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Legislature Passes Historic Audit of California Family Court System

From the press release:

Stories of court-ordered child abuse inspire unanimous support

After 17 months of delays and procedural hurdles, California's Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) yesterday unanimously passed a request by Senator Mark Leno and numerous co-authors to audit the California Family Court system with respect to the use of court appointees in child custody disputes.
 
"We applaud Senator Leno's leadership in rectifying this critical miscarriage of justice, since court appointees have profited off of these tragic cases for far too long with virtually no oversight or accountability," said the Center for Judicial Excellence's Kathleen Russell.
 
The request was prompted by ongoing complaints from across the state that children are routinely being forced by family courts to live with parents they've accused of physical or sexual abuse.

In the press release are links to more information including a video of the hearing.

Hat tip: justice’s posterous.

Our brain is a music box and no one knows why

On a day of patriotic songs, I hope you enjoy this article about the relationship between human brings and music. I found it engaging and engrossing but then I have been thinking about music a lot recently.

From "Magic Flute: Primal Find Sings of Music's Mystery" (Wall Street Journal):

Parrots dance to the beat. Sex-starved mice sing for love, new research shows. But true music, from rap to Rachmaninoff, is a unique human invention that resonates in us all, striking neural chords of memory, emotion, motor control, timing and meaning -- and transforming us in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand.

"Music is biologically powerful," says neurobiologist Aniruddh Patel at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "Every culture ever discovered has music, no matter what else they may lack."

By any measure, our brain is a music box. Yet no one knows why.

...

To Dr. Patel, music-making was a conscious innovation, like the invention of writing or the control of fire. "It is something that we humans invented that then transformed human life," he says. "It has a profound impact on how individual humans experience the world, by connecting us through space and time to other minds."

There is no denying its power to change our mood -- or our brain structure.

Click to read the rest of the article.

Speaking in Congress, Rep. Tim Ryan touts mindfulness and meditation

Tim Ryan, a Congressman from Ohio who earned his JD from Franklin Pierce Law Center, is an advocate of meditation. Click to learn more about his meditation practice.

At this link (Cleveland.com), you will see him in Congress listing some of the benefits of mindfulness, including emotion regulation, stress reduction, and better attention and focus. He does so while asking HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the role of meditation in health care reform.

I think it should play a big role; I bet that opinion of mine does not surprise regular readers, does it?

Blog Glob: Is this the future bookstore?: Machine downloads books from a massive database while the customer waits

Excerpt:

The Northshire Bookstore, in quaint Manchester Center, Vt., has all the classic trappings: exposed beams, wood tables stacked with hardcover bestsellers, comfortable leather chairs nestled into alcoves.

And then there’s “Lurch,’’ a hulking jumble of machinery that is often groaning and shuddering in a corner behind the sales counter.

Officially known as the Espresso Book Machine, Lurch, as the employees call it, is a “print on demand’’ setup the size of a meat freezer that creates books for customers while they wait.

The publishing world is closely following the experiment at Northshire, the first independent bookstore in the United States to install the clattering book machine. If Northshire can make money printing books downloaded from massive online catalogs, it will show how small brick-and-mortar bookshops might be able to match the overwhelming variety of products offered by a giant online retailer like Amazon.com.

Click to read the rest of "Is this the future bookstore?" (Boston Globe).

Free report from Harvard Law -- Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law is offering a free report. From the Web page:

In Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization, you’ll discover:

• How to “unfreeze” old thought processes so that real change can happen.
• How to structure negotiation training so that it actually delivers results. (Simply reciting interesting concepts and retelling war stories is not a model for success.)
• How to be certain you understand the key concepts and practical applications of a negotiation simulation.
• What to do when making decisions based on faulty intuition threatens your self-esteem.
• How delegating responsibility without adequate authority can stymie negotiations. (The all-important organizational changes required to help negotiators succeed.)
• Measuring responsibility, accountability and dollar impact. (The essential factors for establishing a well-formed outcome, justifying criteria for success, and rewarding performance objectively.)
• A simple exercise for reducing contentiousness and competition. (Simply adopting this mindset can improve the negotiation outcome.)

Go here to download your copy of the report.

Blog Glob: "Centenarians show it's never too late to tweet"

Excerpt:

Three percent of U.S. centenarians questioned in a new survey said they use the service that allows users to send short text messages, or tweets, of up to 140 characters at least once a week to keep in touch with their friends and family.

Another 10 percent sent emails to stay connected, 12 percent shared photos on the Internet and 4 percent downloaded music from the web.

"These centenarians are really inspiring because they are starting to embrace newer trends and newer technologies," said Sherri Snelling, senior director at Evercare, one of the nation's largest care coordination programs, which commissioned the survey.

...

Evercare said it believes the results support the belief that longevity is based primarily on lifestyle rather than genetics.

Click to read the rest of "Centenarians show it's never too late to tweet" (Reuters).

The law in song: These lyrics have footnotes!

I am very happy to present this guest post by Kristin Grossman. She's a law student who has created a unique way to make the law fun and memorable. Thanks, Kristin, for telling us your story and letting us read your five outstanding songs. I know many readers will be hearing the songs in their heads as they read. Now here's Kristin . . .

Like Elle in the film “Legally Blonde,” I pretty much did wake up one morning and decide to pursue a J.D.  The similarities don't stop there.  My background is hardly what one would expect for a law student.  I have a B.A. in art, a yoga teacher certification, and a body of professional and personal experience that diplomatically can be termed “eclectic.”  I'm also blonde and fond of the color pink. 

One can imagine then, that much of the time at school, I feel like a Hare Krishna at a Presbyterian church picnic.  There is no getting around the fact that it's tough being a right-brained person in a left-brained environment.

My need to remember legal concepts in a creative manner spawned the following lyrics.  And to give these lyrics a stage, "Restitution: The Attractive Nuisance Band” was formed with the help and guidance of Professor Susan Daicoff and my fellow artistically-inclined law students (one of whom is now my husband - what an amazing benefit to being yourself).  We performed these ditties for our Contracts II class and the student body at Florida Coastal School of Law.  It's the most I'd seen everyone smile in nine months.  And my hope and suspicion is, that in the midst of the fun, important concepts were solidified.

It is important to note that these lyrics do not merely represent the musings of my restless creative self, but truly serve to “flesh out” the concepts and the key elements of important rules of law.  I think the creators of “Schoolhouse Rock” would back me on this: certain brains learn more effectively when they have a jingle and some fun to help remember the dry stuff.  

Little Bit Me, Little Bit You
(to the tune of A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You by Neil Diamond and performed by the Monkees)

Compare!
Portions of fault now
It can’t all fall on me¹

Not fair!
To make me pay for
The harm in entirety²

Girl, the court’s gonna find
that you’re a little bit wrong
and I’m a little bit right

And I say girl!
You know that it’s true
Fault’s a little bit me
Fault’s a little bit you
True…

Don’t  know!
just how it happened
Girl I apologize

You said
drive way more faster
We’ll make it before sunrise³

Girl, the court’s gonna find
that you’re a little bit wrong
and I’m a little bit right

And I say girl!
You know that it’s true
Fault’s a little bit me
Fault’s a little bit you
True…

Brake now!
Couldn’t avoid it.
The curve came up way too fast

Scrapes now!
Could have been much worse
In judgment we both had a lapse

Girl, the court’s gonna find
that you’re a little bit wrong
and I’m a little bit right

And I say girl!
You know that it’s true
Fault’s a little bit me
Fault’s a little bit you
True…

1. Pure comparative negligence eliminates a windfall for either claimant or defendant allowing each party to recover only for the portion of the damages not attributable to their individual negligence. Hilen v. Hays, 673 S.W.2d 713, 718 (Ky. 1984).
2. "The concept of allocating liability proportionate to fault remains irresistible to reason and all intelligent notions of fairness." Hilen 673 S.W.2d at 718 (Ky. 1984) (citing Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 119 Cal.Rptr. 804, 863 (1975)).
3. She was trying to make it to the sunrise yoga class at the beach.     

Keep These Eight Away
(to the tune of You've Got to Hide Your Love Away by Lennon and McCartney performed by The Beatles)

Philippe Goldin speaking on Attention, Mindfulness, and Brain Systems

Dr. Philippe Goldin starts at about 5:12 on the first tape. He is giving this talk at the San Francisco Science Cafe. Click here to watch.

Attention lawyers: A method for strengthening and sharpening your warrior mind

Sometimes I hear lawyers respond to the thought of meditating with a concern that doing so will put out the fire in the belly. I tell them mindfulness will focus the fire, not smother it. Here's some research that will help make my point.

In "Mind Fitnesss and Mental Armor: Training the Mind to Improve Operational Effectiveness and Build Warrior Resilience" [PDF] (to be published in Joint Force Quarterly) you can read about military personnel engaging in mindfulness training. This article by Elizabeth Stanley and Amishi Jha is excellent and I highly recommend it to you.

From the Conclusions:

New research into neuroplasticity and clinical studies of the effects of mind fitness training show that humans can modify neural pathways and strengthen skills with mental training to allow them to make better decisions. Today, stress is commonly understood to mean external events or circumstances, and as a result, we tend to think of stress as something external to us. However, as originally conceived, stress is a perceived, internal response. Mind fitness training can immunize against stress by permitting more adaptive responses to and interpretation of stressors, providing a type of “mental armor.” ...

In addition to its beneficial effect on stress, mind fitness training can help to optimize warrior performance by cultivating ... competencies in mental agility, emotion regulation, attention and situational awareness. In other words, mind fitness training could provide greater cognitive and psychological resources for soldiers to act ethically and effectively in today’s morally ambiguous and emotionally-challenging operational environment.

Anyone still not using some mindfulness practice?

Related article: "‘Warrior mind training’ helps troops stay calm" (msnbc). Excerpt:

Warriors have long used meditation to improve concentration and relaxation — dating back more than 1,000 years to the techniques of the samurai. Here at coastal Camp Lejeune, 100 miles inland at the Army’s Fort Bragg and at several bases in California, the practice now comes with a name: Warrior Mind Training.

Blog Glob: "The Evidence on Online Education"

Excerpt:

Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.

The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.

...

While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the

Still another article on the benefits of meditation for lawyers and law students

Seems like very soon the odd person out is going to be the lawyer who does not meditate or participate in some other mindfulness practice. I am now seeing articles like "Meditation great way to ease stress" (The Lawyers Weekly) frequently. And when I do, I point them out to you.

Excerpt:

We all know that the practice of law is stressful. We have client demands coming at us through phone, cell phone, CrackBerrys, fax and (even) post. Clients want more, quicker. We may have pressures in our partnerships, money worries and attempts at having a life outside the office. We try to meet these needs that, in the process, take a toll on ourselves. We may develop health problems such as high blood pressure, anxiety disorders and panic attacks. We may see personal relationships suffer. We may feel unhappy and discontent with the practice of law.

I have a suggestion of what to do to deal with the immediate symptoms of stress. ...

...

A number of leading law schools, including Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, are now offering meditation courses to their students in an effort to provide budding lawyers with tools to fight the stress they will face in their careers.

What's your mindfulness practice?

Image credit: pattpoom.

One lawyer's reasons for backing off from Twitter

In two words: time and balance. From the blog post Thoughts on Twitter, Web 2.0, and legal marketing written by Tom McLain.

So why is it that, after less than two months with apparent Twitter success, I have decided to back off on my commitment to Twitter. The answer is time. The beginning of the end for me can be traced to some of the questions that I answered in my twitterview. Those questions caused me to focus on my overall marketing plan and just how things like Twitter fit into it. Both sides of the debate over Twitter for lawyers recognize that it is vitally important to remain true to proven core marketing principals such as face-to-face meetings and other forms of personal interaction with people and that Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools are a poor substitute for "good, old-fashioned" client development. I do not think that I am alone in my belief that the marketing efforts should be focused on, in order, face-to-face interaction, maintaining a good website that is visible in Internet searches, maintaining a good blog that generates attention, and Web 2.0 tools. Of the Web 2.0 tools, my personal preference is LinkedIn, followed by Twitter. A fair assessment of my own marketing practices is that my priorities have been wrong and I was spending too much time on Twitter and not enough on higher ranking methods. In short, my balance was off or, in the words of Larry Bodine, I had allowed Twitter to become a "powerful distraction from getting real marketing work done." I simply need to create more time to focus on face-to-face marketing and blogging. In the words of my dear friend Chris Kimbel, sales director at Womble Carlyle, my marketing plan lacked proper balance and was skewed in an unhealthy degree in the direction of the least productive marketing methods.

I recommend that you read the whole post. Got me thinking.

Hat tip: @dianelevin.

Paying attention to what you are paying attention to is key to success

Anyone who has attended my training programs knows that I put a lot of emphasis on the benefits of paying attention. Click to read more about maintaining "a tight grip on your mental flashlight." So I read of this new research with much interest. From "Remembering What To Remember And What To Forget" (Medical News Today):

"One of the first telltale signs of Alzheimer's disease may be not memory problems, but failure to control attention," said Alan Castel, UCLA assistant professor of psychology and lead author of the study.

Attention is a critical arrow in life's quiver. And it can be strengthened and disciplined no matter the age of the person. (One method [PDF]. How are you using yours?

Mass Bar Association president calls for "mindfulness in our profession"

Edward W. McIntyre's column in the April, 2009, edition of the MA Bar Association's Lawyers Journal [PDF] is titled "A call for mindfulness in our profession."  Excerpt:

Lawyers work at an increasingly frenetic pace, leaving limited time for contemplation and reflection. Little in our work seems to provide for opportunities to attune to one another, allowing for appropriate attention and awareness. This toxic pace and pattern increases our tendency to run on auto pilot.

“Living on automatic places us at risk of mindlessly reacting to situations, without reflecting on various options of response,” according to Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.

As an alternative approach, Kabat-Zinn and the center’s work concentrates on the benefits of mindfulness. ...

Such an approach may serve our profession well.

Click to read the rest of "A call for mindfulness in our profession." I note that McIntyre's "President's Message" in the following month was "The power to heal." He wrote:

As a profession, we may underestimate our ability to calm a situation. "The mere presence of a