Judge Dread

Clearly, I was spoiled for news stories to cover last week. Even this week, and more specifically today, a lot of things I’m interested in have been cropping up.

Trump‘s been in the news a bunch, but I’m not going to spend any time on the details of that. I mean, who’s got the bandwidth to constantly maintain the rage?

A: This guy?

No, the most interesting thing I learned about Trump this week keyed into my interest in the amount of time we spent at work.

[Waste your time at work with the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]

However, also, I have to say, 20 hrs a week should be the endpoint of a fully automated economy. All that spare time for craft, relationships, self-development, citizenship. Trump scratches his wizened balls. We can do better. https://t.co/5TnrGjunoH

— Pat Kane (@thoughtland) August 21, 2018

Apparently, Michael Cera plays the Young Donald Trump. You know Trump would love that, right? The character playing his acoustic guitar like a manic pixie dream boi?

From my days as an attorney, the thought of a 20-hour week seems like a crazy dream. Six years later, I’ve got to think that it still is. Surely Trump’s various activities have added – on average – around ten hours to the working week of every lawyer in America.

Rudy Giuliani realises why he’s lost his mojo

When I would dream about the day that the legal bar-based closed shop would collapse and my job would be shipped off to an emerging economy, I always reckoned that becoming a barber would be a good gig. Of course, I got the sack and had a stroke before I could achieve that impossible dream.

‘We have mastered scissors anyway, you bouffant-ed fool!’

Around six years too early, it seems. This morning on the Today Programme, they were talking about how algorithms are infiltrating the law and A.I. is playing an increasing role in the legal world. Not just in checking contracts – some of the more advanced NYC firms were already punching the provisions of term sheets into templates and spitting out early drafts of complex agreements when I was practicing. No, they’re talking about algorithms predicting court outcomes, and even making judgments. The Lord Chief Justice of England apparently doesn’t believe that lawyers and judges will be replaced by algorithms. Nevertheless, Today said,

some lawyers are warning that the U.K. should put protections in place to make sure that algorithms aren’t one day allowed to make court rulings.

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