Ohh baby baby ...

If you follow celebrity news you know that Beyonce and Jay-Z have a baby.
They named the baby Blue Ivy.
Now I knew a guy named Blue and I've heard of women named Ivy so as celebrity baby names go it's not so bad. It's kind of catchy. You know. . . I think Blue Ivy would make a great product name!
And so do Beyonce and Jay-Z. That's why they registered the name as a trademark.
They are the third to do so by the way. Two others tried registering the name just after the baby was born but the applications were rejected. This one will probably go through.

I haven't looked up the application but I read that it is for perfumes and scents.
wait... what?
Do you really want to smell like a baby? Now I don't have any kids of my own but my brother has six and I can tell you most of the time babies don't smell that great.
Personally I'd have gone with a line of baby clothing, but hey, I'm not the one with the multi-million dollar portfolio.
And I'd never name a baby Blue Ivy.

So if you have a baby, before you pooh pooh any weird name suggestions, ask yourself if you want to make it a trademark. Will it be distinctive enough?
Maybe Rob Morrow should open a line of training pants named for his daughter Tu (yes, her name is Tu Morrow)

START THE YEAR OFF RIGHT

I've been a very bad blogger. It's difficult to make meaningful blog posts about interesting things in the law because to write something I feel I have to research it thoroughly so I don't pass any misinformation.

That means a single page post may take 3 hours of research and another hour of writing to get the wording clear and accurate. I need to allow myself to be a little more sloppy - or a little more superficial.

In either case I will be blogging more this year and will be talking about all sorts of things that may or may not be related to the business. I have to make it free-form so that I don't tie my own hands doing research and in the end writing nothing because I can't find the time.

So my first off-topic post is my bucket list.

I read a great bit of advice recently: make a bucket list, and when you accomplish one thing add a new goal. You will never finish your list, but that's the point.

Also, give yourself deadlines - and not literally as in most bucket lists.

I'm starting here with things to accomplish this year.

1. Get published

This doesn't have to be big. I've been published before, but it was a while ago and I should really do it more. This means to me that some other entity over which I have no control, will put my words in print - on paper. It doesn't have to be paid. If the Washington Post publishes a letter to the editor that counts.

2. Get paid to speak publicly.

The nature of the payment doesn't matter. If someone covers my dinner that's good enough. Of course I get paid to talk in court all the time but for this goal it has to be something outside the context of a litigation. Either for entertainment or educational purpose rather than advocacy.

3. Come up with more things for the bucket list.

SERVE THE BREAD FIRST

This is an old post I wrote back in October but never uploaded.

That document review project I was on lasted only a month for me, and not much longer anyone else. The multi-billion dollar corporate merger it involved was cancelled by the DOJ as a trust violation.

No big deal. I got some more temp work almost immediately and have had my own cases pick up. I even had a trial in December, but more on that later.

I learned something very important on that project: something every lawyer should know.

So here is the big lesson I learned

Serve the bread first!

I’ve been working almost every day on this document review project. I’ve learned something valuable: start with the bread.

The place I’m working provides lunch. They lay out the food on these lined up tables and everyone walks from one end to the other in 2 lines, one on each side of the table, cafeteria style.

The other day they served build-your-own barbecue pork and chicken sandwiches, the food kept in those aluminum sterno-warmed serving trays. We all lined up to get lunch and at the starting edge of the table were the plates and flatware. Then there were trays with steamed vegetables. A good sign. There were then home-style fries and fried chicken, and then the delicious pulled pork and pulled chicken, then the cole slaw and lastly the bread.

Sounds delicious, right? Well it was. But did you notice the problem? If you’re assembling a barbecue pork sandwich as you walk along the table, what do you do with the meat when you come to it? Ideally you’d open up your bread and slap it on, but hold up. You don’t have any bread. It’s way at the end of the table. People ended up running up to the other end of the table to get a roll then running back hoping the line didn’t push ahead and they could still get back to the meat before the person behind them figured out what was happening. An ugly lump in the line ensued - or people settled for a plate-full of sloppy shredded meat.

So if you’re a caterer, and you’re serving a crowd build-your-own sandwiches, serve the bread first.

Of course there is a greater lesson to be learned here and that’s what I’m getting to now. Like a good server, I’ve left the meat of my discussion for last.

The sandwich line is an example of how lawyers are not experts at efficiency. There are experts at efficiency, but they don’t come out of law schools.

I’m a lawyer. I know the law. I like to read cases and rules and regulations. I like to see how a pattern of facts matches up to a statute. I’ve never built a car on an assembly line. I wouldn’t know what parts to start with. If I had to build a car on an assembly line I’d hire an expert at line-efficiency to work out the best way to get the car built with the least amount of time spent by line workers standing around waiting for parts.

Most lawyers don’t seem to think this way though. I think they get too focused on the legal twists that they are good at they neglect addressing the things they aren’t good at.

At the place I’m doing document review, there are somewhere around 200 contract attorneys (temps) reviewing documents - only most of the time we don’t have documents to review. We wait. We get paid to wait, to be here when the documents do come, but most of the time we wait.

Over us are maybe 6 staff attorneys, and above them one associate attorney. Their job is taking the documents that have been reviewed by a previous law firm for relevance and sorting them into batches to deliver to us to review for privilege. (if you don’t know what that means don’t worry, it’s not relevant).

Anyone with a manufacturing background will see the problem. There’s a 6-person bottle-neck. Those 6 people get to make the decisions about how we will address issues and to make on-the-spot decisions when the unexpected arises. They also form a review layer to look at what we’ve done and make sure things are working as they should. The process of batching and distributing should not also be stuck with them. Perhaps another level of temp attorneys could be hired to do that part of their job. The point is, we’re all standing round trying to make a sandwich and the firm is putting the bread at the far end of the table.

If I ever find myself as counsel on a large case that requires doc review, I will also spend a little extra for an efficiency expert instead of paying a bunch of lawyers to wait around.

contact work at last

At the beginning of this year I signed up to a long list of "contract" attorney firms.

That's basically a temp agency but for attorneys.

At first there was nothing, then I got some really good research and writing projects for a very friendly small firm in Dupont Circle. It was like I was part of the firm, going in every day, sitting at the office desk and working my hours, going home, getting a paycheck on Friday.

Then the cases I was on closed. Sure, there were projects that came and went from them after, but very short things, couple days at most here and there. Great people so I'm happy to keep doing work for them whenever they need the help.

But that's not typical of contract work. Mostly it is document review.

So after seven months on the rolls, another contract firm contacted me in a rush to fill some document review slots. Tomorrow I will begin a three month stint in document review. I don't really know what to expect but given the economy and some big expenses coming up for my home, at least the money is good.

Location, Location, Location - and REGISTER!

If you own real estate in Maryland to rent out, read your county code requirements.

Tom Baranowsky did not, or he thought he'd save some money by not registering his rental condo in Anne Arundel County. It ended up costing him quite a bit in the long run.

Tom was not able to evict his tenant when she did not pay rent.

To register, and get a license to operate a multi-family dwelling, such as Tom's in Anne Arundel County, means to have the place inspected for safety and habitability by the county.

Technically, Tom had gotten such a license, but these are not permanent things. His had expired in 2005. The county contacted him thereafter (on 5 separate occasions) asking him to renew in order to be able to operate, but he did not attempt to renew until May 21 2009.

But on March 12, 2009, he had rented the property to Katie McDaniel.

Katie almost immediately discovered a short in the fuse box. She tried to get Tom to fix it. She called the fire department and they told her to move out as it was unsafe - but Katie had no place to go. There were also missing window locks and broken windows, and the kitchen countertop was never secured to the cabinets. Definitely unsafe for Katie and her young daughter.

In April a county inspector told Tom of those and numerous other safety violations. The same day of the inspection Tom filed suit to evict Katie because she had not paid rent for April 12 - May 12.

While the district court found for Tom, he lost on appeal.

The Court of Appeals ruled May 4 2011 that failure to license under the county rules undermines his legal status as landlord and thus denies him access to the expedited eviction process of the law.

He should have lost on the eviction case and the case was remanded to deal with the rent.

The moral is, check the local codes and get whatever licenses you need. It may cost a little now, but better than costing a lot later.

Would Solomon have Split the Dog in Half?

(this is something I posted on another forum in August that I'm reposting here in case it gets deleted there)

Fortunately we don’t have to know because in today’s legal arena you can split time. That’s what Judge Graydon S. McKee III (retired), sitting on the Circuit Court for Calvert County, has recently done.One of the difficult issues in any divorce is how to split up the property. It is almost always better to come to an agreement for the court to approve. If the parties don’t agree on how to divide a piece of marital property, then the court usually orders the property sold and the proceeds split equitably. What about the family dog?In Maryland, pets are considered property. If the parties can’t agree who gets to keep the pet, the court can order it sold and the money split. The reality is that people don’t consider their pets just like other property. In the recent case of Meyers v. Meyers, Judge McKee did not think that was a good solution, so in an unprecedented move he ordered Craig Meyers have possession of the dog 6 months out of the year and Gayle Meyers have possession the other 6 months.This was a possibly risky move in a precarious area of the law. Pets are more and more being considered part of the family, but the law still considers them property. If this case were to be appealed the decision could easily be thrown out. Then again, if it were a part of a negotiated separation agreement it would not. That is more reason why coming to an agreement with each other is better than having a decision thrust on you by the court. Not every judge will be as innovative as Judge McKee.

The Cruelty of a Sexually Transmitted Disease

Divorce is a bit difficult in Maryland. You can't just say "we no longer get along - we have irreconcilable differences."

You can do that. There is "no-fault divorce" in Maryland, but to qualify you have to mutually agree to separate and then you have to wait for a full year before you can file your complaint for divorce.

If you have grounds though, like adultery or extreme cruelty, you don't have to wait.

Extreme cruelty may not be what you think it is though. Sure, the stereotype abused spouse with bruises and missing teeth is the victim of extreme cruelty, but did you know you could be the victim of extreme cruelty without a finger being raised against you?

You could instead have a disease.

In Maryland, if your spouse was infected with an STD and knew it, and slept with you anyway, without telling you about the STD, that is extreme cruelty.

And why not?

It shows an utter disrespect for your autonomy and your health.

You need a grounds for divorce in Maryland. An STD can be grounds.