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Recent Blog Posts
Not Unethical, But Still Not Right
Chief Disciplinary Counsel Mark DuBois regards the issue I submitted on behalf of the Twittergate Committee, composed of a few bloggers who felt strongly about the controversy mentioned above, as frivolous, suggesting that both I and Mark Bennett have too much time on our hands. Case closed. No ethics violation, not even probable cause to believe there was one.That ends the matter for me. But I am sure you can find continued commentary on it elsewhere.
Indeed.
I published the bulk of the correspondence between Mr. DuBois, self-styled "leading American trial lawyer" Norm Pattis, and me here, and predicted that Pattis would claim that Dubois's response vindicated Pattis's foolish Twitter post.
Where the Twitter post itself showed only a momentary lapse of judgment, Pattis's response to the criticism revealed something else entirely. A thing can be wrong even though it is not grievable; this is indisputable, and to loudly maintain otherwise, as Pattis has done, betrays a want either of reason or of integrity.
No Bono
Yesterday's news: the Supreme Court of Mississippi is considering forcing lawyers to provide 20 hours of pro bono representation each year. It's not suprising: Mississippi's poor have great difficulty getting a basic education to the poor; I shudder to imagine the quality of representation they get.
Scott Greenfield, noting lawyers' protestations that mandatory pro bono is forced servitude, says:
Lawyers are given a monopoly to practice law. We are not like other occupations, but are provided a privilege that entitles us to represent other human beings. With privilege comes responsibility.....There's no question that pro bono as a social responsibility of lawyers, even as a quid pro quo, is a good thing. But there's a very real question of whether forced pro bono actually fills the huge need for those who cannot afford counsel in civil matters.
I agree with Greenfield that we lawyers are obligated to provide pro bono representation to the less fortunate. Twenty hours a year is not enough (a tithe of 200 hours would not be excessive, considering the heavily-protected monopoly we enjoy). But pro bono legal services are provided for the good of the public, and services provided because the law requires them are not, by definition, pro bono. If the Mississippi Supreme Court donates 20 hours of a lawyer's time to the poor, the court is arguably providing pro bono services, but the lawyer? He is just paying a tax.
One California Bankruptcy Lawyer Steps Into the Breach
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.
There will be those who disagree with the idea of helping connect lawyers of unknown quality with clients of unknown requirements. So let me explain.
Generally, I am opposed to the hiring of low-bid lawyers. In my arena, most of the fees are flat rather than hourly. Resolving criminal cases well requires spending time on them, but resolving them badly doesn't. So paying a lawyer a low flat fee to handle a criminal case invites being treated like a package to be delivered, rather than a client to be fought for. (Yes, every rule has an exception, and once upon a time I charged unreasonably low fees for criminal cases because I needed the business.)
Harris County District Clerk Candidate Chris “Lightweight” Daniel
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 for County Criminal Court at Law Number 4) or lose (Democratic) District Clerk Loren Jackson.
(For the elected judges, judicial candidates, and other readers whose IQs may fall two or more standard deviations below the mean: the above paragraph means that I am endorsing Vanessa Velasquez, Mike McSpadden, Larry Standley, and Loren Jackson, and that I am doing whatever the opposite of endorsing is to John "Years of Trial Experience" Clinton.)
As Murray Newman writes of Loren Jackson, "Only a die-hard Republican who was completely unfamiliar with the job Jackson is doing would think of voting against him." I was going to write, "Only a political hack who didn't care about the District Clerk's Office...", but Murray's way works just as well, and he got there first. The Republican running for District Clerk, Chris Daniel, is, at any rate, just that sort of political hack, unfamiliar with the job for which he has applied.
Always... Except.
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 that come up in that type of case in particular. You must understand the ethics rules. You want to get as much as you can to avoid any nasty surprises, but at the same time, you can get yourself in a legal or ethical mess if you don't know what you're doing.
Another of the judges had a clear answer:
The transactional lawyer also seemed dissatisfied with my response. He explained to the competitor, "all of the hot-shots downtown always want to know very little so they can keep their options open."
Scene at the Courthouse
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 tragedy, some days farce.
Blawg Review #282
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. Why? Mondo Frazier (Death By 1000 Papercuts) certainly has it right:
It only took 19 months of the Obama administration–aided and abetted by a Congress more intent on pushing unpopular laws than protecting the freedoms of the citizens who elected them–to spark this renewed broad interest in the U.S. Constitution.
To which this 15-year criminal-defense lawyer says, "it's about damn time!" Because one day out of the year we all ought to at least make noises like the Constitution is important.
Hard Work and Quick Thinking
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 ready. The trick is not figuring out something that's hard, but getting on top of something that's simply massive.
Nathaniel Burney, The Rules of the Game (The Criminal Lawyer blog).
In law school, hard work beats quick thinking. This matches my observation; I wasn't in the hard-working group. I knew very few people in law school who were both exceptionally smart and very hard-working; "hard-working" became my code for "not particularly bright." (My hard-working law school friends are judges now, or biglaw partners.)
Nedlog's Rule
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) as a "dual endorsement" of him and his opponent. I wouldn't have endorsed his opponent under any circumstances, and I thought my friend knew this. Instead of realizing that or at the least calling me to ask, he started complaining to others that I had endorsed both him and his opponent.
I was dismayed by his response. If I had done what he thought I had, it would have been a betrayal. Had I not made it clear to him that I had his back? Had I fallen down on the job somehow?
Or were his complaints self-revelatory criticism? Often the critic reveals things that he would prefer the world not know.
This Looks Like a Job For ACDLA!
Texas judge bans cowboy boots from court, and criminal-defense lawyers are up at arms. (Austin American-Statesman.)
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