Legal Antics is running a poll on the funniest law blog. Voting is open till June 25th. Vote early and . . . vote once. Legal Antics is trying to discourage ballot-box stuffing. I was not nominated -- Defending People is not the breakout comedy hit I was hoping it would be. Technorati Tags: blawgs

A silly class-action lawsuit against silly website Avvo has New York Legal Update asking, Should Zagat's be careful when it provides numerical ratings for a restaurant's food, service and decor? Should movie critics be concerned when they give a movie 1 and half stars rather than 5 stars? Should the Automobile Association of America - AAA - worry about a class action suit when it gives a

The thing that shocks people the most about the Texas criminal "justice" system is the number of people sentenced to death and executed. Less shocking, but apparently still surprising, is the fact that Texas juries can recommend probation for people convicted of a murder committed before last Saturday (as long as it is not capital murder and the accused has no felony convictions or probations). I think

Defenders: Gideon wants to get a rough estimate of how many cases you carry at a time. Technorati Tags: blawgs

Shannon Quadros wrote, in comments to Us v. Them, Don't you think McKinney is being a tad rough. I know that the DA's office isn't a bunch of angels but it's not like they are the spawn of Satan either. Well not that I know of anyway. What I would like to see is what someone who has been on both sides, say former ADA now criminal-defense

Mary Flood writes in the Houston Chronicle: The State Bar of Texas wants lawyers to be friends. They've started an online meeting place for bar members to chat, form groups, send out invitations and bond. It's called the Texas Bar circle.

From Troy McKinney: You have a right to a lawyer no matter the offense. If you are indigent, you have the right to appointed counsel, no matter the offense. You may not lawfully be stopped at a roadblock. Police must have suspicion that you are doing something wrong, not just that you are minding your own business. From me: The accomplice witness rule (Texas Code of Criminal

Scott Greenfield of New York is all atizzy over my Lucky Stars post. Scott challenges his fellow lawyers in the third-largest state to comment on why the New York criminal liberty-rendering system sucks less than Texas's. No response yet from the tassel-loafer brigade. Over at A Public Defender, though, Gideon makes the case for the Duchy of Grand Fenwick being a better place to be arrested than

By Troy McKinney, a lawyer's lawyer (in fact, my lawyer), a few of the differences between prosecutors and defenders: They take away people's lives. We give people their lives back. They break up familles. We help families stay together. They cause and maximize pain. We prevent or minimize pain. They judge. We forgive. Their solutions are usually destructive. Our solutions are usually constructive. They cause kids to

Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice informs us that, in the People's Democratic Republic of New York, there is no right to expunction (only he calls it "expungement," which, according to my OED, is "rare" -- not that there's anything wrong with that). So I presume that if you get arrested for something in New York, your friends, neighbors, employers, landlords, and any other busybodies can find out