Me, to office staff today:
I have believed, ever since the day I was a paralegal, that a lawyer without staff is much like a lion tamer without a chair, a bear trainer without a whip, and a race car driver without a steering wheel. Pretty much pointless, and quite possibly dangerous.
Office staff to me, responding:
Behind every great lawyer is a worn-out staff.
You can trust me on this - it’s true on both sides of the equation.
While last year’s Wisconsin Alumni Association meeting was held in amazingly beautiful fall weather. It seems highly ironic that this year’s, in Nevada, was covered in a wonderful snow.
There was at least one similarity, though - the same guy was elected President both times. I appreciated the vote of confidence and the many kind words.
Being re-elected also gives me the chance to look backwards and forwards at the Alumni Association. In doing so, I discovered that the Alumni Association is at the same point that I am in my own life: We are at the spot where we need to turn vision into reality. It’s a hard place to be, in many ways, but it’s sure an exciting one. The foundation is laid, the vision is there, and now it’s time to make something out of it all.
Here are my thoughts for the Alumni Association blog - which manage to be similar to introspective musings in re: yours truly.
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Every organization starts with a vision of something great. For the Alumni Association, that was a vision of expanding, promoting, and growing OBCL’s unique calling. Even as a student, I could see the vision of those that worked to establish this organization. It was apparent, and it trickled all the way down to my study-swamped self. In the intervening years, the vision has been clarified and built.
And in every organization’s life comes a time in which the established vision must be put into practical reality by dint of hard work. And as I looked back on the last year’s work done by the Alumni Association Board and numerous volunteers, I can’t help but realize that we are at that point in the Alumni Association’s life. The vision is there, and it is clear - and now comes the time in which we must turn that vision into practical reality.
This past year, the Board worked to lay the foundation to build this reality on. So many “small” components go into effective communication, effective promotion, and effective fundraising…and this list of essentials could go on. Beyond those normal challenges, the Alumni Association faces unique challenges simply because we are scattered all across this nation! One thing that I have greatly appreciated about the Board of Directors of this association is their willingness to do things the right way. We’ve never taken an idea and gone off half-cocked; we’ve taken good ideas and made them better - those ideas and that work is the foundation.
But right now we have this chance to turn vision into reality, if we are willing to put our noses to their respective grindstones and do the work. It’s time to take the foundation and build on it, taking those ideas into reality. And that is our goal for this year.
It was terrific to see the excitement of the alumni at the annual meeting last week. Indeed, I found it impossible not to get excited myself! We have the skills and the desire to do the building - and we have the foundation to build on.
It is going to be a great year.
There have been many things that have scared me in the last few months about the way out government is going. I could give you a laundry list, because my mind cannot cease to be boggled about how many things we Americans have taken for granted that can no longer be assumed. When government owns and controls industry, when government can pick and choose what organizations live and what organizations die by who they give money to, and when the knee-jerk reaction to financial instability is to look to the government for a solution, there are countless indices of freedom running in the red.
But I want to talk about the one that scares me the most, my friends. This is not meant to be a partisan rant, nor is it meant to be directed at the current Supreme Court nominee - what you see here is the thoughts of a genuinely worried common citizen.
This idea is the one that our judges should be governed primarily by “empathy.” Merriam-Webster tells me that this word comes from the Greek for passion, feelings, and emotion. The part of the definition that we are most familiar with says that empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…” If judge is to be ruled by empathy, it is to say that this judge, when faced with a case, looks not to the law, but looks to his or her own emotions and discerns which party makes them say “awwwww…” louder. That’s why I’m calling this the “rule of awwww” - and it can be easily distinguished from the rule of law.
But one cannot be bound by both the law and one’s emotion. One or the other must reign supreme. And if a judge feels that he or she must choose based on empathy, that judge must literally disown the rule of law.
I don’t claim to be an expert in the rule of law. There are many who could expound the theory of the rule of law much better than I. And yet, that’s the point. You don’t need to be an expert to know why the rule of law is so vital to any sort of justice and freedom. Our society is based on law. The rule of law provides us with stability and expectability, giving us a cause-and-effect in societal interaction. It serves as the great leveller, subjecting every person, great and small, to its universal principles. Laws can be changed, certainly, and adapted, but not on a whim of some self-seeking person, and not only in subjective application to targeted individuals. You don’t have to be an expert to understand the value of the rule of law - and you don’t have to look any further than wherever you’re sitting to see how valuable it is in everyday life.
And that is why judges unbound from the rule of law have been hallmarks of despotism for time immemorial. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to automatically equate an “empathetic” judge with the judges that executed “the people’s” whim in revolutionary France, Hitler’s whim in Germany, or Stalin’s whim in Russia, or Pol Pot’s whim in Cambodia (or countless other examples). But once one looses a judge from the rule of law, you leave yourself open to that possibility.
A politician is necessarily bound by the will of the people, because he can be voted out. But a judge is bound only to the law, and if you remove that mooring a judge becomes at very best a miniature dictator. Perhaps that judge will use his dictatorial power for good, but that’s not a risk I am willing to take - and it is not a risk our Constitution was willing to subject us to.
And that is why the “Rule of Awwww” scares me to death.
I’ve been doing bankruptcy work full time for almost five whole months now. As I’ve gotten my feet wetter and wetter in this whole bankruptcy world, one of my main tasks has been motion work. Motions resolve a lot of the practical issues necessary to get a discharge, especially in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy - they value property to determine security interests, avoid liens, resolve automatic stay issues, and who knows what else.
And because we do debtor work, most of my motions are filed against some kind of creditor, and often mortgage companies. In order for a motion to be effective, we must serve the papers on them in accordance with Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 7004. Normally, this means I have to go dig through the bowels of the Internet to find out who an officer of the requisite creditor is - and in today’s world, that often means digging through records of who bought what company and what the new name is. All this searching has taught me much about these corporate entities.
For instance -
You’ve probably heard of Ditech. (If you have watched TV in the last few years, you will remember Ditech from ads where the evil fat local banker bemoans that he “Lost another loan to Ditech.com” while the blissful customer wallows in happiness. Or the one where they try to convince you that “people are smart” before insulting your intelligence with a poorly animated professorial creature explaining the “advantages” of their rates.) But did you know that Ditech is a business of GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors?
Incidentally, speaking of poor advertising, GMAC was recently forced to change the name of its banking arm to “Ally Bank” in an effort to improve its image.
Did you know that Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo? That was in the news, of course, but it gets complicated - you see, Wachovia Bank, N.A., is not a part of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. They haven’t finished that yet. But Wachovia Bank, N.A. is a part of Wells Fargo Corporation, the mother company who owns an astounding array of entities. And then there’s Wachovia Bank, F.S.B., which used to be World Savings Bank, F.S.B. and now has been almost sort of more or less phased out in favor of new and improved corporate structures.
Speaking of Wells Fargo, did you know that the company called “America’s Servicing Company” is actually just a DBA of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc.?
It’s nothing short of dizzying. And I haven’t mentioned Citigroup, JPMorganChase, or Bank of America, and countless other entities.
But I digress. All this to say that finding the appropriate contact information for Rule 7004 service can be a challenge.
But the federal government might be making it easier on me. If this goes through, the United States government will own a majority stake in GMAC. So I am given to wonder, will my service list look like this?
GMAC
Attn: Barack Obama, CEO
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Thoughts?
…on their one-month anniversary?
…but I have to admit I like the looks of this.
