I recently finished my teaching stint in the Summer Law Program, spending six hours on Corporate Governance and six hours on Relational Contracts. Since becoming a legal academic 10 years ago, I have taught "foreign" (non-US) students in various settings, including as LLMs, as undergraduates in their home countries, and in short programs for graduate students. The experience is almost always a little disappointing, and I have been wondering why.

Here are some possible sources of problems:

* Language. Americans benefit immensely from the fact that English has become the world's language, but the fact remains that many educated people do not speak English well enough to understand a course in law. I do not intend this to be a criticism of non-English speakers -- American law is tough enough for Americans -- but simply an observation. I speak a bit of German, but I cannot imagine sitting in on a law course in German. Yet, that is what we ask of non-English speaking students who wish to partake of our knowledge.

* Legal culture. Students outside the influence of the British Commonwealth assume that they understand the divide between civil law and common law, but when I teach the law of fiduciary duty using Delaware cases, students from a civil law tradition are often baffled. Perhaps I could make this more understandable if I had a deeper knowledge of the civil law, but in any event, this gap exists, and it is much more difficult to bridge than I would have imagined before actually attempting the feat.

* Educational culture. Most American law schools place some value on original thought. Our culture is largely one of exploration and discovery. This is often a shock to students when they enter law school from degree programs that emphasize rote learning, and we spend a great deal of time (especially during the first year of law school) trying to inspire independent thinking. Foreign law students usually come to us with the same sort of bias for rote learning, but we do not have the time to train them. The result is that we are asking questions with no answers and they are wondering why we know so little about our area of supposed expertise.

* Law is complicated. How much can someone learn about corporate governance in six hours? Less than you might think. I have learned to approach these sessions through case studies (in this instance, a case study of Enron) because stories are more memorable than lists of important issues. Still, even at my best I can't hope to provide much depth of analysis. We spend most of the time establishing a framework for thinking about corporate governance.

* Their Motivation. What exactly are foreign students expecting from their interaction with American professors? In some circumstances, I have been teaching students whose primary interest was in practicing their English, and they spent a great deal of time flipping through their dictionaries, trying to learn new words. In other instances, I have met students who hoped that I might provide a contact for them in the United States as they searched for employment here. Of course, many of the students genuinely want to learn some American law, despite the obstacles.

* My Motivation. Why do I want to teach foreign students? In some instances, the primary motivation is that this is how I pay my way to their country. "Will teach for travel." Or I want to earn a little extra money at home. But there is another aspect of this, too, a missionary aspect that is more noble. I feel like I have learned some things that might be valuable for foreign lawyers, and I want to share it. Finally, I always learn from my students -- even those who are silent in class often share interesting insights outside of the lecture. Looking at the picture as a whole, however, I must admit that my incentives are mixed.

The bottom line question in all of this is whether these sorts of programs are worthwhile. Despite my disappointments, I have benefitted immensely from my travels and from my interactions with non-U.S. students. As a faculty development program, therefore, I am in favor. I have a harder time knowing whether the programs are worthwhile to the students. My sense from occasional conversations with alumni of various courses is that the programs are viewed positively, but not overwhelmingly so. Perhaps the key is to set the expectations at the right level -- that is, modest.

Permalink | Law Schools/Lawyering | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

When it comes to business ideas, selling automobile tires is as mundane as anything, but Les Schwab created a company that engenders loyalty. He wrote his autobiography in 1986, and I am sad to say that I have not read it, but when we lived in Oregon, we were faithful customers. We were faithful to Les Schwab because when we had tire issues, the Les Schwab store provided fast service at a fair price. In several instances, they provided their service at no charge because we were regulars. I would drive a long distance for a Les Schwab, but probably not to Helena, Montana ... the closest store to Wisconsin.

These thoughts of Les Schwab came to mind yesterday when I needed to replace two worn tires on my Saturn. I decided to take my business to Sears Auto Center. My dad was a Sears man, and I figured that I could trust them to slap a few tires on my car without messing up. I was wrong. They replaced the old tires and did an alignment for $330. I drove to work and parked the car for several hours. When I returned, however, one of the tires was flat. Arrggh! A half hour later, I was on my way back to Sears with a slightly underinflated spare.

Once there, I patiently explained the problem to the Sears representative and told him that this was somewhat urgent, as I was on my way to the Brewers-Cubs game with my children. Putz, putz, putz. Fifteen minutes of paperwork! Ok, now let's get that car in the shop! After five more minutes of inactivity, I blew a gasket and told them that I was sick of waiting. They had messed up, and I wanted it fixed now! Not my finest hour, but it did manage to bring a mechanic from the back in double time. To his credit, he got the job done fairly quickly after that. The cause of the flat? He couldn't figure it out, but he guessed that it was a leaky stem valve.

Now, I am willing to concede that a leaky stem valve could happen to anyone, even Les Schwab, but the customer service at Sears was horrible. The manager attempted to explain that the mechanics had been busy unloading a supply truck when I arrived. I told her that I was not interested in excuses at that hour when her team's work had already put me in a time bind. The customer comes first if you want my business. That's the way Les Schwab ran things, and that's why I am pining for him.

Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Well, they were playing the Brewers, and somebody had to win. For most of the summer, I follow baseball for about five minutes a day, but I like to attend at least one game every year. Last night, I took two of my children to see the Brewers and the Cubs at Miller Park.

When I was in law school, my wife and I could hear the fireworks at the old Comisky Park, but when we wanted to see a game, we drove to Wrigley. That was the era of Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Greg Maddux, Mark Grace, etc. The Cubs won our hearts, and we have kept one eye on them ever since.

The Brewers arrived in Wisconsin in 1970, not long after my family relocated here. But I grew up loving the Twins with Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Bert Blyleven, Rod Carew, Jim Kaat, etc. Minneapolis was closer to my home than Milwaukee, and we occasionally attended a game at the old Metropolitan Stadium. The Twins continue to amaze me this summer, leading their division over teams (notably, those dreaded White Sox) with much higher payrolls.

Anyway, I started following the Brewers in 1981 because they were good (yes, I am a fair-weather fan) and because I spent that summer working in the pro shop of the Eau Claire Golf & Country Club. As we waited for the last golfers of the day to exit the course, we listened to Bob Uecker call the Brewers games. Those were the exciting days of Bambi's Bombers, and we loved Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, etc.

So last night seemed to be the perfect game. Two teams that I would be very pleased to watch. Greg Maddux v. Ben Sheets. Nice. So I thought.

My troubles began before we even left Madison. At Sears. Because of the delay, we didn't arrive at the stadium until the second inning, and I could see immediately that something was wrong. The Brewers average 24,187 people per game, well below the capacity of 42,400. Moreover, the Brewers are in last place in their division. Surely we could just walk up and buy a ticket, right? I hadn't counted on Cubs fans filling the seats. Doh! The Cubs are in a wild-card race, and the game was sold out.

After parking what seemed like miles from the park, we scalped some tickets from a guy riding a bicycle through the late arriving fans. If I had been in the mood to bargain, I could have gotten a discount, but I paid him $7 per tickets having a face value of $6. He tried to tell me that the tickets were really $12 tickets. Whatever.

As we approached the park, we heard cheering and we could see dancing Cubs fans. We missed the top of the third inning and two home runs. Crud! We finally reached our seats for the top of the fourth. Our seats were bad. Left field, way up. Not only that, but we were behind some railings, which obstructed our views of the pitcher and batter. And people kept walking in front of what was left of our view to get to the exit. Several times, lazy vendors rested by the railings and shouted, "Anyone want some Craker Jacks?" No one seemed to care, except me, so I asked them to move, which they did ... slowly.

The worst part of the night was the bathroom break. My son and I were standing at the urinals doing our business when suddenly both of us jolted and yelled, "What was that!" I had felt a spray of warm water on my leg. IT WASN'T WATER! Two stalls away from me -- the one next to my son -- a drunken Cubs fan was having a hard time finding the wall. Gross! Gross! Gross! We were so shocked and disgusted that the fellow made an escape before we could figure out what to do. That was as close as I have ever come to committing a battery.

And, yet, despite all of this, we left the game happy. We had seen the sausage race. We had eaten cotton candy. We had watched Bernie Brewer slide after a home run by Russell Branyan. We had sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" in the seventh inning stretch. And we had laughed as the bubble cam scanned the crowd. My children are great fun.

Permalink | Sports | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Although I left off blogging about the Tour after Stage 13, I didn't stop watching, and the remaining seven stages were the most exciting, particularly Lance's win in Stage 17, where he narrowly eclipsed Andreas Klöden of Germany. Lance was completely dominant and took most of the suspense out of the Tour well before Paris, but he still made the individual stages exciting. Here are some concluding thoughts:

* Lance should retire from the Tour de France. I always liked the image of Jim Brown retiring from football at the top of his game. Michael Jordan did it twice! Lance could probably win more Tours, but this would be a nice time to end.

* Perhaps the best thing about this Tour other than Lance winning was the emergence of Ivan Basso and Andreas Klöden as new faces on the podium. Jan Ullrich still finished fourth, and you can't help but wonder "what if" Ullrich had Armstrong's heart.

* The US Postal team is simply awesome. They did not win the overall team title, but they completely dominated the race. Hincapie and Landis were particularly impressive, as was Azevedo on some of the mountain stages. I wonder how many of these guys Discovery will manage to retain.

* It would be nice to have an American to root for, but I didn't see any rising stars in this Tour. Tyler is older than Lance, and he can't seem to stay on his bike. Levi seems like a great guy, but his upside looks pretty limited. I would root for Landis and Hincapie, but I am not sure that they have what it takes to be a contender on their own.

* Biggest disappointment of the Tour: Roberto Heras and Iban Mayo. Ok, that is two disappointments, but both of them dropped out in the mountains! That was where they were supposed to be strongest and really make their moves. Even before they left the race, they looked horrible.

This was my fourth Tour, and it has become a nice diversion each July. My son and I are already planning a trip to France to follow along, though not for a few years. In the meantime, we continue to ride the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin and imagine ourselves riding like Lance (think PowerBar commercial here, for those who watched the Tour on OLN).

Permalink | Cycling | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Sorry for my absence over the past week or so. The secondary cause was a software glitch, but the primary cause was a wetware meltdown. That is, my brain needed a bit of a break from blogging to catch up on some work in the office and at home. I am happy to report that my pile of projects is shorter, and I see some hope of breaking through the summer logjam.

Permalink | Administrative | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Venture capitalists have started raising money again, and investors are climbing over each other to invest. Unfortunately, the major constraint on the venture capital industry has not changed: venture capitalists still need to find great ideas. Without enough ideas to go around, lots of money is chasing a few ideas, and the laws of supply and demand do not take long to kick in. Been there, done that.

At the moment, the top tier venture firms are leading the fundraising, and they are striving to retain some discipline over valuations. But with so many investors trying to get into venture capital, how long will it be until we see valuations creeping up?

Permalink | Venture Capital | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

This story is for all of those who have wondered: How does Lance Armstrong ride for six hours, drink all that water, and never ... you know? They rarely show this part of the Tour on television, but of course, it is part of the race.

Danny Nelissen, Eurosport's Dutch cycling commentator and a former professional cyclist is quoted as saying: "It takes a lot of practice to pee at 70kph. I couldn't do it. I had to stop."

If that was more than you wanted to know, stop reading. If you are still wondering about other potential problems, this is also from Nelissen: "One year on the Tour, four teams staying at the same hotel -- including Laurent Jalabert's ONCE squad -- got hit by food poisoning. The next day you had half the pack disappearing into the woods. You drop back to your team car and ask for one of those casquettes. You know, one of those hats. The cloth ones. What else are you going to use?"

As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.

Permalink | Cycling | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark

And then there were two. Hamilton is out of the race completely. Ullrich looks horrible. Leipheimer is simply not in the same class. Heras and Mayo? Forget it! Ivan Basso and Lance Armstrong are the elite, and they left everyone else in the dust on the way up to Plateau de Beille. Armstrong rode a perfect race (despite a flat early on), and it was nice to see him take the stage.

So who ends up on the podium in Paris? The contestants are narrowing. I think it would be great to see Armstrong, Basso, and Thomas Voeckler, who has won a lot of fans since taking the yellow jersey last week.

By the way, OLN's coverage has been great. I thought this statement by Phil Liggett was funny: "You are watching a commercial-free half hour brought to you by PowerPar." It reminded me of my time in law practice, when we used to write "This page left intentionally blank" in a securities prospectus. One of my colleages once added "(except these words)."

Permalink | Cycling | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

You may have noticed a link in my sidebar to Times & Seasons, which is a Mormon group blog. We are pretty happy with the community that we have built over there, lately attracting more than 1,000 visitors on a normal weekday. The topics run the gamut, from silly to serious to sublime. Aside from the fact that we are all Mormons, the 10 permanent bloggers cannot reach consensus on many issues, and when you add a bunch of commenters from all over Mormondom, well, things can get surprisingly raucous. Today, we received some very kind words from one of our frequent commenters, who is called "danithew," as he created a list of Top 10 Mormon Blogs:

The #1 best and coolest blog in the Bloggernacle [our moniker for the burgeoning community of Mormon blogs], far and away, is Times and Seasons. Times and Seasons is a very well-developed with multiple writers/bloggers who are seasoned professionals and former students of the best universities in the United States. Most of them also have families (spouses and children). As a result, the posts at Times and Seasons are intellectually excellent, thoughtful and are based in real-life experience. Guest writers often appear and they add even more to the rich offerings at T&S. In addition to all of this, a wide variety of opinions are presented in both the posts and the comments—and no other Bloggernacle blog comes even close to eliciting as many comments as appear at T&S (most popular entry has 256 comments!).

Times and Seasons is addictive. If each blog in the ‘Nacle were a drug, Times and Seasons would be crack cocaine. So beware of getting yourself entangled in the discussions that go on there in the comments. Let no one say they weren’t warned. As a side note, I just have to say that I am surprised T&S tolerates me as much as they do.

Tolerate you? We love your comments, danithew. Especially this latest.

Permalink | Blogs and Blawgs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Staying with the incarceration theme, Martha was sentenced to five months in prison and two years of supervised probation. When news of this story first broke, comedians joked about seeing Martha in stripes, but no one then thought it would really happen. Martha said, "Today is a shameful day. It's shameful for me and for my family and for my beloved company and for all of its employees and partners." And for the prosecutors who brought this case. Shame on you.

Permalink | Securities | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Awhile back, I wrote a short bit about Bobby Fischer after reading a book about his famous match with Boris Spassky. He has been in hiding for years, evading charges in the U.S. and spewing anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. rubbish on the internet. Now he is in jail in Japan. Strange to think of him as 61 years old.

Permalink | Sports | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Wow! Talk about separating the wheat from the chaff! Ivan Basso and Lance Armstrong made the other yellow jersey contenders look like pretenders today. It's hard to appreciate how strong Armstrong and Basso rode until you see Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, and others sucking wind several minutes behind. Now the big issue is whether Armstrong pushed too hard today. Despite his impressive showing, Basso predicts a win for Lance.

Permalink | Cycling | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

In a fit of insomnia, I was just taking a stroll through Jeremy Freeze's list of "most despised words," and I stumbled on that old favorite: impact as a transitive verb. As I am sure you know, a transitive verb requires a direct object, so this use of impact would be something like the following from a recent CBS News story:

These differences will persist whatever the economy does, and insofar as the president impacts the economy over the short-run it has more to do with things like Clinton's deft intervention in the Mexican peso crisis that have little relationship to the main ideological divide in the country.

Why this construction so annoys people eludes me, but it annoys a lot of people. According to The American Heritage Book of English Usage, 95% of the Usage Panel disapproved of this use of the word.

Nevertheless, the BEU states:

It's unclear why this usage provokes such a strong response, but it can't be because of novelty. Impact has been used as a verb since 1601, and its figurative use dates from 1935, allowing people plenty of time to get accustomed to it. It may be that its frequent appearance in jargon-riddled remarks of politicians, military officials, and financial analysts has made people suspicious. Nevertheless, the use of impact as a verb has become so common in corporations and institutions that younger speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, therefore, that the verb impact will eventually become as usual as the verb contact has become over the last 30 years.

Let's speculate about the staying power of the anti-impact bias among highly educated Americans. Surely we cannot ascribe the bias to inherent cacophony. People who feel strongly on this issue claim that this construction hurts their ears, but this must be a learned response. Actually, the persistence of the common usage may be attributable to the beneficial tonal qualities of the word: "affects" simply doesn't have the same force.

My hunch is that the anti-impact bias is nothing more than a contrivance used to distinguish elite from common English speakers. The fact that the disfavored usage appears frequently in "jargon-riddled remarks" suggests that people who are speaking the common tongue are more prone to use "impact" in this way. By extension those who proclaim their disdain for this usage can (further) separate themselves from the commoners. Despising "impact" as a transitive verb becomes sort of a password for admission to the club of elite practitioners of the English language.

One piece of evidence: James Rosenfield writes: "Using 'impact' as a transitive verb conveys a sort of bland, ignorant business school sensibility, MBA's gone wrong (if that's not redundant), and that in itself is enough to get your teeth gnashing." If you want more evidence of elitism in the air, search "hate impact as a verb" in Google and knock yourself out.

Now, I don't intend this as a personal attack on Jeremy, whom I have never met (despite the fact that his office is just over Bascom Hill from mine). He has a great blog, which I enjoy reading, and, frankly, there are a lot worse "isms" in the world than language elitism. But after a lifetime of listening to this complaint, I felt moved to defend "impact" against yet another -- in my view, unjustified -- attack.

Permalink | Miscellany | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

I have been reading Michael Powell's "blog," which so far consists of two entries and a gazillion comments. His first post is here, and his second post is here. Take a spin through the comments. Some are serious, some are accusatory (calling Powell a "fraud" or a "crony").

All of this makes me wonder: is this a good way for public officials to stay in touch with their constituents? Michael Powell seems to think so. He said this at the end of his first post:

One reason I am participating in AlwaysOn Network's blog is to hear from the tech community directly and to try to get beyond the traditional inside the Beltway Washington world where lobbyists filter the techies. I am looking forward to an open, transparent and meritocracy-based communication—attributes that bloggers are famous for! Regulated interests have about an 80 year head start on the entrepreneurial tech community when it comes to informing regulators what they want and need, but if anyone can make up for that, Silicon Valley can. This is important not just for Silicon Valley—it's essential to insure that America has the best, most innovate communications infrastructure.

I have mixed feelings about this. I participate in a group blog that generates a lot of comments, and I find that I learn a tremendous amount from the commenters. Reading thoughtful comments is exceedingly time consuming, especially so in the amounts generated by Powell's posts, but surely Powell has office lackeys to do the heavy lifting.

My hunch is that the big downside of blogging for public officials is not the time, but the quality and tone of the comments. If you are hoping to learn from commenters, you had better attract people who are willing and able to engage in reasoned conversation. It does not take of lot of vitriol to poison a blog, and political figures are often divisive in a way that ensures poisonous comments.

Permalink | Blogs and Blawgs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark

Google's Gmail has certainly inspired Yahoo! Not only did Yahoo! increase its storage, but it has now acquired Oddpost, which is an email interface with news aggregator. It looks like a great application. But this is what most intrigues me:

In addition to doing all that is necessary, Oddpost also does most of that which is charmingly unnecessary. You can, for example, choose one of several uproarious built-in sounds to play whenever new mail arrives, or better yet, specify a URL to your favorite song clip, movie quote, or any other wav or mp3 on the web. And how many times have you resorted to “hello” or a mind-numbing “yo” as the subject for an email? With Oddpost, a single click on a new message’s Subject: label summons the mysterious powers of the Subject-O-Matique to generate a thought-provoking subject for you.

Subject-O-Matique? I like these guys.

Permalink | Google | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark