Following on my last two posts… The complicated problem is that the Gideon decision created attorney-client relationships barely worthy of the name, between lawyers with conflicting incentives and clients without choices. Now a judge in Washington State and a county in Texas are trying to address that deeper problem in ways that have never been tried in the United States. Their proposed solutions reflect competing schools of

In The Prac­tice of Law as a Con­fi­dence Game: Orga­ni­za­tional Coop­ta­tion of a Pro­fes­sion, Abraham S. Blumberg's major thesis is that criminal-defense lawyers are turned from their duties to the client by the system to get their clients to plead guilty. This is a fair characterization overall, but not universally. Most criminal-defense lawyers put the client first—before personal and professional relationships and "clients"—to some extent. Those at

In Casual cruelty–part two Judge Kopf mentioned "Abraham S. Blumberg’s 1967 classic entitled The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession." Confidence games, law, and the cooptation of the profession? That sounded right up my alley. I found a copy in the wild. After reading it a couple of times, I am convinced that it is something that everyone needing to hire a criminal-defense lawyer

Most Western European and North American social and medical systems operate under the primary ethical principle of autonomy. This principle allows the individual to determine the degree to which he or she will participate, or not, in any specific activity, including health care. For the patient to exercise autonomy, he or she must have a degree of understanding of his or her choices. Hence, medical providers have

Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield is taking nominations for the 5th Annual Jdog Memorial Best Criminal Law Blawg Post: It’s that time of year again! Time to recognize the effort and thoughtfulness of criminal law blawgers with our annual Best Criminal Law Blawg Post, which has been dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Joel Rosenberg. Unlike the other Beauty Pageants in the blawgosphere, the

From the Plaintiff's Complaint in Jane Doe vs. El Paso County Hospital District, No. 3-13-CV-406-DB, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division: 9. Defendant Michael Parsa is a medical doctor employed by the University Medical Center of El Paso. At all times relevant to this Complaint, he was acting in the course and within the scope of his employment.

I feel for Michael Busby. According to him, he was having marital trouble, so he went to a professional. He paid good money—$530—for a solution to his problem. And things went wrong. The professional took another $2,700 from him, which he says he put in a box for the professional to cleanse and return to him. Ten days later she had not returned it. So he sued

A sixteen-year-old kid gets a bunch of buddies in his truck. They steal a couple cases of beer and go speeding down a dark road with lots of blind corners. Suppose that he gets pulled over at mile marker 20 and is taken into custody for DWI. It's his first brush with the law. Should he go to prison? I suspect that the answer is "no." Prison

Remember Joseph Rakofsky, who took a murder case straight out of the law-school gate, a mistrial was granted, the judge said mean things about his ineffectiveness on the record, the Washington Post picked up the story, the practical blawgosphere picked up the story, he sued the Internet, and he got poured out (after settling with a law school, seeking counsel on Craigslist, and an absurdist novelsworth of

The law is a self-mocking profession. There's no need to make fun of it or its practitioners because so many of them are doing such a great job of making themselves the subject of fun. They just need a little spotlight for the comedy to come alive. I like to think that from time to time I provide that spotlight, and maybe a little context so that