Pumpkin Spice Lawyer

  • Law

  • CCSD is seeking an injunction to prevent a teacher strike. [TNI]
  • Environmental groups argue lands bill will exempt Las Vegas pipeline from judicial review. [TNI]
  • Not Vegas, but a lawyer used his Mercedes to run over a man who he says threw a golf ball at his car. [ABC News]
30 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 3:31 pm

First.

This is awesome. CCSD is seeking an injunction. CCEA negotiates a shit contract and teachers that do what they are supposed to (like getting a Master's) are shafted on their raises. I wish the contract weren't garbage and the teachers could file suit to enforce the Kx. I say EFF IT. Strike.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 3:33 pm

I normally loathe public employee unions, but these teachers are getting screwed. It will cause a disruption for my family, but I fully support this strike. CCSD sucks at everything it does. We need to break up the district. It's a disfunctional joke.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 4:23 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

831am here.

This situation is two-fold in fault. CCEA is just as guilty at CCSD. In what world is "management" allowed to unilaterally suspend incentives to "labor" because of some bullshit called budget concerns. I mean who drafted this garbage and who approved it?? I too am totally against public employee unions. But, the CCEA is flat out evil. It's well past time to disorganize and for the CCSD to split.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 10:58 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Strike! Please, pretty please, strike!! Strike!!!

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 3:41 pm

Just in case there are any doubts that the Office of the Secretary of State is totally dysfunctional, check out this email I just received from our illustrious SOS: "We are unable to expedite new notary commissions we are working on getting the problems fixed."
We have already been waiting three weeks and they say they are up to Notary Applications filed on or before July 10, 2019.

Thank you

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 4:04 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Was this intended in part as a passive-aggressive spell check to 8:33?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 6:27 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

No it was not. However, I do know how to spell dysfunctional.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 5:55 pm

Is this our (bleak?) future? Non lawyers involved in practicing law?

Utah Task Force Calls for ‘Profoundly Reimagining the Way Legal Services Are Regulated’

https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2019/08/utah-task-force-calls-for-profoundly-reimagining-the-way-legal-services-are-regulated.html

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 6:10 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I don't understand what forces are driving these changes. Are they really coming internally from the bar? Is there a groundswell of grassroots demands from the public? I suspect the non-lawyer "innovators" are the ones pushing for this, whose motive, let's be honest, isn't to benefit the public.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 6:19 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, a lot of people (probably most) cannot afford basic legal services. Most people's legal needs are not that complicated, and there is certainly a way for non-lawyers to provide competent legal advice on really basic issues, just like an NP or PA is qualified to treat most people who walk through the door of an urgent care.

That being said, the ones who have tried to do it so far are mostly predatory and incompetent, and I don't know how you prevent that.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 7:50 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Woo hoo!! Let the free market reign. DOWN with the Bar's monopoly on the practice of law. Allow those of us unlicensed practitioners a chance to make some real money. Your JDs, LLM's, professional liability insurance and licenses don't necessarily mean that you are better than the rest of us that do your jobs for you. RAGE Against the Machine, once and for all.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 8:20 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

To 11:10 there are three separate vectors of support. #1 allowing limited practice to paralegals in the vein of the solicitor/barrister system has a lot of merit to people looking to lower the cost of routine consumer law – family law, simple wills, etc. #2 some forms of law can be lucrative, investors want a cut. #3 the large accounting firms would like to come in and compete with the big law firms.

I am sympathetic to rationale #1, agnostic to #3, and leery of #2. I support most proposals for limited practice licenses. But as 11:19 points out, quality control and consumer protection will be big issues for limited practice.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 10:39 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

This is not going to happen. People with a high school education should not be practicing law.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:02 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

"This is not going to happen."

Have you been paying attention, 3:39 PM? We live with a State Bar that is openly hostile to private practitioners. A State Bar that was captured by the interests of an insurance company that attempted to hoist mandatory coverage on us. A State Bar who honestly believed it was a good idea to do random audits at the expense of the practitioner. A State Bar who is astroturfing, at the direction of Dean Dan Hamilton, a "Great Debate" about reciprocity so that UNLV Law can maybe climb a few spots in the rankings of a website that used to be a magazine (US News & World Report).

Are you fucking serious? You don't think that could and likely will happen here?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:08 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I can't tell if 12:50 is joking. For all of the faults of law schools, they do serve the important function of weeding out people who are too dumb to get at least a 150 on the LSAT and/or too lazy. Practicing law isn't rocket science, but it does require above average intelligence and above average work ethic.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:44 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

1:20 is on point. #1 is going to happen with regulation. #3 is going to happen– I think this is about to happen in California. #2 is the scary point. Can you imagine George Soros or Sheldon Adelson owning law firms? Then imagine implementation of machine / afriticial intelligence on top of their law firms. Eventually, only the very brave and lucky will be solo / small practitioners. The people we elect to run our practice are disconnected from the reality of solo / small practice. They don't like solo / small practices. They will eff it up for lawyers with 20+ more years on a "career."

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 28, 2019 12:17 am
Reply to  Anonymous

4:44,

You make a great point. Look at all the other areas of society where we have allowed power to concentrate in the last few decades: media, election financing, banking, etc. Can anyone honestly say that society is, as a whole, better off because of consolidation in those areas? How will society be better served if the legal industry is controlled by a handful of barons like the Charles Koch, Sheldon Adelson and Jeff Bezos?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 6:37 pm

I have been in Las Vegas since the late 1980s. It is a broken record that we are not spending enough for education, teachers are underpaid, and there are problems. No amount of money thrown at education is ever enough. The School District was supposed to be broken up. What happened to that? No matter how much money we throw at the School District they will mismanage it and squander it. The School District is a bloated bureaucracy unable to handle its basic mission and functions. The answer? A full blown audit of their operations and have the State take them over. How many increases in the property and sales taxes have taken place to fix their problems??? One fix after another never works.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 6:43 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I wouldn't trust the state of Nevada to take over and improve anything… especially under Sizzlelack!

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 10:35 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Have there been increases in property and sales taxes that have gone to the school district? I ask because we're consistently in the bottom few in per pupil spending. In the same vein, it is a broken record that money can't fix education when we've never tried adequately funding schools here and states with consistently higher spending churn out, on average, smarter kids.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:16 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Spending isn't everything. Utah spends even less than we do and has significantly better outcomes. Although, that is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Utah has more stable and cohesive communities and families than Las Vegas. The culture in Las Vegas places much less importance on education than Utah. The economy in Utah relies more heavily on an educated work force than Las Vegas. This isn't a single bullet issue. In fact, because most of it is societal, I seriously question whether it's a problem government can even solve at all.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:55 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

4:16 – you omit the fact that Utah has one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation (just about 10%). Clark county is about 15%. Why does that matter? Those in lower income households need additional support, special education, meal funding, etc. Its not as if Las Vegas and Salt Lake are starting off at the same level, with the same level of educated population etc.

ery student in those states receive the funding they need to academically succeed because of their family's socioeconomic status.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 28, 2019 12:06 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Utah also doesn't have a single, unresponsive behemoth school district. There are probably 10 school districts in the Salt Lake Valley alone. (My number could be off, but you get my point). The town I grew up in is less than 100,000 and has TWO districts. The sheer size of CCSD guarantees profound failure.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 8:40 pm

Las Vegas public schools have always been bottom ranking. Some want to blame the parents, but teachers and the District need own the problem. Agree, more money, more money does not fix the underlying problem, and if anything, the quality of public education is declining. Have you noticed how many private schools are springing up around the city?

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 9:24 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

wow so edgy!

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 10:33 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

More private schools sounds good to me. Vegas has one of the lowest rates of private school enrollment in the country. I've always thought that getting more local students into private school could help reduce CCSD overcrowding and boost the amount of funds available per CCSD student.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/08/where-private-school-enrollment-is-highest-and-lowest-across-the-us/375993/

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 11:47 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Las Vegas is the 6th largest school district in the country behind New York, LA, Chicago, Puerto Rico & Miami which are all wonderful place to raise kids in a public school system. Clark County SD needs to be broken into 10 school districts. The current administration is out of touch. Small districts put the power to run the schools back into the hands of parents. I hope they strike for 90 days.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 28, 2019 2:20 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Power in the hands of parents is a good thing? I'm, sorry, but have you met a lot of parents? Many of the ones who can afford to have placed their kids in charters or private because they are not impressed with CCSD. Those that remain are either ambivalent towards education or want their kids to succeed but are working 2 jobs and don't have time for homework, let alone oversight of educational bureaucracies.

Anonymous
Guest
Anonymous
August 27, 2019 10:20 pm

Exempt Las Vegas Pipeline from judicial review

SNWA has been aggressively pushing for the pipeline and pumping upstate ground water for many years, even to the point of buying up water rights upstate. This a course that SNWA must pursue to allow continued growth in the city. However the upstate farmers and ranchers will be screwed. Ground water is finite, the city will draw it down making a scarce resource for farmers and ranchers even more scarce. Non partisan judicial review is necessary and should not be left to political appointees.

Anonymous
Guest