Conflict of Disinterest

So, when you go to the doctor, do you ever ask where they went to med school? Or what their grade was in gross human anatomy? No? Hmm. So, by the same token, when you choose an attorney, and let’s hope you haven’t had to, do you ask how they did in their ethics course? See, I only ask because I’m writing this particular blog post while sitting in my legal ethics course. Before you get sanctimonious or shocked, let me share what I see going on in the room around me. From my vantage point, I can see three games of solitaire. (NOTE: I took a break there to take a brief note. Just to provide a sense of the multitasking going on here, I’ll indicate further note breaks with a capital “N.”) I just heard two classmates remember to switch their cell phones to vibrate. OH! A fourth solitaire player just joined the fray! N. I count at least five classmates who are actively, visibly “disengaged” from the lecture. That doesn’t include me! N, complete with class comment. I count three colleagues using the “canned” notes available for purchase from the Cumberland Law Review for the reasonable price of $20.
And the discussion at hand? What constitutes a conflict of interest in representing a client. Dryer things have been discussed at law schools, but not without involving the federal income tax codes. N. OH! I believe I see a computer with the Nintendo classic “Mike Tyson Boxing!”

So, life is largely back to normal in Mobile. Gas prices, oddly enough, are pretty close to pre-Katrina levels in Mobile, while Birmingham continues to siphon dollars out of its petroleum customers at rates equal to their highpoint in the post disaster fuel scare. And I meant to say scare, not shortage. Great piles of desiccated yard debris still line the streets of Midtown Mobile, inviting a stray cigarette butt to convert the substantially recovered neighborhoods into well mapped out conflagrations of latent Katrina wreckage. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Back in Birmingham, I’m back to my semi-daily pilgrimages to my personal library, i.e., Starbucks. My ‘bucks in Trussville now has open wireless internet access, greatly improving the utility of that location. I say they understand me there. My wife says they are only faking it to get my money. I say that is a valuable illusion. Then again, so is most of life.