Blogs
TV Dinners
Back in the day before microwaves and an entire aisle in the grocery store wasn’t dedicated to frozen meals of increasing gourmet pretensions, there was the TV Dinner. TV Dinners[1] were packaged and served on […]
Articles by Lori Duff
Legalese
Legalese — Managing Your Powers of Attorney
Powers of Attorney are useful things to have. I advise my clients to have both medical and financial powers of attorney, not because they may need them in the present, but because they may need […]
Blogs
(th)Inking about the Past
As it turns out, I don’t have children anymore. I mean, I have offspring, but not children. My youngest turned 18 a few weeks ago. She’s excited about it. She no longer needs us to […]
Legalese
Legalese — Arbitration
Most of us have heard the word ‘arbitration’ at some point, but not everyone is sure about what it is. Arbitration is a type of alternative dispute resolution, like mediation, but the neutral third party […]
Legalese
Legalese — Why Legitimate?
Whatever our political divide, we can all agree on one thing: babies are cute. Babies make people smile, and are a physical reminder that whatever happens, life goes on. Babies are life going on. Unfortunately, […]
Blogs
Knowing What to Ask
At the risk of sounding more get-off-my-lawn-y than usual, I want to lament the demise of research using books and paper. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the heck out of the internet. Just […]
Legalese
Legalese — Driving in the Snow
I learned how to drive in New York, where snow was something that you expected every winter. People knew what to do. Here in Georgia, where it only snows every few years, and rarely more […]
Blogs
New Year’s Resolution
In case you hadn’t noticed, it is now 2022. I saw on Twitter this morning that the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was closer to D-Day than it is to now, and that makes me […]
Blogs
Legalese — Happy New Year! — It’s the Law!
Happy New Year – it’s the law! If you’re like just about everyone reading this column, you celebrated New Year’s Eve on Friday night, welcoming in the year 2022. You probably didn’t give it much […]
Blogs
Time to Sparkle
Generally speaking, I’m not what you’d call fancy. If you have the misfortune of seeing me on the weekend you might think to yourself, “I mean, is she going out of her way to look […]
Legalese
Legalese — Don’t Be the Brussels Sprout
One of the things I like most about the law is it gives us a set of rules. Don’t know what to do? Go to the rulebook. There are literally hundreds of thousands of pages […]
Blogs
Sleeping in the Dark
Hello Dark, You’re Not My Friend. I can never remember which is daylight savings time – the fall back one or the spring forward one. Honestly, I don’t care which is which, I just wish […]
Legalese
Legalese — The Supreme Court of Georgia
I recently had the pleasure of attending a dinner held in honor of the 175th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Honestly, until I received the invitation to the dinner, it hadn’t occurred to […]
Blogs
Targeted Marketing
As a fifty-one year old woman, I don’t have a lot of use for penile enlargement supplements. As a person who posts pictures of her dog more often than her kids, I don’t need horse […]
Legalese
Legalese — Why Aren’t Legalese and English the Same?
I call this column “Legalese” because to me, “Legalese” is a language that looks suspiciously like English but isn’t. It uses many of the same words, and because of that, many English speakers think that […]
Blogs
The Next Phase of Things to Talk About
My son turned twenty not too long ago, and my daughter is on the verge of eighteen. This means that in a matter of weeks I can count on my fingers, I won’t have (legal) […]
Legalese
Legalese — Mens Rea
Mens Rea is one of my favorite Latin legal terms. It means, literally, “criminal mind.” That’s such a great image – it brings forth a picture of a brain that is itself criminal, wearing black […]
Blogs
Full-Grown Adult
My son is about to turn 20 and I have some feelings about that. When other people turn 20, I think, well yeah, he’s an adult, of course he’s 20. But when Jacob turns 20, […]
Legalese
Legalese — Help! I’m the Executor. Now What?
Once people become the executor (or administrator) of an estate, they get a little bit confused about what they do (and can’t do) next. Obviously, I can’t talk about everything here in this short column, […]
Blogs
War Stories
Let me start out by saying that I do love my husband. We’ve been married for 22 years now, and I’m hoping for at least 22 more. But. He’s retired, I’m not. He’s been retired […]