My Time to Take a Stand? post of yesterday has drawn some comment. In comments to my post, Shawn Matlock wrote: It seems that you are limiting your potential clientele quite narrowly. I agree with you, that I would much rather be trying a case than pleading one out. It's what I've been trained to do. (By some of the same people as you I imagine.)I don't

A man needs a code to live by. I believe in living according to principles -- for example, the principle that humans should be free. Sometimes there are competing principles, and a person who lives according to principle must either rectify them or choose between them. Because humans should be free, humans should fight for freedom. A principle that competes with humans should fight for freedom is

[Updated February 9, 2009 with information provided by Houston criminal-defense lawyer Cindy Henley.] [Further update March 9, 2009: Houston criminal-defense lawyer Carmen Roe says, "I called Sprint at the number below; they looked up every number I had and gave the carrier name."] [Additional update July 11, 2010: Bob Matter, at Chicago injury lawyer Jim Freeman's office, adds TracFone contact information; Vita Reid, with Philadelphia lawyer Vincent

Today's Houston Chronicle had a nice surprise: a front-page-above-the-fold profile of Houston criminal-defense lawyer Richard "Racehorse" Haynes and Houston plaintiffs' lawyer Joe Jamail (whom the article calls "the King of Torts" -- I thought Melvin Belli had retired that sobriquet). Mary Flood, the article's author, blogs about the two as well. "It's just not every day," she writes, "you get to sit down and listen to the

In follow-up to yesterday's post about the lawyer who promised that he would get the client out on bond (and, as I learned later, promised that he would get the case dismissed!), here's some advice to clients and their families when dealing with a lawyer who promises a result that other lawyers don't: Get it in writing. Ask the lawyer to set every promise down in writing.

Robert Guest blogs about three reasons cases get dismissed. Today one of my clients had his case dismissed for all three reasons -- the state could not prove the case at trial, nobody really cared if he did it or not, and someone else did it. It was a typical weed-in-the-car case, so the State really couldn't prove that my client knowingly possessed the marijuana. That in

I take an appointed criminal case in federal court from time to time. I don't need the cases (my time is worth much more than the $94-an-hour that the federal courts pay under the CJA), but I see indigent defense as a public service. As a consequence, I don't have any problem with my appointed clients hiring counsel. But why would a federal accused who is getting

I wrote here about managing the risks of child sex abuse, and the long-term cost to society of teaching children that men are out to hurt them. There's a large amount of naivete that contributes to our society's dealings with sex abusers. Take this quotes from the WSJ.com article that inspired the "managing" post: People assume that all men "have the potential for violence and sexual aggressiveness,"

We humans don't gamble very well. We have a natural tendency to make irrational decisions when faced with the possibility of what we see as extreme life changes. (I'll bet the poker players or the economists have a name for this tendency.) For example, we play the lottery. The cost of playing the lottery almost always exceeds the benefit, but many of us pay a dollar for

In my Minnesota Weenies post I wrote that the tools criminal lawyers have to work with, when playing the game of "what really happened," are plausibility and verisimilitude. "Plausibility and verisimilitude" are not my terms; I took them from Chicago criminal-defense lawyer Terry MacCarthy, whose cross-examination techniques I've mentioned here here, here, and here. Here's Terry talking about verisimilitude and plausibility in cross-examination. (Download a form to