…is up at Jurispundit, and includes a link to Ted’s informal London-based hot beverage research.
Posts Tagged ‘about the site’
Latest newsletter
Our free periodic newsletter went out to subscribers this afternoon (in fact, they may accidentally have received two copies — we’re still getting the hang of the new interface). Each issue summarizes a few weeks’ worth of postings in terse yet wry style. To join the list, change your address, etc., visit this page (requires Google registration).
“South Park Conservatives”
Want to know what destructive craziness the trial lawyers are up to? Legal thinker Walter Olson records every jot and tittle on his constantly updated website Overlawyered.
— from p. 117 of the hit new book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, written by my Manhattan Institute colleague Brian C. Anderson (buy on Amazon).
Also new at Point of Law
If you’re not visiting our sister site Point of Law regularly you’re missing out on an awful lot. F’rinstance: contingency-fee tax collection in Mississippi, courtesy of that state’s AG; Alan Dershowitz’s coincidental whereabouts during the Larry Summers flap; liability reform in Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri, and (on asbestos) in Texas and Florida; topical TrackBack spam pings; the “Constitution in Exile” brouhaha; overtime lawsuits; crying wolf on class action reform; pressure for cooperation in white-collar crime cases; how Westchester County, N.Y. residents subsidize wildman enviro-litigator Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and California residents subsidize trial-lawyer front groups as well as propaganda for antitrust enforcement; jury selection in Scotland; several posts on The American Lawyer’s recent special issue, “Plaintiff’s Power”; the supposed hypocrisy of lawsuit reformers; high-tech shareholder suits; much, much more from Ted on silicosis doctors’ testimony; Mike DeBow on Ford Crown Victoria suits; and Jim Copland on the Second Circuit’s dismissal of a tobacco class action. And don’t miss Ted’s priceless story of what happened to ATLA’s own insurance company (did you really think those guys would be good at running one?).
Guestblogging opportunities
With the warmer weather (and some real-world writing projects that will be demanding my attention) it’s time for me again to remind readers that there’s fun to be had in volunteering for a guestblogging stint here (or at Point of Law, which also could use guestbloggers). Blogging experience is preferred but not necessary, and the technology is easy to learn. Drop me a line at editor – at – thisdomainname.com.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere
Evan Schaeffer is a plaintiffs’ lawyer, but he’s made it to the Overlawyered blogroll with an entertaining weblog about balancing a real life with a law firm career; law students’ contributions to blogs; law and literature; and clever, if fallacious, anti-litigation-reform posts and attacks on this site’s positions. Now on the site is an e-mail interview with me about my new job. And don’t miss the discussion in the comments about whether consumers are smart enough to make their own economic decisions in response to my answer to Evan’s last question. More: Blawg Review #6 takes note.
Batch of reader letters
Four more missives from our ever-interesting readers appear on our letters page. Among the topics this time: caprice in the workings of the death penalty, lawyers’ fees and fen-phen fraud, gamblers suing casinos, and pharmacists’ rights.
Latest newsletter (and switch to Google Groups)
Our email newsletter summing up what’s new on the site was significantly delayed this time around by technical difficulties we had with our old list administrator, Topica, so we’ve moved it over to Google Groups. To join or leave the list, visit this page (requires Google registration). Each issue summarizes a few weeks’ worth of postings in terse style. If you’re an existing subscriber and want to leave, you can also send email to Overlawyered-unsubscribe – [at] googlegroups [dot, com]. Thanks for bearing with us during this transition.
New job
I’m pleased to announce that I’m taking a dream job: on July 1, I will start at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as a resident fellow and director of the AEI Liability Project. I should continue writing for Overlawyered, but I’ll also have the additional time and freedom to do longer and more comprehensive articles and books, as well as the opportunity to work with scholars on empirical and public policy research on litigation reform issues and questions. In the words of Glenn Reynolds, I’ve taken the Boeing, though I’m not sure that metaphor works for a lawyer taking a paycut.
I certainly want to thank the editor of this site; this opportunity wouldn’t have been possible if Walter Olson hadn’t been generous enough over the last couple of years to let me regularly speak on a prominent platform he spent years building. Wally’s been a great mentor and, while we won’t be at the same thinktank, I’m looking forward to the many chances we’re going to have to work together over the years on these issues. I want to thank Jim Copland and the rest of the Manhattan Institute for the same reason.
I leave O’Melveny & Myers on May 6. Even if my first day hadn’t been September 10, 2001, I’d always remember starting at the firm. I’ve had some tremendous experiences with what the American Lawyer magazine called the “Litigation Department of the Year,” including dodging fallen trees in the middle of Hurricane Isabel to make it to the office to write a contingent emergency Supreme Court petition in the event that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mandate to shut down the 2003 California recall election, or working on a gigantic ITC administrative trial where the judge regularly held court until midnight. But it’s the people who have made the last three and a half years great. I’ve gotten to work with some of the great lawyers of today, including, but not limited to, John Beisner, Walter Dellinger, Brian Boyle, Chuck Diamond, Mark Samuels, Pat Lynch, and Rich Parker, as well as wonderful attorneys who will be recognized as the greats of tomorrow, including, but not limited to, Brian Brooks, Ian Simmons, Jessica Davidson Miller, Evelyn Becker, David Applebaum, and Matthew Shors. [bumped by editor; originally posted by Ted 4/26 at 17:59]
Easy to read, that’s us
Via Prof. Bainbridge (Apr. 22) comes word of an automatic checker that will rate the readability of a website, assigning it scores according to its “fog index”, its reading ease, and the educational level it demands of readers. When we run the current front page of Overlawyered.com through the checker it tells us, among other things, that our average sentence contains 8.24 words, of which 15.48% are of three syllables or more. (The first number seems low; maybe the checker is using a nonstandard definition of “sentence”.) At any rate, our “fog index” stands at 9.49 on a scale on which Time and Newsweek stand at 10 (that is, slightly harder to read than us) and most popular novels score between 8 and 10. On the alternative “Flesch reading ease” measure, on which “Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70,” we come in at 65.29. Finally, on the “Flesch-Kincaid grade level” calculation, we score a 6.20, suggesting that a seventh grader might be capable of following along with the posts here, though we can’t recall hearing from any who do. As a check, we ran the March 2005 archives through and got a slightly more difficult rating: 10.74 fog (comparable to the WSJ), 60.25 reading ease, and a grade level of 7.58. Overall, we come off as easier to read than Prof. Bainbridge himself or the Volokh Conspiracy, but not so easy to read as Glenn Reynolds — no great surprise on either front.