Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. It provides a great excuse to buy chocolate — by the bag in fact. Plus no hours spent slaving over a hot stove, no need to shop for gifts (or wait in endless lines to return any), and no family feuds to mediate. What’s not to like?

It’s the one holiday that I unfailingly observe here at Online Guide to Mediation. So, in keeping with tradition, here are some Halloween-related links for your reading pleasure:

Start with my posts for Halloween 2005 and 2006, “Ghost of a chance: three ways mediators can celebrate Halloween” and “High spirits: legal issues can arise on sale of haunted houses“.

Bone up on “Witchcraft and the Law” with this bibliography from the LSU Law Library.

Play “Halloween Party“, a board game involving “crafty negotiation” and bluffing.

Or, get philosophical with “The Story of The Devil and Daniel Webster as a Post–modern Allegory to Individualism in Negotiation“. (Requires a subscription to download in PDF but cunning Googlers can access an HTML version of the article.)

Just be sure to save some 3 Musketeers bars for me.

(Photo credit: Nicolas Raymond.)

Kansas-based lawyer Grant Griffiths asks, “A Mac. A blog. A home office. What more does a lawyer need?”

You can count on him to show you all the reasons why at Home Office Lawyer, a blog with lots of great advice on “Keeping Your Earnings, Your Clients…Your Sanity”. (There’s plenty of good stuff for mediators, too, who run their businesses from their home–explore his categories, which cover everything from marketing to practice management.)

Grant is also the host of this week’s Blawg Review #132, , with a special focus on solo practitioners and lawyers working in a home office. Blawg Review of course is the weekly review of the best in legal blogging.

Don’t miss last week’s edition of Blawg Review, hosted by David Maister, a forward-thinking business consultant and innovator, as well as publisher of the blog Passion, People and Principles.

And please show your support for Blawg Review by submitting your posts for next week’s edition. On deck for hosting duties is the Chicago IP Litigation Blog.