Good Idea

Love Your Lawyer Day, Yea or Nay?

In October, the American Bar Association declared the first Friday of November as “National Love Your Lawyer Day” so the public can “celebrate lawyers and express their gratitude to them for their affirmative contributions to the public good and the administration of justice.”

Good intentions, to be sure. Lawyers certainly deserve recognition for the good work they do, and the job can be a thankless one. But some wondered whether a lawyer-imposed love your lawyer holiday could backfire.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen ‘Love Your Doctor Day’ or ‘Love Your Accountant Day.’ It’s making lawyers what they already are: an open target for criticism,” said Brian Tannebaum, a criminal defense lawyer, in an article posted by the Wall Street Journal Law.

Whether “Love Your Lawyer Day” will catch on with the masses, it’s a good time to ask: If you had to pick one lawyer to love, who would it be and why?

Post a comment below or send your answers to wislawmag@wisbar.org.

Out There

Know Your Legal Description of Eggnog

Running out of things to talk about with Uncle Eddie at the family holiday party? Trying to impress your boss? Knock their socks off with this legal description of eggnog, per 12 C.F.R. § 131.170:

“Eggnog is the food containing one or more of the optional dairy ingredients specified in paragraph (b), one or more of the optional egg yolk-containing ingredients specified in paragraph (c) of this section, and one or more of the optional nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners specified in paragraph (d) of this section. One or more of the optional ingredients specified in paragraph (e) of this section may also be added.

“All ingredients used are safe and suitable. Eggnog contains not less than 6 percent milkfat and not less than 8.25 percent milk solids not fat. The egg yolk solids content is not less than 1 percent by weight of the finished food. The food shall be pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized and may be homogenized. Flavoring ingredients and color additives may be added after the food is pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized.”

On the Radar

Santa’s Mistletoe Problem

According to WillisWire, a commercial risk blog, plaintiffs’ attorneys “have filed several mass tort actions resulting from allegations of misuse of mistletoe as a substance to enhance holiday mirth.” Apparently, eye-witnesses saw Santa using the substance “to kiss plaintiffs’ mommies.”

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration “is considering a revised label change warning consumers about the risks of mistletoe off-label use.” Santa will be testifying before federal regulators.

Quotable

“Too many law schools are filling their entering classes with people who face serious risk of not passing the bar exam.”

– Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, an organization that released a study concluding that law schools facing decreased applicant pools are admitting more “at-risk” students with lower scores on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). The LSAT is used to gauge future success on bar exams.

The study notes that “at-risk students subsidize tuition for peers who are more likely to pass the bar exam and obtain gainful employment,” meaning at-risk students may incur more law school debt and have fewer employment opportunities, even if they pass the bar exam.

Wisconsin is the only state with a “diploma privilege,” allowing in-state law school graduates to become licensed without taking a bar exam.

Did You Know?

Go Ahead … Worry (at Least a Little)

Waiting on the outcome of a big case? Results of a bar exam? Or some other high-stakes decision? “Hey compadre, there’s no point in worrying about it,” you might hear from your carefree and unbothered associates.

But did you know that worrying during the waiting period may better prepare you for bad outcomes, according to a study conducted by Emotion, a journal for the American Psychological Association?

And if good news arrives, worry warts experience more elation than their relaxed peers, the study found.

The study surveyed 230 law school graduates waiting for California bar exam results. “If the news was bad, the worriers were ready with productive, reasonable responses,” said Dr. Kate Sweeny, who oversaw the study, published in October. “Those who sailed through the waiting period were shattered and paralyzed by the bad news.”

Source: “Good News About Worrying,” New York Times

Tech Tip

Keep Your Contacts Current

The holidays are a great time to network. While sipping your eggnog at that holiday party, you may acquire some new contacts to help build your business.

But your phone now includes contact information from last year’s party, and the one before that. And much of the information will change before you know it. So how do you keep your contacts current?

An app called CircleBack could be your solution. It offers:

• accurate, real-time updates when people in your network change jobs, titles, and contact information;

• unified contacts from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter;

• networking tools, like business card scanning and email signature capture, to simplify adding new contact info.

Source: “Best New Apps for Lawyers, March 2015,” The Cyber Advocate Blog