Friend, here's The Timesheet for June 2008

Don't worry, we've got you covered on both scores. Scroll down to take a look at just a few of our greeting cards especially for paralegals. To view all of our paralegal cards, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.

And, even though we don't live in a Ward, June, Beaver and Wally world, you can make sure that your father knows best with our Father's Day special:

All too often, we (and I include myself) hear the "beep" or feel the vibration and pounce immediately, even in the middle of a sentence—our own or someone else’s. And I’ve seen (and though I’d prefer not to admit it, experienced) the discomfort that can occur when someone knows there’s an email waiting but doesn’t pounce. The ticks, the nervousness. It’s almost pathological sometimes.

Recently, I decided to drive for a business trip rather than fly, and for safety’s sake, I didn’t want to be tempted to look at my BlackBerry everytime an email came in. So I set the profile to ring for phone calls only, and to be silent otherwise. I drove almost 150 miles before I had to stop for gas, and I checked the BlackBerry then. I had about 40 messages, none of them urgent. And I had a strange feeling that I subsequently identified as peace. Peace! No irritating noises, no demands, no irrelevant press releases. It was a good change.

That was a month ago, and I’ve continued to keep my BlackBerry on "phone only." If I’m expecting something urgent, I ask for a phone call rather than an email, and it’s been truly instructive to discover how much better conversations are when I’m not wondering about the email I just heard arriving. And the truth is, I have yet to miss anything important as a result of this practice.

Try it. Just for today. You can change back tomorrow if you like. I predict you won’t want to, and I predict you’ll be more present to your work, the people you’re with, even your own relaxation. And in turn, you’ll be more productive and more creative.

Not a bad return on eliminating an irritant, is it?

Julie Fleming Brown, J.D., A.C.C. provides attorney development coaching and consulting to law firm associates and partners, focusing on topics such as leadership, client, and professional development; career strategy; and work/life integration. A certified leadership coach (Georgetown University), Julie publishes the weekly email newsletter Leadership Matters for Lawyers and posts often on the Life at the Bar Blog. Learn more at www.LifeAtTheBar.com or by contacting Julie by telephone at 800.758.6214 or by email to jfb@lifeatthebar.com.

©Stu Rees. All rights reserved.

Did you Know that Stu also licenses his artwork for use in newsletters, presentations, print publications and on websites? He even offers special rates for student and teacher use.

You can also purchase original artwork and custom prints (framed or unframed) from Stu.

Timesheet readers get 15% off all licensing orders, original artwork and custom prints (use coupon code BILLHOUR). Click here for information on licensing or purchasing "Fantastic Golfer" or one of the hundreds of other images Stu offers. For more information on original artwork and custom prints, click here.

We particularly like the first card, which can do double duty for Father's Day and Paralegal Day/Paralegal Week.

We also carry cards for court reporters and judges. Because we know you're busy, you can find our cards categorized by intended recipient under "Especially For" on the left side of the card store's main page.

If you have a story about how you use TBH greeting cards, we'd love to hear from you: send your story to us at info@TheBillableHour.com. Tell us what card you use; who you send it to; what message appears inside the card; whether you take advantage of our optional free personalization features (do you upload your signature/logo? Do you upload a photo to be printed on the inside left panel?); whether you have your cards sent directly to the recipients or shipped to you; whether you have uploaded your contacts directly into your cardstore account to make sending cards even easier; and the reaction you've received from recipients.

©Dan Rosandich. All rights reserved.

Like this cartoon? Send it to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.

To watch more of the funniest law-related videos from all over the web, join us at The Video Venue!

At first, Popular Names developed informally, by consensus of politicians, journalists, and assorted pundits. Nobody officially bestowed them. Beginning in the early twentieth century, Congress realized that they could expedite, and control, the process by inserting official Short Titles right into the text of statutes. The Short Titles were meant to be instantly "Popular."

The use of Short Titles has been traced back as far as an agricultural bill of 1916 that had the audacity to call itself the Federal Farm Loan Act. Short Titles, however, did not really take off until the New Deal, when a mass of complex legislation suddenly demanded some very clever packaging. This was the era of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, and the granddaddy of them all, the Social Security Act, a name that is considerably easier to remember than the Long Title:

An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.

A certain enforced blandness is the general rule with legislation. Congress even manages to drain the excitement out of cars, trucks, and trains by their deft use of the phrase Surface Transportation. In Britain, when the government acted to crack down on marauding bands of soccer hooligans, Parliament reduced the whole unpleasantness of the subject into a single throat-clearing parenthetical: The Football (Disorder) Act 2000.

Whenever possible, lawmakers strive to give statutes names that people cannot disagree with, such as the Clean Air Act, the Animal Welfare Act, and the Child Protection Act, to name just a few. Who could be against those things? British parliamentarians employ the same technique, as can be seen in the unassailable Equality Act of 2004—although one wonders what took them so long to get around to that one. Excerpted from the book The Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese by Adam Freedman. ©2007 by Adam Freedman. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, L.L.C.

click here to enlarge (large file; please be patient)

©Suzan Charlton. All rights reserved.