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Dealing with obsessed clients, empathizing with all clients, and getting to zero limits
In the past, when people asked me if I did family law, I sometimes would respond that I am more than happy for other lawyers to have to deal with levels of obsession among their clients that apparently are much higher than among criminal defense...
Winning requires battle, dirty hands and beyond, and transcending unfairness
In my second semester of law school, my eyes glazed over about the trade-school-sounding aspect of our moot court instructor’s intensely instructing us on the minutiae of using the right color for our appellate legal brief covers – blue for the appellant and red for...
When the opponent gets angry or sarcastic, know the weakness that comes with it. (And a story of a courtroom SBD.)
The life of criminal defense lawyering inevitably faces the trial lawyer with seemingly numerous unpleasant and downright distressing people and situations. They run from yelling and seemingly underhandedly scheming lawyers, to lying and nasty opposing witnesses, to numerous judges who seem to be prosecutors in...
“The life of lawyering is filled with noise and turmoil. Peace is hard to find.” – John Johnson
Abbey Road revisited. This morning, a gaggle of geese crossing a busy street gave drivers a chance to step back from their Friday hustle-bustle. I excused myself from my cellphone call to snap this photo. John Johnson emphasized to me the importance of finding quiet and...
Trials are war, and require reducing fear and stagefright
Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Even though my own stagefright level by now is at a deep minimum, I still need to understand stagefright and ways to minimize it for my own ongoing journey, and for the sake of the witnesses...
The canard of “I will never forget that face”
Imagine the dissonance felt by the victim of a serious crime not to be able to identify the perpetrator. If the perpetrator is not found and convicted, the victim may feel that the victim has been let down, the police have been let down, the...
Trials & the Art of Bloodless War
Is criminal defense work about proverbial war and sometimes bloodletting? Hell, yes, whether one wants it that way or not. As I have said before, t’ai chi principles are important to criminal defense, for focusing on harmonizing an imbalanced situation without applying more than a...
Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
Do jurors want to be tortured for hours by droning lawyers, witnesses and judges, interspersed with waiting for bench conferences with silence that might be even more excruciating? Or, do they want to be transported into the middle of an interesting story, experiencing the action with...
The ambiguity of silence; the silencing of ambiguity
Undoubtedly, cops have legions of tricks to convince suspects to give up their Miranda right to remain silent, starting with delaying an arrest and detention so as not to need to give such rights yet, proceeding to intimidating body language (including patting the cop’s handgun...
It’s not how you dress, but how you persuade
Adam Levin at Southern Criminal Law e-mailed criminal defense lawyers “whose blawgs I frequently read” for tips on practicing criminal law for newer lawyers and for those transitioning to solo practice. Here are my replies in CAPS: Philosophy What practical advice do you have for...