I told an anonymous document review whiner in this post that I would gladly spread his name if he was interested in representing human beings in their common disputes for little money. He didn’t take me up on it (it now transpires that he has actual clients, not just pretend ones, which one would never guess from the desperate tone of his blog), but another lawyer did.

A sweep by either party in Harris County’s 2010 elections will be disastrous. The people of Harris County can no more afford to lose Vanessa Velasquez (Republican incumbent for the 183rd District Court), or Mike McSpadden (Republican incumbent for the 209th District Court), or Larry Standley (Republican incumbent for County Criminal Court at Law Number 6) than to elect John “Years of Trial Experience” Clinton (Republican running

Arizona criminal-defense lawyer Matt Brown writes about judging a “client counseling competition,” (!) and advising a struggling competitor who was concerned about asking the mock client too many questions, because he “didn’t want to know too much. Matt gave a nuanced answer: To know what to ask and what not to ask, you need intimate knowledge of the area of law in general and of the issues

In court, a prosecutor, big black Sharpie in hand, redacts identifying information page-by-page from a copy of an offense report. After he redacts the driver's license numbers, phone numbers, cops' payroll numbers, and so forth from a page, he passes it to the defense lawyer, who, reading from the original offense report, is handwriting the redacted information back on his copy.Life in the criminal courthouse: Some days

Last Friday was Constitution Day, a day when, by law, every educational institution receiving federal funds has to educate its students about the constitution (Ruthann Robson, Constitutional Law Prof Blog). Or, as I call it, the thinking person’s Patriot Day. Constitution Day has been around since 2004, but blog posts including the phrase “Constitution Day” are up almost 300% between September 12-19, 2009 and September 12-19, 2010.

We noticed this in law school.  The students who did best were not necessarily the brightest, but were instead the ones who put in the time.  The ones who plugged away every day, from the beginning of the semester, making sense of the materials in whatever way worked best, routinely outperformed those who may have been quicker on the uptake but put in less productive time getting

The Sixth Rule of Criticism: All criticism is autobiographical. Criticism reveals at least as much about the critic as about his subject. Recently a candidate for election as judge, a guy whom I consider a true friend and whose back I have always had, interpreted my listing of candidates for the various Harris County judicial benches (before I added the note at the top of the post)

Texas judge bans cowboy boots from court, and criminal-defense lawyers are up at arms. (Austin American-Statesman.)

Pattis plays dumb: So rather than engage in another link-building piece of naval [sic] gazing, I will submit the issue Bennett raised to my local Grievance Committee, the body that polices lawyers. I will publish the results of the complaint here. If I am wrong, I will admit it. First, Pattis imagines that I seek revenge for some slight that he imagines that he gave me long

1. Trench Menu: 2. Too Much Information: See the difference?