LAWYERSCHILE EL MUNDO INTERNACIONAL DEL ABOGADO

Rodrigo González Fernández y un grupo de egresados de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad la Republica en Chile ha decidido poner al alcance de todo el mundo de la profesion legal importantes materias en Ingles para ir practicando el trabajo en materia de Tratados internacionales y que nuestra profesión estará en primera linea. Invitamos a todos a opinar, debatir, participar activamente.Es el primer blog legal en inglés de latinoamerica.

Monday, December 01, 2008

A Very Different Thanksgiving Story

A Very Different Thanksgiving Story

At his blog, Leadership for Lawyers, Mark Beese tells the story of one adventurous boyhood Thanksgiving he spent on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation near Buffalo, N.Y. A local Boy Scout leader named Dan had been able to get an invitation from an Iroquois religious leader to the reservation's mid-winter festival, a Thanksgiving festival in which families gather for three days in a rustic, one-room longhouse lined with benches and heated only by wood stoves at either end. Beese, then a young Boy Scout, was interested in native culture and thrilled at the invitation.

After an elderly woman in traditional dress questioned them and told them the rules they would have to follow, they finally were able to meet their host, Corbett Sundown, chief of the Seneca Nation and a kind of medicine man known as the Keeper of the Faith. He appeared to be in his 70s, Beese writes, short and strong, with white hair beneath a baseball cap. He was to be their guide and over the weekend they had many conversations. But one stood out in Beese's memory. It started with Sundown asking Beese if he knew the difference between Christians and Native Americans. Answering his own question, he explained:

The difference between the Christians and my people is how we pray. The Christians pray to God, 'give me this, give me that.' It is a give-me religion. They are always telling God what they want and how they want it. They are focused on themselves, not on others. They think God is there to give them what they want.

We pray with gratitude. We pray, 'Thank you for the Sun, that warms us and grows the corn. Thank you for the rain and the snow that gives us water and irrigates the beans. Thank you for the earth, that feeds the plants. Thank you for the trees, that give us wood for houses and heat. Thank you for giving us each other.

Sundown's words have stayed with Beese, who thinks of them every Thanksgiving. "On Thanksgiving Day, when we re-create the Harvest Celebration of pilgrims and natives, I think of Corbet Sundown's admonition of recognition and thanks."

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 1, 2008

CONSULTEN, OPINEN , ESCRIBAN LIBREMENTE
Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en RSE de la ONU
www.consultajuridicachile.blogspot.com
www.el-observatorio-politico.blogspot.com
www.lobbyingchile.blogspot.com
www.biocombustibles.blogspot.com
www.calentamientoglobalchile.blogspot.com
oficina: Renato Sánchez 3586 of. 10
Teléfono: OF .02- 8854223- CEL: 76850061
e-mail: rogofe47@mi.cl
Santiago- Chile
Soliciten nuestros cursos de capacitación y consultoría en LIDERAZGO - RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL EMPRESARIAL – LOBBY – BIOCOMBUSTIBLES , y asesorías a nivel internacional y están disponibles para OTEC Y OTIC en Chile

What is a Law Degree Good For, Besides Law?

What is a Law Degree Good For, Besides Law?

The National Law Journal this week raises the question, "Is the Versatility of a Law Degree Just a Myth?" "People don't see the value in the joint degree. They think I'm confused," Dina Allam told the NLJ regarding her joint law and master of business administration degree from Ohio State University. In hindsight, Allam said, she would have skipped the JD and gone straight for the MBA.

Allam won't get any argument from Ron Friedman, the lawyer-turned-consultant, who writes at his blog, Strategic Legal Technology, that he does not see a JD as a useful credential for jobs outside law. He explains:

When I graduated NYU Law in 1986, I worked as a strategy consultant for Bain & Co. My pre-law school job experience got me the job, the JD got me the “consultant” title, the same as MBAs (in contrast to “associate consultant” for BAs and, in my class, one MD).

I started law school uncertain if I would practice. I heard many lawyers and law placement professionals say how flexible a JD and law practice experience is. I found that with my prior business experience, a few employers (e.g., investment banks) would consider my JD as the equivalent of an MBA. I’ve seen little evidence that the market has changed since then.

If Friedmann's right, then how does he explain all the lawyers who end up in interesting careers outside of law? He chalks it up largely to chance. "That many lawyers end up with interesting non-law jobs does not mean a JD is a path to those jobs or a 'flexible' career. It only means that some lawyers, after they practice some years, can change careers." In the NLJ piece, career consultant Stephen Seckler puts it this way: "Going to law school gives you a certain set of credentials that really aren't valuable for anything other than practicing law."

I say, tell that to Barack Obama. Ours is a society of laws. Laws control virtually all aspects of government and business and many of our personal affairs. To understand law, I believe, is to understand how things work. That was why I went to law school on the advice of a journalism adviser who said, "You know how to write and report. Get a degree that will teach you about the world." Law was his idea, not mine, but I've never regretted my JD.

What do you think? Does a law degree prepare you for anything other than law?

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 1, 2008

Blawg Review Visits Alice's Restaurant

Blawg Review Visits Alice's Restaurant

You'd think it would be reason enough for a blogger to give thanks to have Arlo Guthrie show up at your door on Thanksgiving Day and offer to help you write Blawg Review, that weekly recap of highlights from the legal blogosphere. But to help him in writing Blawg Review #188, Eric Turkewitz had not only that icon of counterculture protest, but also a whole bevy of actual blawgers. For Turkewitz, the author of New York Personal Injury Law Blog, the guest list of legal bloggers made for memorable dinner conversation, as the assembled lawyers did what lawyers do and talked turkey. Here is a taste:

As I carved the turkey in the kitchen, Gene Quinn from the IP Watchdog was telling me of a patent to debone a turkey. Our resident vegan, Sherry Colb from Dorf on Law, was not amused and wanted to talk about the hypocrisy of gathering to celebrate while an animal gets slaughtered. (There's one in every crowd, Arlo whispered to me.) Meanwhile, Amir Efrati from the WSJ Law Blog shifted the talk to the ritualistic pardons a few lucky turkeys receive from politicians. We chatted about the Sarah Palin and George Bush turkey pardons and then the more serious people pardons that Bush just signed and those he might sign soon. His colleague at the WSJ, Ashby Jones, joined in with more on those begging for a Bush pardon, as did Andrew Golden from the Marquette faculty.

Seems like the only person missing from this feast was Officer Obbie. But even without him, it is a Blawg Review you will gobble up.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 1, 2008

Three Lawyers' Mumbai Survival Stories

Three Lawyers' Mumbai Survival Stories

No doubt many lawyers were touched by the week's tragic turn of events in Mumbai. Here are three survival stories I've found from news reports.

Boston transplant stays safe. Lawyer Nirva Patel and her husband Paresh left Boston two years ago to make their home in Mumbai, taking an apartment in the heart of the city's commercial center within eyesight of the luxurious Taj hotel. Today they are safe, but they are confronting a mix of emotions and reactions that echo what they felt in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. "We just saw a body being thrown out the window," Nirva Patel said in a telephone interview with The Boston Globe Saturday. "The entire Taj hotel is in smoke. They say there's a foul smell emanating from the Taj. ... We're too afraid to open up our doors and windows."

The 30-year-old Patel, a graduate of Boston University and New England School of Law, and her husband remained safe by staying inside their apartment building, monitoring the news on TV and the Internet. As the lobby of their building became a staging area for freed hostages and evacuees from the Taj, they helped out by dispensing cellphone chargers so the displaced could stay connected with their friends and families.

The Patels regularly dine in the restaurants at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, two blocks from their apartment, and at the adjacent Oberoi and Trident hotels, four blocks in the other direction. Paresh knows two people who escaped from Oberoi's Kandahar and Tiffin restaurants, where dozens were killed. And Nirva ate lunch Wednesday at Trident's Frangipani a few hours before the siege began. She might have returned to the hotel that night if not for lack of a baby sitter.

Speaking to The Boston Globe, Patel said she was thankful for the safety of her family, which includes a 7-month-old daughter and small dog. "I'm grateful. I'm really grateful. We could have been there."

Retired judge turns to texting. Meanwhile, inside the Taj, vacationing former Cook County (Chicago) Circuit Court Judge Benjamin S. Mackoff and his wife Carol were thankful they had brought an international cell phone with text messaging. For nearly 48 hours, as the couple remained holed up in their hotel room, their text messages served as a lifeline to their family, the U.S. State Department, reporters and others, and eventually helped coordinate their rescue Friday morning, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.

We got a call from the colonel of the [Indian] army, and he said we will give you a password, and if we come to the door and give it to you, come quietly with us," Mrs. Mackoff told CNN after being rescued. "That's exactly what happened.

"They took us down a back service stairway that was very quiet. We were tiptoeing through glass and blood and discarded shoes from people who it appeared had recently died."

The 75-year-old Judge Mackoff and his investment-banker wife Carol, 66, were part of a tour group staying at the hotel and had been traveling through India since Nov. 6.

BlackBerry was lawyer's salvation. For Australian lawyer David Jacobs, trapped in a room on the 16th floor of the Oberoi/Trident Hotel, his BlackBerry proved to be his salvation, according to the Sunday Mail. Hiding in a closet, the 58-year-old Baker & McKenzie lawyer exchanged a stream of e-mails with his family in Sydney and two U.S. security experts.

"I don't know if I'm going to get out of this and I love you and I love the kids, and we've had a great life together," he wrote in one e-mail to his wife. Throughout the ordeal, he received advice from security experts on escape options and what to do if taken hostage.

In an ironic twist of fate, Jacobs represents hotels as head of his firm's Global Resort & Tourism Practice. No word on whether the Oberoi/Trident is his client.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 1, 2008