Monday, July 07, 2008

Skelly at Arbitrary and Capricious slammed me today.

I'm pretty sure that I had it coming, but it was my first post and all. Check out his blog at http://skellywright.blogspot.com/. He slammed me because of my post a couple of days ago. He didn't like what I said about "old liberals," probably because he considers himself one. In fairness, I dissed him first when I slammed "old liberal attorneys." In retrospect, I think I did it unfairly. What I should have said was "retired on the job old liberal attorneys." I was commenting about the fact that my office, I am sure like others, has (and had) some old liberal attorneys who have retired on the job. You know some of these guys - they still talk about what the law used to be like and constantly bitch how you can't win anything any more. And they couldn't type at all. What the hell was that?

You know, the law in California has become so very difficult that for some of these guys it was like walking malpractice. I guess that at one time PDs didn't really need to go to training, didn't need to attend CPDA or CACJ conferences, and didn't need to constantly update their knowledge base. But that time is no longer. Every year or two some MAJOR piece of "tough on crime" legislation gets passed by the legislature, the voters, or both. Likewise, so many bad court opinions roll down the pipe that you have to stay abreast of them, lest you fail in the task of defending your client. If you don't keep up, and that is hard to do for anyone, you stand the risk of screwing your client. That goes for younger attorneys twice as much - they have to learn the ins and outs of California law quickly, and absorb stuff like a sponge. My office used to have NO training program. Now we at least have something, and they give us various updated legal materials. But, seriously, why does it seem like no one uses LEXIS? For God's sake, that tool makes our job so much easier.

That being said, it was nice to be noticed, even if it was in a negative way. Hopefully Skelly, who loves Bob Dylan (as do I, but I am sure I don't like him as much as Skelly does - I like Jakob Dylan too (AKA The Wallflowers), but he is nowhere near as intense and interesting as Bob Dylan still is), will keep reading the posts that I write and give me constructive criticism.

Hopefully someone other than myself reads this blog. I'd like to see some discussions start again.

Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It might take awhile for the comments to come in. The posts have been far too infrequent and I'm sure some people have given up checking in to see what's new.

I have been reading the column for a few years but I've gotten to the point where I rarely check in.

Just as an FYI: You have a couple of spots in your articles where you have minor grammatical errors.

Anonymous said...

keep it up. i love your blog.

Dennis Wilkins said...

Thank you both for the comments. I will try to keep up the posting. I was frustrated that PD Dude wasn't able to post for long periods of time. Now I have a place to speak my mind. I hope that others join in discussions.

Thanks for reading.