Defending People

There seems to be a bit of a kerfuffle about whether the blawgosphere is “stagnant.” Here’s David Hoffman’s (Concurring Opinions) post asking the question, and contrasting law blogs with progressive political blogs. Citing Stephen Bowers of Open Left, he characterizes the “short tail” (the highly trafficked sites) of the progressive political blogosphere as:
marked by: [...]

Please welcome Fort Worth criminal defense lawyer Shawn Matlock to the blawgosphere. Shawn not only has a great name for a criminal defense lawyer, but he also has a thoughtful blog, here. I’ve added him to the blogroll.
Today Shawn wrote about lawyers promising dismissals. It’s good to have him adding his voice to [...]

I mentioned in passing here the “Defense Groups” that advertise on the internet, claiming to “handle cases in all 50 states.” Legalpad has this post about the State Bar shutting down one such group, Criminal Defense Associates (cached by Google).
Criminal Defense Associates was the “nationwide” criminal defense corporation that, while it was circling the [...]

(I promised, on reading SHG’s 231 Years and Still Trying, to write about the nature of freedom, the power of fear, and the abandonment of American Ideals. This is the second post in the series; it covers the first topic.)
When we talk about Americans’ freedom, what are we talking about? The freedom to shop at [...]

Federal criminal defense lawyers know that the questioning performed by judges in federal criminal cases is, in most cases, worthless at best and devastating at worst. They ask closed-ended questions, lead and use stupid lawyer stuff and otherwise impede the lawyers’ efforts to get the jurors’ true feelings.
Anne Reed’s Deliberations post today is about a [...]

Estimates from the “Epidemiology” chapter of the “Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury” (American Psychiatric Association) (Amazon):
Medically attended brain injury cases in the U.S. per year (hospital admissions + prehospital deaths): 336,000.
Of these, 154,000 are “mild,” 92,400 are moderate, and 61,600 are severe.
100% of the patients suffering mild TBI are discharged alive.
93% of the moderately brain-injured [...]

Fellow Texas criminal defense lawyer Jamie Spencer of the Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer blog is hosting this week’s Blawg Review.
Next week’s theme will be criminal defense, and more specifically, the amendments in the Bill of Rights that most effect criminal defendants. But you civil lawyer Blawg Review regulars, don’t despair. Trust me, I’ll work you [...]

Many thanks to Capital Defense Weekly for calling me the “best new legal blogger of 2007,” and to Deliberations for not disagreeing. This is high praise indeed from either of these blogs.
Thanks also to the State Bar of Texas for forgetting about me and keeping me listed under “Featured this Week” for five (or is [...]

In the beginning, there were the print media. Criminal defense lawyers who wanted to tell potential clients about their practices would pay for space in the yellow pages, or send letters out to arrestees, or buy ads in weekly newspapers (in Houston, for example, the Greensheet and Houston Press). Space was costly, so ads were [...]

New York Criminal Defense Lawyer Scott Greenfield writes about lawyer advertising:
Before I finally succumbed to creating my own website, I googled to see what others had done. It was, to be kind, shocking. The first half dozen lawyer websites I stumbled across were worse than patently offensive; they were flagrantly false and deceptive. [...]