Lombardi Gras!

Did you hear the news?    Of course.

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:

I beat the Louisiana Bar…and it was cool

On a chilly evening in November of last year, I was sitting aside a fireplace in Seattle, Washington, and reading literature from the Louisiana State Bar Association explaining its new lawyer advertising regulations.    It got me riled.

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

Satellite TV Baffles Me

So Emily and I are fully moved into a new place in Seattle, and getting into the groove of things.   Internet gets set up today (presumably), and last week we had Directv install their dish.   Directv being the choice provider because of the ability to watch Saints games from the West coast, of course.

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.

William Shakespeare, gentleman

On my new Kindle, I’m ready a pithy Shakespeare biography by Bill Bryson.  Bryson is one of my favorite authors, writing one of my favorite books of all time – A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Notwithstanding any of this, there are times when you’re reading about a subject and something clicks to help you understand it.   Here is an excerpt from Shakespeare that helped me understand the fellow’s significance, speaking about the prosperity of the Latin language in Shakespeare’s day:

Thanks in no small measure to the work Shakespeare and his fellows, English was at last rising to preeminence in the county of its creation.  ‘It is telling,’ observes Stanley Wells, ‘ that Shakespeare’s birth is recorded in Latin but that he dies in English, as ‘William Shakespeare, gentleman.’

Just thought I’d share.  Get a Kindle.

Photos Added from Bacchus Ball

Doug was in town from our Seattle office, and we all went to the Bacchus Ball over the weekend to celebrate the carnival season.   We posted about the ball on our Wolfe Law Rocks website here, .

A slideshow of photos from the event are embedded below.

Cool: Our Wedding in Seattle Bride Magazine

Pretty cool news from the wifey today, as photos from our wedding and a writeup is appearing in Seattle Bride Magazine.

Emily & I got married in Seattle back in September 2008, and now a few months later we’re appearing in the magazine’s “Real Weddings” section.   Take a look at the write up, some photographs, etc. by clicking here.

New ScottWolfe.Com Design

ScottWolfe.com is sporting a new design as of 10/5. The old design was clearly just a rip-off of the Wolfe Law Group page, and I’m happy to resurrect this site after a few years of non-activity.

The new design has a few important features:

1) I can make updates to the page through the center “blog” section;

2) The latest posting from my company blogs (wolfe law, express lien, etc.) are displayed on the left-hand side of the page;

3) I’m using Google’s Picasa Web to start publishing more photographs. I have a few thousand pictures from the past ten years that were previously up on this site, and I’m working to get most of them back online. For now, however, most of the photos on the page are from my recent honeymoon to South America;

4) Keep up with ScottWolfe.Com. You can subscribe to our RSS Feeds, or at the bottom left-hand side of the page you can “Follow” this blog with GoogleFollower.

2008 has been a very busy year for me. We opened a second Wolfe Law Group office in Seattle, WA in January 2008, we launched ExpressLien.Com, and I got married to Mrs. Emily Wolfe. Hopefully the last quarter of ‘08 and ‘09 is a bit calmer, and I have time to develop this page, as well as to take a load off. Stay tuned.

Scott Wolfe on Knol

Google just launched “Knol,” a self-defined “unit of knowledge.” According to Google, a knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.

Presumably, the service is designed to compete with Wikipedia and other collaborative encyclopedias. Nevertheless, Scott has prepared his own Knol page, and published a number of construction law knols now on display.

Take a look at the Scott Wolfe Jr. knol page here: Scott’s Knol

Office Photos

Check out our office photos through the above slide show. Also, you can visit the Wolfe Law Group Photo Gallery by going to the following URL:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wlgphotos

My Life in RSS Feeds

2007 was the year of the RSS Feed, and I can attest that I spent a great deal of time within the past year arranging for my websites to provide RSS feeds. While in many ways there is still some work to be done (there always is), I have a starting point.

In large part my career is centered around the construction industry, and the legal topics and issues faced by those in the construction industry. The RSS feeds currently available are, of course, a reflection of this.

Through my RSS Feeds as they currently stand, you can read weekly construction law articles, keep up with news at my law firm Wolfe Law Group, learn about construction lien laws and topics affecting contractors across the country, get the scoop on my September 2008 wedding and even keep an ear on the ground in regards to my personal life and photos.

Here you go, with my list.

Wolfe Law Group Construction Law Update
http://feeds.feedburner.com/wlgnola

Express Lien Blog – Construction Liens
http://feeds.feedburner.com/xlien

My Wedding Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/schmoopie

Scott Wolfe Jr. Personal Page and News
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sgwolfejr

Scott & Emily Photo Gallery
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sgw_photos

Wolfe Law Group Photo Gallery
http://feeds.feedburner.com/wlgphoto

More Than Solo – Taking Your Law Practice Further
http://feeds.feedburner.com/morethansolo