Posts Tagged ‘interviewed’

Interviewed about lawyers in America

Joseph Ford Cotto interviewed me for his publication, the San Francisco Review of Books, and has now published the results as a three-part series:

Part I. Is having more lawyers in society good for liberty? Should the government seek to equalize access to lawyers? Do consumers benefit from a glut of lawyers?

Part II. Does reality live up to the public image of lawyers as affluent? How might demand for lawyers decline in the future? Is medical liability reform still needed?

Part III (which links to the previous two). What are some less obvious costs of litigiousness? Which reasons to want to become a lawyer are good or bad, especially from a libertarian point of view? What about criminal law? And is legal practice too commercialized?

“I myself escaped by a bare whisker from attending law school…”

My tell-all interview at Fault Lines gets into why I don’t hate lawyers (really), my various books, my views on Cato and other think tanks, law and economics, the lack of any real reckoning for the Great Tobacco Robbery, why law schools might actually serve as a counterweight to campus pressure for ideological uniformity, my writing outside law, and much, much more. I’m interviewed by Scott Greenfield, well known to our readers for his criminal law blogging; Fault Lines is a recently launched criminal justice website that’s part of Lee Pacchia’s Mimesis Law.

There have been many flattering reactions already, scroll down from the interview to this comment from Margaret Little which made me particularly happy:

Overlawyered made an enormous contribution to understanding where lawyers were taking the legal system over the past several decades and it continues to fill a vacuum in the discourse about law. For too long that discourse was plaintiffs vs. defense lawyers, with both sides vulnerable to attack for self-interest. Worse, the defense bar, which has an economic interest in the expansion of liability, is often silent or even complicit in the game. While Overlawyered’s postings were made with much-appreciated wit and style, the sheer comprehensiveness of the empirical data, and the mind-boggling attention to detail in its analysis makes it a gold mine for research and a landmark accomplishment. Well done! Don’t quit!

Whole thing here.

Two new podcast interviews

RadioMicMike Semple Piggot at the well known British law site, Charon QC, interviewed me yesterday for his LawCast podcast series. We talked about why British legal blogs are more often personality- rather than practice-driven compared with those here, the pluses and minuses of Twitter, and the recession for big-firm lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic, among other topics. Results are here (iTunes version).

I was also interviewed last week by Duane Lester of All American Blogger for his online radio show “Bloglines” at RFC – Radio for Conservatives. It was something of a Legal Blogging Week for his show — other guests included Eugene Volokh of Volokh Conspiracy and Bill Jacobson of Legal Insurrection. I’ll post the audio link when it becomes available.

LawLine.com blog of the week

LawLine.com (“Celebrating 10 Years of Online CLE”) has begun a new weekly series that “will recognize some of the most notable legal blogs on the web”, and is kind enough to begin it with this one. Christie LaBarca says she enjoys running across “unique” and even sometimes “outlandish” stories that other law blogs don’t pick up on. She quotes me on a couple of theories that might explain the blog’s longevity (as I’ve mentioned, it’s coming up on its tenth anniversary in just a month and a half).

Speaking of kind things people say about us, I don’t think there’s any way I’m going to live up to the headline on Brandon Martin’s generous column at Daily Uprising.

“A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar”

LawyerWalksInto.jpgNo, I still haven’t seen a copy of this documentary (Apr. 19), which has been getting rave reviews all over the place and is a new Ebert & Roeper weekly pick. It’s just out on DVD now, and available on Amazon, where it’s selling briskly. Here’s the New York Times’s review:

Writer-director Eric Chaikin’s feature-length documentary A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar. . . offers a witty, seriocomic look at myriad aspects of the American legal process and judicial system. It hones in on six individuals, all prospective attorneys at the time of the film’s production, and follows them through trials and travails as they approach and take the formidable bar. Chaikin then uses the subjects’ stories as springboards to broader digressions on U.S. litigation. The film features a myriad of celebrity guest appearances, from both well-respected attorneys and entertainers. Participants include: attorneys Alan Dershowitz, Mark Lanier and Joe Jamail; comics Eddie Griffin and Michael Ian Black; TV commentators John Stossel and Nancy Grace, and many others.

The producers interviewed me at length as part of their research in making the film, and they tell me that some of the resulting footage appears in the bonus tracks on the DVD. The film’s website is here. More: Above the Law, Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites, David Giacalone (scroll down), Suzanne Howe @ Counsel to Counsel.

I’m interviewed…

…at the blog of speechwriter and ghostwriter Jane Genova, who for the past two months has been liveblogging the Providence retrial of Rhode Island’s lawsuit against former manufacturers of lead paint. Among topics we touch on in the interview: the role of media hype and TV cameras in big trials today; problems with jury selection, and the treatment of jurors generally; two reasons I hope Rhode Island loses its lead paint case; and the case for patience on liability reform. (Jan. 25).

Our editor interviewed

Last week this site’s editor visited the Sooner State to speak to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, in conjunction with which visit commentator/radio host Brandon Dutcher recorded this informal Q & A which touches on the tobacco and fast food litigation, the prophetic role of former Okla. Sen. Fred Harris, and more (“No Joke: Lawsuit Abuse Hurts Us All”, interview with Walter Olson, OCPA Perspective, August)

Interview with our editor, and more publicity

Steven Martinovich at Enter Stage Right talks with our editor about what’s wrong with the legal system and how this site came to be (“The case against lawyers: An interview with Walter Olson”, Aug. 18). Doug Bandow’s review of our editor’s new book The Rule of Lawyers, which appeared in National Review this spring, is finally online now (“Shyster Heaven”, National Review Online, Apr. 21). More recent publicity: “Lawsuit lockdown” (editorial on malpractice crisis), Las Vegas Review-Journal, Aug. 7; Anne Marie Borrego, “Fairer Class Action” (on the Class Action Fairness Act), Inc. magazine, Aug.; “Shame on you Rush”, Cut on the Bias (Susanna Cornett’s blog), Aug. 9.