perhaps too hyperbolic, but for example Google has made a database of Federal and State case law and legal journal articles available via its  Google Scholar  search.  In their defense, lawyers can now purchase on Amazon the “ Please Do Not Confuse Your Google Search With My Law Degree” coffee mug.  For a simpler DIY approach, YouTube displays over 146 videos on Family Law. This also includes shuffle playlist for greater variety. For comparison, A.I. factors into over 38% of regular enterprise planning for mainly customer int...