Above the Law posted about Michelle Obama telling Oprah how great being a lawyer was how terrible document review is: …she preaches about the soul-crushing nature of document review. “I was doing document production in Washington, D.C., and I was like, ‘I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I can’t sit in… Continue Reading

I’ve been working out in the afternoon at a gym with a wall of TVs in the cardio room. A TV is tuned into each of the local channels and the popular cable channels. I find myself mystified by the number of lawyer commercials. Both the number of commercials and the number of different law… Continue Reading

For two years I planned to take a 6-week sabbatical in the summer of 2015 to thru hike the Colorado Trail. It didn’t work out. I had hip problems that made hiking impossible from 2014-2016. It didn’t matter. My wife developed serious health problems that would have pulled me off the trail if I had… Continue Reading

It was another win for the plaintiffs yesterday in the Mississippi-born Johnson & Johnson baby powder talc litigation. The latest verdict was $417 million a California jury awarded to a single plaintiff after a 4 week trial. The plaintiffs have now won something like 5 of the 6 trials with most verdicts being massive. That… Continue Reading

An interesting article recently hit the presses: The Curious Incident of the Falling Win Rate, by Alexander Lahav and Peter Siegleman. Here is the Article. The study is based on federal court results nationwide for 1980 to 2010. It opens: Between 1985 and 1995, the plaintiff win rate in civil cases adjudicated in federal district… Continue Reading

A lot’s happened in the legal world since I last had time to blog. The U.S. Supreme Court took a lesson from the Miss. Supreme Court’s playbook on joinder. Meanwhile, some non-Mississippi judges on the 5th Circuit locked Mississippi into 50th place upheld HB 1523. That’s like letting Bama homers decide whether Ole Miss committed… Continue Reading

I saw a report that an effort in the Florida legislature to amend the state’s workers compensation act failed in part because the House wanted to cap fees of claimants’ attorneys at $150 per hour. The Senate was more generous, only wanting to cap fees at $250 per hour. Florida has close to 30 million… Continue Reading

Note: I wrote most of this post week before last. In the interim, another local man in his early 20’s overdosed. Good kid. Good family. The opioid epidemic is real–and it’s in your neighborhood. This is kind of off topic, but it’s becoming more apparent by the day that maybe the number one threat facing… Continue Reading

This  Medscape Article titled Poll: 43% of Doctors Say Lying For Colleague Could Be Justified confirms what lawyers already know. Doctors aren’t any more honest than the next guy. In the poll of 922 physicians, only 57% said it was never okay to lie to protect a colleague. Nurses have more scruples–82% of nurses said… Continue Reading

As reported in the Daily Journal, former Circuit Judge Frank Russell died on Saturday. Judge Russell had a quick wit, as evidenced by this exchange that I was lucky enough to see in person: Defense lawyer:  I’ve got 10 reasons for why you should grant our summary judgment motion. Judge Russell:  Well, you better pick… Continue Reading