JBD asked for an outline of my TMSL talk on avoiding old-school ethical heresies. "Ethics" training for lawyers usually focus on the disciplinary rules. But the disciplinary rules are law, not ethics. Sometimes the rules have nothing to do with ethics. Sometimes the rules provide no ethical guidance (so that what the rules allow is unethical). And sometimes what the rules require may be unethical. For example: Depositing client money into your

[Updated to include David Hardaway's name, at his request.] A defense lawyer appeals his client's second DWI conviction, arguing that the client should be punished for a first DWI because the State did not plead or prove the first conviction (which acted to enhance the class-B misdemeanor first DWI to a class-A second) in the culpability phase of the jury trial. He wins: The Court of Appeals

There are three subjects that I've been giving a great deal of thought to lately, and I'd like to summarize them and tentatively tie them together in the context of trial here. Attention, Rapport, and Loop Theory. Attention I wrote about attention here. Attention is your one resource. If you are not yet aware of the value of your attention, I invite you to ask yourself: When I

I had a jury trial in Midland County last week. ((Not guilty, thank you very much.)) The jury panel was very authoritarian — the prosecutor asked a Likert-Scaled (Strongly Agree — Agree — Disagree — Strongly Disagree) question: "Better that 100 guilty people go free than that one innocent person be punished?" Almost every member of the panel strongly disagreed with that proposition. ((To be fair, n=10 would

There are two sorts of restriction on speech: content-based restrictions and content-neutral restriction. Content-neutral restrictions are "justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech." Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989). Content-based restrictions are everything else — they are justified with reference to the content of the regulated speech. I earlier proposed the "Grumpy Cat Rule" for content-based restrictions: If the statute favors images

What’s up with people who oppose hate crime laws? How can you be against laws that protect people from being targeted because of their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disabilities, sexual orientation or gender identity? Sing it, sister! How indeed?! And in fact most Americans favor federal hate-crime enhancements. How about hate speech laws, which protect people from being targeted with hurtful speech because of their race, ethnicity, etc.?

I learned this weekend that the Honorable Herb Ritchie, whom I took to task (albeit without naming him, since he was only an example of the implicit corruption that is tolerated at the Harris County courthouse because it always has been tolerated) here for soliciting money from lawyers who would be practicing before him, is returning contributions made by lawyers with cases pending before him "in order to avoid even

Without all of the clothes rending and teeth gnashing about how David Temple murdered his wife (I am familiar with the evidence, and I doubt that he did), I agree with Murray Newman (as often I do) that Kim Ogg should ask that an attorney pro tem be appointed to decide how to proceed in the David Temple case, ((Murray suggests the AG's Office; this is a

(Updated first to include appropriate soundtrack: ) Item the First: On his first day as a criminal-defense lawyer, cheating prosecutor Justin Keiter gets appointed to five serious felonies. Justin Keiter — caught making an unethical argument to a jury, caught hiding Brady information, and not having his contract renewed at the Harris County District Attorney's Office — has on his first day as a criminal defense lawyer been