This morning (right now, actually, thanks to the wonders of Verizon wireless broadband) I'm in state district court in one of the counties adjoining Harris County. The judge of this court begins her day by having the courtroom stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I am not a big fan of loyalty oaths. I don't believe that a republic that deserves its citizens' loyalty needs them to

If you take retained criminal cases, you need a good contract. You don't have to have a written contract with the client in every case, but there will be cases in which you will at some point wind up saying either "I wish I had gotten a contract signed" or "I'm damn glad I have a contract signed." Personal injury lawyers use contracts to bind their clients

Here is a tabulation of Harris County's jail population as of September 20, 2007. There are 10,000+ inmates in the Harris County jails. The largest single group, by far, is pretrial detainees on felony charges: 4,367 (including people held on dual charges and people held on state jail felony charges). By contrast, 411 people are in the Harris County jails while awaiting trial on misdemeanors only (there

Here is the plea bargain agreement in the Russell case. As you can see, Mr. Russell pled guilty to misprision of a felony by: Having knowledge of the commission of a federal felony -- that is, possession of child pornography;Failing to notify federal authorities; andDeliberately taking some affirmative step to conceal the crime -- that is, returning to his law office with the computer containing the child

No, I don't take payments. If I put you on a payment plan, I'd be loaning you the money to pay me. I'll give you some time to get the fee together, but if nobody you know will loan you the money to pay my fee, why would I? Banks are businesses dedicated to loaning people money. They know how to identify sound and bad credit risks,

I generally have very little use for the State Bar of Texas and its official propaganda arm. I skim the Texas Bar Journal every month for the sole purpose of confirming that I've neither died nor been disbarred without my knowledge. This month's bar journal arrived today, and its theme is criminal law. So I browsed the table of contents, and saw that there was an article

Do any of you use Skype? I'm thinking of adding it to my repertoire of communications widgets.

In Texas, there are three basic classes of misdemeanor and five basic degrees of felony.The basic classes of misdemeanor: Class Incarceration Fine C N/A Up to $500 B 0d - 180d in county jail Up to $2,000 A 0d - 1y in county jail Up to $4,000 County jail sentences are served subject to the county sheriff's good time calculations. In Harris County, a person will likely

Down the street at Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, Jamie was visited by death penalty enthusiast Jeff Deutsch. Jeff recognizes that, as long as we have a death penalty, we are going to kill innocents -- "Zero innocent victims is not compatible with any human, and necessarily imperfect, institution" -- but feels that the benefits of having the death penalty outweigh the detriment of killing an innocent person

Check out this advertisement for my friend Wayne Heller, a Houston criminal-defense lawyer (hat tip to Above the Law). Wayne is an excellent lawyer and a really funny guy. Technorati Tags: advertising