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Should the UConn Foundation be subject to Freedom of Information laws?
How will body cams transform the work of police, especially if they are subject to Freedom of Information laws?
Are our top judges becoming legislators?
Dan Klau (pictured), a leading First Amendment and open government lawyer and I had a lively conversation about these and other topics on the most recent episode of WNHH radio’s “Legal Eagle.”
He also sang the legal blues — literally.
Click on the above sound file to hear the entire program.
We also discovered that Klau is a musician on the side, a jazz piano player and singer whose second album of musical parodies on the law was released this week. The CD is entitled “The Lawyer is a Champ,” a take-off on the “Lady is a Tramp,” a great old jazz tune by Richard Rodgers.
Klau confessed that originally “The Lady is a Champ” was named “The Lawyer is a Tramp,” but he succumbed to the PC police and changed the title. Sort of. “A few friends of mine with whom I aired it said, ‘Dan, you will get yourself in unnecessary hot water.’” So he admits he caved.
How Klau got into writing lyrics for songs, which he clearly enjoys and says is great fun to do, came from an inner need that wouldn’t go away.
It was back in 2002, he said, “when I woke up one Saturday morning with a phrase in my head, pounding in my head. It was the ‘Billable Hour Blues.’” He said he couldn’t get the phrase out of his head. “It wouldn’t go away.” So he went to his piano in his living room and in the space of about an hour, “I wrote “The Billable Hour Blues.”
He explained that the way most lawyers in private practice work is that they live by a time sheet, a piece of paper in which every hour is divided into six minute increments. “And every time we do something for a client, we mark it down. So if you have a 12-minute phone call you mark 12-minute call. If you spent an hour writing a legal brief, you put that down.
“Our lives are based on how much time we bill in the day and at the end of the month the firm totals all that up for all of our clients and the bills go out. You take the time you work, times your hourly rate (and I won’t tell people what my hourly rate is because they would be shocked) and that is how you are paid. We noted at this juncture that Klau appeared on our show “pro bono.”
After Billable Hours was written he would find himself “waking up in middle of the night with another phrase, another verse. This compulsion, and it is the only way to describe it, was to write these things down,” he said.
He said on “my first album in 2004 had a tune called ‘It depends.’ Now if you are a lawyer, the most likely answer to any question is, well, ‘it depends.’
His most recent CD contains a tune named “The Jailhouse Lawyer Blues.” He then sang the opening lyrics on air: “What this song is really about and the catch line of the song is I didn’t go to Harvard, I didn’t go to Yale, I didn’t go to Stanford cause I spent my time in Jail. That’s right prison. That’s where I got my J.D. I’m a jailhouse lawyer and as dumb as a lawyer could be ….”
This latest album, released this week, contains 14 not so politically correct tunes, including “I’ve Got the Judge on A String” and “Sue Me.”
Klau is donating all the proceeds to Legal Aid organizations in the state, which are in the midst of a financial crisis, he said. “I am trying to do what I can by donating the proceeds.” Click to his blog, “Appealingly Brief,” for more information.
We await his next tune: Maybe he could call it, “Legal Aid, What Legal Aid?”
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