MidLaw and Divers Items
Even as MidLaw was marveling about the extraordinary human talent cultivated there in the past, Conetoe was garnering fresh national approbation and accolades for new achievements. There’s a movie about it. They won an Emmy.
What is it about Conetoe?
Bartleby, The Scrivener, A Story of Wall Street, by Herman Melville.
It was published in 1835, but it is uncannily contemporary. Uncanny: Bartleby is a direct comment on the application of blockchain to the practice of law in the 21st Century – coming from a guy otherwise best known for his study of albino whales and certain broader aspects of the whaling industry in the 18th Century.
The book is an almost perfect thing for a holiday weekend. It is free. Published in 1835, you can download it at no charge. It is short. And it is written in an engaging style. It is funny.
Withal, you can still feel a sense of accomplishment from reading it. It’s said to be “the most noted of American short stories.” It’s among the most interpreted, commented upon, and alluded to stories ever. The Economist magazine maintains a blog named Bartleby. Bartleby.com is a major Internet repository of classic texts. The character, Bartleby, is a stereotype, a trope even. So, it’s good to know what’s behind all that.
Bartleby has become a mental model, a way of understanding the world.
And – 200 years down the road – it has become impossible to conclude that, with Bartleby, Melville was not commenting on the application of artificial intelligence to law practice – with precision and humor.
The story is told by a Wall Street real property lawyer, who describes himself as:
a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man.
The lawyer’s snug retreat has been threatened by changes in the marketplace and profession, and by accompanying changes in the law and legal system:
The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a—premature act;inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years.
But, for the moment, the lawyer is experiencing an upswing in his business, and he needs to hire a fourth “legal copyist” or scrivener. Scriveners were 19th Century word processors. (Note for younger readers: until the late-Twentieth Century, word processors were human beings.)
So the lawyer hires a scrivener, Bartleby, who had lost his job as a clerk in the Dead Letter Office of the postal system due to a change in administration. Thereby hangs Melville’s tale of a man who copied legal documents, word-by-word and by hand, for his living.
Today, in the 21st Century, scriveners have been entirely replaced by small machines. Lawyers today – at least those in search of a snug retreat – are now the ones being re-ordered, if not largely eliminated, by changes in the law and by the advance of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and their supporting technologies, also delivered by small machines.
It’s hard to see how Bartley is not commenting on all that – although as Bartleby says, “I’d prefer not to.”
Possibly, the story is also a comment on contemporary politics. That’s for others to say. I’d prefer not.
More than half of the branches of the largest banks in Sweden don’t keep cash and won’t take cash or checks anymore. Churches, charities, and even homeless street vendors prefer swipe cards or cell phone payments to cash. So do the major retailers worldwide.
In Africa and India, most commercial payments move by cell phone. Cash and checks are too expensive, too risky, and too much trouble.
The point when cash and checks will be finished is in sight.
So this is a moment for MidLaw.
There was a time when MidLaw made a tidy practice in negotiable instruments law as an attorney and also as an expert witness. It was a nice practice – just narrow enough to require a quasi-specialist but nonetheless broad enough to keep a steady stream of legal questions and controversies coming in. And it entailed enough money both to keep rogues looking for new angles and also to justify paying lawyers to sort things out.
But the rogue community these days seems to be moving on to email, telephone scams, and the like. Those check scams that are left seem to focus on fake checks and counterfeits, and they just don’t seem to require lawyers so much anymore.
Well, the good old law of paper payments has a long and colorful history and MidLaw hates to see it go. It occupies not one, but two, articles (chapters) in the Uniform Commercial Code. There’s an extensive criminal law of worthless checks, forgeries, counterfeits, and kiting. Can a negotiable order to pay be written on the back of a cow? Can you serve as an intermediary to help the late royal family of Nigeria negotiate a certified instrument? (They said they were royal, anyway.) There’s a well-developed body of precedents about these things. In short — and I am serious: the law of negotiable instruments is a monumental and elegant achievement of Anglo-American jurisprudence.
But now as payments in cash and checks decline and fewer matters arise, MidLaw is mindful of the thoughts of that long-ago lawyer in Bartleby, the Scrivener, who had a practice as a Master in Chancery on Wall Street in the early 19thCentury. He said,
The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a premature act inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years.
Similarly, modern-day negotiable instruments lawyers can hardly indulge in indignation at the substitution of electronic payments for paper instruments, and they can hardly label it an outrage, but they might be excused a certain regret in noting the passing of this once pleasantly remunerative area of practice.
Tyler Cowen cites an analysis questioning whether Kareem, Russell, Jordan, Curry or Magic is the most valuable player of all time. Cowen frames the issue in terms of “The Limits of Human Talent.” Noteworthy to me: all but Russell have key North Carolina connections.
Closer: a trusted source tells me that Magic Johnson’s mother’s family started out in Conetoe, before moving to Tarboro. Just as Thelonius Monk’s mother’s family also started in Conetoe before moving to Rocky Mount.
Conetoe.
Two of the most notable figures of our time – testing the limits of human talent – link back to Conetoe.
UNC announces opening indoor football facility. Can’t help but wonder what Andy Griffith would have made of that.
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in baskets of silver.”
This peerless aphorism has been concealed from me before now. All this time it was at Proverbs 25:11. (How clever they were to hide it in such a place.) Today a friend uncovered it for me.
I am releasing it to the wild.
For veterans within the service area of the Veterans Administration Kernersville Healthcare Center: that is one superb facility over there and the healthcare it dispenses is superb.
They have focused on providing high-quality service, using technology well, and employing good, well-motivated people to do the work. And they have figured that thing out. They deliver.
They know how to serve large numbers of people efficiently, expeditiously and well.
In the past MidLaw became accustomed to hearing grim stories about the VA. No more. That place and those people are great!
So, this is your Veterans Day message. MidLaw appreciates what the VA has done for veterans in central NC.
Observations made in the field over the course of decades confirm that the two words most abhorrent to the greatest number of practicing lawyers are “mandatory” and “retirement.” (The former is virtually universally despised.)
Recent surveys report that 73% of lawyers in the United States plan to “die at their desks.” Seventy-seven percent (nearly 78%) of law firms have no retirement policies.
Is there is a law firm management problem here? If you die at your desk, were you doing your best work just before?
After age about 60, some issues become statistically significant for everybody:
For most people the statistics are not alarming. But 9% of people between ages 65 and 74 will encounter some form of disability. It gets worse later.
So, lawyers thinking about their lives and careers must face INELUCTABLE facts. At some point, you will not be able to do some things as well as you did when you were younger. Deal with it.
And, while individual lawyers in good health may find a 9% chance of disability a reasonable chance to take, their firms don’t have the same luxury. Sixty percent of law firm partners are older than 55. In that context, a 9% dysfunction is a strategic issue. How many partners does a firm have in the 65&up zone? Multiply by 9%. Adjust for 75&up.
What are the implications of this? Dying at your desk is problematic. “Mandatory” and “retirement” are not getting the job done. Problems are growing as Baby Boomers burgeon into their “maturity”. Strategic problems.
Some thoughts about this anon.
Take heed of unnatural-seeming hair.
When Robert Louis Stevenson died, his business-minded Scottish nanny quietly began selling hair which she claimed to have cut from the writer’s head forty years earlier. The believers, the seekers, the pursuers bought enough of it to stuff a sofa.
Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrott, A Novel.
MidLaw and Divers Items 