Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘accolades’

“100+ All-American Ideas: Stay Out of Court”

Belatedly noted: Reader’s Digest gives us another generous mention (latest in a long series of such) as part of a wider project cataloguing ideas and proposals that could make the country better (Sacha Zimmerman, Reader’s Digest, posted Sept. 14). For another generous mention from the Digest, see Jun. 12, linking to an article by reporter Michael Crowley. And we’ve also been slow to link another good piece from Digest reporter Crowley, on the problems introduced by jury consultants “paid to stack the deck” (Michael Crowley, “Jury Riggers”, Apr. 2006). Sample:

A recent guide published by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America warned lawyers about jurors who may show “personal responsibility bias.” These jurors, the guide said, feel that “people must be accountable for their conduct.” Now there’s a chilling outlook! The guide advises: “The only solution is to exclude them from the jury.” That is, get rid of anyone who might actually care about seeing justice done.

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Sen. Edwards’ record (and some kind words)

Bill Dyer (Dec. 30), following up on Stephen Bainbridge (Dec. 28), has some thoughts about “whether Edwards’ career as a lawyer who primarily represented plaintiffs in personal injury cases is, by itself, a factor that ought to cut against his being President.” Along the way, he has some kind things to say about the authors of this site, which are much appreciated.

The question of what sort of pro bono work Sen. Edwards did during his legal career has also been getting attention recently (as in this guest post at Andrew Sullivan’s). For our take on that, see Jul. 27, 2004.

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Spitzer, Faso, and the New York high court

I’ve got an op-ed today in the New York Post about one of the less obvious issues in the high-profile race for Governor of New York: whoever wins will get to reshape the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, with implications long into the future for the state’s legal well-being. Would a Gov. Spitzer appoint anti-business crusaders to the court? (Walter Olson, “N.Y. Judge Wars: Hidden ’06 Issue”, New York Post, Jun. 30)(cross-posted at Point of Law) (& welcome readers of Prof. Bainbridge, who says kind things).

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Site disruption

Yesterday we got an Instalanche (thank you, Glenn!) the traffic from which unfortunately had the effect of crashing our server. The site was down for much of the day, as was email service to overlawyered.com and walterolson.com (if you sent us mail and we didn’t respond, please resend). While the front page was restored within a few hours, most of the rest of the site remained down until this morning. Thanks for your patience.

P.S. Welcome readers from the second Instalanche, which we’re happy to say our servers have succeeded in accommodating. Our new slogan, courtesy of Glenn: Overlawyered, the site “you should probably be visiting regularly anyway”.

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Blawg Review #39 — and “best name” honors

Blawg Review #39, the carnival of law bloggers, is hosted this week at Bruce MacEwen’s Adam Smith Esq., which is an invaluable source for those interested in the economic aspects of law-firm practice. Calling me “ever-reliable”, he links to last week’s item on the Dallas restaurateur who sued over a bad review.

Speaking of Blawg Review, the anonymous organizer of that endeavor has announced the winners of “Blawg Awards 2005”, and Overlawyered is happy to have won for Best Name for a Legal Blog. Among those commenting: Patent Baristas and the naming-and-branding site WordLab.

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