on the highwire
crow with a mouthful
buzzed by a sparrow
Christmas eve-
the row of cut trees
no one took home
“Christmas eve” – Modern Haiku XXIX:2 (Summer 1998)
Do Lawyers Slow Income Growth? First we mentioned Prof. Magee’s estimate of lost
productivity; then RiskProf extrapolated some new numbers; now, Walter Olson points
Management.com. Despite his awesome concession, I’m not sure Walter’s suggestion
of a better yardstick would work very well, either:
“Where you have a lot of business centers, generally you will have a lot of
attorneys, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are bad for the economy,”
said Walter Olson, founder and editor of the Web site, www.overlawyered.com,
and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Olson said he has a better yardstick.
“If you could measure how many attorneys are out there advertising for injury cases,
that would be a much better indicator for how high the expected hassle value is of
doing business in a given state,” he pointed out.
This time, we agree with Prof. Bainbridge: “it is grossly unethical for a professor to
take money to speak on behalf of some interest group without disclosing the conflict of interest
thereby created. “
We also agree with the NYT editorial staff: Harry Reid shouldn’t be suggesting
Antonin Scalia for Chief Justice, merely because Scalia’s “one smart guy.”