A Time to Write?

After a nearly three month hiatus, it might be time for me to start blogging again. I hope to post at least weekly.  I think that I can manage that. Since I really have nothing terribly substantial to say right now, I will start with a funny story that a good friend told me I should post on my blog.

My friend, let’s call him Brett, recently changed firms, moving from one well known BigLaw firm to another. Today, when I visited LinkedIn, the popular social/business networking site, it suggested that I send Brett a note congratulating him on his move. So I did.  Of course, I had to give him some terribly un-politically correct ribbing about his new title of “Special” Counsel.

Moments after hitting send, I received an “out-of-office” email reply from Brett’s email address at  his former firm notifying me that “Brett is no longer with the Firm.”

Yes.  They capitalized “Firm” as if there was only one “Firm”.  Or they were trying to subtly reveal that they were the titular Firm in that John Grisham novel. Or maybe that they were a front for a shady government black ops agency.

Mediation Training All Week

I will be receiving additional mediation training all this week. I will not be able to live blog, like some other colleagues, so you will have to solider on without me this week.

Dust in the fan……..all it was was dust in the faaaaaaaaaaann. ooooohhhh.

Turns out the thermal event was caused by dust in the cooling fan. The dust gets sucked into the computer and attracted to the fan because of all the static electricity. It prevents adequate cooling. When the CPU reaches a certain temperature, it shuts down.

So, my free tip of the day: Get a spray duster, open your (desktop) computer once in a while, and dust off the big fan in the middle.

I may be offline for a few days

The fan that cools the motherboard is dead and my computer keeps shutting down for a “thermal event”, which is fancy computer speak for overheating. Thankfully, its under warranty and I can take it in to get serviced. While they fix it, I will likely be offline and going through the DT’s or whatever it is internet junkies go through. So, I apologize to the 5 of you who read my blog regularly and to the new people who had the misfortune of finding this the week I can’t post new content.

Movie Review – Michael Clayton

Let me start by saying that, unlike a lot of lawyers I know, I don’t normally appreciate legal themed movies, TV or books. I don’t read Scott Turow or John Grisham, and I don’t watch Boston Legal, Damages, Shark, or any law-firm based night-time soaps. My one exception is the Law and Order series, but Criminal Intent and SVU focus more on the investigative aspect of the police work rather than the alleged “courtroom drama.”

But I was absolutely enthralled by the new George Clooney film Michael Clayton. Clooney plays the title role, a powerful New York law firm’s “fixer.” You know, “the guy who knows a guy who can take care of that thing,” except for his own screwed up personal life. The movie revolves on the apparent mental breakdown of the firm’s head of litigation (and Clayton’s best friend at the firm) during a deposition in a $3 billion class-action lawsuit against the firm’s largest client, an agro-chemical manufacturer accused of poisoning several hundred small farmers with their pesticide. Clayton is sent in to “contain” the problem. What follows is a powerful and piercing look at the world of Big Law, Big Lawyers, Big Litigation, and Corporate America as Clayton comes to realize that his friend and mentor might be right.

I am loathe to tell you much more. It is not a thriller in the traditional sense. There isn’t a “I see dead people” twist to reveal. But the beauty of the movie is in watching the narrative unravel.

I missed out on the BAR/BRI Settlement

I was somewhat excited when I received my notice of settlement in the BAR/BRI class action lawsuit yesterday. Even though I knew the individual settlement would be small, everybody loves found money, right? So, I dove into the settlement papers. As I leafed through all the legal mumbo-jumbo that still amazes me after a decade of practicing law, I got to good ol’ fine print. The class included everyone who took the bar from 1997-2006. I wasn’t eligible. I took the bar in 1996. C’est la vie.

Welcome to my blog.

Hello and welcome to the CKA Mediation and Arbitration Services blog. My name is a Christopher Annunziata and I am a civil mediator and attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. After more than a decade representing businesses and individuals in various civil litigation matters, I realized that my most satisfying results came when I could convince the opposing party (and sometimes my own clients) of the benefits of reaching a compromise solution. Because this is a big no-no in the corporate law-firm world (you can’t bill the file if you settle it!), I decided that I would use my experience assessing litigation risks, analyzing probable outcomes and recommending creative solutions and become a civil mediator.

I plan to use this blog to post about my practice and also to discuss recent developments in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, mediation, arbitration and Georgia law. I expect that many of the visitors to my website will be attorneys, but I will attempt to write about these topics in a way that will inform and entertain the non-lawyer, as well.

If you are interested in learning more about me and my practice, I invite you to visit my website at www.ckamediation.com.