Ramblings

The 3000 Foot View

/ Bruce Cameron

It was the contrast between a morning of field work – a few hours listening to the drone of the tractor and watching the newly mown grass be transformed into bales of hay – and an afternoon of flying – an hour or so spent just drilling a hole in the sky, shamelessly taking advantage of the offer of the use of a new plane for just the cost of gas, enjoying the view from 3000 feet – that brought to mind the oddities of perspective.

For the farmer, harvest can be a time of shrinking perspectives. Once conditions are right, one’s vision narrows to singular focus on the 10 feet of field immediately in front of you through to the implement 6 feet behind you. All else fades away as the process of transforming plant to product encompasses you and your headspace narrows down to this field, these furrows, and this task.

For the pilot, harvest can be a time of expanding perspectives. The CAVU skies and cooler temperatures promise smooth flights and simple, visual navigation. Once the ground is left behind, one’s vision widens. The chart on one’s lap becomes writ large on the earth below – the cardinal directions drawn out by the section lines made visible by the farm fields and fence lines below. Your perspective widens to encompass the entire horizon as you perform an intricate dance with the physics of flight.

The morning had been spent driving a tractor by sight, by ear, and by feel – making adjustments by the sound of the grass passing into the baler, by the bump and lurch of the tractor, and by the relationship between windrow and tire – a system almost as accurate as the tractor’s rudimentary instruments. Unlike my morning’s workhorse, my stead for the afternoon was a marvel of technology – instruments capable of mapping my location and orientation with pinpoint accuracy, a synthetic vision system displaying a 3D representation of the terrain flown over, and an autopilot powerful enough to fly from take-off to landing. Yet, that day, I flew by sight, by ear, and by feel – by the sound of the air across the wings, the bump and lurch of the plane and by the relationship between the plane and the horizon.

Both tasks could have been performed with a different perspective – I could have put the hay up by watching the wider world – maintaining a steady speed on the speedometer and steering straight lines from field edge to field edge and I could have flown with my head nestled deep in the plane’s cockpit with my attention fixedly attuned to the wealth of digital information – but to do so would be to defeat some of the task’s expectations, to lose a little of the art of the task.

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Terry Pratchett

For the client, a case can be a time of  non-existant perspective. They  find themselves in that pitch dark room, forced into an obscure game, and focused so narrowly they cannot a future or a past. This lack of perspective neither good nor bad, it just is.

For lawyers, a case can be a time of infinite perspective. The boundless possibilities of a new matter quickly have a lawyer’s perspective traversing the vast scale space –  from the minutiae of statutory interpretation to the wide expanses of legal strategy – that is part and parcel of the lawyer’s realm.

In isolation, neither perspective is very efficient – the client’s narrow focus leads down the road to positional, non-strategic thinking and often leads to frustration on the part of the lawyer; while the lawyer’s perspective tends to be overwhelming to the client. The key is to set the proper expectations – explicit expectations help to widen the client’s expectations and to focus the lawyers. The cool thing is that by establishing a proper perspective, things become more efficient and (here’s the real bonus) it becomes easier for the client to see the lawyer’s value.

Small Town Courting

/ Bruce Cameron

A fundamental difference between a small town and a small city is that small towns, regardless of their population, still have courthouses whereas small cities, in their hurry to morph into bedroom communities for some urbane metropolis, have justice centers.

Justice centers are grand buildings, integrating glass, steel and stone into a monument  to bureaucratic judicial efficiency providing one stop shopping for all things legal from the sheriff to the recorder and from the courtroom to the jail cell. These are places designed  for those who assume that the efficiencies of consolidation & modernization make up for chronic underfunding. Here there is a cold sterility to the environment that seems to make courtesy appear artificial and channels the mass of humanity that enters its walls into tired, well-worn roles.

Courthouses, on the other hand, are quiet buildings sitting in silent dignity on the edge of the town square; more cathedral than monument. Newer buildings housing the sheriff, the recorder and the jail sit, like handmaidens, behind and to the side. Courthouses were built out of pride and are maintained out of tradition. There is a warmth within those weathered walls and worn and paneled walls that encourages courtesy – more as an act of devotion than a gentile gesture – and welcomes those who enter.

Recently I’ve had similar matters in both a small city justice center and a small town courthouse. In the former, the matter was concluded in a matter 10 tense minutes – a business transaction handled in the crisp efficiency only a streamlined & work-flowed process can provide. In the later, the matter took about twice as long, but along the way, I got caught up on what’s new in town, the weather, and the health of a friend’s dog. Both matters were billed as fixed fees, only one made me glad to have put on my lawyer suit that day.

A Well-Informed Mind

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment
A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. – Ann Radcliffe

At a recent “new lawyer” seminar the speaker, in response to a question from the audience, spent quite some time dispensing tips and procedures for avoiding “bad” clients and provided a cautionary tales about how they handled their “worst” clients. While the tips were the usual dull platitudes,  I was struck by the automatic assumption that there are “good” and “bad” clients – seems a fairly silly base level assumption to make if one is in what is essentially a customer service business.

As I see it, clients come to a lawyer during times of stress. They come to us in a frame of mind that prevents them from operating as their highest, most rational self, and they come to us more through the actions of the imp of the perverse than through their own volition. So, is it any wonder that, at these times, they may require some hand-holding as they venture onto this new and unknown path. Or that, to a stranger, they may appear to be difficult or unpleasant. There is no good or bad here, there are just people who are reacting rather than consciously acting.

Implicit in our role as advocate, is the assumption that our clients lack the standing, skill, knowledge, ability, and perhaps even the emotional capacity to speak for themselves. It follows then, that as an advocate, it is part of our function to inform our clients, to clarify expectations, to educate and inform, to stave off that “plunge into error”. When we take on the mantle of advocate, the base level assumption becomes one that allows clients to be somewhat less than themselves; allows for less than stellar behavior.

There are no good or bad clients, there are client’s whose “shadow-self” (to borrow a phrase from Pauline Tesler) is one I am not prepared for, but that is my failing, not the client’s. My job is to learn and do better the next time. Hey, perhaps I did take something away from that CLE after all.

Rural Technocracy

/ Bruce Cameron

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. R. Buckminster Fuller

Technology is slowly making inroads out here in the hinterlands. GPS, GIS, and laptops are transforming how fields are managed, crops are planted, and even who (to be more accurate, that should read “what”) is steering the equipment. Combine this new technology with the farmer’s existing knowledge about the raw inputs and the result is more efficient farming as crops are planted at optimal spacings by equipment moving at optimal speeds and engines turning at optimal rates.

The interesting thing is that the requirements of the raw inputs are driving the technological improvements. It seems that the successful advances either reduce operator workload or provide better management of the raw materials. All the rest seems to lie on the shelf neatly polished under a light film of dust.

Technology is rapidly making inroads in the legal profession. From smart-phones to SaaS,  VoIP to VLOs, and e-fax & e-mail to social networking, there appears to be a high tech solution to each and every problem you can think of and some you’ve not even thought of yet. But I am left wondering if we, as a profession, are building the right machinery or if, in our headlong rush into the 23rd century we are building a highly polished, intricately complex, highly efficient machine best suited to gathering dust.

Continue reading →

An Accident in the Heartland

/ Bruce Cameron

This weekend there was an accident in our community. It was one of those events where we learn yet again that there is a fine line between urgency and carelessness and where we are shown that the human body is no match for horsepower, physics and heavy machinery. It was also one of those events that brings a rural community together – when the calls of concern and the offers of help arrive on the heels of the emergency vehicles. Neighbors, friends and strangers band together to see that the crops are brought in, the chores are done and the injured are cared for. And it was one of those events where one senses a wave of palpable relief sweep through the community when the word comes through that, this time, there were no life threatening injuries, no serious trauma and the only injuries are those cured by time and rest.

Now that the moment has past, I am left contemplating my fragility, the wholly unpleasant thought of emergency planning for my practice, and asking if my ICE file (in case of emergency) will be adequate for the occasion of my injury. The very nature of being a solo means that, unless prior plans are made, no one will be there to care for my clients. So, I am spending some time reviewing plans made and thinking about what new plans need to be made.

Continue reading →