And there are no robots.

Magic Cards With Googly Eyes brings teh lulzes.

In Portland, snow only comes but once a year, and it grinds the city to a halt if it doesn't immediately melt. I don't want everything to close tomorrow, so I guess it's good that the snow is predicted to be gone by then - but for the moment, the world is covered in a thick white blanket, and it's quiet and magical.

Please, all - is there any one in Seattle who might be able to let me stay over for a night, on the eve of February 1st? I may need to attend a court appearance in the area, on behalf of another attorney, early in the morning. Please let me know if you'd be willing? I can bring some kind of yummy Oregonian food...

I had this whole thing I wanted to write about Bar ethics rules and service of process under ORCP 7 and people's misconceptions about the law, but I'm really, really tired now, so instead for the moment I just want to encourage you to ( look at this )

The problem: Business has been very slow for me and some of the other lawyers in my office for some time. We haven't had many referrals; but of those we have had, many people are unable to afford even our most modest rates, rates at which we could barely get by. Meanwhile, the courts are full of people trying to represent themselves, and often making a hash of things. Legal services are unaffordable to a lot of people, but lawyers can't lower their rates too far, on account of their student loan obligations and the large amount of time and work required by each case.

A possible solution: I've heard before of prepaid legal services, or some kind of legal insurance plan. I wonder whether my office could set up something similar. It would work like this: People would pay a modest monthly fee - maybe $50 per month. This would buy you the right to call or email us with legal questions free of further charge, a certain number of times per month. It would also include the ability to hire us to work on a legal case for a greatly reduced hourly rate and retainer. (Normally, for instance, I would want $150 per hour for a divorce or child custody case, and would ask for a retainer of $3,000. If someone had been on the insurance plan, they would instead be charged just $50 per hour, for a retainer of $500 or even less.) In this way, we could have a steady source of income, and people could have access to legal services that they could actually afford. We would have to specify what kinds of cases we can handle - people could perhaps opt into insurance for different kinds of cases (someone with no children probably doesn't need to be covered for family law).

I pitched this idea to Ian today, and he's looking into whether it's compatible with the ethical rules, but I'm confident that it is. So the next question has to be, would anyone be interested in such a plan? And how would one go about selling it? Are there any local businesses that might want to offer this for their employees, perhaps at a reduced rate for a group? Is this something anyone would want? Thoughts?

I think it might be a good idea, as you go on about your daily business, to occasionally say "Line!" instead of whatever you were going to say, and then pick up the conversation again after a moment. That way, when a movie is made of your life, the actors can occasionally say that during rehearsals and shootings and really confuse everybody.

(And it would still make way, way more sense than "Southland Tales." I don't know where Tim finds these things.)

I promise this is the last time I'll post about this for a while.

I finished revising the office website, as well as my own page on the site. They now have real text instead of images, and use javascript instead of image maps for links, and should be fully compliant with modern standards, and maybe even decent-looking.

No one ever told me I was going to have to learn web design when I went to law school.

Oh my gods you guys
I know Javascript
(Mouse over the image links!)

Of course, the first attempt is crude an inelegant, so there's a lot of exacting, pedantic work left to do on it...

Pursuant to my ongoing, halfhearted and misguided attempt to meet people through the wonders of technology, I just posted this little bit on an OkCupid profile, and remain struck by how well it encapsulates life at the moment:

It's very hard for me to meet people who understand, or share, this central aspect of my life: I usually feel like I'm still a kid, like I'm barely holding all my own things together - but I'm also responsible for the lives of dozens of other people. Usually, we expect, responsibility comes along with stability. I seem to have got the one without the other. It's a consequence of my profession, and working for myself, and it can be lonely and scary.

I know some other people who are responsible for a lot of other people's lives, by their own choice; and I know a lot of other people who feel like they haven't got the stability and security that make us Real Adults - that's almost everyone I know of my generation, really, who's out of school and old enough to have it be an issue - but not very many people who have both at once. This may help explain why I'm so lonely all the time.

Meh. Introspection is bad for you.

I very much hope that this does not sound whiny and self-righteous and self-important. I may have to take it down if it still feels that way in the morning. Fatigue distorts judgment.

Do you want a card for the generic holiday season this year? Either a regular sort, or the special geeky kind? If you email me your address, and some indication of what might be welcome, you just might receive one.