Deli Treat, Porn Site or Law Project?

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Have you ever come across something that sounds like a great idea, but somehow, when you try to picture it, it’s puzzling. Is it me or the concept that’s not quite right? It’s a queasy, disoriented sort of feeling. Or maybe indigestion.

In my case, naturally, it’s always me that’s not quite right, but often the concepts aren’t either. Case in point: I came across this impressive sight at the top of a news release last week.

It’s definitely pretty. My first reaction was wondering whether I should get a bagel and cream cheese to go with the Lawx.

Or was Xlawx a colorful cure for constipation?

Then I read the stuff underneath. It’s seems that BYU Law School “announced the launch of LawX, a legal design lab that will create products and other solutions to address the pressing issues relating to access to legal services.”

That sounded good. We can always use more products and other solutions.

But what’s a legal design lab? Are mice and mazes involved?

Could be. It’s hard to tell. What we are told is that “(w)ith the ambitious goal to solve one legal challenge a semester, the course will be structured as a design-thinking process, in which students will have fast-paced deadlines and responsibilities that are much like being in a startup.”

This could possibly be a fantastic idea. I mean, look at that giant X. Put a bunch of students in charge of a project like that and you know you’re going to get a porn site offering advice on First Amendment protection for stripping. This could be a real moneymaker.

Unfortunately, this probably won’t happen at BYU. (Note to BYU: You may want to rethink the name and logo for this project.)

So what will those students be tackling?

“The first LawX project – slated for fall 2017 – will focus on helping self-represented defendants answer a lawsuit. The project will be directed at everyday people who do not understand how to respond to a lawsuit and might not have the resources to hire an attorney.”

Answer.com?

Get out your wallets, venture capitalists.

More X.  Of course, the downside of having law students come up with tech solutions for the legal problems of the masses is that they may be erasing their own futures.

If a computer program can win a case, who needs lawyers?

It’s kind of like using medical students to end disease. Good for society, perhaps, but career suicide.

This is a real threat. Consider lawbot.x. This is the creation of a quartet of Cambridge law students and it allows anyone – for free – to chat with a software program and get legal advice.

It’s a nice thing, but you have to wonder: What’s the deal with these X’s?

Sure enough, according to a story in The Guardian, one of the students came up with the idea “while volunteering at a school sexual consent class.”

Sex is always inspirational.

By the way, I’d be happy to volunteer for a sexual consent class if anyone out there is teaching one.

A woman’s value. Is it possible for a lawsuit to be sexist?

Of course it is!

Consider a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court against a company called PacGenomics, for “professional negligence” and “negligent infliction of emotional distress.”

It seems, according to the suit, that PacGenomics messed up on the “preimplantation genetic screening” of an embryo that was implanted in the plaintiffs’ surrogate mother.

The plaintiffs contracted for a pair of boys. Instead, they got a girl.

Now the plaintiffs want their money back plus damages for the cost of raising the girl and for “non-economic damages that include the mental suffering associated with rearing a female child instead of the male child that they reasonably expected.”

I’m predicting a lot of peremptory challenges to female jurors.

And therapy in the female child’s future.

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