Douglas Whaley

                                                       . One of the great pleasures of retiring is that I no longer have to attend faculty meetings, as I did regularly for 34 years.   Meetings of any sort are usually awful, but I'm alive to tell you that a collection of law professors gathered in one room to discuss anything is hell on earth.   Like all lawyers, law professors can verbally litigate sentences just uttered, and, also being teachers, then expound for interminable periods on their own point of view.   It's so boring that mice have moved out of the building rather than ever experience this again.   Indeed, an exterminating service should consider scheduling law school faculty meetin...

                                                                      . Mama Cat and Owner The Whaley Family line has always featured two unfortunate traits: (1) optimism when it's not justified (and, indeed, is contradicted by all available facts), and (2) ignoring important symptoms even if doing so will likely lead to major trouble.   This all was on exhibit Tuesday, July 5, 2011. Readers of this blog may remember a prior post entitled   "Report on Old Doug: Health, Theater, eBook, and More" (June 28, 2011) in which I described various topics.   One of these was my enthusiasm for attending a writers' conference in New Yo...

                                              . Since I graduated from law school in 1968 I've always had some sort of legal practice which varied from extensive in the early years, to these days when I'm retired and mostly just doing consulting work for a hefty fee.   In this period I've written a lot of letters threatening legal action on behalf of my client (or, on the rare occasion, myself—see Related Posts below).   In the classroom I've passed on my advice on how to create an effective letter, and now I offer it to you, blog reader. A letter threatening legal action almost always discombobulates a recipient who is not him/herself routinely involved in legal actions.   I tell my law students that in their coming practices they will often...