(202) 549-2374
Fielding general questions on D.C. criminal defense
I do not charge for free consultations. Nor, as a matter of practice, will I take over representation from another lawyer.
My claim to fame
This website is my claim to fame at D.C. Superior Court. It is not my commanding courtroom presence or my oral advocacy skills. It is not even my good looks. It is this website.
On choosing a house. Or a lawyer.
Some clients will hire the first lawyer they reach by phone. Others will take more time. They interview multiple lawyers in person. They ask questions.
Stop plagiarizing my website
Last year I found out that Nabeel Kibria of Ervin Kibria Law had lifted whole blocks of language from my website for use on his.
Presenting your best self when soliciting business
When marketing your writing services through mass emails, it is a good idea to make sure there are no typos, misspellings or grammatical errors in your message.
Beautifying this website
As part of my effort to improve the look of this website, I am replacing stock legal photos with two types of images: D.C. landmarks and graffiti.
Second-Guessing Your Lawyer
The caller tells me he wants my professional opinion. What he really wants is some free legal advice so that he can second-guess the lawyer he has already hired. But the caller has three problems. His first problem is that I remember him. I remember speaking with him not once but twice on the phone before he decided to hire …
Avvo: Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus
Like Kramer asking for extra MSG on Seinfeld, I think I am going to put myself on a “please call” list for marketers. Just kidding. Some marketing guy from Avvo called me the other day, and I shut him down the same way I shut down most marketers: I told him I am so swamped with business that I couldn’t …
Three Years In: Dealing With Potential Clients on the Internet
I get a lot of strange emails and phone calls from people who find me on the Internet. A woman wrote me the other day looking for help with all sorts of different legal problems – from personal injury to child custody to criminal matters. It was unclear from the email whether she was the victim or the accused. And …
Get Out of My Office: A Hypothetical Interview With a Potential Client
A woman and her son come into the office for a consultation. At the end of the hour, the woman turns to me and tells me that they have also met with a number of other criminal defense lawyers. “Why should we hire you?” she wants to know. I have to say, I am somewhat taken aback by the question. …
On Ethical Issues Raised by “Letter Lawyers”
Mark Bennett refers to them as “letter lawyers”; they are the lawyers who, with the hopes of securing new clients, send out advertising materials to the people whose names and addresses have been listed on public arrest records. A friend of ours was charged recently with a misdemeanor traffic offense and received over 20 letters in the mail. She …
Telling Your Wife You Have Been Sued For Defamation
My wife heard a lot of terrible and heart-wrenching stories while interviewing Iraqi victims of the Abu Ghraib torture. She was always completely spent whenever she got back from one of her trips to the Middle East, and I swear that experience took ten years off of her life. One of the stories I liked best was one that would …
When Your Business Card Is More Memorable Than You Are
I am pretty good with faces and with names. I have always been impressed — almost flattered — by people who remembered my name after a single meeting, and at one point early in my career, I decided to make a more concerted effort to learn people’s names upon meeting them and to commit those names to memory. The problem, …
More on Joseph Rakofsky: The Story Keeps Getting Worse
“We really didn’t check him out. He said he was this and could do that. We thought he was telling the truth.” — Henrietta Watson, grandmother of defendant Dontrell Deaner The blogosphere has been abuzz the past week with the story of Joseph Rakofsky, a 33-year-old lawyer two years out of law school who took on a murder case in …
On Becoming A Solo Criminal Defense Attorney Right Out of Law School
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 …
On Norm Pattis and “The Happysphere”
Norm Pattis was in town this weekend, and Mirriam Seddiq and I joined him last night for dinner at Oyamel restaurant. Seddiq’s brother works as the head bartender there, and he made sure we were treated like royalty. Pattis and Seddiq were in the bar area waiting for our table when I arrived. Pattis commented on how much smaller …
Six Months Into A Solo Criminal Law Practice
Mark Bennett and Brian Tannebaum both announced last week that they have been practicing criminal law for 15 years. While I have nowhere close to this level of experience, I recently celebrated an anniversary of my own. As of this past month, it has been six months since I opened my D.C. law office and one month since I began …
Starting Your Own Law Practice is a Leap of Faith
In another lifetime, I wrote short stories. Five or six of these stories eventually found their way into obscure literary journals, with one or two still floating around somewhere on the Internet. The largest circulation of any of the journals that published me was probably two or three thousand readers at the most. With the exception of one story for …
On Free Consultations
In an entry today called “Don’t Blame Clients For What Lawyers Do,” Scott Greenfield writes of the “huge rift” within the legal profession “between those desperately seeking business and those desperately seeking to provide clients with excellent representation.” As an example of the lawyers on the “seeking business” side of the divide, he cites lawyers who offer free consultations to …
The Voice of a Law Office
A couple of weeks ago, I changed the message on my office voice mail. My 19-year-old daughter had done the original recording, but, after listening to it back, we both agreed that her voice sounded too girlish. So, instead, I asked my former sister-in-law if she could do it. I thought my sister-in-law’s British accent would sound classy. I also …
On Meeting Mark Bennett of Defending People
In talking with another lawyer during my training in Houston, the other lawyer was surprised that I could know so much about the author of D.A. Confidential without being aware that he speaks with a British accent. That’s the thing about following a blog. You can find out an awful lot about the blog’s author without ever meeting the person …
Disenchanted with Avvo
My niece attended her first baseball game when she was four or five years old. After the first inning or so, she announced that she was done with baseball. I am done with Avvo. As reflected on the ABA listserv for solo practitioners, Solosez, other lawyers seem to have all sorts of concerns about this legal networking and referral service, the …
On Mirriam Seddiq and the “Not Guilty No Way” Blog
There are two fairly new criminal law blogs that have recently been given a lot of attention in the blawgosphere: Liberty and Justice for Y’All and Affirmative Links. In both cases the attention is deserved. Each blog is written by a group of criminal defense attorneys. And each blog is able to maintain a consistent voice while benefitting from the …
My Career as a County Prosecutor
Unlike many of my colleagues in the criminal defense bar, I would have no moral qualms about working for the prosecution. In fact, during the summer after my first year at law school, I interned at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. I also interviewed with the county prosecutor’s office for an internship the following summer. …
Finding The Right Name For A Criminal Law Blog
Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice wrote a complimentary piece about this blog earlier this week. While I was very flattered to be described as “one of the newest and brightest additions to the blawgosphere,” Greenfield continued to encourage me to change the name of this blog. Wrote Greenfield in a postscript: “Jamison, attempting to straddle the marketing blawgosphere and the …
The Challenges Of Being A Solo Practitioner
I was sorry to learn this morning that one of my favorite legal bloggers – Michael McLees of Fast Texas Divorce – has decided to discontinue his blog. Writes McLees on a recent entry: “I’m just not sure that [the blog] contributes anything to my practice and since the novelty has worn off, it just isn’t fun anymore.” McLees also …
The Koehler Law Logo
There are many things you need to do when setting up your own law firm, from securing business licenses, malpractice insurance and bank accounts to buying furniture, legal research materials, and computer software and equipment. Of all the tasks involved, selecting a logo for my new firm was by far the most enjoyable task. That’s one of the perks of …
Choosing the Koehler Law Motto
During my first year in law school, I heard a Latin phrase that immediately resonated with me: Fiat Justitia Caellum, which is roughly translated into English as “Let Justice Rule, Though the Heavens May Fall.” On starting my own law practice, I immediately thought of that phrase as the potential slogan/motto/tagline for my new firm. I tested the phrase on …