The Hard Work and Home Life of Me, Your Average Lawyer

There's a provocative post over at Lawyerist entitled, "Being a Lawyer Doesn't Mean Long Hours." The author, Chris Bradley quotes someone quoting Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, saying she goes home at 5:30 p.m. every day, and asks why lawyers can't do the same. The commenters mostly take Mr. Bradley to task for even suggesting such a thing, and I agree with them.

Here's my take. People talk about "work-life balance," but I find the best course is just to maximize everything. The most important thing to me, by far, is my family. Except for my clients, to whom I devote every waking moment. Of course, during the in between moments I must admit that all I care about is myself. And money. I contain multitudes, after all.

A day in my life is just the average day, I believe, in a lawyer's life. I awake before dawn to train with the ghost of Bruce Lee for four hours. I then pen letters to my children and tuck 'em underneath their pillows. Just as everyone gets up to eat the breakfast I've cooked for them, I head to the office. Today, for example, I checked in and started and finished the supreme court brief that was due today. Then it was off to the courthouse for a two-week trial (which I finished in one day). Over lunch I taught a six-hour CLE (three ethics credits). The afternoon was filled with client meetings. I had four clients scheduled for 2 pm, six clients scheduled for 3 pm, etc., all the way until 8 pm. After these meetings, I headed home at 5:00 pm, picked up the kids from daycare, and cooked dinner in time to have it waiting for my wife when she got home from work. After that I bathed the kids while leading seven conference calls with various clients simultaneously. I then read the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including the poems and songs) to the kids and put them down for the night. Next I made sweet love to my wife for three hours (cut it a little short because tomorrow is Valentine's Day, after all). After my wife fell asleep, it was off to my other family's house. I arrived there about 5:30 pm and was also able to cook dinner for them. Baths, all seven Harry Potter books, more sweet love.

Then I surfed the Internet for about 11 hours, daydreamed about the Badgers' recent win over Michigan, and had just a little time to do some blogging.

Nothing special, I admit—just making it work, like all lawyers do.

Paul Krugman versus Jon Stewart on the Platinum Coin

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently went after satirist Jon Stewart for what he called a "lazy" bit on the frivolity of the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin idea:

[W]hat went wrong here is a lack of professionalism on the part of Stewart and his staff. Yes, it’s a comedy show — but the jokes are supposed to be (and usually are) knowing jokes, which are funny and powerful precisely because the Daily Show people have done their homework and understand the real issues better than the alleged leaders spouting nonsense. In this case, however, it’s obvious that nobody at TDS spent even a few minutes researching the topic. It was just yuk-yuk-yuk they’re talking about a trillion-dollar con hahaha.

 Having been attacked by one of his own, Stewart had no choice but to respond:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Now, part of Stewart's response is his standard, somewhat weaselly excuse of, "I'm just a joke man!" But another part of his response is more substantive—his point that there are always counterarguments on the topics that he chooses to lampoon, but it is simply not funny to acknowledge them. It's probably not an overstatement to say that exaggeration is the essence of comedy. What matters here is that Stewart has considered the counterarguments and (correctly) decided that, nonetheless, the platinum coin is a "stupid fucking idea." So it's open season.

This is something to keep in mind when watching "The Daily Show": it doesn't present a fair or nuanced view of the issues of the day. It picks out the worst arguments being made to support a particular position and it shreds them, to great comic—and rhetorical—effect. It takes a certain sort of humorlessness to notice this unfairness only when it's your own position being shredded.

This is Part 6 in The Gillette-Torvik Blog's 94-Part Series on the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin idea.

Obamacare oral argument at the Supreme Court

UPDATE DAY 2:  The transcript of day 2 of the oral argument is here.  Justice Thomas did not speak.  Pages 41 and 87 of the transcript are where Justice Scalia makes jokes that make people laugh.  So, Justice Scalia doubled his laugh total from day 1.  On page 88, Justice Breyer gets into the act and makes a joke.  For my money, Justice Kagen steals the show with an amusing bit of self-deprecation on page 90. 


ORIGINAL POST:
The Supreme Court posted the transcript of the first day of the oral argument about whether Obamacare, to use a word Mr. Torvik likes, is constitutional.  The transcript is here. The Reader(s) of Thursday's post about Justice Thomas may be interested to know that Justice Thomas's silent streak remains alive and well.

Also alive and well is Justice Scalia's apparent campaign to get a laugh at every oral argument.  On pages 15-16 of the transcript, Justice Scalia tried to get a laugh by pointing out that federal court judges are stupid.  The justices were asking questions about what particular rule may, or may not, give them jurisdiction to hear the case.    Justice Scalia said,

what's going to happen is you're going to have an intelligent federal court deciding whether you are going to make an exception. And there will be no parade of horribles because all federal courts are intelligent.

Note that the transcript does not contain the word "laughter" after Justice Scalia's observation.  From this, I take it that this joke went over like a lead balloon.  Perhaps the joke went over poorly because people don't know whether laughing about lower court judges is appropriate at the Supreme Court.

Justice Kennedy, possibly unhappy that the halls of the Supreme Court were not ringing with laughter, then made a joke and got a laugh on page 36 of the transcript.  Justice Ginsberg was asking Solicitor General Donald Verrilli about the government's interpretation of the Anti-Injunction Act when Justice Kennedy cut in,

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So -- so, you agree that we would not -- if we agree with you about the correct interpretation of the statute, we need not decide the jurisdiction.

GENERAL VERRILLI: There would be no reason to decide the jurisdictional issue. 

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Don't you want to know the answer?

(Laughter.) 

Justice Scalia, possibly not wishing to be outdone, then made another run at getting a laugh on page 40. The justices were asking the solicitor general whether the injuction at issue in a previous case was an injunction prohibiting the government from collecting a tax or if it was an injunction of the taxpayer preventing them from paying the tax. The exchange goes:

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, in fairness, Justice Breyer, the United States did intervene in the -- in the Davis case and was a party, and so -- not as far as I'd like, I guess, is the answer.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Don't do it again, because I think that goes too far. I don't think that's restraining the collection of a tax. It's restraining the payment of a tax. (Laughter.)

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well - 

JUSTICE SCALIA: You don't want to let that bone go, right?

I think we can all agree that jokes like these make it pretty clear that Justices Kennedy and Scalia should curtail their plan to hit the road and become a comedy duo in the tradition of Rowan and Martin.  The jokes might also be support for the idea that lawyers are simply not very funny.

"It really short shrifts humor, which is critically important to a healthy democracy, I think."

UPDATE:

Louis C.K. has bowed out, perhaps yielding to pressure from people like Ms. Haag and Greta Van Susteren.

ORIGINAL POST:

Louis C.K. will be performing at the White House Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner this year. Mr. C.K. is known for pushing the boundaries of taste in his humor. The boundaries of taste have been on my mind given the recent controversy surrounding a filthy joke forwarded by federal judge Richard Cebull.

Over at the Big Think blog, tasteless jokes are also on Pamela Haag's mind. She criticizes Louis C.K. for his filthy jokes about Sarah Palin (and others) and concludes with the quote in the title above, including her assertion that humor "is critically important to a healthy democracy."

I will just say this: anything that is critically important to a healthy democracy is, by definition, not funny.

Humor from Justice Ginsberg.

Jess Bravin has posted a text of remarks that Justice Ginsberg recently made to the Otsego County Bar Association. Given that the New York Times reported earlier this year that Justice Ginsberg is, if one discounts Justice Thomas, the least funny Supreme Court justice, one might expect the remarks to be a little dry. However, perhaps in response to Mr. Liptak's reports, Justice Ginsberg opened with plenty of humor.

Specifically, Justice Ginsberg gave her audience a rundown of some questions her colleagues asked at oral argument this year. She also included citations to the various transcripts. Anyway some of the incisive questions posed by members of the highest court in the land included:

1. What did James Madison think of video games?
2. Isn’t evidence always destroyed when marijuana is smoked, isn’t it being burnt up?
3. Does al-Queda know this stuff?
4. Why are you here?
5. Why are we all here?
6. I know your client doesn’t care, but we still have to write an opinion. So what is the answer?
7. Is the snake covered?
8. Where is the 9000-foot cow?
9. What do you think about Satan?

These kinds of questions give a new perspective on why Justice Thomas doesn't speak at oral argument.