"The Beard Grows, But The Head Does Not Grow Wiser."
“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.” - H. L. Mencken
"I tell you, I'll consult my lawyer. And if he advises me to do it, I'll get a new lawyer."-Groucho Marx 
"We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can."
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Following up on the previous post, the Detroit Bar Association also ran two articles written by me in its most recent August 2021 issue of the Detroit Lawyer. The on line version of the magazine can be found here, and may be easier to read.
LEX FUGIT-NICK SHAHEEN, pages 14-15. A story about the late, great Wayne County Circuit Court Assignment Clerk.
COVID RETIREE, page 19
The Detroit Bar Association has been gracious enough to run several articles/reviews I have written in the latest two issues of its magazine, Detroit Lawyer. I have included images of the articles and links to the magazine, which might make reading easier.
From the May, 2021 issue, found here:
Book Review, The Witch of Delray, pages 14-15
Lex Fugit?, page 18
Shoeless Joe: Getting thrown out of baseball was like having part of me amputated. I've heard that old men wake up and scratch itchy legs that have been dust for over fifty years. That was me. I'd wake up at night with the smell of the ballpark in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet... The thrill of the grass.
W.P. Kinsella-Shoeless Joe
Tuesday, September 7, 2021. Historically one of the 2 days each year, the other being the first Monday in January, when the switch gets turned on the business world, the various school districts and the legal system.
Things are a bit different for me this year. My kids have graduated from school. But, for nearly 40 years, I would have spent this week at various motion calls, settlement conferences, depositions, case evaluations, facilitations and other such fun and frolic outside my office. None of that this year. Granted, I did retire from my active litigation practice earlier this year, but that was, in no small part, due to the change in the definition of “active”, in the continuing COVID 19 era. True, I did a facilitation, and sat as a Case Evaluator last week, but never left the comfort of my home office, a mere five steps from the temptations of my kitchen. Things went well. Not very challenging, not very exciting, but fine. And, I was able to catch up on both American and European football, from the close-captioned enabled TV in the corner of the room.
Convenient? You bet. But, long ago I learned that the legal system of the state of Michigan was neither ordered for, or concerned with the convenience of attorney Michael J. Butler. For the most part, that has been a good thing.
To the extent that I have become an effective advocate at all (opinions differ), it has been soley through experience gained during years of adversarial proceedings, conducted in open court/deposition rooms, in person, in the physical presence of judges and other lawyers.
I entered law school with an intense fear of public speaking. The phobia sprang, I think, from a rather unfortunate incident in 6th grade, when during an English class presentation, my partner and I, for reasons still unknown, became convulsed with uncontrollable laughter. While our classmates were amused, our teacher, one of the less forgiving Sisters of the Order of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was not.
The fear followed me for many of my school years.
Coupled with the entirely normal fear of making a public fool of oneself, I was a perfect candidate for membership in the guild which prided itself on adversarial advocacy.
But, you get thrown in the deep end of the pool, sometimes chained to an anvil, often enough, you learn to think on your feet, react, respond and innovate on the fly. You prepare better, you think more clearly, you anticipate the arguments of the other side, you look you adversary (sometimes the judge) in the eye. You gain the skill to, paraphrasing Churchill “tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip”. You watch witnesses, and learn what pushes their buttons, and you push them when necessary.
I don’t think you learn this from behind your computer screen, sitting at your kitchen table, the family dog at your feet, dressed in cargo shorts and sandals (you, not the dog), with the judge a tile, no bigger than your own, on the Zoom display.
"Lawyers work hard and, like us, they're human, many of them."-Dick Cavett
