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A recent online law firm article points out that a reason for lawyers to reject a potential litigation client is to weigh the potential benefits of the litigation against the exhaustion and the harm on a lawyer’s family relations that can come from the intense energy,...

I was on vacation and not following the news as much as otherwise when Michael Brown, unarmed, was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9. I posted a handful of Twitter entries about events in Ferguson, and here make a few observations about Mr. Brown’s...

Support our troops is a common refrain —- urging such support regardless of one’s views of the military’s policies and actions — particularly when soldiers are at war. However, eighteen to twenty year olds are treated as responsble enough to carry and shoot weapons in...

One of my favorite clients and I were debriefing about his case, and talking and joking a lot just as regular people — not as lawyer to client — in a courthouse conference room, after we scheduled the next proceeding in his case. This man...

My clients tend not to care how I win for them as long as I win, even if through a final dismissal rather than through the greater excitement of an acquittal. Recently, I got a case dismissed due to the Sixth Amendment violation of my...

All my clients are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, that does not mean that all my clients come to me with clean hands. Behind the seemingly picture-perfect lives of plenty of people who seem to have reached many...

Many prosecutors and police (and perhaps too many judges) apparently see criminal defense lawyers as a curious mix of being part of the legal establishment — “one of us”, in the minds of many of them — who also represent “them”/”the other”/the person to be...

When I studied in 1979 for my certificate to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation ("CPR"), the instructor never told us that as we compress the chest during the administration of CPR, some people will have vomit come out of their mouths, the same mouths in which we...

The DREAM Act is still a dream, to bypass immigration law penalties against those who came to the United States as children. Praised be the Obama Administration for having directed the use of prosecutorial discretion (see the June 15, 2012, Homeland Security Department directive, with...

Virginia marijuana defendants in some Virginia District courtrooms constitute a parade of unrepresented people on their first court date. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I know that word has gotten out that if a marijuana possession defendant has no relevant prior convictions, s/he can save...