Lawyers of the World, Unite!

2004-02-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

WE HAVE WINNERS! And what winners they are!

The Grand Prize winner in our First Annual Legal Poetry Contest is Alan P. Scott of Portland, Oregon:

DECODING HAMMURABI

Despite what we say,
we won't do away with you
anytime soon.
I think, I thought, of the first man's first work,
and how differently things might have gone
if Adam'd had an advocate
to tell him "she tempted me" was a bad defense.

Our runner-up is Name Withheld of Carlisle, Pennsylvania:

NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD

Your Honor, let me open with
A tale of wayward, misspent youth
The kind of Silly-Putty truth
That left well-meaning parents miffed.

It was MY baseball! Wasn't his!
I argued fiercely, scrawled a brief
In crayon, and to great relief
My brother lost and all was bliss.

I'd lied, though, and my sister knew.
She offered a plea bargain, but
Too dumb to take it, I was cut
From Sunday's game and Thursday's too.

My parents frowned and smacked my rear
They taught me to seek justice, speak
The truth, be honest, guard the weak,
And that's how come I wound up here.

A pyrotechnic burst of gratitude shimmers in the cyberspace that IS this blog, sending multicolored waves of thank-you toward Messrs. Scott and Withheld, and everyone else who participated!

2003-10-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

And the Entries Keep On Coming...

You people are AWESOME! Poems about joy, bitterness, frustration and triumph! I even got an entry in iambic pentameter (thanks, Mom).

Who wants this burst of verbal pyrotechnics to end? Not I! Therefore, the contest deadline is hereby extended to December 31, 2003. Unleash your creativity! Send me a good one. Until next time, here's one of my own to inspire you to do better:

To save your hide
You must devour
The Young Lawyer's Guide
to Money and Power.

Available October 31, 2003 at www.secretguide.com .

2003-08-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Announcing the First International Poetry Contest for Disgruntled Lawyers

My forthcoming book, The Young Lawyer's Guide to Money and Power, will be released on October 31, 2003 by Secret Guide Publishing (www.secretguide.com). It's a 224-page mentor that will always be there for you, giving you courage and support during those dark hours when the partners are treating you like a broken-down appliance. This assumes you're working with Bad Partners instead of Good Partners, who really do exist but get (and demand) a lot less attention.

To celebrate, let's write some poems about our worst experiences with the law! Here's an example:

How I love my job
Writing memos all day long
I feel f@#*ing great.

You can write haiku, sonnets, free verse... everything is welcome. Just don't name names or write anything defamatory. That would be bad.

Deadline is October 31, 2003. The grand prize is a copy of THE YOUNG LAWYER'S GUIDE TO MONEY AND POWER. The runner-up will receive ONE CRISP AMERICAN DOLLAR BILL, suitable for framing. With incentives like these, how can you NOT enter?

Send your entries to williamshears@secretguide.com. It'll be fun!