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Forgettable Advice
A stranger sent me this email a few days ago: Hi, I’m not sure if you can help me, but thought you could possibly point me in the right direction. Would you be able to suggest two or three sources (books, articles, website, people) that were helpful when you were starting out in your legal practice? I’m a recent graduate of [better law school than I went to] and I’m working on a research paper on starting up as a solo practitioner or small law firm. Any help you could provide would be very graciously appreciated. Maybe I’m a sucker and am wasting my time, but I try to respond to everything that hits my inbox. That includes a fair amount of stuff that may be spam or just lazy people hoping I can do a … Read entire article »
Filed under: lawyers, Practice in General
I May Be Amazingly Brilliant and Tall And Good-Looking But I Am Still A Nuts-And-Bolts Criminal Defense Lawyer Available To YOU 24/7
Over at a public defender, Gideon wrote yesterday about a fascinating overturned conviction: Michael Skakel has just had his convictions reversed and a new trial ordered by former Appellate Court judge Thomas Bishop, who was designated to preside over and adjudicate Skakel’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. The allegations revolve mostly around Skakel’s representation by famed celebrity lawyer Mickey Sherman, in that Skakel alleges that Sherman did a terrible job representing him. That “famed celebrity lawyer” was actually the subject of a post at Simple Justice in 2010 after he pled guilty to two counts of willful failure to pay federal income taxes. The post was about how being a celebrity comes at a price and noted how Mickey Sherman was alleged to have converted for personal use money intended to … Read entire article »
Chris McCann Is So Gonna Sue Me
Chris McCann is a California lawyer who really doesn’t think very highly of my blog. He only recently found out about it, I think, as he just started bombarding me with emails and waited until yesterday to leave a bizarre comment. Chris’s problem is that he’s upset about a post where I mentioned his name in passing over thirteen months ago. He may be a little slow working the interwebs, as he also just stumbled across one of Brian Tannebaum’s old blog posts too, the one I had cited as the basis for my thoughts. Chris left a bizarre comment there yesterday as well. No one can accuse Chris McCann of not being proactive. Getting back to the real issue here, why he’s upset, I think it’s probably … Read entire article »
Doing It All
I had a long weekend of work, but I’m ready for trial. The work I completed over the weekend wasn’t trial prep, though, because that was done long ago. I spent the weekend tying up loose ends. Trial is like a really shitty vacation. You have to make sure all your ducks are in a row so you can take some time off. Instead of dipping your toes in the water and watching a sunset with your adult beverage of choice in hand, however, you get to endure grueling combat all day every day for days on end. It’s a break from your daily stress during which you forget about your normal troubles in favor of some more pressing troubles. Did I mention that … Read entire article »
Carbon Copy Criminal Defense
Arizona has pretty good discovery rules. The state has to disclose quite a bit fairly early in the process compared to many jurisdictions. The defense also has a duty to disclose, which mostly consists of providing the state with a list of witnesses, exhibits, and defenses that may be offered at trial. Courts generally don’t enforce the rules as they should, but they’re still quite helpful. At the very least, the defense gets enough to prevent nasty surprises in most cases. The notices themselves contain a lot of boilerplate language. Writing a disclosure notice from the ground up would waste time. Plus, things like diagrams of the scene and maps of the area aren’t normally the first thing a lawyer thinks about when mounting a … Read entire article »
Filed under: lawyers
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