I spent the weekend in trial mode, preparing for a DWI trial in Montgomery County, north of Houston. This would’ve been only my second trial in a slow year for jury trials (the first ended in an acquittal; several others have been dismissed on the eve of trial) and my client’s career was at stake, so trial mode was particularly intense; I may have barked at my

Popehat got comment spam. Ken wrote an entertaining post blasting the lawyer whom the comment spam was touting. The lawyer responded to the post in comments, explaining how he wasn’t really responsible for the comment spam, and Ken updated the post to remove identifiable references to the lawyer.I have mixed feelings about that.I’m full of loving kindness and hopes of redemption for those of God’s children who

Dan Hull of What About Clients asks: Does client service mean "being nice" to clients?; he has some interesting observations about the differences between good clients and bad clients. (And if you don't already know the answer to Dan's question, you don't know Dan.) Now, Dan's practice is very different from ours: while his firm's ideal client is a large business with general counsel, and while I

Sad to say: If your political opponent fired his political consultants, and you hired them, you'd both be better off.

One of my readers complains that the front page of Defending People doesn't show the latest posts. I suspect that the problem is that Greenfield needs to clear the cache on his ZX-81, but let's humor him. Please go to https://BennettAndBennett.com/blog, and if the first post is from before September 14, 2009, email me a screen shot. Thank you.

Mike at Crime and Federalism wrote back in July about How the Legal Blogosphere Has Changed:The modern legal blogosphere sucks because it's been overrun by legal marketers, and because people who might be able to engage in actually-interesting conversations are too busy sucking up to their e-friends and e-colleagues.Mike's been doing this a long time. (When I had my first blog (2004?), Crime and Federalism was already

I’ve suggested before that a lawyer can know as much about the narrow subject of an expert witness’s testimony that hurts the defense than does the expert himself. Even when it’s brain surgery, it’s not rocket science. Being a trial lawyer means being able to learn enough about the topic at hand that ignorance is not a handicap. But despite my ability to quickly get up to

Randall Patterson's Houston Press article on conditions inside the Harris County Jail, based on inmate interviews. If you believe the government, this must be a vast conspiracy of defamation conducted by inmates. If you believe the inmates, federal crimes are routinely committed by jailers.Which story is more credible? Considering that the inmates aren't even organized enough to keep themselves out of jail, it's highly unlikely that they

The last rule for right now (it is an evolving list). . . .I've talked about how the jury panel is a group and the jury is a group. Why? Because people like to be in groups. Most people will, given a choice between being in a big group and being in a small group, choose the big group. Another evolutionary relic? Safety in numbers? I think

If the rules were in some particular order, this would have received much higher ranking.  Simple Rule 15: The Bat Rule:Ping, then listen. Or fail.Because bats, you know, use echolocation: ping! and detect food and obstacles by the signal that bounces back. A bat that doesn't ping doesn't eat, but neither does a bat that doesn't listen.Your ping is a question. You have to ping. If you