[odf-discuss] Request for Digg help

[marbux]

On 6/2/07, Ian Lynch <ian.lynch at zmsl.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> You provide the experience and confidence to learn how to learn. The
> most important thing is not immediate detail in all things but kindling
> the desire to know and understand more.


Good point. I overlooked that factor and agree it is the most important.


> > I wish I had a good answer to that problem but I don't. I just wanted
> > to note the overstatement to make sure Ian knew it was there. I can't
> > fault him for it being there. I'm sure he agonized over how to
> > approach the subject far more than I did.
>
> Probably no more than you would agonise over how to present a routine
> issue in a point of law. Its probably why I'm a professional educator
> and you are a professional lawyer ;-)


Yes, a famous legal historian -- famous within legal circles, of course --
once said, "[s]uch is the unity of all history that any one who endeavors to
tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web."
F. W. Maitland, A Prologue to a History of English Law, 14 L. Qtrly Rev. 13
(1898).  That's about as good a description of writer's block as I've ever
run across. :-)

The corresponding lesson is that the practice of law is  but in many ways
the collaborative drafting of new chapters in legal history. We cannot
feasibly say everything that could be said of the relevant law in any single
presentation. We have to focus on the points we believe most persuasive.

One of the first lessons baby lawyers have to learn is to lay aside the
drafting of legal encyclopediae in favor of hitting the judge and the other
side with your best two or three shots. The situations in which there are no
principled arguments available to the other side are rare.

I suppose it is little different in any human endeavor.
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