Friend, here's The Timesheet for September 2007

Do you find yourself signing contracts and clicking the "accept terms" button with a sigh of resignation—knowing that you'll never really understand the legalese you just agreed to? Do you ever wonder why the law insists upon using Latin in the twenty-first century? Are you afraid to ask what all the fuss is about torts?

With dazzling wit, Adam Freedman de-mystifies legal language, from its beguiling oxymorons (attractive nuisance) to its cautious redundancies (null and void). The Party of the First Part explores the origins of legalese, interprets obscure terms, and sheds some much-needed light on the Non-Intercourse Act and other bizarre laws. Jumping into the debate between Plain vs. Precision English, Freedman demonstrates that archaic phrases like "witnesseth" have no place in a post-jousting world. Lively and informative, The Party of the First Part provides unique insight into a language that we all must learn. William Safire of the New York Times praises The Party of the First Part as "a lighthearted but lucid explanation of legalese."

Adam has written the "Legal Lingo" column for the New York Law Journal Magazine since 2002, and was a litigator in New York City before joining a major investment bank, where he currently earns his living decoding policies and procedures into Plain English.

Adam also publishes The Party of the First Part blog, where he's currently accepting nominations for the Golden Gobbledygook Award, given for the best example of bad legalese. The term "gobbledygook" was coined by a Texas congressman, Henry Maverick. He meant for the word to evoke the sound that gobbling turkeys make.

Send the worst example of legalese you can lay your hands on to adamjfreedman[at]yahoo.com, and you can be the proud winner of the Golden Gobbledygook Award. Pop over to the blog for more information about the contest, which runs through September 14.

The Party of the First Part makes a great back-to-school gift for that special law student in your life.

Click here to read an excerpt from the book.

For more about legalese, check out "A Brief Look" in this month's Poeticus Lex column.

Often, part of our coaching work is to reframe what "no" means. For instance, saying no to additional work when your plate is already full to overflowing is actually saying yes to the question, "Shall I meet my current deadlines and deliver a good product?" Saying no to a client who's clearly going to be troublesome (perhaps expecting unreasonable results, challenging every item on a legitimate bill, or being just plain nasty) means saying yes to reserving your time and energy for clients you can help who will faciliate and appreciate that service. And saying no to work-related demands that burden personal time is critical for the selective disengagement that allows full professional engagement at the appropriate times.

The underlying step that makes this reframing possible is knowing what you want. These examples are fairly simple, but clients of course face more challenging situations, such as taking on time-consuming work that will be demanding and draining but will give the lawyer an opportunity to shine within the firm and with clients. When that's weighed against a long-awaited vacation or even serving more routine client needs, the lawyer needs to know where her priorities are given all of the circumstances. Billing heavily everyday for a month takes on different meanings at the beginning of a job, during an emergency situation, and during times of ordinary workflow. Knowing where to set the boundary is critical to knowing whether a request oversteps that boundary.

Are you facing a situation in which you should say no? What will you say yes to instead?

Julie Fleming Brown provides professional and personal coaching for lawyers on topics such as client and professional development, job searches, career transitions, and work/life balance. She is also certified to provide the DISC® assessment. Please visit http://www.LifeAtTheBar.com/ for more information and to arrange a complimentary coaching exploration session. To get your free Life at the Bar Survival Kit, go to http://www.lifeatthebar.com/MenuSignUp.htm

A couple of months ago, we added 37 new cards from Stu Rees to the Billable Hour Card Store, This, month, we've added 44(!) more.

Just about every lawyer can identify with Stu's take on the legacy of law school (left), while all of us with with kids can attest to the truth of his take on precocious children (right):

Like these cartoons? Send them to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.

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.

Timesheet readers get 15% off all licensing orders (use coupon code BILLHOUR). Click here for information on licensing "Crushing Student Debt", click here for information on licensing "Motion to Compel Answer", or visit www.Stus.com for more information on licensing one of the hundreds of images Stu offers.

In a recent post on his Web Ink Now blog, author and online marketing expert David Meerman Scott wrote about using humor in business to business communications. As Scott observed,"[Y]our buyers, no matter what sort of organization you work for, are people—real people with a sense of fun—not nameless, faceless, corporate drones. Sometimes a bit of the unusual and funny can work wonders." Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly, goes on to warn that "it's tricky to strike the right balance. And if you've never used humor before, you'll need to start small."

We know that law and lawyers are at least as funny as the B2B IT world. Whether you're thanking a colleague for a referral, or sending holiday cards to your clients' general counsel, The Billable Hour Card Store can help you strike the right humor balance. 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. If you take the time to write, you'll receive an Original Pocket Briefcase as our thank-you gift.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of a new greeting card line—our first line by a cartoonist who's not also a lawyer. Once you check out his work, though, you'll see that he's got a better grasp of many legal concepts than opposing counsel on some of your cases!

Dan specializes in "custom" cartoons and his services are available for any of your projects. Dan has more than 30 years of experience in the cartooning business. Many of his cartoons appear in the popular Chicken Soup For The Soul series of books including: Pet Lover's Soul, Christian Soul, Mother's Soul and Gardener's Soul. Dan's cartoons have also appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including Reader's Digest, Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, the Saturday Evening Post, Barron's Magazine and more.

Here are just a few of Dan's hilarious cartoons:

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.

We'll be featuring Dan's cartoons in each issue of The Timesheet.

To view Juris Comic, click here

Long before The Billable Hour Company came onto the legal gifts scene in November 2005, Lawrence Savell was tickling the ivories—and lawyers' funny bones—with his three holiday-themed CDs just for attorneys.

We're pleased to announce that all three of Savell's CDs—The Lawyer's Holiday Humor Album, Legal Holidaze and Merry Lexmas from the Lawtunes—are now available in our music department. The CDs are available individually as well as in our Holiday Humor Set. Pop on over to hear samples of such silly songs as "Santa v. Acme Sleigh," "Catchin' CLE" and "I got a Footnote in My Stocking."

Savell is joined on the three albums illusory band members Micah ("Courthouse Steps") Jagger on Lead Vocals, Oral Argument, Strutting Around and Shirt Removal; Nicholas ("Prosser on") Tortolli on Bass, Alto Fax, Photocopier, Invoice Review and Vocals); Maxwell ("Max") Billings on Electric Guitar, Electronic Discovery, Drafting, Wardrobe and Vocals; Smash ("Bones") Drummond on Drums/Percussion and Other Auditory Damage, Cellphone and Vocals); and Malcolm ("Mal") Practisse on Keyboards, Shredder, Excuses, Professional Liability Insurance and Vocals.

Savell's philosophy emphasizes that lawyers and other people really need to take the time to pursue their "after-hours" dreams, despite the increasing pressures, longer work days (and nights), and other factors that may make them think it is impossible—and no matter how unrealistic or unlikely realizing those dreams may be. In short, he's a man after our own hearts!

That Judge Smithson got hauled before the ACJC has become as big a story as his decision to spend eight additional hours a day of professional quality time with his spouse. The married people I've spoken with would never want to be in that position, much less encourage it: Busted, the myth of the "Hard day at work; where's my martini, Rob?"

"You don't deserve a martini, Marian. I saw you today. Get yourself a Tab."

Former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Alan B. Handler, a gentleman uniformly respected in our little community and chairman of the ACJC, defended its process and mission to squeeze out all the facts in the case. After all, this specific situation had never before surfaced. But what he said speaks worlds about committees in general.

"The committee has reached no judgment." And this: "The committee is, I must say, uncertain." And finally, "the committee was unwilling and unable to make a definitive finding."

Heck, anybody who's ever served, been in front of, or listened to a committee knows that.

Daniel J. Graziano Jr., Smithson's lawyer, characterized the ACJC-Smithson "chat" as a "star chamber proceeding," which is pretty rough language itself, something you'd expect to hear from, oh, I dunno, Bill Mathesius? Misused hyperbole both tarnishes the original and makes it harder for the next guy to use it. Throw in a couple of raised voices and fist-banging and you have what, a lynching?

There are lots of great lines about committees. If you're wont to say there's a germ of truth to them, you're employing grossly understated humor. Committees are a farce. People look silly sitting on them, and decisions they reach reflect it.

Committee: A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
~Fred Allen. 1894-1956

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee̶that will do them in.
~Bradley's Bromide

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.
~George F. Will, 1941-

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
~Sir Barnett Cocks, 1907-1989

There is no monument dedicated to the memory of a committee.
~Lester J. Pourciau

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
~Edward Shepherd Mead

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
~Robert Copeland

If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.
~Arthur Goldberg, 1908-1990

A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.
~Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915

One Graziano-Smithson argument was that letting the Missus off jury duty would itself look like favoritism, a comment that speaks worlds on how this key democratic freedom is embraced by us citizens. But per the committee, the average Joe would consider her service unusual and inappropriate. Maybe they are both saying the same thing: The poor lady was pretty darn unfortunate to have that man for a husband.

The ACJC, in a Handler letter to the judge, had some special words for the special nature of marriage: "Marital relationships, by definition, are significantly different from other relationships and engender associations of closeness and continuity."

About what you would expect from a committee-description of holy matrimony. It's great when folks say "by definition," which is easier than saying "in some cases, perhaps in the early years of the relationship or later on when everybody has argued every conceivable point of contention into an absolute standstill."

The psychology of group behavior is a fascinating subject when you're focused on mobs, jihadists, or upper-deck New York Yankee fans. But a bunch of well-dressed lawyers sipping bottled water and pondering the intricacies of the Code of Judicial Conduct? Uh, no?

I sympathize with Judge Smithson, who resisted appearing before the ACJC. Publicly, he claimed the appearance itself would cast him in a negative light. But we know what was really going on here: He didn't want to be bored to death.

Bob Pladek is the Special Sections Editor for New Jersey Lawyer. This article is reprinted with their permission, which wasn't overly begrudgingly given. Bob's views, thankfully, are entirely his own. Send a nice note to him at Robert.pladek@njlnews.com

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The trouble is not inside your head," she did explain
"You can get through your first year with very little pain"
She said "I'd like to help you keep your sanity maintained
There must be fifty ways to get through law school"

I don't usually go around giving free advice
But you say you've been in school a week and only have slept twice
So heed what I'm about to say 'cause it's worth double the price
There must be fifty ways to get through law school
Fifty ways to get through law school

Buy the Casenotes briefs, Chief
Read the Nutshell, Mel
No library, Larry
If you're gonna stay free
Hit the speed, Reid
Any time you feel the need
A little Prozac, Jack
And just lay back

Property is a cinch with your Legalines
Sum and Substance in Civ Pro can save you half the time
Go to Contracts once a week and never fall behind
There must be fifty ways to get through law school

Now son don't you know that life is more than Torts
Your future lies way beyond a dimly-lit court
So before the final lesson let us have a little snort
There must be at least fifty ways to get through law school
Fifty ways to get through law school

Buy the Casenotes briefs, Chief
Read the Nutshell, Mel
No library, Larry
If you're gonna stay free
Hit the speed, Reid
Any time you feel the need
A little Prozac, Jack
And just lay back

Jesting in somewhat the same sort of vein
May be the way that attorneys explain
Calling a work in voluminous sheaf
By the most inappropriate title of "brief."

An argument sometimes is complex as hell,
With subtleties on which attorneys must dwell,
But even if not, I am sad to report,
Lawyers infrequently cut ourselves short.

Give us a point in our favor, and then
We're sure to repeat it again and again,
Tweaking the language a bit, here and there,
Making our "brief" a redundant affair.

The tomes that result, which the judges must read,
Often are very slow going indeed,
With citations of cases in flowing cascade
That barely illumine the meager points made.

If brevity's really the true soul of wit,
Then this allegation we'd have to admit:
In light of our signature long-windedness,
Lawyers would seem to be half-wits, or less.

Viewing the mode of expression we use,
The verbiose tendency shown by our Muse,
An objective witness may sometimes be stirred
To wonder if lawyers are paid by the word.

*(To demonstrate what I decry in this verse,
This poem is hardly what one could call terse;
Seven full verses to have this reporter
Note that attorneys should try to write shorter!)

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.