The Saints are world champions!  New Orleans is a bona fide place to live again.   Drew Brees and Sean Payton are geniuses!     All this and we’re smack in the middle of Carnival season.

After screaming privately for the game, we went out to the quarter to watch the pandemonium there.   In all my years (younger years) of partying on Bourbon during Mardi Gras, I’ve never ever seen the quarter so packed and electric.    Normally, you can’t move on Bourbon.   On that night, though, you could barely move on Royal.  It was wicked packed.

I have a few You Tube videos on my channel here.

There’s no better place in the world to be for the next two weeks than in New Orleans, Louisiana.   It’s Carnival time, the weather is perfect, we’ve resoundingly and calmly elected our new mayor, and the Saints are Superbowl Champions.

Some pictures from the dubbed “Lombardi Gras” are up on my Flickr page, and here is a slide show:

Sherlock Holmes
A Case of Identity

It got me to thinking about some of the persistent differences between Americans and Europeans.

It would be mighty rare to see an American label himself as an amateur anything.  We have twenty-somethings (like me) strolling around in designer clothes and accessories who are experts in marketing, economics, music, law, entrepreneurism…what have you.  From college graduation to the window office…never amateurs.

We’re likely fooled about this.  I suppose I actually am an amateur at a whole lot.  As a lawyer, a businessman, a husband, a grown up…  A bit liberating to admit that actually. Time to change the business card – Scott Wolfe:  Amateur.

But of course, damn good.

It was clear that the Louisiana bar wanted to regulate personal injury advertising, but the animosity it harbored for this style of advertising had blinded its duty to its membership…and to me.   Particularly, my complaint was with it’s regulation of speech by attorneys on the Internet.

Hoping to prevent personal injury attorneys from posting “disgraceful” ads online, the bar passed a far-reaching rule that restricted all attorney communication on the net.   The regs were a bit complex, but here is a summary:  If you’re an attorney, and you say something online, it’s regulated.

The rule was so out-of-this-world unconstitutional, I can hardly believe the bar spent its entrusted funds to fight it.

I suppose there are two reasons it did so:  (1)  It was blinded by its disdain of personal injury ads; and (2) It was clueless about how the Internet actually worked.

After a nine-month constitutional battle, the Louisiana Eastern District Court agreed with our position, and the state was enjoined from enforcing the component of its rules regulating attorney speech online.

In retrospect, the entire experience was fun.  There I was, less than 4 years out of law school, as a lone plaintiff against the Louisiana State Bar Association.  Standing before the district court judge, I could barely remember how I stumbled into the situation.

The experience was eye-opening, too.   A small faction within the powers-that-be in the Louisiana bar single-handily decided to over-regulate attorneys, and it took a lot of work (and unfortunately, thousands of dollars) to stop it.  Shouldn’t the bar association be more responsible to its membership?   I found the bar surprisingly stubborn about its position, even though it had no support.

Word is that the bar will go back to the drawing board on Internet regulations.   Someone asked me a few months back what would be a fair regulation of attorney communications online.   My answer was that bar associations should regulate in response to an actual problem, and not because because they’re interested in having a regulation.    If they can’t identify a problem…how are they going to successfully regulate the non-existent problem?

As the bar prepares to take a second shot at Internet regulation, I hope they do their homework.   They owe it to their membership, and to me.

**

I kept a blog about the progress of this suit, which you can read at http://www.protectspeech.com.  You can also check our some of the press we got here:

Forbes Magazine:  Lawyers Say Limits on their ads unconstitutional

Lawyers USA:  Judge Rules on Louisiana Advertising Rules

ABA Journal:  Judge Strikes Down Louisiana Ad Restrictions on Lawyer Internet Ads

JDScoop:   Explaining the Court Decision and Order

First, as you may or may not know, I’ve filed suit against the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board in the Fall to 2008 to challenge the constitutionality of their new regulations of attorney advertisements.

We argue that the regulations go too far in the restrictions they impose on attorneys who use the internet to communicate…and advertise.   We created an entire blog dedicated to tracking its progress, which you can visit at http://www.protectspeech.com.

• On Monday, we’ll be filing our Motion for Summary Judgment in the federal suit against the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board.   We’ll post a copy on our JDSupra page.
• On Thursday, I’ll be among the faculty for an American Bar Association legal ethics teleconference (with CLE credit) titled:  Ethical Implications of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World:  From Facebook to LinkedIn, Websites to Blogs.  More information on the teleconference (including how to sign up) here.

Second, Chinese Drywall is rampant in the news these days, and our firm has tried to lead legal discussion on the topic with our Chinese Drywall Blog. We’ll be discussing the Chinese Drywall situation, and the status of Chinese Drywall litigation in two venues:

• On Wednesday, I’ll join the Legal Talk Network in their Lawyer2Lawyer podcast to discuss the status of Chinese Drywall litigation.
• On July 31st, Doug Reiser & I will co-present at the Chinese Drywall seminar in New Orleans, LA, put on by Half Moon Seminars.

So, I like the country.  But, my goodneess is there a lot of it.

It’s astonishing really, because while we all know its there is a lot of country, I’m not sure if we think about it.  I know I don’t, as I pretty much assume that life-as-I-know-it is life, and that everyone lives with a Starbucks near by, a shopping mall within 10 miles and a move theater close enough to attend without planning.

But everyone doesn’t live this way, and this becomes apparent on just two occassions:

(1) When you’re driving cross-country; and

(2) When you’re watching national election returns.

So, one is obvious, and that’s because my wife and I drive across the country for almost three solid days to get to Seattle, and we go through cities for about a grand total of 45 minutes.

For two, just think about those nights when presidential election returns come in, and candidates collect electorial votes with each of those mid-West states, and each of those counties that we’ve never heard of and never thought of.  Who are these people?  Don’t they blog?!

Well, they don’t blog, and they don’t have protests, and they aren’t very boisterous at all [short of the string of anti-abortion billboards on I-70 in Kansas].  In fact, the only time I ever think of them politically is when national election returns come in, and Iowa and Idaho make the rest of the states’ hold their breath.

For this reason, concentrated folks in the main American cities have fought the electorial system, and they have their reasons.  It’s not 1776 anymore, Toto, right?

Well, that would make us closer to a pure democracy, and I happen to agree with Publius on this type of government:

A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Federalist #10.

So they come to my house with this 20 some-odd inch disc, attach it to my balony and point it in a precise direction.   Then, it’s time to get the wire to my tv.  Yeah, that’s right…the wire.

Now this is an interesting problem when you have cement outer walls and windows and doors that shut air-tight.  They had to reduce the ordinary 2-wire installation to one wire, and use a flat wire, and run the wire across my building, through a window and to my tv.

Here is a picture of Directv’s satellite, where they beam over 1000 [sometimes] high definition signals from outer-freaking-space.   It is directed from space, to this tiny plastic dish that sits on the balcony of our place…and yet they need to run a wire from the dish to my television, which sits just 5 yards away.

No other complaints though.  Looking forward to football season in the fall.

This afternoon, at 11am pacific / 1 pm central, “22Twts” will interview me.

You can follow the interview at #22Twts, and of course, follow me at http://twitter.com/scottwolfejr.

See you there.

This is worrying contractors and building suppliers across the country, who may be implicated in the inevitable litigation.

As a construction attorney in New Orleans, LA, Scott was interviewed by Fox 8 news about how contractors and suppliers are implicated in the crisis.   Here is the video: