When I am bored (which happens way too much) I tend to troll various websites to see what the literati/cognoscenti/blogerati are going on about. Lately, in several different fora, there has been a discussion about plagiarism. One thread was triggered when an attorney representing Lindsay Lohan got dinged for "ripping" a bunch of stuff from the web, pasting it all together, and serving it up as some sort of brief or motion in one of her interminable cases. The judge was not amused and fined him.
Another thread dealt with the question of whether it was possible to plagiarize yourself. This is considered unprofessional among journalists, as they are expected to serve up fresh stuff every day. But we lawyers always copy our old stuff. The whole thing raises interesting questions of whether there is really ever anything new, or whether most of what we lawyers do is rehash, replay and serve up what we and others have done or said before, with small differences for the new facts.
