Ernie The Attorney

Off to speak in New Hampshire

Today, I'm off to New Hampshire where I'll give a talk tomorrow morning. I'll be speaking to the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in beautiful Bedford, New Hampshire. The focus will be on gathering and managing digital information. Criminal lawyers (like civil lawyers) face the stark reality that their client’s words and actions are being captured in many digital forms: surveillance cameras, text messages, Thumb-drives, web-browser history and so on. I'll be back on Sunday, hopefully in time to watch the Hornets clinch another playoff win against San Antonio.

The power of one

"Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Subtlety & Fear

What if every day you showed up to work, eager to do something really good? Something meaningful.

What if you came up with ideas on how to do things better? Not at first, but only after you felt confident that you understood the point of the work and all of the subtle forces surrounding it.

What if, upon hearing your suggestions, your boss rejected them without much consideration? What if he made you feel small, suggesting that you were distracted? Your boss directs your attention to the goal: "do it this way," he says. The "goal" is to do it by a certain method. There is nothing subtle about the goal, or how to achieve it. Systems are never subtle.

Eventually you become demoralized. You wonder what the point of your work is. Why do you feel disloyal? Why doesn't your boss appreciate you?

Well, stop being so selfish. Get a grip.

Put yourself in your boss's shoes. He's worked in the system a long time; he know how things are supposed to be done. It's hard trying to get people to work within a system. Bosses don't have time for subtlety and novel ideas. They have to teach lots of people the old system, the one that they learned. Organizations like the one you work in need authority, and they need people to follow along without a lot of backtalk. What do you really want anyway?

Do you want something real?

What if every day you felt a sense of satisfaction about your work? What if you could try a new approach at the very moment you realized it was better? What if your boss completely supported this? What if you were the boss? What if you worked for yourself?

You would not be free of authority. But you would be free of institutional, corporate authority. Does that scare you? Then what are you afraid of?

You'll make mistakes, no doubt. But that's not what scares you, is it?

LSBA conference for solos and small firms

In a few days I'll be speaking at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Conference, which will be held at the New Orleans Hilton Riverside Hotel. The conference is this Thursday and Friday (May 8–9th). Dane Ciolino and I will talk about how to develop a paperless law practice, and I’ll join a panel talking about how lawyers can be more mobile.

Top-notch legal tech folks from around the country will offer valuable advice on using technology more effectively; if you want to beef up your practice now's the time to do it. More details about the seminar are available here.

Jazz Fest 2008

The festival got some rain a couple of days, but not when I was there.

Just who is Barack Obama?

That's the thing Ed Rollins, a political strategist (read: "inside the beltway box thinker"), says no one has figured out yet. I have this weird suggestion: read this book called Dreams of my Father. In it Obama explains a lot about himself; he even answers Ed's concern about being a "community organizer in Chicago, whatever that means." Hmmm, sounds suspicious. I wondered what it meant too.

SPOILER ALERT

At first Obama didn't know what it meant either; he was told to go into impoverished communities and engage some pastors to help raise awareness about loss of manufacturing jobs. And at the first visit, guess what happened? The pastors didn't welcome him. He was an outsider and they didn't trust people who came in with fancy titles like 'community organizer.' So what happened next?

I'm not going to tell you. Ask Ed Rollins and see if he knows. Or, here's that crazy idea again: read Obama's book.

Kindle update (minor problems, amazing realization)

Well, my Kindle had a small problem. The other day it ceased waking up from sleep. The only solution was to flip the little guy over on its back, remove the battery cover, and reset it with a paper clip. I had to do this every time it went into sleep mode.

Not cool, obviously.

I called Amazon support and they walked me through some steps and then concluded the device needed replacing. They sent me another one, which arrived today. After charging it I fired it up, and it took a few minutes to find the wireless connection. Then I registered it to my account. But, it had no books on it, even though I had bought a bunch already.

Turns out it was easy to get the books I had already ordered to 'come back' to my new Kindle: all I had to do was go to the "Content Manager" and select the books I wanted to re-download and, bada bing!, there they were. And the best part? When I opened each book it was exactly where I was when I was reading it before. In other words, the books you download are not only kept on Amazon (in case you need to re-download them) but Amazon also keeps track of where you were in the book the last time you were reading it.

I knew that they kept your bookmarks and highlights backed up, but I didn't realize they kept your place in the book backed up too. That means if your Kindle was ever lost or stolen, you could get a new one and replace all your books (for free) and open each one to the page where you last were. Nice.

I'm really glad my Kindle is back up and running. In the short period I've had it I've come to realize that it's not something I can easily live without. I'm reading a lot more, and more easily. The Kindle is now available for immediate shipment (i.e. no long waits anymore). If you like to read books then you should definitely get a Kindle; you'll be glad you did, especially if you read a lot while traveling.

Building unity is hard; building it quickly is usually impossible

I recently finished reading Team of Rivals, a book about the improbable political rise of Abraham Lincoln. People forget (or in my case, never knew) that Lincoln was the 4th place contender for the Republican nomination in the election of 1860. It's also often forgotten (or never known) that when Lincoln took office he appointed each of his 3 rivals to cabinet positions. Salmon Chase, who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, was constantly conspiring against Lincoln. When you read about Chase's brash efforts to undermine Lincoln you can't help wonder how Lincoln couldn't see what was going on.

Lincoln was undermined as well by General McClellan, one of the top Union Generals who was well-regarded until it became evident that he was incompetent. People wanted Lincoln to fire him immediately, but Lincoln put them off. McClellan was finally done in by his own machinations. And Chase rashly offered his resignation thinking Lincoln wouldn't accept it but instead would appease him by giving him greater reign. To his surprise, Lincoln accepted the resignation. Lincoln came away from both problems with his stature enhanced, and Chase and McClellan's stature's were diminished—more so because of Lincoln's patience.

Most presidential scholars agree that Lincoln was the best president that we ever had. Team of Rivals demonstrates why he was such an amazing statesman and politician. Of course, when he was president many people didn't trust him, or didn't appreciate him. Building unity out of deep division is never easy, and the conditions for him were—to say the least—highly unfavorable.

I thought about Team of Rivals when I read today about Obama's strong denunciation of his pastor. It reminded me of Lincoln (to some extent) in dealing with his disloyal rivals. Even though people wanted him to, Obama didn't quickly denounce Reverend Wright. Wright was given lots of leeway. But instead of acting prudently he sought the limelight and embarrassed himself. That made it easy for Obama to denounce him.

The 'patient approach' doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to act swiftly and decisively. People criticized Lincoln for not getting rid of Chase and McClellan more quickly. Only in hindsight is it clear to most people that there was great cleverness behind Lincoln's cautiousness. When tensions are high and people are in a state of extreme distrust, it's hard to build unity. Building it quickly is almost always impossible. Lincoln understood that better than most people in his era.

Hopefully, the same will turn out to be true of Obama in this era.

Famous News Anchor bloggers

NBC news anchor Brian Williams has an interesting blog post about reading the Sunday New York Times. That's right: a blog post.

My law firm's new web design

A few days ago I started playing with iWeb, which is free software that comes bundled with every Mac computer. iWeb makes it easy to build stylish websites with very little effort. I learned that you can use it in conjunction with a personal domain name, and that got me to thinking. I had acquired the domain 'svensonlaw.com' awhile back with the idea of making that the domain for my law firm website, which was hosted at ernestsvenson.com. But I never got around to it, mostly because the thought of creating a website seemed daunting. Not anymore.

After messing around for a few hours I managed to create what I think is a pretty stylish website. The home page is actually a blog, which is great for posting information about upcoming speaking engagements. Managing the website will be ridiculously simple, thanks to iWeb's easy interface and its tight integration with other Mac programs. When I was at my old law firm we spent countless hours trying to get everyone to agree on a new site design (and we spent lots of money). This weekend I put up a new site for nothing more than the cost of a domain name, which goes for about $10 per year. Thank god I was able to get my marketing committee to approve my new design (ha!).

Check it out and let me know what you think! (The nice thing about websites is they're easy to edit).