“If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter…”

This one was too good to pass up… a baseball story that applies not only to the practice of law, but also daily life.

Did you hear the story last week about the runner who got hit between the legs by a pick-off throw and he wasn’t wearing any protection down there?  I won’t get into the fundamentals of it, question why a professional baseball player would be returning to first base facing the pitcher (he could get hit in the face that way), but I will ask the question about why he wasn’t using the protection that was available to him.

From the time I was about 10 years old I seem to recall little league baseball requiring boys to wear athletic supporters.  Don’t you remember the classic scene in “The Bad News Bears” when the team was told to wear the protection and they had a problem with that since Tatum O’Neal didn’t have to wear one?   And this is a professional ballplayer who wasn’t wearing it, a veteran.  When asked about the incident afterwards and if he would wear the equipment in the future, his answer was a no, for all kinds of excuses.  It was too uncomfortable; it was a freak occurrence and wouldn’t happen again; it shifted too much when he ran. 

We all have those times when we know we should do the right thing but choose not too because it is too uncomfortable or the odds are that it won’t happen.  There are so many people who don’t have the right insurance or haven’t created an estate plan to nominate guardians to take care of the kids.  Or don’t form corporations or limited liability companies to protect against liability.  We all know we should do it, but it is uncomfortable to think about; maybe we think it will cost too much; or we justify our decision by thinking the catastrophes won’t happen to us. 

Or look at it on another level.  We sometimes leave our seatbelt off when we go to the store.  We have one more drink before leaving the bar.  We go swimming after we eat.  There are examples everywhere of things we do that we know we shouldn’t or precautions we should take that we don’t. 

I am not preaching.  I will say that I never go onto a baseball field without protection down there.  I have never had a ball come near that area (even in all of my years of catching), but I am not going to test my luck.  I would rather wear it and be uncomfortable than experience the extreme pain should I forego wearing it and later wish I had. 

I mean seriously, do you really want to get a ball between the legs when you have equipment at your disposal to protect against it?

Have a safe week.

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“They used to call me Crazy Joe. Well now they can call me Batman!”

You see a lot of interesting things in Las Vegas, things you may not see anyplace else in the world.  You can go to Las Vegas and sit in one spot for hours, never move, and see all manner of humanity walk by your seat.  This weekend, while in Las Vegas for a weekend getaway, I saw something amazing.  And no, I didn’t have to pay to ration out dollar bills to see it.  

Every once in awhile I am reminded about how life can be so cruel sometimes.  Innocent people dealt crappy hands (Las Vegas pun, I apologize) and life being turned upside down.  The simplest tasks now become impossible as paralysis rears its ugly face.

 

Friday night while sitting in a lounge with some friends, I saw a group of guys, maybe in their mid to late 20’s, hanging out at a bar table, hollering and whooping and having typical Las Vegas fun.  Included in that group of guys?  A guy in a wheelchair.  But I am not talking about a guy just in a wheelchair because he can’t walk, I am talking about a wheelchair that has the bells and whistles, and none of them good.  Hoses and connections to help him breathe; a joystick to help him move; and a head-rest to keep his head immobile. 

 

We see tragedy everywhere and it is easy to look at tragedy and think that things will never be the same.  And they won’t, there is no doubt about it.  But this group of guys seemed to be making the best of it.  This wheelchair bound individual was not being treated differently, was not being catered to like he was an invalid.  He was being treated probably the same way he was treated before he became wheelchair bound (if in fact his disability was a result of an injury, an assumption I made, I accept that; but it is my dream world and I will see it any way I please.)  And other than wiping his nose when it needed it, the guys never seemed to treat him like anything other than one of the guys, just like everyone else.

 

I was incredibly taken by this scene.  There are many different ways to deal with tragedy.  This group of guys could have simply said they were sorry about what happened and went on their way.  But instead, it seemed that the guys dealt with this tragedy with dignity and sensitivity.  And I felt so touched by this whole scene.

 

Makes me wonder how I would deal with a situation like that.  I may have created a fiction-world in my mind, but I happen to like what I think I saw.  And since I saw this on Friday night, it really was a great way to start the weekend.

 

Hopefully this will be a great way to start the week.  Have a great one.

 

Rob

“I consumed over thirty pounds of sugar. That’s an average of a pound of sugar a day.”

Friends:

I know that the economy has been hard and that there are a lot of people out there trying to save money and cut corners, but I am concerned that the wrong corners are being cut.  The internet makes it too easy. 

Imagine this if you will:  a husband and wife have two young kids, a home, a comfortable living, and a nice, steadily-building, retirement plan.  They want to make sure that their assets are protected and their kids are provided for.  You know what they need… they need an estate plan.  But they want to save money and cut some corners, so they put the plan together themselves.

Imagine this:  two life-long friends decide that they want to go into business together.  They each have considerable assets of their own and they now have created a unique product which isn’t on the market, a logo they think will be an eye-catcher, and a tag line that rolls off the tongue.  They need a lot of things:  some form of business entity, some kind of intellectual property protection, maybe even some kind of agreement between them to identify their roles.  But they want to save money and cut some corners, so they do it all themselves. 

The internet makes this so easy!  But no one is there to watch and make sure the do-it-yourselfers do it right.  How hard have the people in my examples worked to achieve what they have?  How valuable is their family; how valuable are their assets; how valuable is the concept for the new business?  Enough to run the risk that the documents are done incorrectly? 

I started a new work-our program about a month ago; this after three months of procrastinating.  I knew it would be hard.  I knew my life would have to change.  And I dreaded it.  It is so much easier to sit on the couch in the evening, read another chapter, or eat that extra scoop of ice cream.  But I finally made the commitment.  And it is as bad as I expected it to be.  I sweat more, I am more sore, and I have less “free-time” than I ever have before.  But I just cannot stop.  I have already worked too hard to throw it all away.

Oh there are temptations out there.  My favorite food in the world is a bacon cheeseburger (I know, not kosher) and sometimes that is all that I crave.  Eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in one sitting while watching “The Biggest Loser” used to be my pastime.  Now I am sickened by the thought.  I know how hard I have worked these past 24 days.  I know how much sweat has poured our of my pores, how excited I was to see the pounds dropping off, how amazed I was at my six-pack abs (ok, so I am not quite there yet). 

So when I see temptation, I see that Egg McMuffin for breakfast or Hershey’s Bar for a snack, I think about the hard work I have put in and am committed to putting in.  Why would I “half-ass” my commitment to myself?  Why would I introduce those poisons into my body, which would undo all of my hard work, which would jeopardize all that I have achieved so far and plan to achieve?

So why would you trust your assets, your family, your business to a cursor?  Point and click?  These people have come so far and now they are potentially sabotaging all that they have achieved by “half-assing” it.  They are sitting down with their pint of ice cream and thinking that they will be able to recover tomorrow.  They have worked so hard.  Why cut the corner now? 

And it isn’t just in my field.  It is the same with insurance, investments, home-buying… why would you work so hard to achieve success, only to entrust your success to a mouse and words on a screen that haven’t analyzed your special circumstances?

Well, I apologize for ranting a bit.  Believe me, I have seen my share of do-it-yourselfers who regret it.  It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow; but there may be a time when the documents they created are tested.  Will they do what they think they will do?  Will they provide the protection they think will be provided?  A pint of ice cream has some immediate appeal and satisfaction, but is it worth it?  How much harder will I have to work to overcome it?

 Of course, I say all that and I will be in Las Vegas this weekend, the City of Sin and Gluttony.  Resolve, thy will be tested…

Have a great week. 

Rob

“It’s the Supreme Court, sir. You don’t get around it.”

I know I said before that I would not use this as a platform to espouse political views and I promise you, I will keep to my word.  Although this post does have a smidge of politics in it, just a mite bit.  But it was too much of a coincidence that I couldn’t look past it and needed to give comment.  The timing of the Elena Kagan Supreme Court confirmation hearings in conjunction with my recent reading of “The Rule of Nine” by Steve Martini was too interesting to resist.

 

The Supreme Court selection process is flawed.  Heresy!!!  How can he criticize an institution that has been in existence for almost 240 years and which governs his very profession?  How can he take issue with the institution that gave us “Brown v. Board of Education” and “Roe v. Wade?”  It isn’t the institution itself, it is how the judicial officers are selected.

 

The Supreme Court should be immune to political influence and it isn’t.  It should refrain from involvement in party affairs and it doesn’t.  It should be a bastion of fairness and clear legal thought, and I am concerned that it isn’t.  I think this is attributable not only to the selection process, but also the lifetime tenure of its members. 

 

Let me state this first.  I am not a Constitutional scholar.  I have not studied and analyzed the actions of the Supreme Court to great extent, and I certainly have not investigated whether any of my assertions hold water.  This is strictly my lay analysis of the situation.

 

But this is what I think is wrong.  A President who also controls the Senate can pad the Court with his/her own appointees which can create not just a ripple-effect for subsequent generations, but a tsunami-effect.  Consider this:  with some degree for error, political pundits can estimate when certain Supreme Court judges will retire.  Remember, their retirement from service is at their own discretion.  There is no mandatory retirement age; no specific date on which a judge’s tenure will end.  So the judge can retire or stay on the bench for as long as he/she wants.  And the judge can then determine the appropriate time for retirement based on the President’s political party, even if the judge has outstayed his/her welcome and lost any judicial effectiveness.  Did you follow that?  I will state it much more succinctly:

 

A Supreme Court judge could theoretically stay on the bench until the President is elected from his/her political party so that the judge’s replacement will also be from that political party.  A conservative judge can wait to retire until a republican president is elected. 

 

And we have seen the tsunami-effect; it has been cycling through for years.  Remember the issue with President Roosevelt in 1937?  He tried to increase the number of Supreme Court justices so that he could put politically friendly judges on the high court to support his New Deal program?  I always thought that the Supreme Court judges were blue-hairs whose legal acumen and competency increased by virtue of their gray hair.  Nowadays, however, it seems that the Supreme Court nominees are getting younger and younger.  Why, do you ask?  Because they can then stay on the Court longer!  And they can create tremendous problems for the opposite political party. 

 

Consider this:  Elena Kagan is 50 and Chief Justice John Roberts was 50 when he was appointed.  By comparison, Thurgood Marshall was 59 when he was appointed and Chief Justice Earl Warren was 63.  Not only are the judges being appointed at younger ages, the life-expectancy in the 21st century is longer than it was 50 years ago. 

 

I could go on and on but I won’t because I have already gotten too long-winded as it is.  I will leave you with this:

 

“Because of the life-time tenure conferred on members of the high court, and the fact that these nine justices held the final world on most if not all of the social and economic controversies confronting the country, it was the one controlling point that could alter the long-term direction of America.”   — Steve Martini

 

So given the amount of power that these judges have, doesn’t it bother you that they are not immune to political pressure?  Don’t they feel some loyalty to the party that appointed them?  Don’t they feel some pressure from their party to stay on the bench until a favorable President is in office?  Do you really want the Supreme Court subject to these types of influences??  And it isn’t like we can get rid of them if we don’t like their opinions.  At least we get to elect a new president every four years.  Some judges we might be stuck with for decades.  Judges who will be crafting judicial theory for our children’s children.  Wow, that is a huge responsibility.  Good thing politics won’t play a part.  Oh, wait…