I always have the best intentions after attending a good CLE. Returning to my office with a binder full of great information, I have every intention of reading through all the materials that were just referenced during the training. The binder lies on my desk for a couple of days. After a week of so, I move it onto a …
Back when I worked for the federal government, there were some employees who were really, really busy. You knew this because their offices were a mess. Their telephones were no longer accepting messages. They had that harried look. And they always talked about how busy they were, especially when you came in to give them more work. Despite all this, …
This whole “transitioning my practice to Baltimore” thing may be more difficult than I had been thinking. I met with my Maryland mentor last week. It is great that the Maryland Professionalism Center offers this opportunity for people who have just passed the Bar, and I was fortunate to be assigned to this particular person. My mentor practices criminal defense …
Whenever you walk into a store, it doesn’t matter how busy the staff may be, the clerk should immediately acknowledge your presence. Good afternoon, sir, the clerk should say. I will be right with you. You forgive a lot once these words have been spoken. Please, you respond graciously. Take your time. And you mean it. The same principle should …
I wake up again at 3:00 am but, for the first time in over a week, there is nothing to do but clean up my study. After four days of trial, the jury took only a couple of hours to find my client guilty. There were positives from the trial: A government expert who could not perform basic calculations, and …
Wayne my investigator is a worrier. I am too. Wayne is an early riser. So am I. This means I usually have company early mornings before trial. The two of us sit in our respective home offices on opposite sides of the District, texting each other hours before we need to head over to the courthouse. Alas, because there was …
He is a senior prosecutor. He doesn’t hide the ball or over try his cases. He is pleasant and reasonable, and he lets you know exactly where he is coming from – what he can do for you and what he can’t. I was surprised he went forward with this particular case. As Wayne my investigator says, sometimes there’s just …
In Pennsylvania, the offense is known as endangering the welfare of a child. In D.C., it is cruelty to children and, as the D.C. Court of Appeals pointed out recently in Mitchell v. United States, 64 A.3d 154 (D.C. 2013), you cannot read too much into the title of a criminal offense: The title is of use in interpreting a …
Rule 41 of Keith Evans’ Common Sense Rules of Advocacy is what he calls “Newton’s Rule.” Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, of course, was that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Evans applies this rule to trial advocacy to suggest that you never want to get into a confrontation with your finder-of-fact, whether that’s a judge …
There are certain reference materials that are essential to a law practice. In the case of a criminal defense practice in D.C., for example, you could not get by without the D.C. crimes code, jury instructions, rules of evidence, sentencing guidelines, the two volumes of the Criminal Practice Institute’s manual, and some type of legal research service. In addition to …