Publisher's Notebook

E-mail. I get a lot of it. Some good, some junk.

Sometimes it’s a press release touting some new product that lawyers can’t do without (the good ones go to our ad department for prospecting…others get the delete key).

And sometimes it’s a press release for a seminar. For the most part, these get the boot, too. Then there are those that raise vital legal issues of our day and deserve due attention.  Take for example, the invite I got this morning to a conference on “Wine Law in America.” It will be held next month at the Fairmont Mission Inn and Spa in Sonoma, Calif., a town I have visited twice and know for a fact is pretty close to heaven on this earth.

The conference will cover “Intellectual Property in the Wine Business” and “Understanding Entitlements and Regulatory Costs and Timelines” for the wine industry. There’s also a session on “How to Get Into the Wine Business.” Maybe, I daydreamed, someone needed to go and get the skinny in Sonoma.

The invite urgently noted that there’s only one seat left. Just as I was thinking maybe I needed to call my own number for this one, I checked the date: It’s the same weekend at the VBA meeting at The Homestead.

Okay, the Virginia mountains are pretty close to heaven, too.

Larry Bodine, a well-known and well-respected law firm consultant, doesn’t like Twitter. He recently kicked up a storm on the Internet, essentially arguing that the social media outlet has little value for law firms.

He was in Richmond earlier this week, talking to the Virginias Legal Marketing Association. I didn’t go, but all my sales staff did and I got a report: Larry remains unconvinced about the service.

Twitter, Bodine said, is like the Macarena (the arm-folding, bouncing dance craze of 1996, for those who somehow have forgotten). Here today, popular today, likely to pass.

I must admit I tweet (@paulfletcher, if you want to follow me), but not all too often.

I logged on today and there was a comment defending Twitter: “Twittering is like hugging. Just because it’s hard to measure the return on investment doesn’t mean there isn’t value there.”

Hmm. Okay, so Larry won that round.

I was walking down Main Street in Richmond one sunny lunchtime about a week ago. It was one of those Richmond-in-June days…humid, temp around 80, not bad but you know it’s going to get ugly before long.

Standing in line to get cart food were two guys in their mid to late 20s. Both were in seersucker suits that looked new; one was a light blue and the other gray. Bowties ruled the day, allowing them to show off the crisp starch of their dry-cleanered white shirts. Both had expensive sunglasses: one guy had just a shock of fashionably long hair falling over one lens.

They looked like they were working hard to blend in and, if perhaps a bit overdressed, they succeeded. On a summery day in downtown Richmond, you won’t see that many men wearing a tie, let alone a jacket. It wasn’t that long ago a friend who worked at one of the big firms told me that the office code for men was always to wear a jacket when you went out at lunch, and you always buttoned the button. Even in 90-degree heat. But times do change, thankfully.

I overheard them talking to each other. Casual hail-goodfellow talk, each eager to please and be solicitous of the other. They sounded like two guys who had been thrown together about a week before and were working at becoming friends.

Count on summer to bring four things: Fireflies, corn on the cob, peaches and summer law clerks.

A word of advice to the two guys in seersucker: Work hard and try to enjoy your summer. I hope you get your offer in August.