The total number of new-style comic strips now numbers ten, which means I should probably start splitting up the collection. Damn it.
The latest strip is dedicated to my favorite Anglophile, who is still the only person I've ever heard pronounce "scone" that way, and who is one of those people who special-orders the English versions of all the Harry Potter books because that's the way the Queen meant it to be.
More to the point, the strip is somewhat grounded in reality. According to the legal presses (oh yes, they're out there), a wave of U.S. firms are opening offices in London, and my firm is leading the way. This isn't such a big deal for those of us on the Light Side (litigation), as domestic lawyers are more likely to work with the international offices on the Dark Side (corporate). Yank litigators generally aren't familiar with the intricacies of English Barristry, but the dark arts of transactional work operate in a language that everyone can understand.
Though, I should say that the only first-year associate to use her passport for business purposes so far was a litigator. She made a few trips Home to Ireland in order to do some document review, which was made necessary by some weird Irish law designed to make life difficult for non-Irish lawyers. But I imagine that when the tickets to Beijing and Hong Kong start showing up they'll be directed almost exclusively at the corporate folks. London shouldn't be any different.
This is interesting. I'm currently a student at Columbia Law, and students here are champing at the bit to do international law. At any given social event, every conversational group of three or more students will be at least half composed of students who claim to want to do international law when they graduate. This semester we get a choice of electives, and by far the most popular is the course on "Lawyering Across Multiple Legal Orders."
As such, this post is refreshing in its distaste for international law. I am under the impression that international law is essentially just like regular law, but with much longer flights. Is this a reasonably accurate conclusion?
10 strips and no Claudio. Or Ted for that matter...
Claudio and Ted are on their way. In theory.
As for international law, I really don't know that much about it other than corn-fed litigators like me don't get into it very much. The stuff I heard about most (but didn't pay much attention to) at Boalt were International Patent Law (GATT and TRIPPS and all that), International Antitrust Law (which is interesting but nobody practices Antitrust law anymore), and International Human Rights Law (it was Berkeley, after all). IL in general is much bigger on the East Coast, from what I hear. If I had wanted to get into it I probably would have gone to Georgetown.
But not Columbia. Because I didn't get in.
Alright, Matt? (standard greeting, not meant to ask if something is wrong)
That was v. enjoyable. Quite flattered to be dedicated. Toodles!