Blog

So, so close!

Airline passengers should be allowed to use their personal electronic devices to read, play games or enjoy movies and music, even when planes are on the ground or flying below 10,000 feet, according to recommendations an advisory panel sent to the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday.

But the panel said that restrictions should remain on sending text messages, browsing the Web or checking e-mail after the plane’s doors have been closed. Passengers can do that only when the aircraft’s Wi-Fi network is turned on, typically above 10,000 feet. The use of cellphones to make voice calls, which was not part of the review, will still be prohibited throughout the flight.

The review was the work of a 28-member panel set up last year to revise current policies. It provides a road map to changing the policy, but it is now up to the F.A.A.’s administrator, Michael P. Huerta, to decide whether and when to do so.

“The F.A.A. received the report and recommendations today on the expanded use of personal electronic devices,” said Les Dorr, a spokesman for the agency. “The administrator will review the report and determine next steps.”

Not likely to happen during shutdown.

When I sent Unprecedented to press in June 2013, I thought the saga over Obamacare was basically over. I recognized there may be constitutional challenges around the edges, including the contraceptive mandate, but I thought that the law was settled. I could not have predicted what has happened of late.

I don’t know if my book will ever make it to a second printing. But I am already working on an afterword, to explore this unexpected turn of events in the past few weeks. Not to mention what will happen with the inevitable debt ceiling negotiations.

This law continues to be, in every respect, unprecedented.

I don’t see this happening:

The District of Columbia is still waiting to see if it will be allowed to keep city services running with an unusual gambit: declaring all city employees as “essential” workers.

Essential workers would stay on the job in the event of a government shutdown.

In past government shutdowns, some city services, including libraries, recreation centers and trash pickup, have been curtailed. The federal government has final say on how the District spends its money, even when that money is collected from local taxes — an issue that led to a successful, though toothless, referendum on the issue in April.

District Mayor Vincent Gray made the declaration Wednesday in a letter to the federal Office of Management and Budget. But it’s not clear how the federal government will respond; the White House Budget Office has the final say on the issue.

As of Monday morning, the OMB had not yet rejected the mayor’s declaration.

The good news is, the District has money on hand that’s already been authorized by Congress — enough to wait out a couple of weeks of a shutdown.

That reserve is a good thing, since D.C.’s attorney general has warned the mayor could be arrested for spending any money Congress hasn’t authorized.

Bill gave a lengthy interview with the ABA Journal on his recent front-page feature, on how Legal Process Outsourcers (LPO) are supplanting much of what law firms do. I blogged about the article here and here.

Here is a snippet on what law firms should do:

So there’s a proliferation of different companies that are using technology and big data and process to try and do traditional legal work traditionally done by law firms better, cheaper, or faster. So if I’m a law firm, and this is eating away at some of the bundled services that I’ve traditionally offered; I’d have to ask myself: can I really do this better than these upstart companies? Or is it better to develop strategic alliances and to basically piece together a kind of re-bundled service where the law firm is acting as a general contractor and it knows the best vendor in e-discovery. It knows the best vendor to come up with market standard transactional documents. It knows the vendor to help price high-end IP cases. And there’s a trench of trusted advisory or advocacy work that the law firms are going to keep.

But in the meantime, they’re putting together–kind of quarterbacking the whole transaction or the whole litigation matter. There’s an opportunity for law firms to do that, but if they steer clear of these vendors and they try and keep the work in house using inefficient methods, then they’re really kind of telling their clients when their clients find out that they really have their economic best interest above their clients’ best interest. And I think that will come back to harm them, long term. So if I was a law firm, I would go out and learn what these vendors are doing and ask yourself: what can we do and what should they be doing, and try to put together the best package for your clients.

And on what law students should do:

Bill Henderson: I would advise them to get a great, traditional legal education. But at the same time, moonlight and learn an area about, let’s say, law and technology, law and process; some sort of a new-edged angle to the legal market. Something where they’ll have some intrinsic interest or passion. And moonlight and learn that, invest in themselves, and become a specialist in that area.

…

But the students aren’t going to find an employer that’s going to equip them with all the skills they need to prosper in this area. They’re going to have to invest in their own personal human capital. And so go out and moonlight and go out and work for free. Go out and shadow somebody that’s in this interesting sector that you find interesting and invest in yourself, learn something about it. And when you see an opportunity, leap at it.

 

RBG is branching out in neck-doily style.

Front and center was Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court, performing her second gay ceremony following the court’s decision striking down laws that had denied federal benefits to same-sex spouses. The importance of her presence and the setting — the roof of Fiola restaurant in Washington, with a panoramic view stretching from the Capitol to the White House — was not lost on the 100 assembled guests. …

But who would officiate? Then they read an interview with Justice Ginsburg, in which she said she had never been asked to perform a same-sex wedding. They asked, and on the day the court invalidated DOMA, she agreed to marry the couple.

At the ceremony, Justice Ginsburg described the couple’s love as “universal” and “human nature,” and expressed hope that it would make them “magically more wiser and richer in experience, happier than either would be alone.”

Yet somehow, the Times originally misspelled her name. Look at this ghastly correction:

Correction: September 29, 2013

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the name of the Supreme Court justice who performed the wedding ceremony. She is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Gisnburg.