Legal News

Iceland: Land of Bjork, Failing Banks and Distressed Lawyers

By Ashby Jones

Prior to this week, we knew precisely three things about Iceland: 1) that swan-dressing pop crooner? chanteuse? icon? Bjork hails from there; 2) so does the “post-rock” band Sigur Ros, who reportedly sing some of the time in a made-up language based on Icelandic (which is, incidentally, supposed to be incredibly hard to learn); 3) Michigan Law professor Bill Miller teaches an entire class on the blood feuds of the country’s saga age.*

But thanks to a meltdown in the country’s banking system, we’ve come to learn a lot more about the nation this week. For those just getting up to speed, we highly recommend Charles Forelle’s story in today’s WSJ, which manages to weave seamlessly two stories into one: a synopsis of what’s happened as well as what comes next for the country — a possible shift back to fishing.

For the lawyers out there, check out the Q&A AmLaw Daily did with a man named Gudmundur Oddsson, a lawyer in the London office of LOGOS Legal Services, one of Icleland’s larger firms.

We know life is tough for a lot of U.S.-based lawyers, but it seems downright harrowing in Iceland. Consider this exchange, from AmLaw Daily:

How are things?

It’s been absolute chaos, that’s the only way to describe it. In the past few weeks people have been trying to figure out what we can do to salvage things, but everything obviously took a turn for the worse. There’s not much we can do except advise desperate people in desperate times. . . .

*In Miller’s words, the course is “an investigation of disputing and dispute processing in Iceland of the saga age with side glances at pre-Conquest England and some contemporary pre-industrial, kin-based cultures.” (Dispute resolution in Iceland? Sounds like the next hot topic to us!)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 10, 2008 (boomark / email).