Publishers, 10; Courts, 3.

[captainsblog]

In the never-ending battle between my vocation and my avocation, the latter won today, big time.

My dear friends at Candlemark & Gleam just announced the first, and very positive, review of Susan Jane Bigelow's second installment in the Broken series. It's called Fly into Fire, and I am immensely proud to have been one of its editors. It becomes available for purchase on January 24, but sorta-kinda-pre-orders are just fine, thanks:)

Meanwhile, if you haven't got a dime to spend, but have a Kindle? No prob, Bob: another of my amazing 2011 editees, Kate Danley, has put her first book, The Woodcutter, out for Kindle loan for nothing. Nada. Gesphincto.  Mind, I had nothing to do with this title other than to enjoy it thoroughly, but now, so can you:)

----

Would that the day in the law courts went as prettily. Not badly, just annoyingly. And adverbially.

I spent my morning fighting with forms, on a quest for a client on which I will not likely make an additional dime. Client hired Lawyer X to file a BK for him. X absconded with his entire fee and filing fee, never filing anything for him. A bit of research turned up the fact that X had never filed a case in our court for anyone, ever. I took it on for a substantially reduced fee, got the desired result, and then turned to helping him in trying to file a grievance against X- who is now known as Ex Lawyer. He resigned in December, and thereby deprived the Grievance Committee of any jurisdiction to sanction him further.

Ah, but there is a remedy- maybe. The high-falutin'-soundin' Lawyers Fund for Client Protection- a slush fund of sorts, funded by a portion of our biennial registration fees, which pays out money to victims of dishonest lawyers^*.

^*Quantities limited. While supplies last. Restrictions apply.

Among the restrictions: good-guy lawyers cannot charge victimized clients anything for helping them fill out these forms against bad-guy lawyers. I wouldn't have anyway, but it would've been nice if they'd made the process a little easier. They didn't. The claim forms are available at their website as .pdfs, but they are not fillable, and that means printing them out and typing them on typewriters. How perfectly 1920.  Even worse, one of the forms, when you open it online to print the blank form, gives you this.

That form, amazingly technological enough to defeat screencapping, is nonetheless a scan of a colored-paper document that practically drained a third of a black ink cartridge when I went to print it out. I could hear the printer crying, Refill! Refilllllll!

I snailmailed the typed forms to the client, and will send them in for "approval" to Albany, knowng full well that they will likely deny the claim. I just hope it isn't because the typed form wasn't legible enough.

----

What better way, then, to top that off than to spend most of the afternoon in Small Claims Court?

Don't get me wrong; I won, although by default (my third appearance, after each side previously got their One Adjournment), but the lack of practicality in the room, it burns.   One case called before us involved two lawyers on one side, against a complaining witness who was close to legally deaf, taking up half an hour and probably more in legal fees for the two lawyers than the claim was worth, ultimately resulting in, what else?, another adjournment. 

The one case before our final default victory, the only one we saw the whole time which went on to the merits, was a he-said/she-said dispute over a security deposit. The hearing officers never announce their decisions from the bench in contested cases (likely for their own safety, most of these people having seen way too many televised Judge Shows where things get really violent), but it occurred to me that we could seriously reduce the state court system's deficit by letting the other participants in the room wager on the outcome. If they were giving anything under even odds against the tenant losing, I'd have bet my parking money and likely taken home some decent lunch money.

Instead, the judge will write a decision. I wonder if he needs someone to edit it;)

Comments

[firynze]

I sort of love the idea of making book on cases like that. The state could take a cut, and you'd have to be present to wager, and maybe have to pledge jury time or something, too. Civic duty and entertainment, all in one!

The forms sound like a nightmare. Paperwork so often is...

[targaff.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure why the NY Law Fund link to that version on their website when they've got a printer-friendlier (albeit admittedly a tad blurrier) version of the same form on their own website. Someone somewhere needs scanning lessons.