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March 17, 2008
Secunda on Law Professor Lateraling
If you are interested in the topic of law professor lateraling, you've probably already seen Paul Secunda's series at Concurring Opinions. That series is worth checking out to see all of the comments. However, for your convenience, Paul has glued the series into a single PDF that includes some of the choicest comments in the footnotes. I believe that Paul's article is the most comprehensive discussion on the very mysterious topic of lateraling, so many thanks to Paul for trying to lift the veil. And congratulations to him on his successful move to a school dear to my heart!
Posted by Eric at 05:43 PM | Legal Education Industry , Life as a Law Professor | TrackBack
March 15, 2008
More Family Pix
After seeing this set, I bet you'll be ready to join the peace movement too. Sorry that Lisa didn't edit out the more revealing bathtub shots and the duplicates. Some bonus pictures of Dina.
Posted by Eric at 01:55 PM | Family & Friends | TrackBack
March 10, 2008
WBG Builders Using Lawyer Letters to Do Reputation Management--Why?
Today I received the following correspondence:
__
March 4, 2008
Via Regular and Certified Mail
Eric Goldman
Ericgoldman.org
Santa Clara University School of Law
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053
Via E-Mail
Eric Goldman
Ericgoldman.org
egoldman@gmail.com
Re: WBG Builders
Dear Sir or Madam:
This office represents WBG Builders. Attached please find a print-out from Ericgoldman.org which references WBG Builders. We ask that you kindly remove your reference to WBG Builders in your posting. Please note that the article to which you link no longer exists and/or does not mention WBG Builders.
Very truly yours,
Nash Law Firm LLC
Alan A. Reuter, Esquire
Enc.
___
See the original post in question about WBG Builders (with link fixed). Notice that this letter was sent on official law firm stationery by regular mail, certified mail and email--same content, received 3 times (all in the span of about 1 hour, as it turns out). I imagine many recipients would find repeated delivery of a letter like this intimidating and would happily comply to avoid further interactions with a lawyer.
Also interesting is that the letter requests that I fix a dead link by removing references to WBG Builders. Huh? Even if the link is dead, there's no need to change the text. And as it turns out, it was easy enough to fix the link.
Instead, this approach suggests to me that perhaps WBG Builders is trying to do some reputation management and may not want consumers to know that it might sue them for saying things it doesn't like. But absolutely consumers should know this in forming their opinions about WBG Builders, and any effort to scrub the Net of undesirable WBG Builder references is both distressing and doomed to fail.
Posted by Eric at 12:54 PM | Blogosphere Issues , Legal Industry | TrackBack
Armful of Love
Apologies for the beaming dad subtext of this post. It's been hard to get a nice photo of both kids at once, and impossible to get a good one of all three of us. For now, this is the best we could do:
You might call this a group hug or a Jacob sandwich, but I think that I have an armful of love.
Posted by Eric at 10:21 AM | Family & Friends | TrackBack
March 09, 2008
States Trying to Stimulate Demand for Hunting
From the NYT: There appears to be a downward shift in the demand curve for hunting. In 1975, there were over 19M+ hunters; in 2006, only 12.5M. This decrease might reflect widespread changes in consumer preferences, but some states are losing a little hunting permit fee revenue. For that reason and others, states believe it's their responsibility to stimulate demand for hunting. Among the initiatives:
* lowering the minimum hunting age (just like the tobacco companies
* "learn-to-hunt classes for single mothers"
* expanded state-sponsored trips for women, children under the age of 15 and disabled people
* state-sponsored youth hunting weekends
* "a 'Leave No Child Inside' initiative last year that encourages families and children to try fishing and hunting."
Did you notice a running theme? Just like the tobacco companies, states appear to be trying to hook the kids early.
Ironically, many of these states have shut down Internet hunting, which might have actually expanded the ranks of hunters. And it's hard to distinguish Internet hunting from the modern state of physical-space hunting, which as one hunter described, "the habit is to ride an all-terrain vehicle to a tree platform, pour out a bag of corn and sit waiting for the prey to show up."
Posted by Eric at 06:20 PM | Vegetarian | TrackBack