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KinsellaLaw Web Log
• BLOG ARCHIVES
Saturday, August 28, 2004
BugMeNot!:
BugMeNot.com--Bypass Compulsory Web Registration.
Friday, August 27, 2004
How to Write Contracts:
A few useful works:
More on humorous voicemails:
Following up on recent posts about humorous voicemails and emails, here's another humorous voicemail. The story behind the voicemail is explained here, and in the letter below.
Mr. Kinsella:
I stumbled over this website courtesy of an article about the
recent humorous voicemail and couldn't resist writing you to share something amusing that happened to our company. Our Austin-based company, Despair Inc., produces cynical humor products- including parodies of motivational posters
called Demotivators. Anyway, our logo features the :-( emoticon--which we
obviously did not invent but nevertheless submitted a trademark request for to the USPTO. To our surprise (and our IP lawyer's amazement), we received a
trademark for the symbol in printed matter class of goods.
As a joke, we wrote a fake press release about how--in light of our trademark on the :-( symbol--we planned to sue several million individuals who had used the symbol in email of late.
It was mostly meant as a rip on frivolous IP lawsuits. But
because of some clumsy reporting and overzealous netizens, it ended up becoming a gigantic outrage to many thousands of people who missed the joke. The most amusing contact we received came in the form of a late-night voicemail from someone who sounded very drunk.
http://www.despair.com/frownies.html The voicemail is linked in the page above. It is expletive-laden and frequently incoherent--but provoked gales of laughter and ultimately, the desire to share the joke with others. We bleeped out the expletives--as we're a pretty family-friendly
website--but even without them, it's a very amusing and
confusing listen, though admittedly, for a somewhat select audience. Hope you enjoy it.
Cheers,
Justin Sewell
Despair, Inc.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Bay of One Hundred Fires:
Bay of One Hundred Fires, the new novel by retired Houston attorney (and my former mentor) J. Lanier Yeates, is "a frighteningly realistic geopolitical thriller that cannot be put down." Or so says one distinguished commentator--namely yours truly, who was lucky enough to read it in manuscript form.
In addition to being an attorney, "On active duty in the United States Navy during the Vietnam years, J. Lanier Yeates served aboard the guided-missile destroyer, USS Mitscher before joining the pre-commissioning unit of the nuclear-powered cruiser, USS California, where he supervised the installation of the ship's hightech, long-range, air-search radar system." Order your copy today--!
In Bay of One Hundred Fires, author J. Lanier Yeates weaves a chilling tale of what Saddam Hussein might have done with the deadly weapons many believed he had. [A] poor Cuban family from Cienfuegos is swept into a battle between the Navy and a global terror network. To complement its firepower and 21st century technology, the Navy calls on a young lieutenant commander and maverick CIA analysts. The Navy has one more weapon to leverage its powerful assets: Hoss Mueller, the skipper of the re-born USS California.
Coda: More info in this press release.
Best Website in the World:
LewRockwell.com!
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Lawyers and Summer Associates:
Re recent posts about humorous lawyer voicemails, I was reminded of this story: Elite Firm Summer Associate Sends E-Mail Boasting Of Laziness to Partners.
Re: Associate's Foulmouthed Voicemail Makes the Rounds on the Internet:
Re my previous post, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Eric Herman has picked this up story and is running with it, in F-bomb-dropping attorney gets worldwide notoriety.
Coda: others have picked it up too, including this one from The Chicagoist, Lawyers Drop F-Bombs?, which includes some decent gossip about the "victim" and interestingly, some off the cuff defenses of the angry attorney. Another discussion forum is on MyShingle.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Latest Books:
My latest book is Online Contract Formation. It went to the printer this month, and is published this month by Oceana. It provides practical advice about legal issues related to formation of contracts through online means, from a multi-jurisdictional perspective.
Forthcoming in December is International Investment Political Risk and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide.
Latest Patents...:
6,782,019: VCSEL with heat-spreading layer. Issued today.
Associate's Foulmouthed Voicemail Makes the Rounds on the Internet:
Re this post--this article appeared today in New York Lawyer, listing my blog as a source of the voicemail left by Winston & Strawn associate Ankur Gupta. I despise incompetence so actually tend to side with Gupta.
Some excerpts from the article:
An expletive-laden voice-mail message, reproduced on blog KinsellaLaw.com, left by an associate at one law firm for a colleague at another is making the rounds in cyberspace, with young lawyers seizing on the message as a symbol of declining civility within the profession. In the message, Winston & Strawn associate Ankur Gupta in Chicago berates an associate in the New York office of Latham & Watkins for apparently complaining about changes Mr. Gupta and his colleagues requested on a mortgage document. Mr. Gupta tells his fellow lawyer that he should save his "[f**king] breath" and that if he continues to complain about the changes, Mr. Gupta will make his "life on this deal very unpleasant" by involving his client. The Winston & Strawn associate concludes by advising the Latham associate that if he will not act as a "monkey [f**king] scribe," his work will be given to a secretary at Winston & Strawn. Forwarded to lawyers across the nation, the message has unleashed a firestorm of Internet message board commentary.
In my view, all this noise about "the decline in civility" is part and parcel of lawyers' attempt to keep their profession licensed so as to keep out competition. It is arrogance to believe civility is more the domain of attorneys than "normal" people.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Professional Courtesy:
According to the attorney who sent it to me: this was a voicemail message "that an associate at Winston & Strawn left for an associate at Latham. Latham is representing a borrower in a real estate transaction and W&S represents the lender. I don't know what correspondence preceded the voicemail but as I understand it, W&S asked Latham to make some cosmetic changes to mortgages a day before closing and Latham responded by email that they thought the changes were unnecessary. The response from W&S is pretty unbelievable--a pretty abusive voicemail. This is soon to be part of law firm urban legend along with that summer associate from Skadden [I earlier guessed--wrongly--that they meant here Tucker Max's story, The true story behind "The Now Infamous Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle" email --SK]--it's already making it's way around the email circuit. Enjoy!"
And along those lines, an oldie but a goodie: Voicemail message, with increasingly frustrated obscenities, purportedly left by trademark applicant/appellant with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB); resulting Final Order concerning disclipinary action of the attorney (linked here).
Friday, August 13, 2004
Fundamental Physical Constants/Metric System:
Physics Today has free guides to The Fundamental Physical Constants (latest recommended values for the constants based on the 2002 adjustment); and Guide for Metric Practice (summarizes the SI system of units).
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