Other Interests: pursuing your passion

The Legal Profession

Via the [non]billable hour and Three Years of Hell To Become The Devil in a discussion of things to improve in law schools, comes this link to On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession written by  Patrick J. Schiltz, an Associate Professor at Notre Dame Law School in 1999.

It's quite an amazing, well researched but emotional and personal article directed at law students about their future in the legal profession. Whilst there are blogs that are clearly satiric in their analysis of Big Firm Law (eg  Anonymous Lawyer), Schiltz wears his heart on his sleeve in his assessment of the happiness, health and ethics of lawyers in big firms (and firms who wannabe big firms).

The data on health, depression and alcoholism is US based but there is no reason to suggest it would not be similar in Australia.

That's not to say that there are not people in the legal profession with a strong community and justice focus. But the business of law can sometimes clash with the needs of clients.

Writing

Johanna Rothman's post on writing on her Product Development blog is no coincidence.

Writing is a key skill both in designing and developing projects as well as for reflecting on progress and success or lack of success.

I attended an action research discussion last night with Margaret Fletcher : a key part of the project being discussed was the journals that were kept by all project participants including the facilitators

Copyright: what is fair use?

Malcolm Gladwell's Something Borrowed in the New Yorker is a wonderful non-legal discussion of copyright and plagiarism.

It describes his search for understanding when key words in an article he wrote about a psychiatrist are used in a Tony Award nominated play involving a character based on that person. The real life psychiatrist threatens legal action against the playwright but Gladwell uses the incident to analyse his own feelings, the impact of the allegations of plagiarism on the playwright and whether there is a difference in "borrowing that is transformative and borrowing that is merely derivative".

In the course of his research he speaks to an expert on musicals and an expert on pop songs for comparisons in those fields.

A well-written stimulating personal piece of writing !

via BizzBangBuzz, Pierce Law IP News Blog

Just work!

This interview with Russell Muirhead (from HBS Working Knowledge)discusses his book Just Work.

He observes that that the book title's "double meaning gets at the two faces of work. One is the side of necessity. Work is something compulsory, not merely an option or a lifestyle choice. The other side is more hopeful. It invites us to find work that is fulfilling, that is part of a good life."

A key quote: culturally, we make a big thing of work. It is a source of status, of personal identity, and a sign that we are contributing to the common good. Because of this, we cannot really help taking it seriously, and asking as much from it as it asks from us.

Customer Service

I have spent the last few days helping my in-laws pack up their house after moving to a nursing home.

We needed a moving company. I had heard good things about the local company and had used them once before for a small job. They have good systems and staff. I booked well in advance.

But this time something went wrong. When the pre-packers did not show up on time I rang. I was told my booking had been cancelled.WHAT? I freaked out as we were on a tight schedule. After some heated words, they quickly re-organised packers and got the job done. I rang to discuss what went wrong: if they could email me to confirm the booking, why didn't they email me to confirm the supposed cancellation? Without any pressure, they offered me a 10% discount on the packing job PLUS the actual move.

Whilst there was some short term pain, the rest of their service was so good I am likely to use them again. The discount while not big in dollar terms was an important gesture.

20 Questions

The classic guessing game Twenty Questions is now on the internet and it's heaps of fun. The computer, by asking simple questions, tries to determine what object you're thinking of; it's able to guess some obscure objects, and if you win it checks your answers to see whether you mislead it!