What Criteria Should a Start-Up Use When Hiring Its First General Counsel?
I got an email from a student posing this question to me: what criteria should a technology start-up consider when hiring its first in-house general counsel? I can definitely speak from first-hand experience! Here’s my response, but I would also…
Michael Jackson Spinning Mix
Following Michael Jackson’s death, Lisa decided that it would be nice to put together a spinning mix commemorating his music. This is what we came up with: 1. Rock With You 2. Blame It On the Boogie 3. Shake Your…
Wisconsin Diploma Privilege Ruling Comments–Wiesmueller v. Kosobucki
Today, the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion in Wiesmueller v. Kosobucki, written by Judge Posner. This lawsuit is a class-action challenge to Wisconsin’s diploma privilege, which allows graduates of UW Madison and Marquette to become lawyers in Wisconsin without taking…
Clemson/US News Ranking Recap
Last week, a Clemson administrator, Catherine Watt, made a presentation about Clemson’s obsessive focus on improving its US News rankings, which seemingly drives every aspect of Clemson’s decision-making. Some of Clemson’s ranking-driven decisions may not be especially controversial and may…
Google Chrome–Some Comments and Requests for Help
I finally got fed up with Internet Explorer 7. The last straw was the fact that it was choking on Ajax-heavy websites. When I would have the combination of Gmail, Google Calendar and Facebook (or even a subset of these)…
Mountain View Ranked #4 Best Place to Live
Forbes recently ranked Mountain View as the fourth best place to live among towns under 100,000 people. As the Mountain View View points out, this ranking is despite the magazine’s belief that we don’t have good restaurants in town, even…
Rebranding Cow Parts to Move More of Them
The New York Times has an expose on the efforts of beef manufacturers to come up with new fancy brand names for cow parts to increase consumer demand for beef. The article starts out: the nation’s 800,000 cattle ranchers began…
Gordy Davidson on Succeeding as a Business Lawyer
Last week, I went to a lunchtime student-oriented talk by Gordon Davidson, chair of Silicon Valley firm Fenwick & West, on the topic of “The Art of Being a Business Lawyer and the Changing Business of Law.” Gordy laid out…
Should an Incoming Associate Voluntarily Defer a Year?
I got an email from a graduating student telling me that his law firm had asked incoming associates to volunteer to defer their start dates for a year. This is an unfortunate situation, and naturally it produces significant stress and…
Social Networking Sites and Blogs Talk Slides
I gave another talk today for PLI describing social networking sites and blogs. Even though it was for a lawyer audience, it was more fun than a typical CLE talk because it had no law. My talk slides.