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What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:53 pm
by Desert Fox
Like I understand for judges/clerks sake to make stuff uniform and easy to read. Totally on board.
But no, I'm not going to spend hours formatting shitty discovery responses (even worse invalidity contentions) so that my cites says "quote." See id. at X:YY instead of See, e.g., DocumentName at X:Y ("quote").
It's the same fucking thing.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:40 pm
by Serett
Desert Fox wrote:But no, I'm not going to spend hours formatting shitty discovery responses (even worse invalidity contentions) so that my cites says "quote." See id. at X:YY instead of See, e.g., DocumentName at X:Y ("quote").
Yes you are
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:25 pm
by patentlitigatrix
Serett wrote:Desert Fox wrote:But no, I'm not going to spend hours formatting shitty discovery responses (even worse invalidity contentions) so that my cites says "quote." See id. at X:YY instead of See, e.g., DocumentName at X:Y ("quote").
Yes you are
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:27 pm
by Tanicius
Been a practicing lawyer for a year and a half now. I don't even actually know what citation style the local courts want us to use. Nobody cares.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:37 pm
by Anonymous User
My judge (and the feeling I feel like plenty of judges are the same), wants us to use "bluebook lite" ... not the exact term they use, but basically a loose interpretation of bluebook. As long as the case can easily be found, and pincite is there, then we are good to go
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:01 pm
by Tanicius
Anonymous User wrote:My judge (and the feeling I feel like plenty of judges are the same), wants us to use "bluebook lite" ... not the exact term they use, but basically a loose interpretation of bluebook. As long as the case can easily be found, and pincite is there, then we are good to go
I think most judges in state court operate that way.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:08 pm
by Anonymous User
Growing up my mom had pretty severe OCD, which made me the opposite because I saw how much pain the obsessive attention to detail brought her. In practice this has been my greatest weakness. I'm convinced that Monk would 100% make partner at any firm. He'd eat it up out here.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:44 pm
by Desert Fox
Anonymous User wrote:My judge (and the feeling I feel like plenty of judges are the same), wants us to use "bluebook lite" ... not the exact term they use, but basically a loose interpretation of bluebook. As long as the case can easily be found, and pincite is there, then we are good to go
this isn't evne going to the judge. Just opposing party.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:51 pm
by orangecup
Shit like this is in corporate too. Such a waste of time.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:08 pm
by dixiecupdrinking
Gotta maintain the pretense that this shit matters since learning how to properly bluebook and whatnot is like 95% of the barriers to entry in this profession.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:27 pm
by jbagelboy
Amen
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:56 pm
by Anonymous User
Clients might be less likely to buy it took that long if the work looks hotch potch. More likely it all traces back to a satellite office of a white shoe firm that will remain nameless but ultimately came to be known as a V-20 that had a small but successful overseas practice in Moscow during World War II. The rumor is that Stalin was working with the Moscow office of this eventual V-20 to have his will finalized, and a 4th year drafting the signature page spelled premiere without the E so it read premier. Long story short, when Stalin came in for the signing ceremony they went through all the Russian requirements for a valid will, they read it three times in a stoic voice, sounded the trumpets and when Stalin was about to sign he saw that the word premiere was spelled premier. He was so angry he sentenced the lawyer to death before the firing squad, and not only the 4th year, the partner and the rest of the firm as well including a distant relative of Stalin himself who was only an unpaid intern, but the premiere required perfection and held the whole team accountable for anything less. Even though it's a 100 years later, the black pen, as the tragedy came to be known, still impacts many law firms today.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:59 am
by Greenandgold
Desert Fox wrote:Like I understand for judges/clerks sake to make stuff uniform and easy to read. Totally on board.
But no, I'm not going to spend hours formatting shitty discovery responses (even worse invalidity contentions) so that my cites says "quote." See id. at X:YY instead of See, e.g., DocumentName at X:Y ("quote").
It's the same fucking thing.
Ha. Just had this exact issue. I'm getting pretty skilled at using Find & Replace in Word.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 11:45 am
by mvp99
umm there is always something wrong with your work so you end up billing more?
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:03 pm
by Tanicius
mvp99 wrote:umm there is always something wrong with your work so you end up billing more?
Good for the self-interested short time. A bad joke from an ethical standpoint that will just help ensure you hate your job in the end. I particularly like how biglaw will encourage associates to churn out late-night memos that the partners won't even read just because they want to put more lines on the bill. That shit is bad faith as fuck. Imagine how pissed you'd be if you wrote a book but your publisher took forever in releasing it because they needed to measure, by hand with a magnifying glass, how far the text on the printed pages is from the edge of the page, and they charged you for doing that. That's what these individual character citation checks are from a practical standpoint.
I get it, money is money. But not all legal jobs treat the work that way, and I think it's one of the big things that leads to burnout in biglaw. You either get cynical and just accept that you're going to make a lot of your money by wasting everyone's time and their own money, or leave.
Re: What is with lawyers insistance on formatting consistancies for shit that doesn't even matter one bit.
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:49 pm
by 20160810
I have, and have never once opened, a California Style Guide.
See generally, yolo.