Last year, while taking the first steps to launch my own law firm, I spent a lot of time on the ABA listserv for solo practitioners, Solosez. I followed the excited postings of other people who had just opened the doors of their new offices. I also took heart in the anniversary announcements of lawyers who had been on Solosez …
David P. Baugh was one of the speakers at a Virginia Trial Lawyers Association CLE I attended yesterday. Baugh is perhaps best known for defending the free speech of a Ku Klux Klan member in a trial that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Virginia v. Black, and, surprise, surprise, he turns out to be a dynamic and …
Many years ago, as a student at the University of Freiburg in Germany, I went with an American friend to West Berlin to sightsee. We went to a bar one night in which we were taken for some money by the bar’s establishment. The two of us were so embarrassed by the whole thing (we couldn’t believe we had fallen …
Courtesy of the solo practitioners at the ABA listserv Solosez, here are the top 15 signs that you have been working out of your home office, by yourself, for too long. You look forward to your dentist appointment. You’ve started talking to the cat. You don’t like cats. You don’t have a cat. You look in the mirror and realize …
My wife Susan Burke heads to the United Arab Emirates this weekend to depose Blackwater Founder Erik Prince as part of one of her civil lawsuits against him. As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, Susan has brought suit against Prince on behalf of former Blackwater employees accusing Prince of defrauding the government. Susan has already settled seven suits …
“Swaying while balancing” is one of four “clues” used by a police officer to detect intoxication during the One-Leg-Stand component of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST). The police officer would require only one other clue to mark the suspect down as having failed this component and arrive at the conclusion that there is a 65% (according to the …
For over 20 years, Detective Wynn conducted line-ups at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF) in Philadelphia. The line-ups were carried out in a little triangular-shaped room just beyond the main reception area. You know the way it looks from T.V.: the ante-room, the glass, and then, on the wall behind where the suspects stand, the red lines demarcating height. The …
A couple of days ago I was contacted by a colleague here in town on a criminal case she had just taken on. My colleague set up her own firm right out of law school, and this is the first criminal matter she has ever handled. My colleague is smart and went to a good law school. She has …
The science behind the Intoxilyzer 5000EN and other breath test machines all sounds very impressive. The problem is that the machines are based on certain assumptions about the person being tested. If the assumptions are faulty, so are the results. One of the major assumptions used in breath testing is that there is a correlation of 1 to 2100 between …
With two DWI trials coming up, I will be focusing myself, as well as this blog, on the science and law related to this issue. I am also consulting what I have found to be the best resource I have ever found on DWI/DUI defense: Drunk Driving Defense by Lawrence Taylor and Steven Oberman. Although I have handled hundreds of …