Corporate Governance

Judge Joseph T. Sneed III

Posted on February 14, 2008
Judge Joseph T. Sneed III died last week. I had the pleasure of clerking for him during the 1985-86 term, and here are just some of my recollections:Roughly the first week of the clerkship, he asked me to be the clerk who would drive him around Pasadena when he was sitting in Southern California...

I did it--I switched to a MacBook Pro!

Posted on January 24, 2008
Having gotten a full refund from Dell (thank you, Michael McKinney), I have switched laptop formats from Dell to a MacBook Pro, although I still have a Dell desktop.  Even though having an Apple computer is a tad like being a left-hander in a right-handed world, I love it:  I love the design, I love the sharpness of the screen, I love the fact that I've had it for two months and have not managed to break it...

Death of the billable hour, part n+1

Posted on January 24, 2008
In this morning's NYT, Lisa Belkin's article, Who's Cuddly Now? Law Firms, caught my eye. As I've predicted (see here for an example), law firms are starting to move away from billable hours to more client-friendly, lawyer-friendly forms of fees. She points out that clients "reacting to spiraling legal costs, have begun insisting on flat-fee deals...

Bye, bye, lessons that we can learn from Enron

Posted on January 23, 2008
What with the Stoneridge case and the denial of certiorari in the Enron shareholder lawsuit, it's pretty clear that Enron--along with any lesson that we hoped to draw from it--is drawing to a sad, useless close. The more things change, etc., etc. See, e...

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It's all about the incentives....

Posted on January 22, 2008
Jared Sandberg's WSJ column today, Why Learn and Grow on the Job? It's Easier to Feign Infallibility, reminds me how important the right incentives are in business. Bad behavior unpunished is no different, really, from bad behavior rewarded. Enron wasn't that long ago, you know, and with the ink from the USSC's Stoneridge decision still wet, we're going to see continued bad behavior...

For all of my friends who know my political leanings, guess what? John Yoo is right about the lawsuit against him.

Posted on January 22, 2008
See his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, here. For those of you who don't subscribe to the WSJ, here's an excerpt:In a case about warrantless national security wiretaps ordered by Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, the court declared that executive branch officials should benefit from qualified immunity...

Legal Ethics Nightmare Comes True--Sort Of

Posted on January 22, 2008
I'm assuming that other folks saw this article in the Saturday New York Times: Lawyer Reveals Secret, Toppling Death Sentence. It's about a lawyer who knew about alleged prosecutorial misconduct but kept it confidential until he was advised that he could speak up about it at last...

The headline meme....

Posted on January 08, 2008
Jim Chen has tagged me, over at Jurisdynamics, to do my own version of the following four headlines:Headline I most fear seeing in 2008:  2008 Exactly the Same as 2007; No Changes Predicted for 2009, EitherHeadline I most want to see in 2008: Public Realizes Education Can Be Useful; Funding IncreasesHeadline I most expect to see in 2008:  Corporations Decide Pillaging Can Be Expensed; Congress AgreesHeadline I least expect to see in 2008:  Congress Swears Off Legislating Before Investigating Root Causes of Corporate ScandalsNow I tag Jack Ayer and John Steinberg...

Nice one, Cameron!

Posted on January 01, 2008
For those of you who missed Cameron Stracher's op-ed on the rankings, see here. For those of you who don't subscribe to the WSJ, here's an excerpt:Of course there are other things that matter to law-school graduates -- like getting a job. Although the U...

A couple of op-eds that resonated....

Posted on January 01, 2008
As we start out in 2008 (and here's wishing everyone a good 2008), I wanted to note a couple of op-eds that resonated with me:  one from the New York Times on December 26, suggesting that creative mortgages aren't such a bad idea, as long as those lenders who are offering them can explain them clearly to the borrowers (Michael S...

Thanks for the plug, Paul!

Posted on December 10, 2007
A hat tip to Paul Caron for mentioning this book on MoneyLaw and TaxProf Blog: Law School Leadership Strategies: Top Deans on Benchmarking Success, Incorporating Feedback from Faculty and Students, and Building the Endowment. Thanks, Paul!

Ann Bartow: tag, you're it!

Posted on November 29, 2007
Jim Chen, the stalwart dean of the U of Louisville School of Law, has started a bad movie meme over at Jurisdynamics, and he's tagged me first. Nice try, Jim, nominating Caligula. I think, however, we can reach lower: I nominate a bad movie from an actress whose work I normally like...

A nice way to put things in perspective this week.

Posted on November 19, 2007
Hat tip to our friend Scott Unger for sending it along--thanks, Scott!

Latest lawyer joke--except that it's not one.

Posted on November 10, 2007
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "Except in One Career, Our Brains Seem Built for Optimism."The only career where optimism wasn't, well, optimal? Law.

Anthony Ciolli gets dismissed from lawsuit

Posted on November 10, 2007
To see how disgusting some of the comments posted on AutoAdmit were, see here. The people who posted such things demonstrated their immaturity (at best) and their own venal natures (at worst). Nothing I've ever said condones the material that these people posted...

Happy birthday, Marines!

Posted on November 10, 2007
I know some honorable people, although there are few enough truly honorable people that I can count the ones I know on two hands. But I know of one honorable group for sure:Follow this link (here) for more. Happy birthday, Marines!

And now, for something completely different [in the law school publications wars]

Posted on November 07, 2007
I enjoyed Brian Leiter's comments about SUNY-Buffalo's latest publication (here). Having recycled my share of "law porn" this year, I'm actually looking forward to reading Buffalo's publication.BTW, for those of you who said that I seemed a tad bitter about UH's 2004-2007 faculty publications PR piece, fair 'nuff...

A history lesson: "law porn," Trotsky, and ... Rapoport?

Posted on October 30, 2007
Hmmm.... Let's see:1. We know that, during the USNWR rankings season, law schools send out ludicrous amounts of PR material with an eye toward influencing the voting of four (yes, 4) people at each law school on the "academic reputation" survey. That material often goes by the catchall phrase "law porn...

Today, we saw a miracle....

Posted on October 23, 2007
Yesterday and today, Jeff & I were the guests of Johnson Space Center for the launch of STS-120, better known as Discovery, which will be taking Node 2 (Harmony) up to the International Space Station. Today, we watched the spectacular launch from the bleachers at Banana River, roughly 3...

Guilty pleasures, ballroom dancing, and academic support

Posted on October 19, 2007
How can I not love this post? See here.

A shout-out to Paul Caron

Posted on October 19, 2007
Two of my guilty pleasures, Paul, are (1) reading blogs (including Tax Prof) and (2) my own obsessive hobby (see here). For other folks' guilty pleasures, see here and here.

What I would have posted on Brian Leiter's blog....

Posted on October 19, 2007
Brian thought that my comment on his post (here's his post) was off-topic. It's Brian's blog, so it's totally his call on what to post. But because I liked my own comment enough to save a copy, here it is:Brian, I agree w/you about Northwestern and its stellar performance in the social sciences...

Breathing a sigh of relief....

Posted on October 16, 2007
See here. I owe a debt of gratitude first, to my beloved, who saw me through the exam and gave me more support than anyone ever has a right to expect; then to Bar/BRI and to Strategies & Tactics for the MBE, which got me through the substantive and testing theory parts of the bar...

Does anyone happen to have a contact telephone number for Dell Computer's legal department?

Posted on October 15, 2007
Dell managed to ship my new laptop somewhere into the ether, and I've been trying to get a replacement computer shipped to me in an expedited manner. I have now spent over 90 minutes today trying to get someone with authority to ship my computer to the address that I had specified (our home address), rather than the mythical one to which Dell apparently shipped the first order...

A new market--USNWR reputation votes

Posted on October 09, 2007
Doug Berman posts an intriguing hypothetical over at the Law School Innovation Blog (here). He asks whether he should sell his USNWR vote on IP specialties (not his primary field) to the highest bidder. What makes Doug's post so lovely is how clearly he identifies USNWR's methodological missteps: one of the key players in criminal law & criminal justice gets a ballot to rank the top 15 intellectual property programs in the country...

JURIST -- Forum column today

Posted on October 08, 2007
Here's a link to the JURIST Forum piece I wrote over the weekend (here).

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