Advanced Lawyer Photography for Dummies*

Class is in session. Today’s lesson: Successful photography for lawyer clients.

First and something to mind throughout the creative process: Lawyers are not a photogenic bunch. Alas, despite this misfortune of nature, they, like realtors, seem obsessed with pictures of themselves.

Here are a few tips to help you out. You’re an advanced class, one of my best, so I’ll go quick.

Lawyers want to convey rigidity, strength, dominance. They’re representatives of our no-nonsense legal system: Have them stand proud but perhaps with a slight “come hither” look in their eyes. Crossing arms further conveys confidence that a simple high school yearbook background might elide.

Lawyers are thought a cold, tough breed, sharks sporting suits but with worse manners. A bit of PR might be required of you by the firm. This friendly persona can be captured with the proper lighting--well, proper lighting and a bit of Photoshop. For tougher customers, try softening the border of your picture to reduce hard edges. Even better, get rid of edges altogether or place your subject between his/her office and the Twilight Zone.

Additionally, lawyers of all ilk take an oath (equivalent to doctors’ Hippocratic) to defend freedom. Freedom© being copyrighted by the U.S., what better way to display your love of the oath than to put a patriotic reminder of your nation behind you. Or, better yet, capture them volunteering at their local flag shop .

So, class, I hope you were taking notes. Your homework for next week: Generate a successful lawyer pic for one of your clients. For a reference, you can view representative examples of photographic excellence by following this and this link .

Class diss-missed.

Envy all people, let none annoy thee.

* Limited educational value. Primarily for our shared enjoyment and to justify my hours of looking through the results of “lawyer” on Google image search.

** Veiled Monty Python allusion.

Sane or Safe?

Was reviewing this morning’s RSS feeds to see how the friendly, big money-loyal, buyable politicians in Tennessee were doing—never get tired of their friendly faces hiding behind legal pads and raised suit jackets—after the FBI is charging them for changing state laws to benefit a dummy corporation, but before I could read the article a large, orange ad taking up a good portion of the webpage caught my eye:

Stop Crazy Lawsuits in Washington...

Being sensitive to the public perception of lawsuits and lawyers, I clicked to find out what, exactly, these "crazy" cases were that must be stopped. What's interesting is that no previous lawsuits are offered (you can google for them yourself; I’m not going to host their URL). Nor is it exactly clear who the "coalition" hosting the site is or why they don't want to see certain proposed laws passed in Washington state. Instead, what the website amounts to is just what I feared: a special interest group hosting the page to play off the general public's ideas of lawyers and lawsuits run amok.

Now I'm not a native of Washington state. I would rather not post a position on the bills this website doesn't want to see passed. I am a little disturbed, though, by those individuals the website lists as supporting the petition to prevent these "crazy" lawsuits. These are all either insurance companies (State Farm), big business (Johnson & Johnson), or large hospitals. But what I can’t abide is the empty rhetoric of “crazy lawsuits.”

Though treated with the status of individual by the courts, corporations cannot be locked away for injuring like a flesh and blood human. The damage to human life and wellbeing a pharmaceutical company can do far outweighs any convenience store holdup or bank robbery—and these corporations' take (called "profit" by execs) is in the millions. Corporations, incorporeal entities created to make money, are not deterred by jail sentences; profits rule its logic. The only way to keep their abuses limited is to speak their language. The only measure we little guys and gals have against these Goliaths is to sue.

What would be "crazy" is voting against your primary means of protection.

Envy all people, let none annoy thee.

Welcome

Oh and agh and uh, hello, welcome to my first blog--well, the first I've been paid to write and my first since my short-lived MySpace account (1 Corinthians 13:11^*).

Never really understood what people got out of posting and reading others’ rants and raves and thesaurus-written ramblings until I began my job at The Consumer Justice Group and realized there’s much more to the neologistic gerund (a quick ShiftF7 for "blogging").

Every M-F I’m scouring the good and bad of consumer and legal advice on the net, researching, finding interesting topics, staring at screens ‘til my eyes feel like they’ve got daggers in them. Occasionally, but more frequently, I’ll come across blogs from a law firm whose attorney’s scribbled something that sounds like news or advice but really exists to make it appear they have something new or important to say so Google’s bots will spider them.

But I suppose that’s business.

Our competition is mega-law firms with PR personalities (about that of a turnip) and metastasizing advertising agencies eating the good tissue of reliable help on the web.

So, unable to change their content, I’ve started this blog to add my own ir-, semi-, and relevant content. It’s now part of my job description. Here I can still help get the word out about CJG and build links to our page while taking a break from composing web content. It’s a dalliance better than designing jewelry from strung paperclips and other office supplies or resharpening the pencils in my desk like a burned out IBM engineer.

It’s my hope you’ll find what I’ll be posting personable, enjoyable, and informative--perhaps in that order.

Feel free to comment or drop me an e-mail with questions on previous or suggestions for future entries. Until then, I’ll keep posting on everything^** legal.

Envy all people, let none annoy thee.

* This quote does not indicate an endorsement of the Christian Bible, nor does this disclaimer represent a disavowal of the bestseller. It’s a good quote. I’d like to leave it at that.

** Please note: Not “everything”. Not even most things. But nothing on this page will be illegal--fortune, weather, human will, and deities permitting.