Lessons from a Punk Rock Lawyer: Intro

In a previous life, before law school I was a musician. I toured a bit, worked in studios, taught lessons and played every gig imaginable from festivals and concert venues to house parties and potluck suppers. It was a great time but I got interested in the practice of law, had kids and the idea of living on a bus for months at a time seemed unreasonable.
However, about two years ago I felt a tug back into the life of a musician. I began performing, locally at first, with Houston based celtic rock band Murder the Stout. I say, at first, because we soon got opportunities to tour. We recently toured the west coast for a week with Street Dogs, Matt Freeman of Rancid's Devil's Brigade, and Old Man Markley.
So for a week a middle aged husband and father used to a comfortable suburban existance, traded the minivan suburban life for the punk life. I've been writing up ideas about lessons learned from my experience. What works, what doesn't. I have always handled some entertainment law and it is great to be able to directly relate to what life is like for my clients. At the same time, the stress of touring essentializes and distills the human experience. Touring creates a state of liminality which breaks down existing structures and allows insight that would be hard to get to in the comfort of a suburban office. (All of this academia to say that tour is tough and you have to dig deep at times to keep together. This process is enlightening.) These insights are of course relevant to my clients outside the Punk rock world. People are people. And People on tour are much more intense people. Over the next few postings I'll be adding my insights about life from my time on the tour bus and the insight that it gave me on my law practice. The one phrase that I repeated again and again as a mantra and theme, despite it being a bit "self-helpy" for me was "Surrender to the Tour." That will be the subject of my next post and a fairly consistent theme for me. In the spirit of my mantra, I'm asking you, even thought this series idea of mine may seem silly, to "surrender to the silly idea" and keep reading.

New Mechanic's Lien Bill HB 346

Over the last few years the Texas lege has made numerous revisions to Texas lien law. Mechanic's and Materialman's liens are an essential part of the the construction process. Liens give even a low level subcontractor a way to protect his or her rights on a job. I've filed numerous lien and been happy to have the lien procedure available. I'm always careful to review invoices, real property records and send the required notice letters. Not everyone is. A few years back there was a rash of bad liens filed as harassment. The legislature responded by granting civil and criminal penalties for erroneous liens. This was a great step to deal with abuse but drafting errors had the effect of subs paying for simple typographical errors. The last session fixed this problem making only bad faith filings subject to penalty.
Now in 2011, we have HB 246 filed by Rep. Kleinschmidt which amends the Property Code to allow attorney fees and costs to be awarded in a suit to remove an invalid lien. This is a great amendment of the code. Lien filers would be aware that invalid liens would be subject to removal at their expense. Valid liens would still serve to protect the rights of labor. This bill has left committee with a unanimous yes vote and has been sent for calendering so it looks like it is on track to pass. Hopefully the lege will, in some future session, streamline the lien process so that the deadlines and notice period is more comprehensible. I recently talked with a Louisiana construction lawyer who was shocked that anyone could work out Texas Lien law. He has a point. This new law would do a long way toward holding fraudulent lien filers accountable.