“Ever and ever have I been casting my line into the great unknown sea, and generally drawing it up with the hook as bare as when I threw it down; and still this in no way keeps me from dropping it in again and again, for surely sometime something will come along and bite. We are all fishers, -- fishers of fish, and fishers of each other; and I know that for my part I have never managed to get others to nibble at my hook one-half so often as I have swallowed theirs.”
The words are those of Clarence Darrow, written in his loosely autobiographical piece, Farmington, published...
September 5, 2011
The South terrifies me. It always has. It seems like a region steeped in suppressed violence. All is politeness by the light of day, but when the Sun sets I worry about the things unsaid. The South seems like a place where ghosts linger, awaiting the gloam to finish work left undone.
So this week, when I traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, for a sentencing hearing, I was apprehensive. I was as confident as I could be that my client would not go to prison, and my confidence was not misplaced. After a nine-year odyssey, my client’s case ended with a sentence of...
September 4, 2011
I operate on what I call the first-date rule when it comes to potential clients. It cost me a client the other day. I am blaming an unlikely matchmaker.
The first-date rule operates in the following manner: A client is referred to you. You meet the client, or speak with them on the telephone. During that first date, you learn why the client is seeking a lawyer. You assess the issue that led them to your door. You give an assessment of how the issue might be resolved. You answer questions put to you. You ask the potential client what success would like. It’s a first date really,...
September 1, 2011
Michelle Bachman talks to God, and she is audacious enough to believe He both listens and heeds what she has to say. She knows His will. She is a change agent for righteousness. For all this I admire her and I envy her. My universe is, and remains, silent. It does so even though I spent time at a place she wishes she had visited. You see, I spent the summer of 1997 at Francis Schaeffer’s retreat in Switzerland. I wanted to know God. I wanted to set the world afire for righteousness. I suppose it is safe to say I also wanted to be president.
Nothing in my life has ever worked...
August 31, 2011
August 25, 2011
The message in New Haven the other night was loud and clear: “We’re from the federal government, and we’re here to help.” It was all I could do...
August 23, 2011
Oh, to be white, wealthy and powerful. To inhabit, if only for a moment, the privileged bubble encasing Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I don’t know...
August 21, 2011
Only two people know what went down in a Manhattan hotel suite in May between the plutocrat and the impecunious maid: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and...
August 18, 2011
I generally avoid writing about the so-called "blawgosphere" – the universe of bloggers who write about the law. There’s an inbred...
August 17, 2011
A juror sent me the following note today with permission to publish it. The note describes her reaction upon learning the sentence the court...
August 12, 2011
It’s been a long time since I could say I was looking forward to cross-examining a DNA expert from Connecticut’s forensic crime labs....