Impeach Bush!

If you are like me and sick of this administration, angry and ashamed of our government, follow the link above to an article, and a website that allows you to send a message.

ALDA Deans attack tenure generally

Thanks to Becky Clapp who alerted us to this important article from Inside Higher Education. Follow the link in the title to see what ALDA hath wrought!

LOLbrarians gone wild!

The young turks are running with scissors! check them out.

Warning on those bar recommendations!

To all OOTJ readers who are asked to write recommendations for new admittees to the bar, take heed! In Massachusetts, at least, you need to be careful whom and how you recommend. Follow the rule to write only what you know, absolutely, to be true. The link in the title above is to a Boston Globe story about a lawyer called for discipline by for the Board of Bar Overseers, because he wrote a recommendation for a fellow whom he assumed (wrongly) to have completed his JD. Sascha Pfeiffer writes, the Supreme Judicial Court took pity on the poor lawyer:

Saying that Evan M. Slavitt was "duped by an imposter" when he recommended for bar admission a man who turned out not to have a law license, the state's highest court yesterday explained why it reduced the time Slavitt -- a former federal prosecutor and 2002 Republican candidate for attorney general -- was suspended from practicing law from one year to two months.

According to the Supreme Judicial Court opinion, Slavitt did not, as the Board of Bar Overseers concluded, make a false or misleading statement when he swore that he did not realize Douglas Fineberg was not a licensed lawyer when he wrote a letter recommending Fineberg for admission to the Massachusetts bar.

Readers celebrating books! 33rd Buenos Aires International Book Fair

In Argentina, the publishing industry has grown like a phoenix rising from the ashes of their recent depression. The 33rd annual Book Fair in Buenos Aires got picked up by the Washington Post here. The fair, unlike other book fairs, is not aimed so much at the publishing professionals as at readers, readers, readers! The Post article notes

The publishing industry is shrinking in many countries, but not Argentina. Since an economic collapse in 2001, the number of new titles published annually here has more than doubled. Argentines are, for the most part, proud of their country's reputation as a literary capital in South America, and they're proud that their book fair is expected to draw well over 1 million visitors during its two-week run.

It is on nights like this when the fair is at its most quintessentially Argentine, when the national passions for reading and for the night feed into one another, when more than 35,000 pass through the entry gates after9 p.m., most lingering until the red-eyed hours.

Que bueno! The link in the title above is to the book fair's own site, in Spanish, of course. Browse around and enjoy some vicarious thrills from a fair and a city that considers it only reasonable to have hours that extend until 2 AM!

Women in Law Firms

Today's Boston Globe features a disheartening article entitled "Many Female Lawyers Dropping Off Path to Partnership." The article discusses the results of a survey due to be released today at 4:00 PM by the MIT Workplace Center in association with the Equality Commission, which includes representatives from the Women's Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Boston Bar Assocation; the Commission was formed in response to a 2003 address by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, "who called for urgent attention to the relative lack of women in leadership positions in the law." The survey concluded that "female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers--and the legal profession entirely--at a dramatically higher rate than men." The summary of the report is here.

Approximately 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers responded to the survey. Thirty-one percent of female associates left private practice, compared with 18 percent of male associates. For associates with children, the percentage of women who left private practice rose to 35 percent, compared with 15 percent. The authors of the study attribute the dropout rate to the "combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers' career trajectories may alternate between work and family." A little more than half of women who leave law firms move to legal positions at organizations that are more family friendly: "nonprofit groups, government agencies, or corporations." However, the rest abandon the law altogether.

I guess the statistic that stood out the most for me was the one that indicated that women who practice law must choose between working and having a family. "Senior male lawyers are more likely than their female peers to be married or living with partners (99 percent vs. 84 percent, respectively) or to have children (80 percent vs. 68 percent)."

Concludes Mona Harrington, program director of the MIT Center, "Nothing is changing." I think that is correct--law firm culture has not changed, despite the influx of so many bright, young female associates. Either the women change to meet the expectations of the firm (which are based on the male attorney with a stay-at-home wife who raises their children) or they have to leave, demoralized and disheartened about not using the degrees they worked so hard to get. I have always told my daughter that she could have it all (although I have to confess I have never urged her to attend law school), and now I'm wondering if I'm misleading her.

Supreme Court and Technology

Today's New York Times, in an article by Linda Greenhouse, reports on the Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Scott v. Harris, No. 05-1631. Greenhouse writes that the "justices took the unusual step--a first for the court--of posting on the court's Web site the 15-minute video of the chase, recorded by a camera mounted on the squad car's dashboard." The video is linked to from the Times article. The black-and-white video is hardly compelling viewing (it shows a high-speed chase that ended in the police ramming the driver's car and seriously injuring him), but it does represent a big technological leap for the Court.

A hat tip to my colleague Professor Ralph Stein for pointing out this article to me. Professor Stein wonders whether "this continuing embrace of technology" might be "credited to the [new] Chief Justice?"

And because I also love new tech toys...

Follow the link in the title to Fotowoosh.com. Thanks to Roy Balleste, who introduced me to this cool new gadget. Folks at Carnegie Mellon figured a way to let a viewer move around a flat photo, viewing those parts visible in the image from different angles. Besides, the music is soothing.

And just because I love books!....

Here is a link to a wonderful article from the Boston Globe about an exhibit opening tomorrow, of miniature books at the Boston Public Library (which also has info about the exhibit on their web page). These books are about 3/4 inch by 1/2 inch in size -- just beautiful! There is a similar exhibit at the New York Grolier Club (here) opening May 16. If you are in easy distance, either exhibit should be lovely, but you can also see a bit on the two websites. Tres cool! The image above is from the Grolier Club announcement page, http://www.grolierclub.org/ExMiniatureBooks.htm

Supreme Court limits patent-holders' rights

Today's Boston Globe notes two new Supreme Court decisions that rebalance the power between patent-holders and users of technology. Microsoft v. AT&T, (No. 05-1056)414 F. 3d 1366, reversed on certiori. KSR International v. Teleflex, Inc., (No. 04-1350)119 Fed. Appx. 282, reversed and remanded, another cert. case. Note that the citation for this last one is just the Federal Appendix. First time I've cited something there. Two landmark cases. Read the brief article link in the title, which includes handy links to the corporate websites.