Friday News of the Inane: New Jersey Lawyers Should Chain Selves to Desks

It's been awhile, but we've been prompted to post again, thanks to a New Jersey Ethics Opinion that issued last week. The ABA Law Journal has a good summary here and also provides to links to several bloggers who have already commented on the opinion.

We'd just like to add the following: Really? Clients will be unable to reach their lawyers if the lawyers don't maintain a physical office and a receptionist? Guess how many of our clients have ever dropped by? Right. None.

If in-house counsel or a business person needs to reach us, he or she generally calls or e-mails one of us. The beauty of modern technology is that we can forward our office lines to our smartphones and be reached by phone or e-mail anywhere we happen to be (e.g., at a CLE, in the car, attending a preschool field trip to a plant nursery, or what have you). One cannot exactly pick up a "bona fide" office and put it in one's pocket, New Jersey.

Judging a Digitized Book Settlement by its Cover

We've followed the brouhaha surrounding the proposed settlement of the Google digitized books class action with some interest. (A pdf of the 2005 complaint filed by the Authors Guild can be found at eff.org.)

A Washington Post editorial has good summary of the settlement here.

Earlier, this month, the William Morris Agency advised its clients to object to the proposed settlement, and a flurry of letters, rebuttals, and rebuttals of rebuttals flew between William Morris and the Authors Guild. See coverage here, here, here, and here.

It's no real surprise that literary agents, publishers, and authors have concerns about the potential effect of the settlement. The dueling correspondence between Willaim Morris and the Authors Guild focuses on protecting the rights of authors.

It's not even a surprise that the Justice Department is investigating the settlement, citing possible antitrust concerns.

To us, the surprise was the news that Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo plan to join the Open Book Alliance, a coalition of nonprofits, individual authors, and libraries that is forming to oppose the settlement.