July 06, 2019
German
The most civilized nations of modern Europe issued from the woods of Germany; in the rude institutions of those Barbarians we [received] the original principles of our present laws and manners.
--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter IX (1782)
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Men of Letters: Charlie Rose, Hunter Thompson.
Never write a letter, never throw one away.
--Attributed to the late private investigator and consultant Thomas Corbally, two medieval priests, and three U.S. mayors.
For reasons which go back to 1974, WAC? misses Hunter Thompson. This son of Louisville put some of his best and funniest stuff in personal letters--and he wrote volumes and volumes of them. Over 20,000. I've read some off and on for years; my favorites (and the funniest) are his with boss Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone magazine's founder and editor, in the 1970s and 1980s. Others are published in Thompson's books over the years. See this clip from a Charlie Rose interview, undated, but his Rose's with Thompson, likely about 1997. HST talks about letter-writing here.
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July 05, 2019
301 Flowers, Duke University.
The Chronicle.
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Barham, Canterbury, Kent, England.
O famous Kent
What country hath this isle that can compare with thee?--Michael Drayton (1563-1631), in Polyolbion
I've been here several times and will return as many times as I can. London lawyer friends live here in this village and civil parish of the City of Canterbury district of Kent, England: a sane and civilized rural way station on the path from Cardiff or London to Paris. Barham is above all ancient, pastoral and undisturbed. Population 1200. It was spelled Bioraham in 799, after Beora, a Saxon chief. The Anglican village church dates to the 1100s and was likely built over a Saxon church which existed at least by 809. Barham is not far from Canterbury--and local legend has it that one of knights who killed Thomas Becket had an estate here.
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July 04, 2019
All Things in Excess: Hôtel Costes
239 rue Saint-Honoré.
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Hotel du Jeu de Paume.
Hotel du Jeu de Paume, 54 Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île, 75004 Paris
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Born Outlaws: Americans.
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July 03, 2019
The 12 Rules of Client Service.
Our world-famous 12 Rules of Client Service. Revel in their wisdom. Ignore them at your peril. Teach them to your coworkers. Argue about them. Improve them.
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Potomac Boat Club. 3530 Water Street, N.W.
Established in 1859 as the "Potomac Barge Club", the Potomac Boat Club is a rowing club on the Potomac River that sits on half an acre along Georgetown's southwestern border. It hosts several hundred members: recreational rowers, Washington-Lee High School crew team and professional athletes. Two members, Larry Hough and Tony Johnson, won the silver medal in coxless pairs at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The club's current building (below) dates to 1908.
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July 02, 2019
Lucien Carr....
I met Beat badboy legend Lucien Carr once and briefly when he was working in DC for one of the wire services. Way talented, charming guy. And serious American history icon. Everyone even a little hip should know about his story. Carr’s on the right below. Google it or however you learn stuff. That’s Memory Babe Kerouac on your left.
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July 01, 2019
69 years ago.
Happy Anniversary Penny and John Hull.
Dad, we miss you.
July 1, 1950
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June 30, 2019
Hesse: Goethe jokes with the Immortals.
Eternity is a mere moment--just long enough for a joke.
--Hermann Hesse's version of Goethe, dead, possessed of a superior perspective, and speaking to Harry Haller, in Steppenwolf (1927).
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June 29, 2019
Maddeningly hot with increasing existential dread by Monday.
Global warming-driven or not, now is the always-hot weather period between July 1 and August 15 that early Greeks and Romans roughly 25 centuries ago named after the Dog Star, or Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. Be reminded, however, that the "dog days of summer" coming early this year isn't just about the heat. You feeling okay there, Jack? If you are uncomfortable due to the heat and humidity alone, no problem. It does look like Al Gore was right about something.
But if you are walking around your town or city not only sweltering but also confused, overly-emotional, a bit paranoid and perhaps seeing mythical animals, penguins, weasels or other fauna you know for a fact are not real or certainly not native or known to survive in Metro Detroit--and finally you are not too much of a whack-job or flake to begin with--you may do well to head for a short summer respite at a local looney bin or garden-variety detox. Three or four days may be all you need. There are also some highly-recommended, reputation-saving out-patient programs where you can meet not only men and women for dating purposes but also a healthy chunk of the city's Irish big law partners who would much rather try six-week breach of contract and UCC Article 2 cases than spend time learning the names of their own children back in Swampoodle.
Indeed, dog days are not just about crazy hot summers. They are in league with Chaos Itself: "the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics and phrensies". See (above) Brady's Clavis Calendarium, 1813.
Woof, y'all.
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June 28, 2019
Londontown
Airplane landing at Heathrow 1993. Hull brothers on board:
ME: Dave, this is so cool! Londontown. I’ve never been in England before.
DAVE: Dan, you lived in London for the entire year of 1978.
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Summer Reads: James Baldwin’s “Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone."
An essayist at heart, American novelist, poet and playwright James Baldwin (1924-1987) wrote his experimental fourth novel about the life of Leo Proudhammer, a black stage actor raised in Harlem who moves to Greenwich Village. Proudhammer has a heart attack on stage. Published in 1968, and panned by critics but widely read, "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone" is an incredibly intense coming of age story set the 1930s and 1940s about racial prejudice, the American experiment, family, faith and sexuality.
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June 26, 2019
Best of Partner Emeritus No. 3: Summering Correctly in Gotham.
Two days ago our hero Partner Emeritus commented in response to an Above the Law piece on summer associate offers:
It's a sad world we live in where kids think they are having the time of their lives by raising bottles of Korbel champagne adorned with cheap sparklers. The video [in the ATL article] is proof that law firms are not celebrating like it was 1984 or 2007 for that matter.
When I was a younger partner, I would take a handful of summer associates to Smith & Wollensky or Peter Luger's in Brooklyn and then party hard at the VIP lounge at Flash Dancers ('80s) or Scores ('90s). Most of the summer associates were caught in compromising positions during these soirees. For example, I had many Polaroids with SAs who were photographed in salacious positions with female entertainers. I even photographed a few doing lines of coke in the VIP lounge.
Once the summer associates became associates I would bring them into my office and give them copies of the Polaroids and remind them that I was the last person they ever wanted to cross if they wanted to keep their job or law license. Most of these folks became partners, which proves my methods for inspiring peak performance were quite effective.
Photo taken in 1986 believed to be PE instructing summer associates Photo: Paramount Pictures).
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June 25, 2019
My 20 year old clothing company: White Boy Action Wear....
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June 24, 2019
Tramps Like Us: Heidelberg Castle.
Around 1620, Jacques Fouquières painted Germany's Heidelberg Castle, a famous structure in both German history and art, in "Hortus Palatinus" (below). Although the Castle has been in splendid ruin for most of its history, artists still flock to its foundations, gardens and terracing. Camera-toting American lawyers do, too. I've spent several hours at the Castle on each of my three trips to Heidelberg--and I am sure I'll go again. Nearly 130 years ago, Heidelberg Castle was a hit with Americans. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as writer and humorist Mark Twain, wrote about the storied castle in Appendix B to his famous "A Tramp Abroad" (1880).
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City of the Dead: Père Lachaise, 20th arrondissement
Laid out like a modern grid-form metropolis, Père Lachaise has the feel of a town--truly, a city of the dead--with tidy paved and cobbled "streets," complete with cast-iron signposts.
--Alistair Horne, in Seven Ages of Paris (Alfred A. Knopf 2002)
Père Lachaise Cemetery, 20th arrondissement.
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June 23, 2019
William Howard Taft Bridge: Lion No. 4.
Lion No. 4, looking north up Connecticut Avenue.
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June 21, 2019
Summer Solstice 2019
It's June 21. Midsummer and Magic Time.
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June 20, 2019
Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798)
Happy birthday to Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, leader of the 1798 Irish Rebellion and the Father of Irish Republicanism. Wolfe Tone was captured at Letterkenny in late 1798 and died under unclear circumstances in a Dublin jail 2 weeks later. He was 35.
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June 19, 2019
World Famous Way-Mindful 12 Rules of Client Service.
The 12 Rules, that's who. Sometimes all you need is what one favorite poet called a New Mind. These now classic if eternally annoying 12 Rules will get you there, friend:
1. Represent only clients you like.
2. The client is the main event.
3. Make sure everyone in your firm knows the client is the main event.
4. Deliver legal work that changes the way clients think about lawyers.
5. Over-communicate: bombard, copy and confirm.
6. When you work, you are marketing.
7. Know the client.
8. Think like the client--help control costs.
9. Be there for clients--24/7.
10. Be accurate, thorough and timely--but not perfect.
11. Treat each co-worker like he or she is your best client.
12. Have fun.
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June 18, 2019
Heroes: Robert Edward Turner III.
Work like hell--and advertise.
--Ted Turner (1938- )
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Samuel Johnson: On Work and Habit.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
--Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
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Naked Lunch, first printing, Grove Press, 1959.
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June 17, 2019
Disraeli on Bad Books.
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
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June 16, 2019
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells. Is there anything human-made more beautiful? Below is Folio 292r (circa 800) of The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament. The entire work is housed at Trinity College Library in Dublin. This page opens the Gospel of John. Illustrations in the Book of Kells are bursting with pre-Christian, pagan and Celtic symbols and motifs that had been evolving, mixing and merging in Ireland for nearly 8000 years. The result a ancient montage of mixed media that is playful, quirky, sexual, mystical and a yet still deeply Christian. And a masterwork of Western calligraphy. 680 pages of the work survives.
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Sunday
It’s Sunday.
Go Somewhere Different.
Meet Someone Different.
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June 15, 2019
Pantheon: Sigourney Weaver.
I need a woman about twice my height.
Statuesque.
Raven-tressed.
A goddess of the night.--John Barlow and Bob Wier, "I Need a Miracle"
Patrician. Five foot eleven. Stanford and Yale. 69 years old.
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Susan Alexandra Weaver in 2008
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“The Bells of Rhymney”
I’ve loved “The Bells of Rhymney” since it stood out hauntingly on my first Byrds album when I was about 14. Like any good well-rounded Indian Hill High kid, I looked up its traditional roots in my teenage years. And it meant more and more to me the more I get to hear great church bells of new cities. Anyway, the late folk great Pete Seeger borrowed the lyrics from either the Welsh or the Brits. And Jim-Roger McGuinn got it from old Pete. Some think the song is the first folk rock. I think it’s great music and lyrics. I’ll play the Byrds version later. And since I come from a musical tribe (both Holdens and Hulls) I would love to hear my talented cousin songwriter-musician-singer Diane Healey perform this. Later I’ll come back here and post the song that appears on that 1965 album.
“The Bells of Rhymney”
Oh, what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney
Is there hope for the future?
Say the brown bells of Merther
Who made the mine open?
Say the black bells of Rhonda
And who killed the miner?
Say the grim bells of Lina
Who aband' us in court?
Say the bells of Newport
All will be well if-if-if-if-if,
Say the green bells of Cardiff
Why so worried, sister why?
Say the silver bells of Whye
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney
Oh, what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rymney
Is there hope for the future?
Say the brown bells of Merther
Who made the mine open?
Say the black bells of Rhonda
And who killed the miner?
Say the grim bells of Lina
Songwriters: Idris Davies / Pete Seeger
The Bells of Rhymney lyrics © T.R.O. Inc.
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The Magna Carta (b. June 15, 1215 - present)
Today, Saturday, June 15, the great human rights document known to most of us as the Magna Carta--also the Magna Charta or the Great Charter--celebrates its 804th birthday. The Charter was of course imposed by feudal barons on the English King John Lackland at the banks of the Thames near Windsor, England, on June 15, 1215. By limiting the king's absolute power, and protecting the rights of at least some of his subjects, the document wisely signed that day by King John (1199-1216) became a critical building block in both English and American constitutional law.
The Magna Carta did two groundbreaking things. It acknowledged that punishment of citizens must be under the law of the land. More generally, it also gave rise to a settled notion, and expectation, that a monarch should not and cannot act on a completely arbitrary basis. What spurred the barons to confront King John? Answer: Taxes, mainly, without notice, over and over again, to pay for John's lackluster military campaigns on the continent.
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A reprinting in London in 1600s.
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June 14, 2019
Pretrial: Caravaggio's Cardsharps.
Caravaggio's The Cardsharps (c. 1594)
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The Classics
A man with his belly full of the classics is an enemy of the human race.
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
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Rule 8. Think Like a Client. Help Control Costs.
Rule 8 is Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs. The 2006 Explanatory Note for Rule 8--we reluctantly decided that an Advisory Committee Notes regime was a bit grandiose--begins this way:
Ask an associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client. The answers will be something like this. (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.
The right answer?
A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.
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June 13, 2019
Bring Back Real Women: Parker Posey
"You don't need the money with a face like that."
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Rule 1: Represent Only Clients You Like.
You cannot afford to act for business clients you do not like and respect. Rule One: Represent Only Clients You "Like". Life's short. The profession is demanding enough. From our annoying but dead-on accurate, world-famous, wise and must-follow 12 Rules of Client Service. Excerpt from Rule 1:
By "like", I mean it loosely: to derive for whatever reason real pleasure and satisfaction while doing legal work for a individual or organization.
My firm shies away from individuals as clients, regardless of his or her resources. We usually represent businesses. So in the case of an organization, we "like" the client because overall we somehow feel comfortable with or maybe even admire the personality, business culture or goals of that client, personally like/admire the client reps and general counsel, or both.
My firm "likes" business clients which are experienced, sophisticated users of legal services. When we perform well, the client appreciates us and signals that appreciation. So then we like the client even more, and want to do an even better job or keep doing the good job we are doing so we can derive more real pleasure from the engagement, and obtain more work.
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June 11, 2019
Alexandria: Best 'Hood in Northern Virginia.
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Think you’re a Rebel? Consider Jonathan Swift.
Swift was a Titan in rebellion against Heaven.
-- John L. Stoddard, 1901
Anglo-Irish, Angry and Brave: See one of our past tributes to Dean Swift (1667–1745) in "Heroes and Leaders: Anyone out there with soul and sand?"
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Oscar Wilde: On Writing and Writers.
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
--Lord Henry Wotton, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890)
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Hunter Thompson: On Quality Time.
Excerpt from the famous November 1974 Playboy Magazine interview with writer and humorist Hunter S. Thompson conducted by Craig Vetter, a well-regarded writer and storyteller himself.
PLAYBOY: ....this morning you've had two bloody marys, three beers and about four spoons of some white substance and you've been up for only an hour. You don't deny that you're heavily into drugs, do you?
THOMPSON: No, why should I deny it? I like drugs. Somebody gave me this white powder last night. I suspect it's cocaine, but there's only one way to find out...
PLAYBOY: What do you like best?
THOMPSON: Probably mescaline and mushrooms: That's a genuine high. It's not just an up -- you know, like speed, which is really just a motor high. When you get into psychedelics like mescaline and mushrooms, it's a very clear kind of high, an interior high. But really, when you're dealing with psychedelics, there's only one king drug, when you get down to it, and that's acid. About twice a year you should blow your fucking tubes out with a tremendous hit of really good acid. Take 72 hours and just go completely amok, break it all down.
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Rule 5: Over-Communicate: Bombard, Copy, Confirm.
Over-Communicate: Bombard, Copy Confirm. It's from our annoying but dead-on accurate 12 Rules. And it's short.
Rule Five: "Over-Communicate": Bombard, Copy and Confirm
I am indebted to Jay Foonberg for the inspiration for Rule 5--both "bombarding" and the idea of keeping clients continuously informed. Nearly all of my better thoughts about practice management are influenced by Foonberg. The notion of "bombarding" clients with paper and information does have obvious exceptions. For instance, you work with a GC who trusts you and wants you to leave her alone. She doesn't want you to copy her on every transmittal letter or e-mail. Fair enough. Just be 100% sure you know what she wants and doesn't want. But aside from that, this is a "can't miss" rule--and I am amazed that many good lawyers express surprise that my firm informs the client of everything at each step of the way, and copies our clients on everything.
Again, our eternal debt to Jay Foonberg for this rule. We just changed the words a bit. Thanks Jay for being the first lawyer to sit down and think about how clients really think.
Over-Communicate--but keep it short and don't spazz it up.
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June 10, 2019
Storytelling.
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
--Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
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Rule 6: When You Work, You Are Marketing.
When you work, you are marketing. You are constantly sending the customer small but powerful ads. Rule Six comes from our hopelessly arrogant and deeply infuriating but consistently right, practical, and world-famous 12 Rules of Client Service.
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June 09, 2019
Sunday in Charleston
Charleston is all about The Dance.
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Rule 7: Know Thy Client.
You're a servant. Whatever your client does, find out about it. And find out in 3-D.
Rule Seven is from our wise, world-famous, tortuous and highly irritating 12 Rules which make their appearance here in some form roughly 50 times a year. Excerpt from Rule Seven:
The client, it seems, actually wants you to know him, her or it. Take time out to learn the stock price, industry, day-to-day culture, players and overall goals of your client. Visit their offices and plants.
Do it free of charge.
Associates in particular need to develop the habit of finding out about and keeping up with clients and their trials and tribulations in and out of the areas you are working in. Learn about your client--and keep learning about it.
Devise a system to keep abreast.
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June 08, 2019
Flaubert: On His Writing.
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
--Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
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June 07, 2019
Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Irish.
There's no point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant Secretary for Labor, a few days after November 22, 1963
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Real Women: Audrey Tautou.
Source: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Europe (2011)
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