Law Practice Management

Where is this book?
"Everthing Every New Lawyer Wants to Know But is Afraid to Ask."

I don't know where it is, either. But I did find a Law Practice Management Blog that might have some of the answers. It's titled simply: The Practice. Cute name.

http://www.thepracticeblog.com

The Blog holds itself out as a source for law students, new lawyers, and old dogs who just want to learn new tricks.

Sure do wish that we had discovered this valuable resource when we first opened our shop. Who knows, maybe we could have avoided a whole bunch of pain getting "up to speed." Or maybe not.

Perhaps the best way to learn somehing and make it your own is to go through the painful process of discovery.

Is a legal blog a solicitation?

Some courts in New York might say yes.

There is a proposal to place Legal Blogs in the same category as solicitation for business, and thus subject to strict scrutiny, so says a recent email that I received from the ABA.

Now you understand why I have strived to keep THIS BLOG free of "pay-for-clicks" ads and the like. I have absolutely no interest in having ANYTHING that I do under any sort of "strict scrutiny."

I would rather worry about creating settlement distribution letters for my clients to sign, as I hand them their share of the settlement check. That's why I went to law school: to make things right for a client who has been wronged.

Outsourcing Legal Work -- Overseas??

Lately, lots of buzz is circulating around the topic of outsourcing legal research and writing to overseas firms. The folks on the discussion lists are questioning and examining the pros and cons of sending legal research out of house to firms in Asia .

The caveat presented is this:
Ask if the outsourcing firm carries legal malpractice insurance.
And then ask: how much.

One firm claims (on its website) that it has a number of lawyers in India working on your legal project. The selling point for this firm is the time-zone difference. You send out your request for legal research before you leave the office at 5:30 in the afternoon; when you arrive back at the office at 8:30 the next morning, there is your brief, all written. The advantage cited? Your work is done in India, while you are sleeping in the United States.

A quick look at that same web cite reveals that it is literally RIDDLED with so many errors -- grammar, spelling, and others. To me, that indicates that the final written product would also be full of errors. Ugh.

I think I'll keep my research in-house. At least then I'll know the errors are mine.

PS: However, there is one local Legal Research firm which I would trust, if the need ever arises.

Law School in 30 days

More to follow

Link to the Huggins and Huggins Law home page

We have created a very basic home page.

www.HugginsAndHugginsLaw.com

The page is very basic; no advertizing as of yet.
It is still in the very early construction stage.

Immigration consequences for a criminal defendant

The Immigration consequences for a criminal defendnat can have a devastating effect on a non-citizen's status. This becomes critical in the event of a guilty plea to an aggravated felony. The Department of Homeland Security (formerly INS) looks very harshly on non-citizens who commit certain crimes. What happens? A nearly guaranteed one-way ride out of the country.

A defense attorney who defends a non-citizen often is placed into a quandry. The law of Immigration is so volitile these days; it's such a hot topic because there are so many unsettled issues. How can a criminal defense attorney even begin to know how to navigate the explosive minefield of Immigration consequences for the non-citizen client? Should the defense attorney go out and learn Immigration law in order to properly serve the non-citizen accused?

Or should we set up a system where a non-citizen is provided with an Immigration attorney, in addition to a criminal defense attorney?

As it stands today, the system will provide a language interpreter for an accused, at the State's expense. So why not provide an attorney who can advise the non-citizen of the possible Immigration consequences?

Deportation seems like a very harsh measure ... like a life sentence perhaps??

Should cell phones be BANISHED from the plane?

You just have to wonder what people are thinking, sometimes. Or why they are not thinking at all, at least not thinking about the people around them. I am referring to the person -- no, make that people -- who stand up in the aisle the minute the seat-belt sign is turned off after touching down, and yammer nonsense into their cell phone.

They just HAVE to announce that the plane has landed, and then discuss the fact that everyone is wating to get off the plane, I'll see you in a few minutes at the luggage pickup, or whatever, yammer yammer yammer.

What is so annoying? These folks forget that we are all trapped in the same long metal tube, waiting anxiously to stretch our legs. But we are all prisoners to the inane cell phone conversation. Mutiply that annoyance by the three million other people on the same flight, add the egotistic maniac who shouts into the phone, and imagine all the cell phone users competing with each other for top volume. Ugh.

Should there be Federal Legislation to ban the use of cell phones all together, not just in-flight? After all, we can't bring a toothbrush and toothpaste on the plane, so why should cell phones get the AOK?

Just me ranting ...


http://www.franksteward.com/newsletter.asp?id=32

This one speaks for itself

As a firm believer in the Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms, I truly appreciated the link that Dan sent to me.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8490506794163083426&q=bullshit

Penn and Teller tell it like it is: Gun Control is b*llsh*t.

The show runs for about 28 minutes, and it's jampacked with goodies. Pay attention to the tragic story the Texas lawmaker relates; your heart will hurt.

Airline Travel in the month of September is different these days.

As an Adjunct Professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, I have the honor of teaching Advanced Research and Writing to third year law students. This semester, my classes are scheduled for Monday afternoon. This year, Labor Day fell on a Monday, so there was no class the first week of school.

That meant that my first class fell on Monday, September 11.

Of course, I flew out of Washington Reagan National Airport. It's a mere twenty minute ride on the Blue Line Metro. Because of the timing, I chose to fly out on Sunday.

Boy, was I nervous. It felt eerie, almost surreal. The presence of so many TSA officials strolling around the airport was both unnerving and yet comforting at the same time. Of course, the flight to Detroit was seriously delayed. And of course, the airline lost my luggage. (Again.)

What made this flight quite interesting was the new regulations and restrictions. No liquids, no gels, no toothpaste, no mouthwash, not even lip gloss in the purse. Ugh. That translated into a long flight in dry air with no bottled water in my briefcase.

How did I accommodate the new regs? I carried a small empty water bottle in my briefcase, and filled it from the water fountain when I landed. For my personal stuff, I put my real purse in my checked luggage, used a tiny purse for the flight, and carried only the bare minimum. This plan would have worked nicely if my luggage had arrived in Lansing with me, but it didn't.

The ticket agent was so sympathetic: she gave me a really nifty flight bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a shaving kit, and some other stuff that included a really cool extra-large white tee shirt. The airline finally sent my luggage on to my hotel when it arrived in Lansing, and it was delivered to my hotel at two in the morning.

All my handouts for the first day of class were in that lost luggage.
Fifty million pounds of paper ...

So you see, it all turned out OK. Gary wisely booked my return flight on Tuesday, which was September 12. The return flight was uneventful, thank God. And I am getting ready to do it all again tomorrow. Back to Lansing to teach again.

Are criminals liberal or conservative?

After spending a long time thinking about this question (no, not really !), I started to wonder if we really know how criminals think and stand, politically. Is it important? That's another question.

Here's how this train of thought started:

I was thinking of the upcoming election season, and thinking that people sometimes put bumper stickers on their vehicle to show support for a candidate or a cause. Then I remembered that a bumper sticker could get your car in trouble, if the car were located in a politically sensitive area (read: opposed to the vehicle owner's political point of view). Think: a busted window, a slashed tire, or worse.

That raised a question in my mind: a criminal who was angry at a bumper sticker message might actually damage the car flaunting the bumper sticker because it reflects the vehicle owner's political position...

Then I remembered that vandalism is a crime, and worried about the political thinking of a criminal, and it led me to ask this probing question: are criminals liberal or conservative?

Will my luck really change today?

That's what it says on the fortune. It was hiding in a slot in my pink wallet; I reached in the slot to see if there was any money in there, and lo and behold: I pull out this little fortune from a Chinese Fortune Cookie I had saved (a million years ago).

So does one really have "luck" as this little slip of papers calls it? Or is it really fate?

When I feel like getting into a crazy mood, I'll toss around the idea that "luck" is what guides the daily grind. But I know better. My "destiny" is guided by the million small choices I make each day, all day. Do I wake up early and jump out of bed to grab the day? Or do I roll over and grab twenty more winks? The outcome of that decision will guide the events of my day's beginning. (Crazy rush or relaxed cup of tea.) The little decisions grow into the bigger ones, and the results of all those decisions will form results that can be devastating or can be uplifting.

By the way, the word "luck" does not appear in Black's Law Dictionary, Deluxe Seventh edition. On the page where it should appear, if it were in the book, is an interesting concept:

lucid interval:
1. A brief period during which an insane person regains sanity sufficient to regain the legal capacity to contract and act on his or her own behalf.
2. A period during which a person has enough mental capacity to understand the concept of marriage and the duties it imposes.

So: does an "insane person" believe in "luck" and think that destiny can be controlled by words on a Chinese Fortune Cookie strip? Or is it necessary to "regain sanity" and understand that destiny results from the million little decisions made in life.

Gotta go, gotta do some work.

Welcome to Our Cyber Law Office

Every so often, we explore a legal concept. How are these legal concepts chosen? A few ways.

One of the most interesting ways is to drop open the big Black's Law Dictionary to any page, and see what falls out. Run your finger down the words, say "stop" when the feeling hits, and there is the word for the day.

Another way is by exporing something interesting in current events, such as the legal newpapers, or any other newspaper, such as the Washington Times or the Washington Post. If the item seems interesting, there's a good chance it willl appear in the blog.

Another way is to explore some research about a case or a client whom we are working with. That requires some "tweaking" to avoid any possible breaches of confidentiality.


Another way to explore a topic is to blog about something interesting posted on the listserves. Or on another blog. Those folks have so much interesting stuff to contribute to collective knowledge.

We'll see how it goes...