Practice Management

GeekLawyer is coming to America. Again. (Update)

By Dan Hull

Weekends are the only times I can write on this thing about important national and world events. We then communicate with our sixteen loyal but isolated non-American readers who want all the skinny on the States in towns like Aldeburgh, England, Mainz, Germany and Tooele, Utah.

During the week, I help my firm make money defending people who are accused for no reason at all of: spilling, copying, making too much money, and suddenly breaking promises with people who suddenly have no money. Many of these business disputes, ironically, have their roots in a law firm making world-class transactional and "just-wrong" advice mistakes which could have been avoided by a smart third year associate on Methaqualones who shows up at work most days; it would be funny except for the expense to their clients.

Best of all, and the most fun, I also make sure that former employees, often highly-paid ones, of some companies wish they had thought twice about getting mad about something my client did. I talk with them for a few hours--well, sometimes two or three days--with a court reporter, people they don't like anymore, and people who work for me, in the room. You can see the lights go on. They learn with me. I feel I am of service. We have windowless rooms for those talks.

Lots of free coffee, though. If Elizabeth or Lauren is at lunch, or gone for the day, or sleeping, or it's the weekend, or Christmas Day, I often serve the coffee myself--always slowly, deliberately and with a head waiter's flourish, and from the left--hopefully while they are reading something they signed back in 1999. I get to sport bow ties for these little talks, but my office said the black cape, hat and eye-patch were a bit much, so I stopped all that. I still wear the spats, though.

All wonderful work, if you can get it--I still can't believe you can get paid for it. So I am reconsidering my lapsed relationship with the Episcopal Church. It reminds me of a couplet in the Celtic prayer-poem "Purple Haze", in which a picaresque left-handed genius named Jimi gets a little grateful himself. Visit Tower Records for a copy.

Seriously, though, here's a major happening, and an extremely controversial one. Apart from monetary strategy to jump-start the economy, President Obama's current foreign policy plans, and the advent of useful new Covey-esque seminars you pay for on "How To Accommodate Young People Born After 1974 At Your Failing Business", the big news in America is that GeekLawyer--who I was unfortunate enough to meet and have 13 Diet Cokes with in Mayfair last September--will again (see Edition #666 of July 1, 2008) host Blawg Review* on March 16.

A friend of mine, an inspired and quite sober Charon QC in London, even crafted a short film about the nervously-anticipated return of a man whom Elkhart, Indiana and many other U.S. venues can do just fine without thank you very much. It's the guy's language. He likes words (all of them), he's British (they are all quirky creatures, but GL has raised High Brit Quirk to a "potty-mouth" if intelligent art form) and so you get the idea (but maybe not; this is off-the-charts stuff, Jack). Charon's sensitive film, a labor of Lud, is below.

*Now edited by a dead guy, apparently, but a minor detail for Americans, like Ed., with moxie and grit.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on February 28, 2009 (boomark / email).