Brown & Little, P.L.C. » Archive
Priorities
When Nick Martin at Heat City put up a link to this on Twitter, I started thinking. Nobody’s going to feel too sorry for lawyers making $250 an hour. If they work 40 hours a week at that rate for a year, they’ll be earning roughly ten times the median household income in the United States. It’s nothing like $450 an hour, where they’d be pushing a million in fees each year working less than I do, but it isn’t bad. In all fairness, I imagine it’s larger firms doing all the work, so nobody in particular gets all that money. Take out a chunk for a top-floor office with lots of marble, throw in a few expensive associates who don’t contribute anything valuable to the representation, and maybe … Read entire article »
Filed under: lawyers
Senate Bill 1070
Everyone has an opinion about Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably love it or hate it. You may have a strong opinion about it even if you have no clue what it says. If so, you aren’t alone. S. B. 1070 makes it so the government can’t create a policy limiting the enforcement of federal immigration laws. If any part of the government does make a policy restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, citizens have standing to sue. If they win, they get court costs and attorney fees. This doesn’t mean an officer will be sued just for not arresting a particular person or group of people. There will have to be a policy, not just one officer failing … Read entire article »
Filed under: Arizona Statutes, immigration
Gotcha!
May 27th, 2010 | 3 Comments
When I was in law school, I was fortunate to attend many hours of public defender training. I can still clearly remember the cross-examination teacher describing his technique for impeaching a witness. He recommended something called “the 3 Cs.” The 3 Cs stood for “commit,” “credit,” and “confront.” I don’t know if it’s his thing or something widely known to trial lawyers, but it’s a pretty solid, general approach to impeachment. Let’s say you have an officer who’s saying something highly incriminating, something that he didn’t put in his police report. You want to impeach him with that omission. Using the 3 Cs technique the teacher recommended, you’d first commit the officer to his current statement. Make sure the judge or jury understands exactly … Read entire article »
Filed under: lawyers, Trial