Sometimes, the jailhouse lawyer was in fact at one time a lawyer.  In other cases, the jailhouse lawyer has studied law or been through the system so many times, he or she just knows more than the rest.  The jailhouse lawyer can be fairly intelligent and has virtually all the time in the world to commit to studying a legal issue.  If properly educated and given adequate resources, a jailhouse lawyer might give you a real run for your money, or at least ask you questions you can’t answer right away.

The New York Times quotes Mr. Rosenberg as saying something to the effect of, “Anyone who wants to become a lawyer, should spend some time in jail.”

It’s an interesting thought, that could mean a variety of things.

Does it mean that jail is like a law school?

Or, does it mean that you aren’t really qualified to practice law until you’ve walked a mile in a prisoner’s shoes?

How literal is the comment—spend a night in jail or spend more time working with prisoners at a jail?

Why does it strike me with such curiousity?

Perhaps because I have actually toured detention centers and been so curious about what it must feel like to be caged…to know what life in there is really like…

Or perhaps I just question whether people working in the legal field and the courts can really understand what prison is like, when most have spent hardly any time in our detention facilities.  I mean, it’s not exactly part of the on-the-job training, and it certainly is not a part of law school or most other formal education.  I understand that some criminal justice education involves tours of prisons.

What do Mr. Rosenberg’s words mean to you?

Las Vegas is a horrendously dry place.  It’s oft-compared to being baked alive in a convection oven, at least when summer rolls around.  This unique environment leads to dry skin.  Skin so dry you can’t keep it moist, even with a generous slathering of lotion every few hours.

Lawyers work with a lot of paper.  It’s the nature of the job.  Reading, drafting, pushing papers around your desk like George Constanza, it just comes with the territory.  Unless you’re one of those paperless firms, straining its worker bees’ compound eyes staring at computer screens all day.  Your eyes strain from the effort at focusing, because a computer screen is just a flashing light and one shouldn’t stare into flashing lights for long periods of time, but I digress….

The dry skin, the large volumes of paper, the need to do things fast, it’s the trifecta for paper cuts.  Paper cuts in awkward places, impossible to place a bandaid on without retarding your efficiency, leaving little blood streaks on your work, justifying the use of cliches like “my BLOOD, sweat and tears” in open court.

How can a lawyer avoid these damned papercuts in Las Vegas?  That’s where secretarial staff comes in.  Offload the paper to the secretary.  Stuffing envelopes creases your fingers? Why, that’s perfect secretarial work.

So the next time you run into your staff, thank them.  They’re your first line of defense against paper cuts.  Oh, and don’t forget to add bandaids to the supply order.

You know you’ll need them.     

Ba Ba Reeba has both a bar and restaurant component offering tapas and a full range of beer, wine and liquor.  It is located on the Strip in the Fashion Show Mall, close to the newest casinos– Wynn, Encore, Palazzo– and many others still under construction.

Pros:

Indoor and outdoor seating available

Patio extends out to the Strip and offers high visibility (if you’re waiting for someone for example) with low interference (if you don’t want exhaust fumes or pandering with your drinks)

Sangria by the pitcher that tastes like they care

Small portions

Not very noisy

Trendy, clean design

Cons:

Pricey (think at least $25 a person for drinks and appetizers)

Parking hassles (Best parking is reached through the Mall, which closes long before the restaurant, and can be hard to come by)

Where’s the valet?

Cell phone dead zone

Little or no entertainment

Overall Recommendation:  Just a plain old, “Recommended”

However, in a world where men carry diseases but are unlikely to be tested for them, and women are not only regularly tested but in some cases required to be tested for the diseases, who is the “dirty” one?  In a world where the fastest growing demographic worldwide for new HIV infections is heterosexual women of color—frequently women who believe that they are carrying on a monogamous relationship, who is immoral?

And why is it that there is such an emphasis on testing women, but no similar push to test men? 

If I were an optimistic person, I would argue that women are tested because women suffer the symptoms of communicable diseases more severely than men.  In fact, some communicable diseases cause no known symptoms or adverse effects in men at all.  By testing women, you get right to the person who most needs treatment.

Being a cynical person, however, I tend to think that the medical community and the government has failed us when it comes to researching and treating the role of men as vectors for disease.  In American society, women continue to bear the brunt of the burden when it come to healthcare.  Women are responsible for contraception, for protecting the family from communicable diseases, for organizing and paying for healthcare for the family.   When healthcare isn’t affordable, it’s women and children that go without.  Once again, women are bearing the responsibility for stemming the spread of communicable diseases.

Does this really make sense though?  One man can infect many, many people with a communicable disease.  In fact,  women are eight times more likely than men to contract HIV during unprotected heterosexual sex.  Some studies have even suggested that men only have 1% chance in any unprotected sexual encounter of contracting HIV from an infected woman.  If you tested and treated one man, educating him about spreading communicable disease, wouldn’t you statistically-speaking be saving many women and men from contracting the disease?

Perhaps an analogy is in order.  When fishermen fish for crabs, they usually throw most or all of the females back into the water.  The wisdom is that one male crab can impregnate many female crabs, but one female crab can only reproduce so many times in a season.

The government doesn’t much care for my logic though.  The lastest trend in HIV legislation is mandatory HIV testing of pregnant women.  In Nevada, recent legislation requires medical facilities to offer HIV testing to all pregnant women.  If the pregnant woman refuses, then the medical facility is required to test the child within a certain amount of time after birth.  In effect, the law mandates testing of pregnant women–because it is near impossible for a child to be born HIV positive if its mother is HIV negative.

Mandatory HIV testing has been hailed as a positive means of preventing cases of pediatric AIDS.  Yet, it is also a fairly offensive invasion of a woman’s privacy.  The State has determined that its interest in preventing pediatric AIDS outweighs the interest of women in keeping their health issues private.  In states where anonymous testing for communicable diseases is not available, such as Nevada, it is a particularly egregious invasion of privacy, which only  targets women.

Nevada is not alone in adopting mandatory HIV testing of pregnant women.  Many other states have passed similar legislation, and Nevada was actually late in the game.

I raise mandatory testing to demonstrate a point:

Women are the focus of efforts to test and treat communicable diseases and therefore deal with the consequences of testing and treatment to a greater degree than men.  Yet, it seems that testing and treating more men would actually do more to prevent the transmission of communicable diseases, since men statistically have more opportunity to spread the disease to both other men and to women.

So before the powers that be spend one more dime testing and treating women, I demand:  Why not men?

In case you forgot, which by my guesstimate about 40% of America will have as well, the Daylight Savings Politburo ordered all clocks turned forward by one hour at about 2:00 am on March 8.  That means, if you didn’t turn on a computer or TV all day Sunday, you might be an hour behind the rest of the US come Monday morning.  (The Politburo says buggers to Sabbath-observers.)

Unfortunately, it will all catch up with you on Monday morning.  That other time reality you’re living in will come crashing down when you wonder why morning traffic is so light or why everyone else is already at their work stations.  And snickering.

If you’re reading this, it may already be too late.  If you’re reading this on Sunday, turn your clock forward an hour and get your hiney to bed.  You’re already losing an hour of sleep.  Don’t make it any harder on yourself.

You can thank me in the morning.

American society is extremely protective of its youngest members.  Children are protected from their stupidity (and that of their parents) to a far greater extent than adults. 

Under the doctrine of attractive nuisance, a property owner can be held liable for injuries to a child, even if the risk of injury was obvious.  With respect to most laws on statutory rape and the provision of alcohol or tobacco to a minor, adults are expected to establish the actual age of a minor, even if the adult reasonably believes that the minor is an adult, and even if the minor lies or provides false identification regarding his or her age.  In short, the law places the burden on all adults—not just a child’s legal guardian—to protect that child from harm.

But where are the parents when bad things are happening to their children?

Given the current state of the law, It is no wonder that parents place more and more responsibility on society as a whole to raise their children.  Yet, I must protest on grounds of basic human decency…

PARENTS: PLEASE SAVE THE REST OF US FROM EXPERIENCING WHAT GOES ON IN YOUR HOME.

In particular, I’m thinking of bathroom behavior.  I don’t care if you allow your kids to watch you relieve yourself in your own home, but have some compassion for everyone else using the public restroom.  The rest of us do not want little eyes peering through the cracks and underneath stall doors.  Even in a public restroom, a person is entitled to a little privacy. 

Let me illustrate with a story.  I noticed the startled look on a man’s face as he exited a public restroom one day.  I asked if everything was ok—apparently he was grossed out.  As it turned out, he was using a urinal, and a man came up to use the urinal alongside him.  Not so strange, right? Right– except the man had a small child sitting on his shoulders the whole time.

Come on, that really crosses a line.

Here’s a suggestion:  If you, parent, are using the restroom, have your child stand in front of your stall door.  If the kid moves, yell at ’em.  If your child is using the restroom, you stand in front of his or her stall door.  If the kid gets outta line, yell at ‘em.  That would make all the rest of us so happy that you became a parent

So very, very happy.

Should I have a website?

There’s an old saw that goes something like, “If you can’t do it well, you’d be better off not doing it at all.”  With respect to websites, it is sometimes better to have no internet presence than to have a presence that reflects poorly on your work.  If all you can manage is a text-only plain html site bereft with banner ads (much like the ones you see on angelfire.com), you may want to reconsider even establishing a website for your business. 

Your website can be your first impression.  A poorly-run website can suggest to potential clients that you are sloppy, unprofessional, or worse yet—unsuccessful in your line of work.  You may miss out on some potential clients by not having a website, but much like your current clients, they may be able to find you just as well by using internet directories or the telephone book.

On the other hand, you may need a website to counteract the image that other websites have created for you.  Try this test: Type your name or your law firm name, in quotes, into the search engine at google.com.  If you do not like the first page of results, then you may need a website to promote a more positive image of yourself and/or your firm.

Do I want a dynamic website or a static website?

This question may seem a little out of place as number “2″, but it is fundamental.  Some lawyers and law firms just want a couple of pages with basic firm information like location, hours of operation, practice areas and attorney resumes.  The information provided will rarely change.  This is a static website. 

If, on the other hand, you want a website that is frequently updated with news, publications, events, or that is interactive (chat, forums, comment areas, document access), you want a dynamic website.

Most content management software is designed for a dynamic website.  A dynamic website can be expensive and time-consuming to maintain (expensive if you hire someone, need a lot of security, or need a lot of server space, time-consuming if you are doing it yourself).  However, it also makes your website more of a sales tool.

If you just want a simple, static website, consider spending a lot of money on the first design and budget for redesigns annually.  Also, budget quarterly for advertising the website.  For a static website, appearances are everything.   Search engines like content (words, that is).  Static websites usually don’t have a lot of content.  Your website will probably need to be advertised to ensure that it comes up high in search results.

How do I get a website?

Once you have decided to have a website dedicated to yourself or your firm, you will have to either (a) hire someone else to do your website or (b) do it yourself.

Hiring someone else

Generally, you will have a couple of services offered when hiring someone else to do a website for you.  These services are as follows:

Hosting— Regardless of whether you hire someone else to do your website or do it yourself, you will need a computer to host the site.  There are many services that offer to lease you space on a server (computer) for your website, and this is generally referred to as “hosting”.  You may be leasing space under their domain name on their server (i.e. lawyers.com/examplelawfirm or examplelawfirm.lawyers.com) or you may be leasing space under your own domain name (i.e. examplelawfirm.com).  Some hosting plans even offer “email only”, where you can have an email address on a certain domain name (i.e. example@examplelawfirm.com or example@examplelawfirm.lawyers.com).  The cost of hosting has come down immensely and if you are willing to put in a little elbow grease, you can have ten websites hosted on a shared server for less than $60 per year (not including costs of registering the domain names). 

Website Development— This is a service where someone actually designs the appearance and perhaps even the initial content of your website.  Many people pay thousands of dollars to companies to design very simple websites for their businesses.  Ironically, these websites are often designed using content management software and templates that are neither unique nor very expensive (in other words, you’re paying out the nose for labor, which may not be justifiable).  If you want a website that involves a lot of unique elements or that is highly secure, consider hiring someone with a programming background rather than a graphic design background.  By way of analogy, graphic designers are architects (artists) while programmers are engineers.  A programmer can actually design software for you or seriously tweak the code for open-source software so that your website is truly unique.  Programmers are paid pretty well, and remember, the more unique the coding, the more dependant you will be on that particular programmer going forward (for technical support and for redesigns on the website).

Maintenance— Just because you paid for server space and for the initial design, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the company will maintain the website for free.  If you require changes to the website (e.g. you want to add or remove information about attorneys) or technical support, you may want to purchase maintenance services.  You really need to shop around on maintenance.  Depending on how busy your tech is, he or she may react to requests in as little as 24 hours or as late as a couple of months (or perhaps not at all, but that’s a more serious issue).

Doing It Yourself

Doing it yourself is easier than you might expect.  However, initially, it will require a lot of patience and eagerness to learn on your part.  If you have some time on your hands, and you get a real joie de vivre from saving money and learning new things, then creating a website might be right up your alley.

I cannot stress planning ahead enough when it comes to creating and maintaining your own website.  List off everything that you want to see on your website.  Go to other websites to get ideas.  You want a calendar? List that.  You want an “About me” page? List that.  Don’t forget the Terms of Use and Privacy Statement that you are going to painstakingly write (or adapt from someone else’s website).  You want a fancy flash landing page? Get ready to learn Adobe or its open-source (read: free) analogue. 

Once you have an idea of what you want, you will need to select a content management software (CMS)  that allows you to easily create a website with all the features you’ve listed.  You can either purchase software or you can find software for download for free.  Always try the demo before you download and install! Even if it’s free, you will invest your time in experimenting with software.  The demo and the comments from other users may tell you everything you need to know, without wasting any time.  Want to try a lot of software in one place?  Check out this site.

Once you have a CMS picked out, start shopping for hosting.  You can actually host a website on your own computer if it has uninterrupted connection to the internet and you have some backup capacity. But, let’s be realistic, that is generally cost-prohibitive. 

When shopping for hosting services, you will sometimes have the option of using a shared server or using a dedicated server.  A dedicated server can be very expensive, but it can also provide more reliable service and might make sense if you have a high traffic, large website (e.g. you are General Motors or Citibank).

Make sure that you hosting service has (a) very responsive technical support, (b) software that is compatible with the CMS you want to use (check the specifications/requirements for the CMS and for the hosting service, if you need PHP scripting or Ruby-On-Rails, make sure the hosting service allows that), (c) provides you with sufficient server space and traffic quotas, and (d) the price is right. 

There are a million and one articles on the internet about choosing a web hosting service, but pay attention to who the author is.  Look for someone who has no incentive to mislead you, someone who is not trying to sell you a service for example.  “Techie” forums and tech review websites give a nice variety of opinions on the topic.  Perhaps my favorite way to get the skinny on a hosting service is to type the name into google with the word “sucks” (e.g. ”example.com sucks”).  The results are interesting in any event.

Once you have selected a hosting service, you’ll need to install your CMS on the server and get to work setting up your site through the CMS.  If your hosting service uses cpanel, sometimes your CMS is preloaded and all you have to do is run the installation program or unpack the zip files).  Read the manuals and the support forums, and most of all have fun.

Initially, you may need to select a theme, skin or template for your site.  For popular CMSs, there are literally thousands of designs available for download on the internet (some for pay, some for free).  A design is only as good as its code, so make sure the code (and the person designing it) is stable and reliable.  If there are problems, you’ll certainly hear about them on the support forums.

As you develop the site and add content, keep your eyes peeled for good applications (which may be called widgets, plug-ins, modules, etc.).  Adding in new apps keeps your site fresh and exciting. 

 Those are the basics.  If you read this without falling asleep, you passed “Law Firm Website 101″.

All things held equal—experience, client base, law school ranking—being good looking will stand out at the interview and in the print ad.  Legal professionals may aspire to be above judging one another on appearances, but most would accept that, like it or not, it happens.

The ABA recently printed an article musing over the personal cost-cutting measures attorneys will take in a recession.  The article’s headline asked if laid-off attorneys would forgo their manicures.  The article quoted an employment consultant who urged attorneys not to forgo their manicures, claiming that it would only make the laid-off attorney feel worse.  I found the conclusion solid, but the reasoning odd.  Perhaps that consultant was too shy to put it bluntly: “OK, you’re down one.  But, let yourself go, and you’ll be history.”

For most women in the legal field—who probably asked themselves these questions during the boom—being judged on your looks is a continuing insult.  One might even think it impermissible discrimination on the basis of age or sex.  One should think again…or at least take a second look at cases like Jesperson v. Harrah’s Operating Co., Inc., 444 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir. 2006).  In Jesperson, a bartender working for a casino in Reno challenged the casino’s policy requiring female workers to meet with an image consultant and wear cosmetics.  Ms. Jesperson lost her case (and I lost some faith in the sanity of the corporate workplace, but I digress).  For an in-depth discussion of the Jesperson case, from one point of view, I recommend Michael Selmi’s The Many Faces of Darlene Jesperson, available here.

So while you’re dusting off those forgotten texts, researching that LLM, and reviewing layouts for the billboard ad, consider tightening up that tummy, upgrading your wardrobe, and bleaching them teeth.  I’m not just talking to the ladies here.  Gentlemen, you know who you are.