Murray Newman has a rundown of the outcomes of Harris County's criminal judicial elections. The races were closer than they've been since I started practicing law and paying attention to judicial elections. Where the Republicans used to sweep and the Democrats swept all but one bench in 2008 the Republicans captured only two thirds of the nine criminal-district (felony) court benches. I was glad for the Democratic

Here's another sample question from the Texas Board of Legal Specialization: In federal court, where a hearsay statement is admitted, the credibility of the declarant may be attacked by: a. Prior convictions, subject to Rule 609; b. Opinion and reputation testimony concerning the declarant's truthfulness; c. Prior inconsistent statements; d. Specific instance of conduct, if probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness; e. all of the above except d. 

Highlights of audience comments: • "The 'Interesting Legal Questions' only served to confuse me." (There's a fine line between interesting and confusing; I cross it occasionally.) • "Presentation was well done. What a shame that his 'biased liberalism' had to be so blatant it detracted from an otherwise good discussion." (You stand up and fight for the right of devout "judge not" Christians to serve on juries,

Here is a sample question from an exam I'm preparing to take on Texas criminal law. The question was provided by the authors of the exam: In a jury trial the assistant district attorney calls the defense attorney to the stand to attempt to establish that the defendant visited the attorney at a certain time and location in order to demonstrate that the defendant was in town

Minnesota debt-collection mill Gurstel Chargo announces that it has hired two new associate attorneys in Scottsdale, Katherine Merolo and Benjamin S. Kulpers. I wonder if Merolo and Kulpers know what they're in for: I am a recent (now past) employee of this law firm. FDCPA violations happen on a regular basis, and I just wish that more people knew their rights, because suit could be legitimately brought daily

{Update 9 August 2013: The Colliers appear to have dismissed their case against Gurstel Chargo. The Stipulation to Dismiss says in part: 2. Gurstel Chargo performed no action that was in violation of the FDCPA; 3. The telephone call referred to inthe Complaint and the central subject of this lawsuit was not made by Gurstel Chargo, any employee or affiliate of Gurstel Chargo, or anyone acting on

Last December a guy named Sam who works for a startup t-shirt company called ooshirts emailed to offer me three free t-shirts of my own design. I put together a design with a molotov cocktail on the front and "No sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism" on the back, along with the URL of this blog. They took about a week to come in, and

Houston DWI lawyer Paul B. Kennedy (The Defense Rests) complains about Carpet bagging [visiting] judges: In the meantime, those who were tossed out of office by the public continue to preside over trials because their buddies and former colleagues keep using them as visiting judges. It's a process that needs to stop. While it is true that the drafters of Texas's constitution wanted judges to be subject

"Lee" wrote to offer me a smoking deal: DWITicket.com is a premium domain available for you to attract online customers. This URL defines an entire, high revenue, industry and you can own it - whether to enhance your own practice or build a directory of DWI attorneys. DWITicket.com is available for just $98,777 Iif you're the sort of lawyer who would think for even a moment of

This is my talk on jury selection—the law, the science, and the practice—from the State Bar of Texas Advanced Criminal Law Course in San Antonio in July 2012. [jwplayer mediaid="4545"] My accompanying paper on Texas's law of jury selection is here. My paper on simple rules for better jury selection is here.