Life After Litigation. Discovering Your Third Act

• Author: Kimberly A. Newman
• Pages: 9-10

Published in Litigation, Volume 48, Number 1, Fall 2021. © 2021 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be

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perhaps exasperated, one, having criticized

a still earlier edition in 1986 in a review opti-

mistically titled “Goodbye to the Bluebook.”

See Richard Posner, Goodbye to the Bluebook,

53 U. C L. R. 1343 (1986).

Indeed, there is a cottage industry of

criticism for what has been called a “comi-

cally elaborate thicket of random and

counterintuitive rules,” which is “both

grotesque and indispensable.” Adam

Liptak, Yale Finds Error in Legal Stylebook:

Contrary to Claim, Harvard Didn’t Create

It, N.Y. T, Dec. 8, 2015, at A24. (The

same might be said of the whole common-

law enterprise. But that’s a different story.)

Still others have acknowledged The

Bluebook’s human toll—after all, I wasn’t

the only law student who missed out on

football games and music festivals. A pro-

fessor at Berkeley described The Bluebook

as having “inflicted more pain on more law

students than any other publication in le-

gal history.” Robert Berring, Introduction

to T B: A S-F Y

R, at v (1998).

But for all the criticism, it is hard to

argue with The Bluebook’s staying pow-

er—its 21st edition was published in 2020,

and in just five years, the publication will

celebrate its centennial—even if many of

its users won’t. q

LIFE AFTER LITIGATION

Discovering Your

Third Act

KIMBERLY A. NEWMAN

The author, now retired, is a former partner at

O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., and a

former executive at Bank of America.

The mother of the Roman emperor

Constantine is remembered centuries af-

ter her death for her achievements during

the last few years of her life. Born circa

246 AD, the woman who would one day be

known throughout the Christian world as