All posts by Jeff Lucas

Start with “Why”
Legal Boundaries Several years ago, Simon Sinek gave a TED Talk on marketing—a business, services, products, even ideas and beliefs. He used several real-life examples including the success of Apple, the achievements of the Wright brothers, and the beliefs of Dr. Martin Luther King. The video, now somewhat dated, is still available on TED Talks...

How to Win a Boundary Dispute Case
Legal Boundaries There are many players in a boundary dispute case, the judge, perhaps a jury, the parties, the attorneys, and maybe some witnesses. When a surveyor is hired as an expert in such a case, it is not the surveyor’s responsibility to win a boundary dispute case, but the surveyor can play a significant...

What is an Accurate Survey?
The surveying profession has always been a measure-centric profession. What I mean by that is surveyors love their measurements, and that is where the primary focus of surveying practice has been concentrated from the very beginning. We have always been the expert measurers in the room. We can analyze our measurements, run closures, make adjustments,...

Are Surveyor’s Immune To Prosecution?
In the early part of my career as a land surveyor I got the impression that many of the licensed land surveyors I encountered in the workplace or at social gatherings had a sense of legal immunity when it came to the results of their boundary surveying work. I remember an instance at a society...

Do Surveyor’s Determine Ownership Limits?
Do Surveyor’s Determine Ownership Limits?

Are Surveyors Professionals or Merely Technicians?
Legal Boundaries This is a question that has haunted the surveying profession for years if not decades. A second related question is: What’s the difference? Curtis Brown addressed this issue in an article he wrote that in 1961 that was published in the ACSM’s Surveying and Mapping magazine, entitled “The Professional Status of Land Surveyors.”...