My first blog post at cuttingedgelaw.com

Just signed up at Cutting Edge Law, a really interesting-looking legal community. Here's my first blog post there.

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Today at Family Court, I found myself running out of patience with a client who was reluctant to accept the best settlement that I could negotiate under the circumstances. That may sound to many lawyers like an everyday occurrence, but for me it is a distress signal and wake-up call. I felt that I was doing my best, in the circumstances handed to me by "the system," and the client felt that "the system" was inherently skewed. The problem is that both of us were right. I was doing the best that I could with the options available to me, but the options which were available to me to present to the client were far more limited than I would have liked to offer. I wasn't conspiring against my client, but when my client complained that what was happening was not fair, the client wasn't completely wrong, either.

In Family Court, more than in any other forum, the "system" needs to maintain a sensitivity and flexibility that goes beyond sifting differing versions of the facts to reach a conclusion about what really happened. We need to go beyond who is right and who is wrong, beyond fact-finding and finger-pointing, to a view toward a solution that is best for all the individuals involved.

Twenty years ago, when Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" was published, everyone was talking about win-win thinking and about paradigm shifts, but now the topic seems so yesterday to most people that they will no longer listen. Unfortunately the need to change our thinking in the legal system has not gone away. Many of us are still thinking in terms of winners and losers, good guys and bad guys.

It has been over three years now since I attended a collaborative law training, and I have yet to handle a collaborative case because no one in my somewhat rural area is interested. It takes at least two to collaborate, and it takes a community to make real changes in the philosophy and attitude of the court system. None of us can do it alone, and trying to change the system alone is a surefire recipe for burnout: keep it up and you're toast. Only by working together on changing our goals, for our clients, for the system, for ourselves, can we achieve any deep or lasting change.

The FTC weighs in on virtual worlds

Virtual Worlds and Kids: the FTC advises parents on the potential risks

Reading an article by Nathaniel T. Noda

I'm just reading an article from the Sturm College of Law Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, Fall 2008 issue (you can "log in as guest"), entitled "When Holding On Means Letting Go: Why Fair Use Should Extend to Fan-Based Activities," by Nathaniel T. Noda, 5 U. Denver Sports & Ent. L.J. (2008)[26]. This one's a keeper.

My thanks to the "Fandom Lawyers" community at LiveJournal for pointing me to this one.

Clio

I'm taking a serious look at Clio and wondering if any other attorneys have any experiences to report about it. I never like to rely on the product website as my sole source of information about any product, especially something as sensitive as web-based law practice management. Thoughts?

Attorney marketing and online social networking

I've been recommending to others (including someone who is running for Family Court judge this year) that it's time for attorneys to start using Facebook and Twitter as part of our professional identities, so I guess it's time to put my identity where my mouth is and start using my Facebook and Twitter accounts accordingly. It's easier with Twitter to separate the personal and the professional because I already have two Twitter accounts, a personal one and a professional one. I only have the one Facebook account, and there's "fun" stuff there, too, not just my professional face. So, I'm thinking about how best to accomplish for myself what I have been recommending to others.

Too funny .....

Gotta love the idea of making a federal case out of iPhone fart applications.

Broadening the scope ....

I think I've been limiting myself too much with the "Second Person Legal" concept. I'm interested in a lot of interrelated techno-law/cyberlaw issues which go beyond just virtual worlds, so I haven't really used this blawg (or the WordPress version of the blawg, or the associated Ning). I'm going to broaden the scope of this and I'm working on a few more ideas, so .... hope to be back here with some of those ideas under development soon.