Finding My Office With what3words

The address of the front door of my office using the app what3words is ///:headed.rating.locate which refers not just to my street address of 1756 Gilpin Street, Denver, Colorado 80218, but to the actual three meter by three meter box location within that parcel of real estate where the front door of the building is located.

The app makers assigned every single three meter by three meter square in the world an address consisting of three English words. This is a precision roughly equivalent to a GPS coordinate with degrees, minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds of latitude and longitude, which is especially useful for large industrial, academic or medical campuses, parks or open space, and large buildings. In some circumstances, you would also need to know the floor of the multi-story building in question. 

This is also roughly the precision of GPS systems that have been scrambled for civilian purposes, and is about the accuracy of GPS guided artillery, guided missiles and smart bombs. 

The use of English words is desirable because people remember words better (and can communicate them orally better) than they can remember GPS coordinates and communicate them orally, a key insight into how a user interface should work. The what3words address of my office, despite being more specific, is probably easier to remember or take down over the phone, than even the full street address, although the what3words address can't be applied on the ground without the app.

The app translates the words into GPS locations using a key. More obscure words are used to describe less high interest locations like locations in the middle of an Antarctic or Arctic ice fields, oceans and deserts. More common words are used to describe locations in highly populated areas that are developed enough to be likely to have lots of users (as of the time that the name were assigned on a permanent basis a few years ago).

After Super Tuesday

The Democrats

Even though Bernie Sanders does much better against all of the leading Republican candidates in head to head polling match ups, and in particularly, is stronger than Clinton in many of the key swing states in the 2016 election, it is almost inevitable that Clinton will win the 2016 Presidential nomination.

He won four states on Super Tuesday, bringing his total to five including New Hampshire.

Clinton is dominating the Southern primaries and performing credibly in states like Massachusetts, where she narrowly defeated Sanders by winning the Boston metropolitan area while losing in the rest of the state.  Critically, she is winning shares of the African-American primary vote that equal or exceed that of Barack Obama and African-Americans are 25% of Democratic primary voters nationally and a far larger share of Democratic primary voters in the South.  She also has the backing of the overwhelming majority of the super delegates.

Colorado went 60-40 for Sanders whom I backed last night as I chaired the Precinct 223 caucus with 76 Democrats in attendance, about ten times as many as in a typical year without a contested Democratic party primary contest. (There are 755 active voters in this Precinct of all parties combined and in House District 2 as a whole of which Precinct 226 is a part, 46.4% of active registered voters are Democrats, so there are probably about 350 active registered Democrats in the precinct implying a turnout of about 21.7% which is better than the 13.3% that Democrats averaged statewide.) If I may brag, our caucus finished well before most of our peers, despite a larger turnout than most.  Our four Presidential race delegates were split evenly, because the Sanders edge was not quite large enough to translate into a 3-1 edge.

We also took a straw poll in the DA race in which Beth McCann took 3 of our delegates, while 1 was pledge to "uncommitted".

The Republicans

Cruz has now won Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska.  Rubio has won Minnesota.  Kaisch has made a few strong second place finishes.  I can't think of any state in which Carson has polled better than fourth place.

A straw poll held that the Republican caucus in Colorado, with no binding effect, suggests that Cruz would have won and that Trump would have placed third, if Colorado had held a caucus.  So the Republican establishment really spited itself by not doing so.  Then again, with higher turnout from less engaged Republicans, Trump might have done better than he did in a straw poll at an ill attended Republican caucus.

Trump has won all of the other state and has come in second place in every state that Cruz has won (Trump came in third in Minnesota). Trump is polling twenty points ahead of Rubio in Rubio's home state of Florida.  Trump hasn't broken 50% in any Republican primary yet, that I can recall, but the anti-Trump vote is divided.

The vain hope that the Republican establishment could rally around Rubio now looks like a pipe dream.  It had already been clear that Kaisch and Carson were spoilers in this race.  But, realistically, it now seems that the only shot that the Republicans have at nominating someone other than Trump is for Rubio, Kaisch and Carson to drop out immediately and throw their support behind Cruz.

Even that strategy is hardly a sure thing.  There are many states where Cruz isn't popular at all and would probably not pick up the votes of Republicans supporting other candidates.

A third of the states have already voted, and a flurry of races this weekend and Tuesday will bring that to almost half in less than a week, and a great many more will vote in the week after that.  There is very little time left to dramatically change the trend lines in the Republican nomination contest.

In any case, since none of the five GOP candidates show any sign of dropping out, Trump is almost surely going to be the Republican nominee for President, leaving us with a Clinton v. Trump race that current polling has Clinton winning by a nose.

This is a pretty thin thread for the nation's future to hang upon.  The Denver Post's editorial board nails it:

[N]ot a week goes by when Trump doesn't demonstrate he is unfit to be president because of his character, temperament and lack of knowledge — never mind his often lurid, simplistic policy positions.

Right now, it looks like the only way our nation can avoid having someone so unfit serve as our President is for Hillary Clinton to defeat Trump in the general election in November.

Fortunately, Sanders supporters are almost unanimous in their willingness to back Clinton in the general election, while many Republicans, rightfully, have qualms about supporting Trump if he wins their nomination.  We can only hope that independent voters won't be duped and throw our nation over the precipice.

Professional Publications Pending

My two part article with the working title "Judgments, Liens, Encumbrances and Garnishments in Probate" will be published in the May and June issues of the Colorado Lawyer, the principal monthly publication of the Colorado Bar Association.

The title is fairly self-explanatory, although the article will also discuss the intersection of probate law and bankruptcy law. Another topic with which I have handled a number of cases, for another day, is the intersection of probate and family law.

Admittedly, this is not the world's most glamorous legal topic.  It ranks right up there with depreciation schedules and dentistry.  But, it covers issues of importance to an important set of technical issues for practicing members of the bar who do probate work or represent creditors.  The article also points out some ambiguities and contradictions in Colorado's probate laws.

My last article in the Colorado Lawyer was in September of 1998 regarding an estate tax credit for family owned businesses that no longer exists, so it was time to write a new one.  I have also written two papers presented at academic conferences, and taught numerous continuing legal education courses since 2002 (mostly through the National Business Institute).

I was previously a full time Associate Professor of Estate Planning in the graduate program of the College For Financial Planning in Greenwood Village, Colorado, a "for profit" sister college of the University of Phoenix.  But, I was laid off using last hired, first fired logic, due to budget cuts because the College had not met profit growth goals, so I returned to private practice in November of 2005.  This wasn't the best paid employment that I've ever had.  But, I loved teaching and still do. And, this was the only job I've ever had where I didn't have to keep track of how I spent every tenth of an hour of my billable time.  It was also the last job I ever had where I was a W-2 employee and received a salary like clockwork twice a month without even having to send in an invoice requesting payment. Those are experiences that I now remember nostalgically as a self-employed lawyer.

Reruns!

In most, if not all, states attorneys must take a certain number of hours of continuing legal education classes every so often to keep their licenses current. In Colorado, the requirement is 45 hours every three years, including seven hours of legal ethics every three years.

Last fall, I flew out to a television studio to record my lectures for a continuing legal education class that was then broadcast over the web to students all across the nation (and in theory, the world) about a month later, at which point I made myself available to answer students questions on a live basis.

On April 23, 2014, this will be the first of the dozens of continuing legal education classes I've taught and conference papers that I've presented to enter the "rerun" cycle, and I'll make myself available a second time for Q&A.

The class is: Use of LLCs in Asset Protection and Estate Planning.

The CLE provider is the National Business Institute (800-931-3140), and the class will be offered in a video webcast format. If you are an attorney, you can register to watch the 7 hour presentation and receive the associated course outline for $339.[1]

My co-presenter is the charming and highly intelligent Shayna W. Borakove of Wisconsin. The topics that I cover in the talk are:

Estate Planning Advantages of an LLC
* Lack of Marketability Discounts
* Income Earned out of the Estate
* IRC Section 2036 - Retained Enjoyment in Life Estates

Transfer of Interest
* Buy-Sell Agreements, Options, and Similar Arrangements
* Planning and Executing a Gradual Transfer

Using LLCs and Trusts Together
* Choosing the Type of Trust to Use
* Protecting Pension Plans
* Protecting and Transferring Real Estate
* Case Examples of Using LLC and Trust in Combination
* Administration Costs

Tax Planning and Reporting
* Asset Freezing Techniques - Preserving the Low Value of the Business Assets
* Avoiding Step-Up in Basis
* What to Do about the New Federal Tax Law
* Income and Gift Tax Hurdles
* Preventing Challenges by IRS with Regard to Valuation Discounts and Disclaimers

Legal Ethics
* Who Is Your Client?
* Preventing Fraudulent Transfers
* Attorney Fees
* Attorney Fiduciary Liability

My co-presenter discusses "Initial Client Considerations", "Structuring and Funding the LLC," and "Asset Protection with LLCs," although, in many of the sections there is a fair amount of back and forth discussion between us. (For what it is worth, it is much harder to give one of these talks to a camera in a studio without an audience, as we did, than to do a presentation before a live audience, since you don't get real time feedback as you look them in the eyes so that you can see if they are getting it.)

Thanks to the able assistance of my assistants, this presentation also includes some of the most awesome and entertaining power point presentations that I have ever used in any class or presentation.

You will laugh, you will cry, it's better than Cats (and more expensive to watch)!

______________________________________________________________

[1] Consider that price.

Instead of watching three first run movies in 3D at the local multiplex for $14 each and buying a trade non-fiction paperback by a best selling author for another $20 (total $62), hundreds of highly intelligent adults have chosen watch Shayna and I, and to read our course pack, for about five times this cost, even though I will freely admit that I am not nearly as good looking as your average movie star (Shayna probably comes out better in that department, so our viewers aren't getting a total loss), and not nearly as funny as the screenwriter for a typical big screen comedy.

Clearly, we are pretty awesome and our reputations precede us.

Alas, despite the much higher ticket charge, I assure you that I am not making anything approaching what Hollywood movies stars do for their performances, despite the fact that I have far more screen time and far more lines than they do. The pervasively unionized environment of the Hollywood movie industry has its privileges.

To earn even Hollywood character actor class paychecks as a lawyer, you need a better paying performance situation - the kind where your audience is a judge and a jury, or perhaps a boardroom.

What's the moral of this story?

Remember folks: Law is theater for ugly people, except it pays more consistently.  My current assistant, Alex, has learned this lesson.  He's spending today taking the LSATs (the standardized tests you need to do well on to get into law school).  Good luck Alex!

Seriously though, the price of a presentation like this does make a certain amount of sense. Watching us teaches you skills that allow your clients to reduce their tax bills by hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars.  For implementing these techniques, the lawyers watching the program, in turn, will receive handsome fees and be allowed to keep their licenses which are indispensable for their livelihood, current.

Essentially, the pricing reflects a return on investment pricing model (and the fact that the economies of scale aren't nearly so good when you have an audience of hundreds, instead of tens of millions, of students).  This deal is really better than most classes of this kind.  A class like this one pays for itself for the student even if that student does only a single transaction that requires this knowledge base.  And, unlike ordinary "get rich quick" seminars, I have no interest in offering my students false hopes that will screw them up down the road in order to pack my audiences in for my huge commissions.

Also, the malpractice lawsuit liability to a lawyer for screwing up a transaction like the ones we are discussing could easily run into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars as well. Indeed, ethical mistakes in transactions like this could even cost a lawyer his license or result in criminal charges.  This is another huge value added feature of watching this presentation.

So, really, the class is well worth the price, even though I'm no Brad Pitt.

Wash Park Prophet on Angels

I have recently added an article to Wikipedia on the subject of the Elioud, who are children of the angel-human hybrid Nephalim in certain non-canonical religious texts such as the First Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees that were widely used by the Jewish Essenes sect around the time that early Christianity arose. 

It is the ninth new article that I have contributed to Wikipedia, one of which was a biography of a living physicist that was deleted on the ground that he lacked sufficient notability.

Coming Attractions: Doing The Work Of "Second-Rate Minds" (i.e. "The Book")

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
 

G.H.Hardy, A Mathematicians' Apology (1940), available here (via Quantum Diaries Survivor).

I am in the early stages of writing (with a collaborator who will be a co-author) a short, trade non-fiction book meant for an audience of educated non-specialists.  So, I anticipate that I will be devoting significant efforts to it over the next twelve months or so.

"The book" will be less technical and academic than academic journal articles or a magnus opus like "Albion's Seed" or Gibbon's "Rise and Fall."  But, won't be a textbook or comprehensive primer either.  Instead, it will be more along the lines of popularizations of the current state of knowledge about the topics it discusses with significant original analysis and introspection exemplified, for example, in books by people like Malcomb Gladwell and Jared Diamond (or less famously, bloggers like Peter Woit, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga  and Tyler Cohen).  I am also drawing to some extent on the trend towards recognizing a class of unaffiliated academic investigators and public intellectuals that the Internet has made possible.  Relative to journalist efforts, this will be the stuff of feature articles and op-ed page essays, rather than straight news reporting.

The mission statement of the book is basically to find a more prominent place in the never ending "national discussion" for some important but under appreciated facts, developing trends, and analytical perspectives that too often are ignored in favor of conventional wisdom.  We think we provide a perspective that isn't reflected in any of the "conventional wisdom" accounts of the topics we will discuss.  This matters.  Perhaps the greatest threat to modern industrialized societies today are those that arise from "group think."  It is important to enough end participants in the discussion, but it is even more important to maximize the number of alternative perspectives expressed in those discussions which the collective audience to this national discussion can weigh and when complimentary, synthesize into an overall approach.

Of course, as a side benefit, we are also buying a ticket for us in the fame and fortune lottery of trade non-fiction writing, and if it is successful there could be successor books along the same lines.

"The book" will not primarily consisting of original research, which I leave for people who have salaried professorships, research assistants, and university resources.

Instead, "the book" will seek primarily to explain the works of others, popularizing concepts and facts that are now familiar only to those at the cutting edge of professional expertise and academic research. Of course, we will go far further in terms of synthesis, connecting of the dots, and analysis than what would be appropriate in some other forums in which I publish or write like Wikipedia article contributions, continuing education courses, bar journal articles for practicing attorneys, and legal briefs. It will be more like the occassional academic conference papers that I write every few years, but with a broader scope and intended for a more general audience.

I come to this from the perspective of someone active in politics all of his life, who actively practices law, and who has intermittently been a journalist (in addition, of course, to being a blogger before the terms was even well established).  My collaborator is a novelist and free lance writer with a solid practical experience and academic background in addressing public policy issues.

Our motives are at least as rooted in the political tactics of movement politics and "saving the world" as they are in raw economics.  While books are "old school," they are still a very effective platform for influencing the national discussion and sowing the seeds of ideas in the heads of bright people who will find their own ways to apply.  At any rate, they are effective relative to posts at a couple of blogs that are currently well into the long tail, or the discipline or industry specific academic or trade publications that similarly have only a small audience, even if that audience is an elite and influential one. 

From my perspective, good ideas mean nothing unless enough of the right people are aware of them, consider them in their professional and political lives, and apply them.  The book will help bridge the gap between what somebody knows and what lots of people know about these topics.

For example, many of the currently influential mathematics of fractal dimensions and chaotic dynamics that emerged in the late 1800s was virtually overlooked by all but a few specialist graduate students in obscure academic journals (some available only in Russian) that failed to illustrate how these ideas could be applied or incorporated into other works, until Benoît Mandelbrot took the lonely road of reinvigorating the field starting in the 1960s that only really took off when his ideas started to be popularized in the trade press in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Once people knew that these concepts were out there, however, professionals and academics in disciplines from physics to engineering to economics to mathematics to information technology and beyond started to incorporate these ideas into the crowded math and statistics canon of concepts taught to undergraduates and first year graduate students in math and science disciplines (most of which was well established before the United States adopted the Bill of Rights).

At this point, "the book" has a working title and overall theme, a lot of research and very rough draft writing for many of the chapters (although without a final determination on which chapters will stay and which will go, or on how they will be organized), an overall sense of where the book will fit on a range from very journalist to very academic, a sense of what some of the core subtopics will be, a general sense of what steps will be taken in the writing and marketing process, an agreement in principle on how tasks will be allocated between the co-authors, and an understanding about how the economics and division of credit will be addressed.  But, the devil is in the details and a great deal of the work still needs to be done.

In the interest of building up dramatic tension and allowing the ideas to gel and to be modified in the course of the writing process, I won't be providing much detail on the specific substance of what will be in the book until much, much later.  But, I will note that posts at this blog and its companion blog, Dispatches from Turtle Island, are and will continue to be one important source for the initial core of supporting facts, academic research, government reports, and analytical constructs that will be systematized, expanded upon and updated in the book.

At any rate, if you notice a reduced volume of posting over the next many months, part of this may be because my available creative capacity is being diverted to "the book." 

Stay tuned.

Service Announcement

Yesterday, I filed my application to fill the vacancy in the Denver Probate Judge position created when Judge C. Jean Stewart tendered her resignation effective June 30, 2011.

My application will be evaluated along with the application of the other applicants who meet the requirements for consideration for the position on May 17, 2011 by the Second Judicial District Nominating Commission, a body with seven members: four Democrats, two Republicans, one unaffiliated Denver residents; three lawyers and four non-lawyers. The body is chaired by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. The Commission generally recommends three of the candidates, on the basis of merit, for consideration by Governor Hickenlooper who must either select an appointee from that group, or defer the choice to the Colorado Supreme Court (which almost never happens). There is then a retention election after an initial two year term, and after each six year term thereafter. Judge Stewart was just overwhelming retained by Denver voters in the November 2010 election.

Judges are subject to the Colorado Code of Judicial Conduct, consisting of nine Canons that judges are to observe. Several apply to off the job conduct of judges:

Canon 1: A judge should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary.

Canon 2: A judge should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all the judge's activities.

Canon 4: A judge is encouraged to engage in quasi-judicial activities to improve the law, the legal system and the administration of justice.

Canon 5: A judge is encouraged to participate in extra-judicial activities.

Canon 7: A judge should refrain from political activity inappropriate to his or her judicial office.

(The other canons don't pertain to the non-financial extra-judicial activities of a Probate Judge except Canon 3 which provides in addition to other matters that "The judicial duties of a judge take precedence over all his or her other activities.")

By its terms, the Colorado Canons of Judicial Conduct do not apply to me at this point. But, in the interest of avoiding any appearance of impropriety, I will be adhering to these Canons during the course of the judicial selection process. Most directly relevant to this blog, I will be refraining from making posts for a political organization or candidate, will not be publicly endorsing any candidate for public office, will not be soliciting funds for or contributing to political organizations or campaigns, and will not be engaged in most kinds of political activity including political blogging.

I will also be refraining from discussing who I would rule on any case or issue that might come before a Denver Probate Judge.

There are many other blogs where you can get your fix of political rhetoric, gossip, analysis and advocacy, and I encourage you to go out and find them.

The Canons of Judicial Conduct do not require that a judge never had political involvement before taking office, and I won't be purging old posts from this blog as a result. I will, however, be removing certain partisan links or links that may create an appearance of impartiality or bias from the sidebar. Please do not consider the removal of your link to be a personal affront.

Urheimat

One of my little pet projects is the Wikipedia article entitled Urheimat, for which I am one of the main contributors (particularly for the non-Indo-European languages). The term refers to the homeland in which a language family originated. The article is currently in pretty good shape. The most recent push was to add illustrations and provide more complete references in the footnotes.

It has a capsule summary of the state of what we know about the origins of almost all of the world's main language families. Linguistic isolates whose immediate place of origin is undisputed, but whose deeper origins are the subject of intense dispute, such as Basque, the languages of the Caucusus, and many of the linguistic isolates of the Americas are omitted.

Please take a look.

Cited

I've published in the state bar journal, taught many continuing legal education classes, and presented conference papers at academic conferences, but I haven't actually published a law review article. This blog did rate a citation in a 2010 article, however, at footnote 42 in a recent article on the bankruptcy gag rule: Renee Newman Knake, "Contemplating Free Speech and Congressional Efforts to Constrain Legal Advice." Thanks for the mention.

Will Evict Squatters, Cheap.

A bank paid "$35,000 in legal fees and bills for locksmiths, security and cleanup" to evict squatters with no prior relationship to the property who showed up one day in a $3.3 million mansion in Seattle. This calls for an open letter:

Dear Mystery Bank:

You are being robbed by your attorneys. I assure you that should you ever encounter this problem in Colorado, that I would be happy to evict squatters from your foreclosed upon mansions, and pay for locksmiths, security and cleanup out of my fee, for a fraction of the $35,000 that you paid. There is a good chance that I could even manage this result without going to court.

For that matter, I'd be happy to evict ordinary former owners of the property with a much stronger claim to the property for less than that price.

Sincerely,

Me

Technorati Claim Token

Technorati, a blog indexing service, lets you claim your blog by demonstrating your ability to control it through the posting of a "claim token" in the blog. Here it is: claim token UFPKBBTEHQVX

Dear Technorati Reviewer: Dude, look at this cool blog!

Dear Regular Readers: Apologies for this silly interruption for the purpose of mindless self-promotion. Still, I can't object to a procedure that artfully escapes efforts to claim and speak for a blog that you don't actually control, and the indexing on Technorati seems much better than it did before its recent reform designed to clear out blog spam from SEO companies that had tried to game the system by creating meaningless links between faux blogs.

This blog, as a look at the sidebar archive will show, has been around for four and a half years of regular substantive blogging and is linked to by blogs that likewise really exist. The copy editing may leave much to be desired, but the thought is more or less original (at credited to someone else when manually quoted or paraphrased).

Charge It Against My Fifteen Minutes

A New York Times article has quoted me on the subject of Dungeons and Dragons in prison.

The issue arose out of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upholding a prison regulation at a maximum security prison in Wisconsin that banned Dungeons and Dragons on the theory that it would promote gang activity. The legal standard at issue is the "rational basis" test of constitutional review of free speech right claims.

I can certainly imagine rational basis reasons for the ban. For example, "prison shouldn't be fun, and the only reason to allow Dungeons and Dragons in prison is to allow inmates to have fun," or "dice and other Dungeons and Dragons materials could be used to conceal contraband," or "Dungeons and Dragons materials could be used as a cover for gambling which is banned in prison." But, the notion that Dungeons and Dragons could conceivably promote dangerous gang activity in prison is absurd, and the testimony of the supposed "gang expert" whose opinion was the basis of the prison's defense of its policy was embarassing to the state and the expert witness involved viewed by anyone with a remote familiarity with the game.

Moreover, from a public policy view, there is evidence that Dungeons and Dragons is likely to improve, rather than harm, the maintenance of good order in prisons. For example, a study of mildly mentally retarded individuals (close to the average in maximum security prisons where more than a third of inmates are typically high school dropouts) showed that playing Dungeons and Dragons helped improve self-control, reading and math abilities.

Full disclosure: Yes, I did play dungeons and dragons and other role playing games actively for most of my junior high school and high school years. The word the Japanese would use to describe someone with my level of interest in the game is Otaku.

The best quote of the VC thread that received notice from the NYT:

Upton Updike says:

Gays can play D&D and not get married.

Inmates can get married but can’t play D&D.

I suppose we’re even...

January 26, 2010, 8:25 pm

Goodbye 80203, Hello 80209

I have practiced law for a little more than four years at 837 Sherman Street, Denver, Colorado 80203 in Denver's capital hill. The charming, more than a century old, converted mansion had its virtues. But, my needs have changed. I don't need to be convenient to the state capital any more, and in an era where court documents are exchanged electronically and many minor hearings are conducted by telephone, I don't need to be convenient to the courts either. Equally important, I simply don't need so much space, but would like to have more free parking available for clients. If you would like capital hill office space, I hear that there is still some available there.

So, next week, I will start practicing law (as a sole practitioner) at a new office located at 3773 Cherry Creek North Drive, Suite 575, Denver, Colorado 80209. For those familiar with the area, the directions are simple. Go to DazBog. Get on the nearest elevator. Go up four floors. Follow the arrow on the sign with my name on it.

Also, I live in 80209 and actually bought my home, in part, to be convenient to an office building just down the street, where I worked at the time. So this makes sense personally for me.

This, alas, will mean less time at my beloved Avianos between 8th and 9th on Lincoln. But, sometimes life offers hard choices and it isn't as if I can't visit sometimes.

Note To Anonymous Bloggers: If you are an anonymous blogger, don't make posts like this one.

Under A New Flag

* Last week I gave a national teleseminar for the National Business Institution "The Essentials of Asset Protection." You can buy copies for continuing education credits if you wish, I believe. I've lectured on the topic to lawyers for many years.

* Friday was the last day that the lawyers Anne McGihon, Andrea Montague and I, Andrew Oh-Willeke, did business as a branch office of the 500+ lawyer, Florida based law firm of Akerman Senterfitt LLP.

All of the lawyers of McGihon & Oh-Willeke, LLC joined Akerman on March 9, 2009. My practice remained commercial litigation, business transactions and estate planning. Anne McGihon's practice in Denver and Washington D.C. focused on public policy issues like representing clients in legislative and regulatory matters vis-a-vis the federal government. Andrea Montague worked with both of us.

As of this week, we are no longer affiliated with Akerman Senterfitt. Those of you who read websites like Above The Law, in the sidebar, know that this has been a very difficult time for big law firms. Most, including Akerman, have cut associate pay, reduced the number of lawyers and staff on their payrolls, reduced rent expenses, and focused on their long established core businesses. Akerman has followed suit determining that it was not ready at this time to take on expansion plans like the one our Denver South office involved. We have greatly enjoyed working with the lawyers at Akerman and continue to serve as local counsel for them in Colorado on select matters. For the vast majority of our clients, this simply means that they will start receiving e-mails from a new e-mail address and will see different stationary when they receive correspondence from us.

Big Law definitely has benefits, although there is always inconvenience adapting to the peculiarities of life in a big organization. But, small is beautiful too. Our telephone numbers and address are the same for now, and e-mail to our old e-mail address will be automatically forwarded in this interim period.

* For readers of this blog, this means that I am no longer professionally limited from discussing the affairs of past clients of the firm, many of whom are in the health care, banking, real estate development and financial sectors. My duties to this firm clients and the risk that I would share insider information (or be perceived as having it, I rarely actually did have insider information that was blogworthy, and most of that was information that was on the verge of public announcement anyway) has limited my ability to blog in this area over the last nine months. Obviously, I still have clients whose privacy and interests must be respected, but I don't have to continue considering the interests of the clients to whom I had only a vicarious connection through my attorney colleagues in the large firm.

Forty Years After Stonewall

The Stonewall Riots (over the shutdown of a gay bar in New York City), forty years ago this Sunday, marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, and the Colorado Democratic Party's gay, lesbian and transsexual interest section (like that of many Democratic Party entities with the same purpose) bears its name, the "Stonewall Democrats."

Growing up in small town Ohio in the 1970s and 1980s, even though it was a college town, this was just background noise to me. I don't remember being really aware of the gay rights movement until I went to an even smaller college town in Ohio (Oberlin) after graduating from high school and encountered people who were out as gays and lesbians for the first time (transgender was part of the acronym commonly used on campus at the time but that concept was not something I had encountered personally, or a possibility that part of my consciousness or that I understood, until later). The notion that someone might take a term like "dyke" or "fag" and embrace it, was a revelation. I knew what the terms meant literally, in high school, but not in a way that had any really context or meaning to them.

More than anything else, the gay rights movement owes its success to that same thing that opened my mind, exposure. The "present company excluded" concept is more than a rule of etiquette. Your brain simply can't help treating people you know differently. Theoretical knowledge is all fine and good, but your gut works on the particularistic experiences you've had in real life. One of the most visible early gay rights groups, ACT-UP, didn't make a lot of friends with its militant and often law breaking tactics, but it made you pay attention and acknowledge that gay rights and AIDS were serious issues at all, and just as important, that gay and lesbian people really existed, and were not just some theoretical construct invented by philosophers (well actually, some queer studies scholars still do say that gender is just a theoretical construct, but that's another story).

Still, the biggest impact didn't come from anything flashy or carefully planned. It came from ordinary but brave people living daily, ordinary lives and choosing to embrace their identity instead of hiding it, even though this involved risks of serious harm to their personal safety and reputation. I learned about what "gay" and "lesbian" meant while serving in student government doing things like brokering disputes over office space between the gay and lesbian student group, the Evangelical Christian group, the sex co-op (it provided contraception, counseling, practical sex tips and other information from a basically pro-sex perspective) and the seven Republicans on campus (some of whom I was also on a debate team and bipartisan student publication with). And then there was the drag ball, one of the highlights of the annual campus social calendar. And then there was walking across campus to dinner or a class or a dorm and seeing people of the same sex embracing like all the other lovers on campus and getting used to it (much more easily than I did to the sweet but very loud young woman in a passionate heterosexual relationship down the hall from me in my second year on campus).

At the time, in the Midwest, there weren't a lot of gay role models and there were no guarantees that there wouldn't be serious backlash. People then (and now) have been attacked, killed and ruined socially and professionally by coming out as homosexual or transgender. Many graduate school bound fellow students who were not only out, but incorporated their sexual orientation into their scholarship, had to gamble that they would be embraced rather than shunned by academics who got their PhDs when "Stonewall" was a descriptive non-proper noun and "gay" meant carefree and happy. The science bound future graduate students on campus often didn't have to be quite so obvious in their application materials, but also faced a group of prospective advisers and colleagues with a lot less predisposition to be welcoming as a matter of principle.

In the fact, most people were not punished for their openness while I was in college in our insular community, although not every place else at the time in the outside world was so welcoming. It was a good time to be out, although we didn't know that then. The safe bet at the time for those who didn't know any better was that this coming out was just a localized, temporary fad that would soon go the way of barbershop quartets, flappers, disco and bell bottom jeans.

I know that I was not so brave or self-assured at that point in my life. I spent all three of my years as a residential undergraduate living a lie (not a terribly uncomfortable one to be sure) as a parishioner of the local Episcopal Church and member of the Christ Church's quite active college student's group (even serving as a Sunday school teacher my last year there), despite having quite definitively ceased to believe in God while I was still in high school. The conclusion on religion only became only more firm as I studied church history and science in the classroom, but I wasn't about to let anyone know that in public. I could easily have simply been negligent regarding church attendance and not been noticed at all (which is what I did in law school), but I erred on the side of caution and habit and self-doubt. Maybe I'd change my mind in a different denomination than the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that I grew up in (and was confirmed in while I was in high school at a time when I didn't believe). I wasn't ready to face my social fears, even after I eventually figured myself out.

The risks haven't ended. The U.S. military, even in the Obama administration, is still drumming people out of the service for their sexual orientation. Public attitudes have changed, with a lot of that change hitting the average person on the street only in the past few years as the gay marriage issue has influenced people's thinking. Laws have changed. Any backlash will have to contend with a nation of Generation X and Generation Y and Millennials for whom homosexuality isn't something to be afraid of. But, transgender acceptance is still probably at least as far from reality now than acceptance of gays and lesbians was then, and the possibility that we may be at the tolerant side of a social pendulum swing is real. In Europe, Jews sometimes lived in peace for decades in an area, only to face a pogrom that left some dead and most of the rest of the community exiled. (In 1543, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, which urged people to conduct pogroms; modern Lutherans do their best to ignore these teachings, generally with great success.)

My neighborhood and its immediate neighbors have now sent at least two openly gay legislators and at least one openly lesbian legislator to the state legislature (I beg forgiveness if I've missed someone), and I count many Stonewall Dems (and a few of their Republican and unaffiliated counterparts) among my friends, colleagues and clients (about 30% of my estate planning clients are gay, lesbian or transgender). Even though I'm aware intellectually that two steps forward can be followed by one step back, I don't subconsciously believe it. A belief that you are right about something, reinforced by personal experience, creates a sense of inevitability.

When Time magazine reported on the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay rights must have surely seemed like a misguided, absurd lost cause to almost everyone. But protesters picketed, made seemingly impossible demands (many still unsatisfied), and demanded that politicians take sides anyway. A sexual revolution was underway, but it would take most intellectuals a couple of decades to come to the conclusion that the sexual revolution and other cultural upheavals of the 1960s (much of which actually spilled over into the 1970s), had as much to do with identity as they did with sex. A counter-revolution of fundamentalist Christian morality, sexually transmitted disease fears driven by AIDS and increased pre-marital sex, a distaste of young marriage and pregnancy driven by increased economic opportunities for women, and increased concerns about acquaintance rape and sexual harassment in an increasingly gender mixed world would start to take hold in the 1980s, taking the shine off the "sex" part of the sexual revolution. But, the gay rights movement did not retreat. It would take another decade still for people to discover the the ironic fact that the anti-gay policies of the U.S. military, which by bureaucratic happenstance dumped many people discharged for being gay in San Francisco, played a pivotal role in creating a queer community with more critical mass than anyplace since early 20th century Berlin. Gay marriage, which seemed like a pipe dream a decade ago, is now reality for tens of thousands of couples in many states, including the bulk of the Northeast. Popular culture portrayals of gays and lesbians have gone from being remarkable and groundbreaking to almost cliche, if they aren't talking about something more than mere sexual orientation.

Another reason for hope is that progress for gay rights hasn't been confined to the United States, which is actually something of a laggard in the developed world on gay rights issues. In the countries that are the usual suspects in the developed world, not just in Europe, but in Japan as well, attitudes are changing.

Progress has not been universal. In Iran and Iraq dozens of gays are executed or subjected to governmentally tolerated extrajudicial killings every year. Africa is as awash with anti-gay hate as any rabidly conservative evangelical Christian congregation in the American deep South. But, no struggle for toleration and acceptance is ever really won everywhere and forever. There are places on this Earth where they still burn witches in the 21st century too. There are still American elected officials who use the Internet to proclaim that Galileo was mistaken when he proclaimed that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The Church of Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ spent last fall pouring money and its doctrinal clout into opposing gay marriage in California and was starting to turn the Boy Scouts of America into a publicly anti-gay organization just around the time I became an Eagle Scout. Life is struggle and the struggle over gay rights is not over. But, gay and transgender rights (and acceptance) are making progress as we start to understand better who we are in a more inclusive way.

In the meantime, viva la revolucion!

Early FAC: Khaos Komic

I'll be presenting a paper entitled, "This Financial Crisis Was Brought To You By The Internal Revenue Code," at the Law and Society Conference in Denver tomorrow, so this week's FAC comes early.

In recognition of the many gay rights stories in progress right now (the California Prop 8 election, the Veiga vacancy election's choice of Pat Steadman, human rights violations in Iraq, etc.), I offer you an extremely tightly plotted, fairly realistic, well drawn comic about several LBGT kids with interlocked lives coming out called Khaos Komic, as your FAC for this week. While relationship rather than porn oriented, Khaos Komic is sufficiently explicit that it is not work safe. It is currently updated weekly and began about the same time as this blog.

FWIW, I don't know why exactly, but a surprising share of the best webcomics (rated by both popularity and by editorial quality) are gay lit. My suspicion is that a lot of good work is having trouble winning over support from comic book publishers and sellers in the print market who are worried about whether there is a market for it, and are worried about conservative buyer backlash. So, these authors, some of whom are message distribution as well as profit oriented, have turned to the webcomic medium. The meritocratic internet, in turn, pushed some of the best comics to the top of the heap, without much regard for genre. These successes, in turn, may have developed an audience for similar offerings in similar places. It could also have something to do with an increasing number of LGBT people feeling more comfortable being out themselves, or acknowledging a sexual or gender orientation, in the current political climate, thereby providing a fast growing audience. But, I really don't know.

Tomorrow is also the last day of school for my children and many DPS kids. So, please be more careful out there from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., as there are far more kids about. On to a long summer of coach pitch.

Nicest Compliment Received In Ages

"[He] is a kick-butt advocate and not likely to be the sort to back down on much of anything, and those same qualities probably provide much of the legal insight I appreciated[.]"

-- Jessical

I appreciate a kind word now and then.

Same Lawyer, New Shingle

It was nice to have my name on the door as a partner with the law firm of McGihon & Oh-Willeke, LLC. But, life takes funny turns, often for the better. I am now practicing law with hundreds of my closest friends at the law firm of Akerman Senterfitt, where I am "Of Counsel" as part of the firm's Denver offices.

For now, physically, I am practicing at the same address (a beautiful converted turn of the century mansion in Denver's Capital Hill neighborhood), one floor above my previous office, and my telephone number will be the same, although I will have a new professional e-mail address (for personal e-mail and communications regarding this blog, you can continue to contact me at an e-mail address that is my last name without punctuation at hotmail dot com). My practice will shift a little, but I will continue to work with many of the clients I've enjoyed serving for years, and look forward to being able to better serve some of them with the resources that a large firm can provide.

Some rituals will be new, like a conflict of interests update the size of a small newspaper to read each morning (something that took just a sentence of two on the telephone or in person every couple of days in my MOW days), while others, like doing quality legal work and accounting for every moment of the day in a time sheet, are eternal.

Also, while it is always there and always has been, to reiterate, read the disclaimer in the sidebar. It still applies, but more so, especially, the part about the gremlins. For some reason, even large law firms do not provide copy editing for personal blogs as a perk. Go figure.

Be My Neighbor

I practice law in the beautiful and historic Tilden Mansion built in 1891 at 837 Sherman Street, about four blocks south of the capital in Denver. My firm, however, is only one of several tenants in the building, and another of the renovated and converted office spaces is now available to lease.

The space is a 1300 square foot loft, on two levels, with a skylight, hardwood floors and stained glass in the stairwell. The unit also includes off street parking and use of a shared kitchen and conference room. It is zoned R-4. The rent is $16 per square foot.

If you are interested in conducting your business in a space that I love, contact Tony Oliver, who is handling the leasing process, at (303) 681-0179.

Readers of this blog can add to this wonderful package, five free coffees with me, at Avianos (at 9th and Lincoln).

Incidentally, while my firm leases space in the building, I am not an owner of the building and receive no direct benefit (or commission) from any lease (or this post). But, naturally, I prefer to have my building to be filled with good tenants.

Coming Attractions

On December 4, 2008, I will be part of a faculty panel in a continuing legal education class entitled "An Attorney's Guide To Asset Protection." My presentation will discuss "Safeguarding Your Assets From Would-Be Creditors" and "In Your Client's Best Interest - Ethical Consideration."

My colleagues at the December 4, 2008 presentation, Edward D. Brown and Frank James Danzo II, will be discussing "Asset Protection Through Integrated Estate Planning", "The Role of Asset Protection In Estate Planning," and "The Best Tools For State and Federal Estate, Inheritance and Gift Tax."

I will also be presenting a paper at the May 2009 Law and Society Annual Meeting in Denver, titled: “This Financial Crisis Was Brought To You By The Internal Revenue Code.” It will argue that:

Tax incentives that favor personal debt, favor corporate debt over equity, and favor executive compensation modes such as stock options have shaped American attitudes towards risk and debt among both elites and ordinary people that helped create the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. These choices flow from societal values formed in prior panics. In contrast, tax incentives in Continental Europe have been important in driving a societal distaste for debt and risk that has reduced systemic risk there.