Culture and Law

Archive for December, 2009

First, do not hire a lawyer who actively seeks your business. If, without your consent, a lawyer or someone acting on his behalf communicates with you in person or by telephone and asks you to hire him in connection with your accident, this is known as “ambulance chasing” and contrary to the Legal Rules of Professional Conduct. If a lawyer will break those rules to obtain your business, this lawyer is likely not the kind of lawyer you wish representing you.

Ensure you are aware of what you’re paying for. All fee systems are different. Explore if your lawyer will request fees “off the top” or only after all of the expenses are calculated. Insist on obtaining this information in writing and in clear, concise language that you are comfortable with. Expenses will include: court costs, court reporter and copies of transcripts, expert witness fees, private investigator, postage, telephone, courier, and photocopying, legal research, out of town air or car transportation, and hotel and meal expenses.

Learn how you can fire a lawyer. Some contracts specify that even if you fire a lawyer, the lawyer still obtains a substantial percentage of any future settlement you may receive. Ensure that you know how to fire your lawyer prior to your hiring him.

Inspect your lawyer’s records. Inquire through your state bar association if your lawyer has ever been the subject of an ethical complaint. Realizing your lawyer has a pattern of questionable conduct could alert you to potential problems, saving you money and time.

Whenever I saw the drunken driving cases I always used to wonder as to why anyone could be so foolish to do an act like this. However, I had no idea that I would be caught in a similar situation when one night I got a call from the cops that my son had been charged with a drunken driving offense. I was shocked beyond my wits but also knew how difficult the law was on DWI cases in my state and decided to get a Minneapolis DWI Attorney to help my son with the case. As soon as the lawyer got into the case we realized what a great decision we had made as he showed his prowess in fighting such cases by describing how the case will proceed and the legal aspects of the case that we should be aware of. He also added a personal touch to this case by bonding with my son as a client and being very understanding towards him in such a difficult time. This Minneapolis DWI lawyer ensured that we were ready to face the battle and a battle it was with our lawyer bringing out all the weapons he had to ensure that the prosecution does not batter my son with a huge punishment. I couldn’t credit this save to anyone else but this lawyer as he saved me from an embarrassing situation I never expected could happen to me.

It is rightly said that the importance of a person or a thing is realised when we lose it. When I lost my birth certificate, I was in the process of applying for an MBA course. In order to make my admission easy, I had to fulfill all the requirements, including submitting my British Birth Certificate. I searched the entire house, but I couldn’t recollect the place where I had filed it. As I was short of time, I wanted to find a quick way out. When I shared my grief with my friend, he recommended that I should visit a site that provides a replacement birth certificate. I browsed through the site, and found a section that addressed my need. On the right side of the site, I saw an option of ordering a certificate online, and I immediately filled the details so that they can start the process as quickly as possible. I just paid £14.45 for the standard shipment. As they promised, they  dispatched my certificate in 12 business days. Moreover, I was also able to trace my order through the site’s exclusive customer satisfaction service. I got the required copy of the certificate without any hassle.

We’re a chess set online retailer. With the stakes so high in terms of profit – what to do when competitors get more and more nasty? What if they threaten to send the boys round? Publish a little online defamation? Register confusingly similar domain names? Steal photography and other content to use in selling their similar products?
The maturing of the web has allowed hundreds of thousands of opportunities to people across every industry who previously couldn’t afford to get a physical store. And thousands of IT consultants have managed to join the two skills (technical and business) they have to jump into the shark infested waters of online commerce. This example of chess set retailing is real and current. The victim is a successful niche chess set company who suddenly appeared on the web by utilizing SEO skills, techie ability and a love of chess. After a year of trading, one of the chess competition noticed and started with threats and intimidation. But this has happened across many industries previously dominated by other web sites. What’s the best course of action and reaction?

The term women suffrage refers to women’s right to vote by law in national and local elections. Great social and economical movements were conducted by British women due to take the suffrage law and establish it as a legal right in the parliament. One of the earliest advocators in Britain was John Stuart Mill whose subjection of women (in 1869) was established as one of the pioneering works of that time. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865. One year later, Mill presented to Parliament this society’s petition, which demanded the vote for women and contained about 1,550 signatures. On the other hand, United State is commonly known as the women’s suffrage origin in 1820s, while New Zealand is credited as the first country by which women got the right to vote; (Campbell 1966) even Corsican Republic, sometimes, is considered as one of the first countries to grant female suffrage in 1788. Thus, one can claim that different countries and locals in the world, obviously, experienced such a movement at various times. With these historical points, as a woman who lived in Iran for most of her life and graduated from Law, I want to point to some social, historic and legal improvements and difficulties toward the women suffrage matter in the Middle Eastern countries and compare them to the situation in Scandinavian countries. Iran will be my ultimate focus as one of the problematic countries over women issues. Regarding this comparison between these two geographic regions, what can we grasp from the conclusion and what are the roots which make these two regions so different and even oppose to each other? And at the end to what extent, regarding this issue, we are able to improve the status quo conditions of countries like Iran?

• Women in Scandinavian countries

In this part I will, shortly represent some historical facts and points regarding women’s voting rights in some Scandinavian countries as well as giving some reasons to the improvement process in these countries. According to Dictionary of World History The first European nation to grant female suffrage was Finland in 1906, with Norway following in 1913. Sulkunen states that Finland’s thoroughgoing parliamentary reforms gave all adult men and women not only universal and equal suffrage, but also the full right to stand for elective office. In her analytical article looking for the reasons for the early enactment of voting rights in Finland and modern Finnish democracy, she points to some factors about the country’s overall cultural mould and how relations between the sexes were constituted in the field of conflicting pressures between a strong nationalist tendency, traditional agrarianism, and the democratization of social life. “No real place was left over for women’s issues per se, yet women were very visibly present in all reform-oriented activity. With the notable exception of the upper social classes, women also did not really perceive their social and political rights to be at odds with the rights of men in their own class.