Sandy has a new blog on the EFL teaching industry in Britain. In the left-hand column is a list of ads for particularly badly-paid jobs, and the comments are quite heated.

Via TEFL Smiler

OLBG – Online Betting Guide – is not a bookmaker, apparently, but it shows the odds for bets on the next pope (via Desbladet). Dionigi Tettamanzi leads the field.
Episcopal lineage is new to me. It seems to be synonymous with apostolic succession, which I have heard of but which I probably don’t understand either. It apparently means who consecrated whom.

bq. Episcopal lineages have long fascinated students of church history. It was not until the middle of the present century, however, that a systematic attempt was made to trace and catalogue the consecrations of bishops on a world-wide basis. A small group of researchers has catalogued the consecrations of tens of thousands of bishops dating back many centuries. The fruits of their labors – labors which are on-going – have resulted in a data base which can trace the episcopal lineage of any living bishop and the vast majority of deceased bishops.

I remember the last papal election. I suppose they’ll be using the smoke signals again and not mobile phones?

It can be useful to see an English translation of a German statute one is quoting in a translation. At worst, such translations may contain so many errors that they are not worth consulting. Better ones may give a springboard for ideas. And the best may be very useful, especially if they draw your attention to elements of the statute that would not have been clear merely from the short section you need to translate.

Today I was translating a website that contained links to a page of the Bundesanwaltskammer containing, inter alia, a link to a PDF file with a translation of the Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung (Federal Lawyers’ Act).

You can find a list of German statutes and other legislation translated into English at the German Law Archive and another one at Robin Stocks’ Carob.

However, as I’ve said before. there are more statutes in English on the Web than linked at those sites. In particular, new and important statutes are likely to be somewhere. Perhaps I should study how to search the Deep Web. LLRX.com had an article on that only this January.

LATER NOTE (December 2011): The site to find German statutes in English is www.cgerli.org. The German Law Archive site has some too, and they may also be found via juris. But the cgerli (Centre for German Legal Information) site allows you to search by German title, which is ideal, and tries to keep links to all translations of existing statutes – although unfortunately for us translators, I believe it does not keep translations of statutes which are known to be out of date, although these do often have to be quoted in translations.

The BBC reports the death on Monday at 37 of Ivan Noble from the brain tumour he has been writing about online for the past two years.

It was only very recently that he announced he had just written his last column. I didn’t know about his German connection (I knew his wife was German, but not that he studied German):

Ivan was born in Leeds in 1967 and was educated at comprehensive schools in Luton and Leeds before studying German at the University of Aston in Birmingham.

He lived in East Germany from 1988 until 1990 where he worked as a translator. After graduation he joined the BBC, initially as a translator, then as a sub-editor in Nairobi.

I see to have missed this Journal d’un avocat, although it and its predecessor have been running for some time.

bq. En quelques mots : je suis avocat au barreau de Paris, passionné de mon métier et aimant à flâner sur le web. J’ai souvent constaté un intérêt poussé pour la justice et le droit de manière générale, intérêt laissé insatisfait par l’opacité de la matière et la difficulté d’appréhender, pour un esprit non formé — à moins que ce ne soit déformé ?— au droit.
Alors j’ai décidé d’y ajouter ma petite pierre numérique.

This blog gets comments from judges:

bq. Point de vue d’un juge d’instruction : la nullité crasse de bon nombre d’avocats en procédure pénale est un problème important dans notre pays. Notre procédure repose tout de même en partie sur la participation active des avocats à la procédure. Du coup, on a souvent le choix entre des très hargneux ou des très incompétents.
Paxatagore

Now it has won A Fistful of Euros’ blog award for best weblog from France.

Wie findet man einen Anwalt, wenn Anwälte nur eingeschränkt werben dürfen? Auch: Klagen trotz leerer Kasse, Anwälte online, Gebühren, Honorarvereinbarungen und Streit um die Kosten. Von Melanie Zerahn, in der Süddeutschen Zeitung (via neues aus schwabenheim)

Neue Terminologie:

bq. Das Gesetz unterscheidet Festgebühren und Rahmengebühren. Festgebühren fallen meist für gerichtliche Tätigkeiten im Zivil- Verwaltungs- und Arbeitsrecht an. Rahmengebühren werden überwiegend für außergerichtliche Tätigkeiten sowie weitgehend für die Gebiete des Straf- und Sozialrechts vorgesehen.

bq. Zunächst wird anhand des Gegenstandswerts die Höhe der Einzelgebühr ermittelt, die sich aus der Gebührentabelle ergibt. Vom Umfang der Tätigkeit hängt es dann ab, welche Gebühren mit welchem Faktor der Anwalt in Rechung stellen kann. Weist der Fall keine Besonderheiten auf, stellt der Rechtsanwalt die sogenannte Mittelgebühr in Rechnung. Er geht dann davon aus, dass der Fall durchschnittlichen Anforderungen entspricht.

bq. Wie schwierig oder umfangreich er den Rechtsstreit einschätzt, entscheidet der Anwalt selbst: Von den Gerichten wird ihm dabei ein Ermessensspielraum von 20 Prozent zugebilligt.

bq. Für die Einarbeitung in eine Sache kann der Anwalt bei außergerichtlichen Tätigkeiten eine Geschäftsgebühr zwischen 0,5 und 2,5 abrechnen. Dabei darf er eine Gebühr von mehr als 1,3 (Schwellenwert) nur fordern, wenn die Tätigkeit umfangreich oder schwierig war.