F. Lee Bailey and ADR: Heretic or Visionary?

This week’s Connecticut Law Tribune features an interview with F. Lee Bailey, who, at 77, remains sharp as a tack. The interview saddened me, in a necessary sort of way. Bailey’s now pressing the case for the merits of alternative dispute resolution. Trial is too costly for most Americans, he says. And besides, the trial process often gets it wrong. Daggers to my heart, these words. Trial is the best thing about the practice of law To see one of its great practitioners so clearly call out its shortcomings chills.
 
Bailey is no longer able to practice law. He’s been...
March 20, 2011

Wills v. Whoosh: Whoosh Wins!

This current New York Review of Books features a savage review of All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, a new book by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, by Garry Wills. Entitled "Superficial & Sublime," Wills is impressive as always with his scholarship, and withering in his judgments. This is Wills at his raging, prophetic, best: small wonder that the man has written some 40 books, including, in 2002, Why I Am A Catholic. Yet for all his evident brilliance, Wills does not defeat the argument made in All Things Shining. Rather, he confirms...
March 19, 2011

Peas, Oil, and Japan: Reaping What We Sow

Although I grew up in Chicago and Detroit, I became a New Englander the day I started to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Decades later, I still see the paperback pages recounting his planting of peas and beans. Something like destiny led me to my current home, situated well off the beaten path in New England, and necessity drives me to my knees each early spring to prepare the soil for another year’s crop of vegetables. Always, the first plants planted are peas. We plant them just after St. Patrick’s day.
I was back in Detroit today, standing in the now...
March 19, 2011

Delay and Its Inevitable Costs

Delay is often the best friend of a criminal defense lawyer: witnesses move away, their recollections fail, the state loses evidence. Things really do go bump in the night. Criminal cases, unlike wine, rarely get better with age. So I should be in favor of delay, right?
As a tactical matter, yes. But no two cases are alike. There are cases in which delay is harmful, and wasteful, both of the time of lawyers and of the finances of clients. Indeed, delay between arrest and trial often creates friction between lawyer and client.
In Connecticut, it is not uncommon for years...
March 18, 2011

Komisarjevsky and the Banality of Goodness

March 16, 2011
I was in New Haven just as day broke. Much to my surprise, there were few media wagons in front of the courthouse on Church Street. Only one ghastly...

Darrow, Love and the Cost of Contentment

March 16, 2011
"There is no such thing as justice – in or out of court." The words are Clarence Darrow’s. The same Clarence Darrow who once...

A Doctor's Pedophilia; A Hospital's Denial

March 15, 2011
One could be forgiven for believing that the walls wept in the West Hartford, Connecticut, home of former endocrinologist Dr. George Reardon. The...

Reading, Writing and Blogging

March 14, 2011
Another lost weekend is behind me. It was spent fussing over a manuscript, reading the same words for the umpteenth time, trying to force the garbage...

Victims, Accusers and the Presumption of Innocence

March 12, 2011
Call someone a victim, and they are at once framed in a sympathetic light. Bad things happen to victims, we are drawn to them, wanting to help them...

Oz and the Prosecution

March 11, 2011
Everyone plea bargains in the criminal courts; sometimes the bargaining resolves a case. It is part of the process. But not all parties approach the...

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Taking Back the Courts
Norm Pattis Taking Back the Courts

The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorites movies as a kid. Little did I know judges were so much like the wizard, hiding behind empty trappings of power. This book tells you things you need to know about what really goes on in court. Read it, weep, and then demand that the courts do better.

In the Trenches
Norm Pattis In the Trenches

Plenty of lawyers write about the law, but few who write try cases. Judge for yourself whether I talk the talk and walk the walk in this collection of occasional essays about life in the law's trenches.

Juries and Justice
Norm Pattis Juries and Justice

How prepared are you to take seriously the notion that 'we the people' are, in fact, sovereign? Discover the secret, and unused, power of jurors. 'Ask why; then nullify.'

Norm Pattis

About Norm

Norm Pattis is a Connecticut based trial lawyer focused on high stakes criminal cases and civil right violations. He is a veteran of more than 150 jury trials, many resulting in acquittals for people charged with serious crimes, multi-million dollar civil rights and discrimination verdicts, and scores of cases favorably settled.

© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
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