The NFL changed its draft process today...reducing the time that teams are allotted to make their draft choice on Draft Day. They used to get 15 minutes to make their selection, supposedly madly consulting with their war rooms, desperately considering trades or deals, or puzzling over the character of the so to be millionaires. Of course, it was all theatre for the televised audience. To think that the Billionaires were making decisions over mere millionaires in as few as 15 minutes was a pretty silly assumption in the first place, but it made for good reality television. With the advent of "Biggest Loser", "The Bachelor" and the like, the NFL Draft Day suspense was exposed for the sham that it was, and the Commissioner of the NFL (who I like more and more) reduced the time between draft choices from 15 to 10 minutes.
I thought this was ironic, because lawyers are usually allotted 15 minutes to argue their case to appellate courts. Can we expect a similar reduction in time, now? Appellate cases don't often involve multiple year guarantees worth $10 million per year, so if the NFL can make do with just 10 minutes, I would expect courts will think that appellate arguments are no more important. Of course, if you've got a case involving the Houston Texans (who chose Mario Williams over Vince Young), you might make a persuasive case for additional time.
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Are these appellate cases televised? If not, CourtTV is missing out on some good reality television.
How about this:
15-20 appellate lawyers each get a 5 minute segment to throw their case at the judges' panel (edited down to about 30 seconds for TV) and a private confessional booth for the lawyers to talk about their feelings and/or clients (on secret video). Then a close up of the judges talking about the case, discussing how such and such attorney is "cute" and that other one had a nice voice, but the case seemed lacking. Throw in a couple of celebrity judges here and there and bring out all the lawyers for eliminations.
Need some tweaking here and there and elimination of that pesky attorney-client privilege for entertainment purposes, but I bet it would give Law & Order reruns a run for their money.
"We could always send you a subpoena."
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