exitedEsq: going dormant (gonna miss ya)
turn, turn, turn
Don’t take on a client or a project if your services won’t be “diligent (attentive, prompt) and competent (thorough, knowledgeable, well-prepared).”
[H]er success came at a price. “The day after I turned in my manuscript, my health collapsed,” says Hillenbrand. “You want so much to defy this illness and live on your own terms. I hoped I could get away with it, but I couldn’t.” Debilitating symptoms of chronic fatigue, and the devastating vertigo that accompanied them, had returned with a vengeance. (from “Betting on Seabisquit,” Smithsonian Magazine, by Larry Katzenstein, Dec. ‘02)
Not to make excuses for myself, but writing a bestseller like Seabisquit is just one discrete project (although a big one). On the other hand, riding ethical herd on the legal profession is an endless, thankless, almost infinite, and — let’s be honest — rather futile job. Don Corleone could certainly do the job a lot better than Don Quixote, but he’d need a very big gang of enforcers.
A consigliere’s last bit of advice for the Godfather: Make sure the consumer of legal services gets lots more information, competition, and options. Then, maybe give the legal profession and its Watchdogs an offer or two they can’t refuse. (Unbundle This!)
The need for a voice/conscience like ethicalEsq? within the legal profession obviously still exists. And this web log has demonstrated that there is an audience for its message. Where are the legal ethics professors, law students, bar counsel, or bar leaders who care deeply about client-oriented reforms? The web-log-osphere awaits them.
Meanwhile, readers who want updated information about reforms in the provision of legal services, should check out the newly-revised homepage of HALT for its Breaking News and Press Releases. Like ethicalEsq?, HALT is “dedicated to helping all Americans handle their legal affairs simply, affordably and equitably.”
I know that some of the new friends I’ve made out there in Web Log Land are a little worried about me and my health, but they shouldn’t be. I’m not seeking sympathy by telling personal details in this public place. I’ve learned some very important lessons while dealing with a serious health condition over the past decade, and I’m glad to have learned them and lived them. Besides discovering my own inner strength, I found out that there are things far more valuable to me than the typical American symbols of “success” — power, influence, recognition, wealth. Being able to remove myself from ethicalEsq?’s heady loop of positive feedback is a very good sign that I’m not forgetting those lessons.
- At the end of this posting, I have listed (alphabetically) a number of the web-log related folks who have become more than just pixelated names to me, due to the quality and/or quantity of their communications, insights, inspiration, or assistance.
Now that Mr. Editor has stopped posting, I’m unemployed and have time to leave Comments. So, you get my Two Cents for free, Ernie:
Don’t send e-flowers to honor ethicalEsq?, but actively work for the consumer of legal services both out in the real world, and through the power of weblogs:
(1) help make bar associations at the local and state level client-oriented, instead of guild-oriented (e.g., improving the Discipline System would be a great place to start);
(2) harness the power of the web to make the self-help-law revolution a reality, and
(3) with or without new laws or ethical rules, get more information to consumers about their rights and options — with enough information, consumers can create their own powerful competitive forces for innovation, improved services, lower prices.
For ideas, see the Editor’s article Counselors Oughtta Counsel (Not Conceal), and the ethicalEsq? resources on Informing Consumers, Access and Affordability , Discipline System , and — dont forget – Fees.