|
According to a USPS news release from
November 2006, the Postal Service
expected to deliver 20 billion letters,
packages and cards between Thanksgiving
and Christmas last year, with the
busiest mailing day expected to be
Monday, Dec. 18, when more than 280
million cards and letters would be
processed—more than twice the
average processed on any given day.
Total mail volume on Dec. 18 was
projected to rise to 900 million pieces
of mail, increased from 670 million
pieces on an average day. About 100
million first-class letters are
processed daily. That number increases
to about 150 million a day during the
holidays.
How can you make sure your do you
stand out from the clutter? Try
avoiding the "Holiday Season"
altogether, and sending Thanksgiving
cards instead.
What better way to thank your clients
for thier business and your referral
sources for their support than by
sending a card for Thanksgiving . . .
the holiday when we give thanks?
Since you can include your own
message in any of our greeting cards,
just about all of our humorous legal
cards can be sent at Thanksgiving
time. Of course, we offer non-legal
cards as well, including this
watercolor-style scene:
Suggested inside message: It takes
time and effort to grow a great
business relationship. I'm grateful
for the part you've played in
growing ours.
Happy Thanksgiving!
For those who prefer to send cards
that will arrive between Turkey Day
and Silent Night, we have a wide
variety of images to fit your needs.
New this year is Suzan Charlton's
Holiday Bonus
(pictured at the top of this issue),
while Stu's Merry Christmas (pictured
below) is a perenial favorite:
We also have a wide range of more
tradional Season's Greetings,
Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa
cards, including, but not limited to
[how's that for lawyering it up?]:
 
Bonus: you
can customize the text on the front
of these two cards, in addition to
including your personal message
inside!
 
In 2006, the USPS's mail-by date for
domestic first-class mail was
December 18—a week before
Christmas. Although we haven't seen
the USPS mail-by dates for this year,
you're probably safe leaving the same
one-week lead time. Just because
December 18 is more than two months
away doesn't mean you should wait for
the last minute, though: why not
place your holiday card order early,
and save the stress for making your
billable hour target before the ball
drops in Times Square?
If you're too swamped between now and
Thanksgiving to even think
about getting your greeting card list
together before the end of November,
consider going in the opposite
direction, and sending New Year's
cards instead. Here are just a few of
our New Year's greetings:
Another way to make your holiday card
special is to include a color
photo—whether of your
lawyers and staff or a local
snow-covered
landmark—inside the card.
The photo will be printed on the
card's inside left panel. This
feature is optional, and there is no
additional charge to include a photo.
We haven't forgotten the importance
of convenience during the busy run-up
to the holidays: you can elect to
have your boxed cards shipped to you,
or mailed individually directly to
the recipients on the date of your
choice. Your own return address
appears on cards mailed directly to
the recipient: in effect, you receive
free envelope imprinting. Addresses
can be uploaded from Microsoft
Outlook as well as other CRM
programs. The envelopes are stamped
(not run through a postage
meter)—just the way you'd
do it yourself.
Images ©Dan
Rosandich. All rights
reserved.
Like these cartoons? Send them to
friends, clients or colleagues on
greeting cards. To order, visit
The Billable Hour
Card Store.
To view Juris Comic,
click here
|
Guest
Humor Column: The Legal
Secretary's Twelve-Step
Recovery Program
|
1. We admitted we were legal
secretaries—that our lives
(a third of them, a least) were
completely dominated by the whims of
lawyers.
2. Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could make us
stop seeing every puddle on the
supermarket floor as a lawsuit
waiting to happen.
3. Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to coming up with
a polite but firm brushoff for
"friends" who ask us for legal
advice.
4. Made a searching and fearless
inventory of our understocked supply
rooms.
5. Admitted to our God, ourselves,
and our lawyers that once, 8 years
ago, we forgot to mail out a service
copy until the next day.
6. Were entirely ready to storm the
mail room in search of . . . just . .
. one . . . measly . . . Fedex pouch!
7. Humbly informed our lawyers that
they should forgive that mail-out
lapse because of the time we smoothed
things over with that irate judge who
called while they were out golfing.
8. Made a list of all the baby
lawyers we've worked for, and became
willing to make amends for every time
we've smirked at them behind their
backs.
9. Made direct amends to such baby
lawyers whenever possible, except
when to do so might dangerously
inflate an already near-explosive
ego.
10. Continued to take supply
inventories and to hoard a year's
worth of any vital office item that
is in perpetual shortage.
11. Sought through meditation and
introspection to improve our
conscious contact with normality as
we understand it, hoping only to be
able to converse with friends without
ever saying "enclosed please find" or
"assuming, arguendo."
12. Having had a spiritual awakening
to the fact that our career path has
precluded our being employable in any
other industry, we resolved to spread
cautionary tales to aspiring legal
secretaries far and wide.
Lawyer's Right Hand is the alter
ego of a Texas legal secretary who,
after 15 years in litigation, decided
that starting a blog was the ideal
way to vent her frustra-- er, share
her wisdom with her peers in the
field. She holds candidly forth on
career, excellence, work/life
balance, and split infinitives at
www.LawyersRightHand.com.
Special Feature:
Dear Professor Rosenstein
by Lawrence Savell
|
Dear Professor Rosenstein:
Let me begin by thanking you very
much for the insight, enthusiasm, and
energy you clearly put into your
teaching of Introductory Taxation
this semester. It was very obvious to
me that you enjoy this course, and
that you make an extra effort to
reach out to all the students in your
class, to ensure that they understand
the concepts being presented.
I am looking ahead with a
considerable degree of mixed feelings
to graduation next week. While it
would be a relief to have this
three-year and six-digit odyssey
behind me, I am a bit apprehensive of
the next turns of the road: the bar
exam and, finally, actual law
practice. I do feel that the Law
School has prepared me well for both
these challenges, although I suspect
perhaps more completely for the
former than the latter.
Like many of my classmates who
desired to pursue such a path, I was
thankfully successful in landing a
coveted associate position at a
prominent law firm. I appreciate that
the prestige and reputation of the
Law School significantly helped make
it possible for my efforts to
translate to such a job, which might
during the course of my projected
life span actually allow me to pay
off at least the majority of my
student loans.
From growing up watching rerun
episodes of Perry Mason,
spending a couple of summers at firms
doing primarily litigation work and,
perhaps most significant, being told
throughout my life that I can be
difficult to get along with, I plan
to be a litigator. Nevertheless, I
thought it useful to be exposed to a
broad variety of legal disciplines,
which is why I picked for my last
four credits your Introductory
Taxation course. Given that purpose,
I did think it prudent to take the
class on a pass-fail basis.
I concede and apologize for the fact
that I inordinately focused my
efforts this semester on the courses
and activities that most directly
relate to the work I plan to do, in
particular the moot court competition
and the law clinic. And I also
confess that I did allocate my
energies and time more to those
courses that I was taking for a
letter grade, although I was
convinced that, after seven years of
college and grad school, I knew what
I needed to do and what kind of exam
essays I needed to write to
comfortably earn that critical "P."
All of this had the unfortunate
result of my not always being
prepared for your class, and for
actually missing class on far too
many occasions.
What I obviously regret most was
missing your last week of classes,
including the class in which you
apparently advised that the final
exam, which was placed before me over
an hour ago and remains untouched,
would be not an essay exam, but a
computation exam requiring specific
numerical calculations with
particular results.
I have often heard people speak or
write of time standing still, but I
have never experienced or fully
understood that concept until this
moment. But I am experiencing and
understanding it incredibly well now.
As I look around this massive exam
room (temporarily renamed during
testing periods to emphasize it is no
longer a classroom where knowledge
could be obtained), with its
cathedral-like ceilings and windows,
I see scores of my classmates
scribbling furiously with their
originally sharpened pencils and
pounding relentlessly the keys of
their trusty calculators.
Mine is the only head that is not
looking down.
Knowing that passing this course
would provide the last credits I
needed for what I believed to be the
technicality of graduation, I had
prepared for it with no less (and
arguably even a bit more) rigor than
I had for other classes I have taken
with such a grading option. I was
prepared to discuss eloquently the
nature of tax law, and the positive
and critical public and social
policies that often (but not always,
regrettably) underlie it. For each of
the concepts you taught, I had come
up with what I thought were
compelling examples of the arguments
and implications on both sides, and
airtight analysis to support the
conclusions I had reached about them.
But these efforts are of no moment
now. No examples, reasoning, or
creativity can guide my pen (in my
ignorance, I didn't even bring a
pencil) to generate the supportive
calculations and magical final
numbers you seek. I am at sea, with
(pursuant to your direction, also
apparently issued during those last
classes, and abruptly enforced upon
my arrival in this room) no treatise,
outline (original or commercial), or
notebook with which to paddle to
safety.
I hear nothing except the sound of my
own breathing.
And so I am doing the only thing I
can do: I am filling my exam book
with this desperate, and knowingly
futile, plea for help.
I have no illusions that you will
help me. Preparation is (usually)
rewarded with success, and failure to
prepare adequately is (usually) met
with the array of sanctions designed
to deter such behavior from occurring
again in those that are properly
fearful.
I cannot begin to imagine (although,
of course, I am) how my family, and
my friends, will react to my getting
a failing grade and not graduating.
I've recklessly let those who care
about me down—those who
have sacrificed to give me
opportunities that they were not
given, those who encouraged me and
who looked forward to rejoicing in my
having succeeded. And even if they
are charitable, I have no delusions
that my law firm (or any law firm)
would be.
How could I have been so stupid? I
think of the fallen trapeze artist in
the Judy Collins song, "Send in the
Clowns," and ask myself how I could
have lost my balance this late in my
academic career, literally when the
bar is in sight.
Finally, I do thank you for reading
this, if indeed you have (surely many
in your position would have stopped
and slapped on the "F" pages ago).
I'm not sure I could have made it
through these four hours without
writing something, without being able
to concentrate on something other
than trying to work up the courage to
leave this room early, perhaps four
hours early.
I suspect that this letter (or
whatever it is; it surely is not the
answers to the questions you have
asked) at this point may be more for
me an exercise in self-flagellation
and self-analysis than it will be for
you in making any decision other than
the expected one. But at least my
exam booklet is not blank. I can for
the moment join my classmates who are
now rising to hand in their
calculation-filled volumes, all of
whom appear to be smiling, presumably
through some combination of glee and
relief. I obviously feel neither. I
feel only emptiness.
Sincerely yours,
Nicholas Bennett
Dear Mr. Bennett:
This is the first occasion in my 45
years of teaching that I have
returned an exam booklet to a
student, but I thought it necessary
and appropriate to respond to your
words directly and in kind.
Obviously, as a teacher, I am
dismayed that you did not devote the
necessary efforts to my class. No
professor wants to acknowledge that a
student has been a failure in his or
her course, because, if even to a
small degree, it means the teacher
has also failed. But students do
fail, and teachers do issue failing
grades, no matter how reluctantly.
I am not completely unsympathetic to
your situation. I have to confess
that, even to this day, and although
there is no personal historical basis
for it, I occasionally (and usually
during particularly stressful
periods) have the recurrent and still
horrific nightmare in which I find
myself in a final exam for which I am
totally unprepared. Perhaps all
lawyers do.
As you may or may not know, this was
also my last class at the Law School.
Last December, after 52 years of
marriage, my beloved wife, Faith,
passed away. I have tried to carry on
the routines of my life, in
particular the teaching that has for
so long given me so much pleasure and
satisfaction, but I have found that
it is impossible to experience those
feelings without her.
When I first took this position, my
wife, a very charitable and forgiving
person, asked me to make her a
promise: that I would never fail a
student. And, frankly, before this
semester, there was never really a
situation where I had to test the
resolve of that oath. But obviously
there is now.
But there are many oaths in my life.
Another is the oath to maintain the
standards and principles upon which
this institution and others like it
are built, and by which students as
well as faculty strive to conform
their behavior. I take these
requirements very seriously, as we
should.
Thus, I cannot simply and offhandedly
say, "Oh, what the heck!" But perhaps
the analysis should not stop there.
I do believe you have done a degree
of preparation for this exam,
although obviously you have not done
enough. In terms of its relation to
the correct responses, your answer
booklet unavoidably warrants a
failing grade.
But you have taken this opportunity
to assess and discuss a variety of
other matters. Although they bear no
reasonable relation to Introductory
Taxation, they (albeit belatedly)
reflect your recognition and
understanding of the need for proper
preparation and diligence, the
responsibilities inherent when others
depend on you, and the value of
balancing competing demands. You echo
feelings of despair that countless
clients who find themselves in
apparently hopeless situations
experience, until they are comforted
by the support of knowledgeable and
reliable counsel on and at their
side. And you present your sentiments
in a reasoned and compelling way.
I have always felt that those who
want to be litigators should, as part
of their training, have their own
deposition taken, so they can feel
firsthand the terror that a
first-time witness experiences. Those
who plan to be criminal defense
counsel should spend a few hours
being "processed" in the criminal
justice system, so that they can gain
a modicum of understanding of what
their clients are going through.
As you may be aware, during my career
I have, in addition to this course,
also taught a variety of small-group
practical and practice-oriented
seminars, on such subjects as Legal
Negotiation, Legal Ethics, Lawyers
and Their Clients, Equity, and
Remedies. It could be argued that you
have demonstrated that you have
learned much of what I have attempted
to convey in these seminars, although
of course you have technically never
taken them. And so, with perhaps a
generous helping of logical
extrapolation, I can justify viewing
your exam as meeting the requirements
by which I could have issued a
passing grade in a couple of those
two-credit courses.
So, following that reasoning, I
believe I can, in good conscience,
essentially transfer these credits
and pass you in this class.
But please do not consider this a
free ride. I strongly hope you will
appreciate it as one who suffers a
sudden but thankfully transitory
chest pain heeds it as a fortuitous
warning sign, and does everything in
his power to prevent himself from
experiencing such terror again. Your
clients and your colleagues will be
relying on you, and you cannot let
them, or yourself, down again.
You cite songs; I cite movies. I find
myself watching a lot of them lately,
and what comes to mind is the scene
in Wall Street where Hal
Holbrook's fatherly character advises
the about-to-be-arrested young
hotshot played by Charlie Sheen: "Man
looks in the abyss, there's nothing
staring back at him. At that moment,
man finds his character. And that is
what keeps him out of the abyss."
Stay out of the abyss.
And perhaps down the road, when you
are a senior partner or a general
counsel (or even a law professor),
and a young underling messes up, you
will give him or her similar
heartfelt advice and a similar second
chance.
That's all I wanted to say. Please
read these words carefully (as I
suspect you have), and perhaps read
them a second time. Then, find a nice
open space away from other
combustible materials and burn this
booklet, so that the only record of
its contents will be in your and my
memory.
And never forget them.
Have a great career, and
congratulations on your upcoming
graduation.
Sincerely yours,
Professor Simon Rosenstein
Lawrence Savell is the the
lyrical lawyer behind
The Lawyer's Holiday Humor Album,
Legal Holidaze and
Merry Lexmas from the Lawtunes,
which are available in our
music department either
individually or as part of our
Holiday Humor Set. Savell is also
a partner at Chadbourne & Parke
LLP, where he has nearly 25 years of
broad commercial and civil litigation
experience, with a concentration in
product liability and media law
defense and counseling.
This article has appeared in
numerous legal publications,
including Washington Lawyer, New
Jersey Lawyer, the Alaska Bar Rag,
the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin,
Arizona Attorney, the Milwaukee Bar
Association Messenger, the Michigan
Bar Journal, the CBA Report
(Cincinnati Bar Association),
Nebraska Lawyer, Wyoming Lawyer, The
Docket (Denver Bar Association) and
Bench & Bar of Minnesota.
Song
of the Month: The Jury Sleeps
Upright
by The Bar & Grill
Singers
|
![image]()  .
Available on
Grilling Me Softly
In the courtroom, the quiet
courtroom
The lawyers speak today
As they mention their grand
intentions
The jury slips away
Hear the witness, the expert
witness
He's talking for a fee
See the lawyers, the judge and
jurors
They're drifting off to sleep
I'm awake! I'm awake! I'm the only
one awake!
Hush, please whisper so you won't
disturb
This quiet, peaceful sight
Look around you don't make a sound
'cause
The jury sleeps upright
I'm awake! I'm awake! I'm the only
one awake!
Just one of the hilarious songs
on
Poeticus Lex:
Temporal Insanity
by Fred C. Russcol, Esq.
|
When lawyers to the bench
ascend,
Prior attitudes will end;
As if they have been born anew,
They get a different point of view.
Judges want to push each case,
Move forward at a frenzied
pace,
While lawyers' tactics sometimes
need
A slower litigation speed;
Like cheese or wine or meat that
cures,
A case improves as it matures.
Opposing counsel will decry
Adjournments for the other guy.
(Knowing well that, other days,
They'll be the ones who seek delays.)
In "Bleak House," the sad Dickens
tale,
The Jarndyce case moved like
a snail;
Generations rose and died,
But the suit would not subside;
Some lawyers now may feel
distaste
At that action's undue haste.
Time flies, in most human
endeavor,
But lawsuits seem to go on
forever;
If all lawyers were put end to
end,
No matter how far they would
extend
In one lengthy, loud extrusion,
They still would never reach a
conclusion.
Fred C. Russcol, Esq. is Of
Counsel to Castro & Remer, P.C.
in White Plains, New York. This poem
was originally printed in the
Westchester Bar Journal and is
reprinted with the permission of the
Westchester County Bar
Association.
|
