March 2010

Maui-sign-300x225 If you want a peek behind the curtain at this humble little blog, law firm marketing expert Jayne Navarre has kindly featured it in her case study “Build a Blog – Build a Law Practice: One Lawyer’s Journey.”

It tells the tale of how and why I produce this blog, how it has helped me to build a practice, and more importantly, why it was essential in creating relationships with colleagues across time zones.

I’ve been blogging for over three years now, which in internet terms makes me an old timer. Practice was fun before launching the blog, but as Jayne notes, something did change after I launched:

Robert’s been in private practice for 30 years. Up until four yearsago, he published articles, gave presentations, was active in the American Bar Association,and hit the local cocktail circuit as much as he could in order tobuild his practice.

Continue Reading Law Blogging, Deconstructed

Who among us hasn’t, at one point or another, found some comfort in that icon of mid-century americana, the greasy spoon diner? In the words of Martin Sexton:

Like a locomotive they were streamlined
And the blue prints were drawn up from a dream of mine
Slap ’em up put ’em on the train
Out to Michigan up to Maine
You may find a diner down in Georgia or
Carolina off the twenty by the Piggly Wiggly
In the country out of Waynsboro

….

Diner my shiny shiny love
In the night you’re all I’m thinking of
Diner my shiny shiny love

The above video is surely the product of the “shiny shiny love” about which Sexton sings. It presents the case of Curley’s Diner in Stamford, Connecticut, and the fallout from the city’s earlier failed attempt to take its property. In Aposporos v. Urban Redev. Comm’n, 790…

Continue Reading Diner My Shiny, Shiny Love

In the latest chapter is the Skyland Shopping Center saga, Rumber v. District of Columbia, No. 09-7035 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 26, 2010) (per curiam), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit got rid of most of the 17 plaintiffs by determining they did not have standing to object to a condemnation, and then dismissed the claims of the remaining four plaintiffs on Younger abstention grounds.

The case arose from the attempt to condemn the Skyland Shopping Center,which is alleged to be a “blighting factor” to the surrounding area,and redevelop the property. The Washington Post reported on the situation here:

A powerful group of affluent Hillcrest residents has succeeded ingetting the city to declare eminent domain at Skyland — a controversialmove seen in no other commercial land deal in the District except thenew baseball stadium. Skyland will be demolished, under the plan, and ahigher-quality shopping center…

Continue Reading DC Circuit Peels The Onion On Eminent Domain Abuse Case