Michael Finkelstein, 2011

300 feet above the Mississippi River, I turned my head to glance downstream; the City of New Orleans, the Riverwalk, St. Louis Cathedral. A big breath as I pulled my head back and glanced north - the end of the bridge, I can almost the glimmer of the lake - Lakeview, my house. Just keep running.

This past weekend, I accomplished a few things that have left me feeling very humbled, and with a deeper sense of community. On Saturday, I was in the few thousand lucky people who ran across the Crescent City Connection as part of the BridgeMan 4 Mile Race. For those familiar with the Crescent City, the iconic twin bridges are a symbol of the city and a main artery for connecting various parts of the greater New Orleans metro area. The race itself was a 4 mile trek from Gretna, up to the foot of the bridge, across the river, down and around to Convention Center Blvd, past the entrace to Mardi Gras World, and wrapping up underneath the bridge we just conquered  bordering the river.

On Sunday, I was very happy to support the HALO Foundation of New Orleans at an event they hosted at the famous Rock 'n Bowl. HALO was established to help a local home health care nurse who was brutally attacked and raped while going out to someone's home for her work. The woman, going by the name "Angel," has been unable to work and support her family since she was attacked. One thing I'm always looking to do more of is be involved in the greater community and help contribute to worthwhile causes. I've always had a desire to help women who have been abused or harmed. As a part of my bar mitzvah when I was 13, I collected donations and other goods to send to the local battered women's shelter. Being a part of this great cause this past weekend reconnected this spirit of community, I was happy to be a part of it, and bring along other people to help contribute to this great cause.

On a lighter note, I took the ferry across the river to Algiers Point on Wednesday afternoon after work and spent the evening enjoying the music and festivities at Wednesdays on the Point. Experiencing the little festivals and celebrations like these serves as a constant reminder to me that the people of Louisiana know how to have a good time and enjoy life like no place else in the country.  

Ongoing, work has been giving me some great experience and I'm very encouraged that my experiences there have been going well. I recently authored my first victorious Motion for Summary Judgment! It has quelled some of my nerves about going into practice that I'm now writing motions and other documents for filing with court, under the name and supervision of the attorney I'm working for, of course. But still, to be getting this much experience doing real legal work at this point in school is a very unique and special advantage that is not being wasted on me.

I'm also hoping to keep on staying more involved in the greater community. I'll be continuing to post my ventures so please keep visiting to see what's going on around my end. Till next time...

Five thunderous claps startled me from my work as I ran out of my office to see if everything was alright down the hall. I thought someone had perhaps knocked over some bookcases in the library and I rushed to see if anyone was hurt. I quickly discovered the source of the troubling booms - our file clerk throwing away our collection of Federal Reporters. Part of my mind cringed with the thought of throwing these books away, and then I realized what a beautiful moment this actually was. 

Last week marked my second week at the New Orleans law firm of Usry, Weeks, & Matthews. With no functional website, the firm is a technological anomaly in today's legal industry. The recent national trend has been to increase access of information available online. In this age of information and technology, consumers are driving content more and more every day. With websites like LegalZoom.com and Avvo.com, lawyers are satisfying this desire, and the industry has undergone dramatic change in recent years. Yet, the traditional law firm model remains constant. The billable hour, the often-condemned unit of measurement between lawyers and clients, is still the measuring stick of firm validity.

Fundamentally, however, the legal industry is still in flux today. The recent downfall of 100+ year old "Legal Titan" Dewey Leboeuf (see http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2012/05/14/247383.htm) evidences the changing times in legal practice. 

One of those key changes has been in the area of access to legal information. The internet has fundamentally transformed our lives, the way we interact with people, and how we obtain information. Before the advent of computers, legal information, mostly in the form of cases, statutes, and secondary legal sources, were once only available in the form of books. These books were both voluminous and expensive. Very expensive. Assembling a working collection required to do significant research required the kind of capital only available to big law firms. At the minimum, this would have required purchasing hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of legal books.

As we've all heard, knowledge is power. No one knew this better than the big, power firms. Having amassed libraries of books, the firms cornered the market because they controlled the information. 

Today, these sources are all available online. With a Westlaw or Lexis subscription and the click of a mouse, small firms, even solo practitioners, have the same access to legal information that was once dominated by BIG LAW. In effect, technology has given the little guys a level playing field. Subscribers now have access to appellate briefs, pleadings and motions on a district court level, and unlimited cases from around the country.