United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joined West author Bryan Garner at the Texas Bar Association’s annual meeting last Friday, June 26 in Dallas.
The spoke about some of the content in their book from West, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. Garner also is editor-in-chief of Black’s Law Dictionary, now in its 9th edition.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram account of the event reports that Justice Scalia said lawyers should always strive to keep things simple:
“You don’t get any credit for eloquence,” Scalia said. “Just make it simple and tell us your point. Your job is to make a complex case simple, not a simple case complex.”
Texas Lawyer’s report on the event included a warning from Justice Scalia to characterize cited precedents accurately:
“When a judge sees that you are playing fast and loose with a citation, he is not going to believe the rest of your brief.”
The Dallas Morning News story on the Scalia/Garner discussion included an exchange between the two men, about the use of contractions:
Garner, who is editor of Black’s Law Dictionary, a standard for attorneys, advocates using contractions judiciously to lighten the style. He read a long sentence from the book in which Scalia wrote that any contractions on the pages were included with his protest.
“I had no idea how vehement one could be about contractions,” Garner said.
Garner noted several major publications that embrace contractions, including The New York Times. “I certainly want to be in that league,” the conservative Scalia playfully scoffed.
The ABA Journal has a recap of the coverage of the Scalia/Garner event, in “Scalia Airs Pet Peeves at Texas Bar Meeting“.
Want more of the wisdom of Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner?
You can see a one-hour excerpt from a free continuing legal education (CLE) event that they held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., last summer, on West LegalEdcenter.
Highlights of that 2008 Kennedy Center event also are in this Westcast video podcast:
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Summer associates and interns in law firms around the United States once again have access to relevant and useful legal research training materials from West.
But this year, that doesn’t mean they have to carry those materials around with them.
West went green, substituting heavy paperwork for easy-to-navigate online materials found on the West Summer Associate Program page on the West Web site. The move also meant the end of shipments of thousands of pounds of paper to large and medium-sized law firms all over the country.
The West Summer Associate Program is designed to pick up where law school programs left off and prepare associates for their summer internships and clerkships.
Lea Harpster, a director in Large Law Marketing at West, says the firms get a big benefit from the annual program.
“We’re there with cost-effective Westlaw research strategies and tips to ensure that summer associates have a foundation of Westlaw knowledge,” says Harpster. “We also give them an understanding of the firm’s contract so that when they’re out there working with the attornies in the firm they’re efficient and more importantly, they’re effective.”
In this video clip, Harpster explains how the changes in the West program came about for 2009. And, Stephanie Krause, a senior marketer at West, talks about some other environmentally-friendly components of the program for summer associates, including a biodegradable pen and a global tree-planting initiative:
Harpster says feedback about the green initiative by West shows it has “really resonated with the firms and the summer associates.”
The West Summer Associate Program page has more information on the materials available, including numerous webinars and ways to get additional free legal research training.
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When describing Black’s Law Dictionary, Bryan Garner refers to it simply as “the law dictionary of record.”
To him, that says it all. And it represents the amount of time and work that goes in to keeping Black’s in its respected position among scholars, judges, lawyers and law students.
“It is the most widely used legal dictionary in the world and it has been that since Henry Campbell Black wrote the first edition in 1891,” says Garner, the editor-in-chief of Black’s. “When I took it over in the 7th Edition we – a team of scholars and I – rewrote it and re-researched it. I’ve tried very hard over the 7th, 8th and now 9th Editions to deepen the scholarship and make it just as reliable a reference work as we can have.”
The new edition of Black’s, the 9th – published by West – contains more than 45,000 terms, including 2,500 new entries than the 8th. In addition to the new terms, more than 15,000 entries now cite the date when they were first used in English-language contexts, especially in judicial opinions.
Garner says the work to find new terms for Black’s is extensive and requires a lot of reading, by a lot of people.
“The way to acquire new terminology for any dictionary is to have a reading program and I have a small army of readers, volunteer readers, who help supply me with potential new terms for Black’s from books, judicial opinions, law review articles and more,” he says.
Garner, who operates LawProse in Dallas, enlists his team to help him research and write the definitions for the dictionary once he’s alerted to new terminology, as well as to review and edit the older terms.
Garner leans heavily on more than 200 legal scholars and legal professionals from around the world. (Find out more about that process in this Westcast audio podcast).
A would-be lawyer’s first link to all the hard work that goes into Black’s Law Dictionary begins in law school. Garner says “if you’re a law student and you’re trying to read a casebook or prepare to give an accurate answer in class or for an exam, you need to know precisely what a term means.”
He adds, “when you become a lawyer, if you’re making an argument in court, you want to be able to cite a reliable reference work. Black’s is the only dictionary ever to have been used as the exclusive basis for a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and Black’s is cited by the Supreme Court just about every term and by federal appellate courts and state supreme courts week in and week out.”
Garner says the 9th Edition meets his standard for honoring the legacy of Henry Campbell Black.
“He was a wonderful scholar and I’ve tried to carry on that tradition,” says Garner. “Black’s Law Dictionary is not merely a collection of what courts have said. It’s not a regurgitation of judicial definitions. We on the Black’s team view it as more of a primary source and we are as lexicographers giving it our best shot at defining the terms as well as possible to really bring it to a new level of scholarship with every edition.” (Watch a video interview with Garner).
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It’s a clichéd scenario: someone you know went to happy hour after work, had a few cocktails, then attempted to drive home, only to have a local police officer intervene. Not a smart move on their part and one fraught with many consequences. They want to curtail as many of those consequences as possible.
They call you because, well, you’re a lawyer. Unfortunately, you don’t know anything about the procedural and substantives issues to help them. What can you do?
If you are going to take the case, start by going to the DUI Practitioner tab on Westlaw. This page is loaded with resources that will help you give your client the best advice possible.
For example, you can quickly access the Handling Drunk Driving Cases treatise (the database identifier is HDRUNKDR), which will guide you through the process of advising your client through the criminal process.
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This morning, about 5 weeks after Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection, General Motors voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While some in the media are speculating that Chrysler will emerge from bankruptcy court soon, it doesn’t look like that pace will be replicated with GM. Given the complicated nature of the proceedings, those wanting to keep track might want to consider tracking the docket that is available on Westlaw.
To do that, access the Alert Center on Westlaw, go to the Docket Alert category and click Create. From there, you will want to create a Docket Track and choose the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court. The docket number for the case is 1:09-BK-50026. With a Docket Track, you will be regularly notified of new events within the case. (Note: if docket tracking is not part of your Westlaw subscription, there will be a fee to track dockets.)
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Given the relatively low turnover on the United States Supreme Court, whenever an opening occurs, it is a big deal. So when President Obama nominated 2nd Circuit Justice Sonia Sotomayor, people took notice.
And, questions immediately started rolling in to the West Reference Attorneys.
People wanted to find out how often her opinions were appealed and how often the Supreme Court reversed her. Knowing the influence she would have as a Supreme Court Justice, everyone was interested in her position on every possible issue that could come before the Court.
With so many documents in so many different places, Westlaw has created a new database for subscribers - SOTOMAYOR-NOM - that contains opinions, law reviews, and other legal documents written by or about the nominee.
A current resume of Judge Sotomayor by West’s Profiler is included, as well as her biography from the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary. Congressional documents related to the nomination process also are included.
For billing information, access the Westlaw subscriber information database.
Andrew Mushett
Consultant
West Reference Attorneys
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We talked with Neil Squillante, the publisher of TechnoLawyer, Tuesday night about the items crossing his desk this year. And, in addition to his Five 2009 Legal Industry Predictions recently published on TechnoLawyer’s blog, he tells us what he thinks will be particularly useful to lawyers this year, mobile technology:
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This is a guest post to WestBlog from Greg Bell, principal attorney editor at Thomson Reuters in Rochester, New York:
I’m here at LegalTech New York to learn about how technology is affecting the litigation process (and to indulge my inner geek to boot…).
Clearly e-discovery has become a focal point of the conference. As I walk through each row in the many exhibitor halls, there are new companies left and right offering this tool or that system that will make e-discovery simple, effective and inexpensive.
Many of these companies focus on dealing with the discovery of electronically stored information after litigation has ensued. The key point in Monday’s keynote, “Enterprise Records and Information Management Considerations” from Fred M. Borchardt, a partner with KPMG who has worked in records risk management for 35 years is that you need to “think left”.
By “thinking left,” Borchardt was trying to focus the overflowing crowd of attendees on the left side of the “electronic discovery reference model” (a flowchart of the key activities and “spaces” within the e-discovery process) to build a proactive and effective records and information management program in the organization.
Borchardt noted that in a lot of organizations, records and information management is characterized by a tendency to view the information in departmental or media-based silos and to hold onto too much information in response to a Legal Hold “just in case.”
There are also inconsistencies of classification and identification as records, non-existent or insufficient search, a lack of understanding in the organization of obligations and policies regarding records retention and management, and ineffective governance and monitoring.
Borchardt set out the main factors for building an effective records and information management program, including:
• The records and management approach must have leadership buy-in. Building an effective program is a change-management process. Leaders have to think and act on an enterprise-wide basis, not in departmental silos.
• Prioritizing is very important. The 80/20 rule is in effect here. (80 percent of the risk is probably found in 20 percent of your records). There is no need to “boil the ocean.” Consider what events and processes in the business demand records, the probability of events, and then determine the scope of the program based on risk and the enterprise’s appetite for risk.
• In assessing the ROI and containing costs, consider reverse engineering a prior production to see what was held and produced that was not necessary and what costs were associated with that unnecessary production.
Greg Bell
Principal Attorney Editor
Thomson Reuters
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Ask attorney Garth Gartrell what keeps him up at night – when it comes to thinking about executive compensation, that is – and you’re likely to hear about Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code.
Created by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the wake of the Enron scandal, 409A regulates the tax treatment of nonqualified deferred compensation, which includes supplemental executive retirement plans and supplemental defined contribution plans (such as those that wrap-around and supplement qualified 401(k) plans), whether paid to executives or any other employees.
“409A dominates the field of executive compensation right now, particularly in severance agreements but also in many aspects of compensation in a merger,” says Gartrell, shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
Gartrell says Enron changed everything for executive compensation.
“Enron drove these fundamental changes that we’re going to have to be dealing with that are going to be changing the landscape of executive compensation for years to come,” Gartrell says. Hear more from Gartrell about Enron’s impact on executive compensation (1:54).
In addition to 409A, Gartrell monitors the IRS for other developments in executive compensation.
“I’m paying attention to anything that the IRS might have to say especially with the executive compensation wrinkles that have arisen out of the banking rescue plans,” Gartrell says.
Gartrell says executive compensation remains a varied and challenging area of the law. “The field touches so many complex areas, like securities, corporate law, tax, and accounting rules,” says Gartrell.
Gartrell is the co-author of Executive Compensation for Emerging Growth Companies, 3d, with Steven Lapidus, the founder and co-chair of Greenberg Traurig’s Global Benefits and Compensation group.
Their book, published by West, has a special emphasis on annotated forms that Gartrell and Lapidus have developed over many years of practicing in the field, including many ideas and forms since the first edition was published.
Executive Compensation for Emerging Growth Companies, 3d is available on the West Web site.
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Leadership, in any career field, can be difficult to demonstrate and define.
But in the practice of law, how does an attorney at any phase in his or her career develop the skill sets, traits and characteristics that are common among the most successful leaders?
Or, is a leader born, not made?
“The overwhelming research in this area really does show that leadership is a set of skills that can be learned, developed and improved upon,” says Robert Cullen, who developed one of the nation’s first ever Leadership for Lawyers courses, which he teaches at Santa Clara University Law School.
I interviewed Cullen for a Westcast podcast about his new book, The Leading Lawyer, A Guide to Practicing Law and Leadership, published by West.
“Leadership skills are identifiable and learnable,” Cullen says. “You can improve your effectiveness as a lawyer for the benefit of your client, your firm, your community and, just as importantly, for yourself.”
In his book, Cullen couples expert research and keen insight from 10 influential attorneys including Rudy Giuliani and Leon Panetta to show practical examples of how leadership combines “legal expertise with exceptional leadership skills.”
It’s a break from traditional thinking in many ways. “It takes creativity, persuasion and inspiration to be effective, successful and admired,” says Cullen.
“We are fine advocates, great analysts, and the profession is full of outstanding problem-solvers,” writes Cullen. “Leadership is our direction, our future, our calling… After this project, I am far more optimistic about the direction of the legal profession and even more proud to be a part of it.”
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The U.S. Constitution is one of the most powerful and impactful documents in existence. It literally touches every American’s life, and has since its creation in 1787. Recently, I had the opportunity to view the document first-hand as part of a new exhibit, “We the People: The First Official Printing of the U.S. Constitution,” sponsored [...]
Earlier this week, we released our 2011 Annual Report in an interactive format available online at thomsonreuters.com. Along with information on the company’s financial performance as well as business unit overviews, this year’s annual report contains a variety of dynamic content including interviews with our new business leaders as well as stories of how we [...]
We’ve got a great episode for you this month, kicking off with our “Chaos in the Courts” segment that, believe it or not, is yet another story about the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. Since our March podcast, another person has fallen victim to the establishment’s trademark bypass burger.
Then in our “On the Blawgs” [...]
