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Rational Rebellion: Morality and the Rule of Law in Harry Potter
I’m at LeakyCon in Burbank, CA right now, and yesterday I presented a talk about law, morality, and rebellion in Harry Potter. It went better than I expected, and though I wish I had been better prepared (and had practiced it enough to not have to read it), it was fine, and I received positive feedback. Since most of you weren’t able to be there, I thought I’d post my talk and slides (with “(slide)” written into the script if you want to follow along). The slides are mostly pictures and quotes to complement the talk, but I did work on them, so I wanted to put that out there. Without further ado:
Jun 2012Things I Miss
A friend asked me today if I miss being at my former firm. I thought about it for a minute. There are some things I miss: being busy all the time (or at least a lot of the time) someone else shouldering responsibility for my work someone else being responsible for bringing in new work having a steady paycheck However, I know that these are things I miss now. I know business will come in the door in waves, and I won’t always be busy (or always slow). I know I can build a network of people I trust to respond honestly to my work product or my questions, which is something I’m already building. I know I’m getting better all the time at bringing in new business. And I know that the paycheck will come, and it will vary, but it will hopefully pay off in the end. In short, I miss having a safety net. But the freedom that comes with being my own boss is amazing. And that’s something I would miss tremendously at a firm.
Apr 2012choosing a name
I’m sure at least some of you are wondering why I chose the name “Vesta Legal” for my firm. First, a lot of lawyers use their names as their firm names, something which I believe is rooted in ethical rules. The rules have changed though, and a law firm can choose different names. I thought my name was too complex and hard to remember to be effective as a branding technique. And it would just be clumsy: “The Law Offices of Rachel Kibler-Melby” - ugh. I like my name generally, but as a brand, it’s not so great. So the next step was finding a phrase or name that I liked. I have always had an interest in mythology, so I thought that would be a good place to start. I searched for gods or goddesses with connections to wills, and I had a hard time finding anything. Then I thought having the goddess of the home would be a good bridge to estate planning, my primary area of practice. I’m more familiar with Greek mythology, so I first tossed around “Hestia,” protector of the hearth. But I didn’t like the sound of it. I went to Roman mythology, where “Vesta” is the goddess of hearth and home. I liked the sound of her name, and to my delight, I discovered that the Romans actually deposited their wills with the priestesses of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins. It seemed perfect. I searched the name and “law,” and a Swiss law firm came up, so “Vesta Law” was out. There also appears to be a town in West Virginia called “Vesta,” though strangely, no one had used it in their law firm name. So then it was just a matter of figuring out what I liked, and “Vesta Legal” won out among the various “law firm,” “law office,” “legal services,” and other variations. If you’re thinking about a name for a law firm, I would encourage you to not use your own name. Having a brand name is frequently easier to remember, and a bonus is that it allows room for growth. If I take on a partner or hire an associate or whatever, I don’t have to worry about changing the name. It also gives no indication as to the size of my firm (thus breaking no ethical rules by stating it is bigger than it is), which can sometimes give more credibility. So that’s how I came to name my firm what I did. I’m happy with it - I think it sounds elegant, and I like the background of it.
Apr 2012new firm!
As my dear husband pointed out, I haven’t updated this since I was studying for the Missouri bar. In the past three years, I have taken (and passed) three bar exams - Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas - worked for two different firms - one doing civil defense litigation (asbestos) and one doing data privacy and records management consulting - and have recently started my own firm! I’m doing estate planning, and I hope to do asylum work on a pro bono basis. I’ll write a few posts on what I did to start my own firm, but I wanted to get a post out. Hooray for a new firm!
Apr 2012another long absence
I’m sure you’ve all been dying to know what I’ve been doing for the last six months, so here’s the update. I left my job and started my own firm, so that’s cool. I’m doing estate planning, though right now, I’m doing pretty much anything. In February, I started a bunch of seeds, and this year, I decided to do better than last year, where all my seedlings either died or ended up really leggy. I got a grow light and some heating pads, and we set up a table in the basement as my grow station. I know what it sounds like, but I promise it’s legit. I’ve planted 5 types of lettuce, spinach (which didn’t germinate, oddly), 5 types of carrots, kohlrabi, arugula, lots of different pepper, dill, parsley, cilantro, basil (a bunch of different kinds), mustard, chives, eggplant (including an African variety - yum), lots of tomatoes, thyme, little strawberries, cucumber, a few different squashes, and other things. I’m SO excited. Some of them have made it into the garden, but a lot of things are still waiting downstairs. I’ve been surprised at how much water they need, but considering the light and the heating pads, I guess I shouldn’t be. Outside, everything seems to be doing really well. Our grapes and (female) kiwi came back (we got a new male kiwi yesterday), the agastache is really happy, we’ve had asparagus, coming up, the raspberries and blueberries are turning into something recognizable, my herb boxes are doing well, and the strawberry patch is blooming. We built another raised bed and planted a bunch of flowers in it. I think Carl is going to build me a basil box to add on to the raised bed. That will be exciting. I’ve been baking quite a bit as well. I made eggplant parmesan a few weeks ago, which was delicious. And I still make my sourdough bread about once every other week. I’ve progressed to adding rosemary and olive oil or cheese to it. I want to try adding lemon thyme to it as well. I think I’m going to make a double chocolate crumb cake this week, so I’ll keep you all updated. I have the best husband ever, the dogs are great, and I have independence in my career. Things are going well!
Jan 2010work-life balance
This will be a short post, as I have to be at work in seven hours, meaning that I have five hours to sleep, but I wanted to say a quick word about balancing work and life. In the legal profession, or at least in private practice, balance seems to be actively discouraged. All through law school and while looking for jobs, I told myself that being balanced was very important. And it is. However, it seems to be a struggle to maintain it, and my job sometimes feels like it is a little kid on a teeter-totter who keeps moving closer and closer to the fulcrum. I’ve joined an orchestra and a gym, and I have taken over the music director position (“position” being a very loose word) at LCM as well as looking for a new church home in Overland Park. Also planning a wedding and starting to look at moving to KC (well, Johnson County really). And making time for friends. I should be able to do all this, right? It seems like these things are essential to my well-being as a person as well as a lawyer. And yet there is never ever enough time. As I write this, it seems more like I took too much on rather than work is demanding more of my time than it should reasonably have, so maybe I’m just whining. Today was just a hard day, and I’m starting to think that this struggle for balance, and this ideal of working at the office and not working outside the office is just that, an ideal.
Jul 2009studying for the Bar Exam
I’ve been working on Wills and Trusts today. I won’t have much time to read tomorrow, so I actually read ahead… And I had a thought. Trusts for animals (pets) are exempt from the Rule Against Perpetuities, at least in Missouri, and they last for the life of the animal, or the last surviving animal if the trust is for more than one animal. When I took Estates and Trusts (one class) in law school, my friend and I had talked about ways to get into the casebook, whether by naming our children C1, C2, C3, and so forth, or by creating an exceptionally complicated will with all sorts of procedural problems. What I want to do is adopt some animal with a long lifespan, like a turtle or a lake sturgeon, then put a massive amount of money into a trust for said animal, and then watch from my cloud while the litigation ensues after I die. I figure someone will make the Rule Against Perpetuities argument, especially since it’s for such a long time, and there will be an issue of what a pet actually is, and the trustee will be completely greedy and breach fiduciary duties. It will be fun. Is it bad that when I study, I think about ways to get around the law? Don’t worry, I won’t be breaking any laws knowingly or willingly.
Jun 2009studying for the Bar Exam
I like organization. I like having plans. I have created a plan that is supposed to motivate me to study for the Missouri Bar Exam, which I will take July 28th and 29th. I’ve devised a point system. Three colors of points, though they are all worth the same amount. I get a blue point for every set (17 problems) of multiple choice questions I do. I’ve thought about having a quality threshold, but that (and I) would be pointless. Then, I get a green point for every essay I write. Finally, I get a purple point for 1) every 20 pages I read in the large outlines, 2) every 20 notecards I create for studying, and 3) every half hour I spend (productively) studying otherwise, though if I study for 50 minutes all in one go, I get two points. Basically, every point is roughly 30 minutes of work. So that’s my system. Sounds great, right? I have decided that I need to amass 30 points before I can watch any Harry Potter movie, and if I want to watch all five before July 15th, I need to get some serious points going. I have not earned many points so far. I’m working on it. Also, I moved into Carl’s house a week and a half ago. Stuff is EVERYWHERE. I feel torn between studying and cleaning, and so I end up reading a magazine instead, naturally. It’s probably a good thing Carl won’t move back to the States until December. It gives me plenty of time to reorganize. I told him how I’ve been organizing our books and DVDs and things. He has a strange aversion to organization, and he has repeatedly cautioned me that his books will not stay the way I’ve put them. It will be a fun marriage, I think. Speaking of which, we’re doing things backwards, and we’re going to basically take our honeymoon this August while I’m over there. We’ll spend a 7-10 days in Great Britain at the beginning, a week in Italy at the end, and we’re hoping to spend a weekend in Switzerland (Zurich maybe?) and a weekend in Vienna. I’m really looking forward to it. I love hanging out with Carl, and we have such a great time together. We have not done much traveling together, and I think it will be a lot of fun. We have similar ideas of what constitutes “fun,” which will be a great thing. I can’t wait to be there. Then, after we’re married, we’ll take a weekend or something and go somewhere close. It may sound corny, but the thing I’m looking forward to most is just getting to be with my best friend. I should study.
Oct 2008cert
SCOTUS granted cert on my issue. No word on when arguments will be. Darn. I knew the risk, but I wanted to be cool and have something published before they looked at the issue, because then I would have been the only article out there on it. Yeah.
Sep 2008dishonesty
Sometimes reading cases just makes me feel dirty when I see the academic dishonesty that goes on. Courts will take things out of context (much like law students, ha), manipulate language, and pick and choose “binding cases.” The best example of this is United States v. Mendoza-Gonzalez, 520 F.3d 912 (8th Cir. 2008). The court basically says that, because a district court in another circuit (a lower court that is not bound by this court’s precedent) decided one thing, and this court cited that case for a sort of related proposition in another case, the district court case became very persuasive, if not binding, law. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.