Winning criminal cases for the defense requires ability, knowledge and experience by the criminal defense attorney. As a Fairfax, Virginia criminal lawyer, I repeatedly crystallize my ideas about the path to court victory, including the benefits of martial arts and contemplative/mindfulness/meditative practice....
On past Veterans Days, I have warned against overglorifying the military, and about the human weaknesses and errors that bring war atrocities and other abuses of military power. Today, I will address some better and more humane ways of fighting, both with the military and...
How does one avoid injury from the insults and firebombs in court and beyond? The story goes that one day a small bird tried landing on the palm of a t'ai chi ch'uan master. However, the t'ai chi master made his hand go so soft...
Taijiquan and non-duality are good sources for motivating winning and not letting loss debilitate a person from turning around the situation into a win and from gaining subsequent victories. In high school health class one day, the teacher had us play an indoor horseshoe game....
Everyone gets angry, at least sometimes. Anger, rooted in fear, is weakening and even debilitating. However, it also is debilitating for us to beat up on ourselves for getting angry, and to beat up on ourselves for anything. We must continue on the positive and...
When a client urges the necessity of my destroying an opposing witness on cross examination, I respond that the backlash from destroying the opposing witness can be much more harmful than my telling the defense story through cross examination, bringing out important evidentiary points, and...
Michael Jordan’s famous Nike commercial reminds people going to battle — whether on or in the court — the necessity of maximizing the chances of winning, and of finding a way to become stronger even from defeats. Being mortal, even apparent superhumans cannot guarantee a...
Yes, the world is filled with too many people too often acting like heartlessly dangerous people. Part of my job is to defuse, shrink, disintegrate, disinfect, and deflect the unseemly and dangerous actions of others, and to extract the gold that can even be found...
Judging is weakening. I am not talking about judgment, which is what good judges must exercise rather than judging. We constantly judge. Just recently, I judged that an unsmiling and at first barely talking cabdriver was unfriendly to the point of possibly being creepy, only to...
In the courthouse, plenty of prosecutors, cops and other opposing witnesses try to heckle, but where does that really get them when the real test is in the courtroom, where heckling is hard to get away with before the judge, and when the cops no...
Remember importance of keeping proverbial physical contact with opponents, because maintaining physical contact with an opponent gives us the best chance not only to listen to and anticipate where they are coming from now and next, but also to neutralize and overcome their attacks much...
What to do once we encounter an opportunity? Seize and exploit it at the right time. For instance, the late great taijiquan master Cheng Man Ch'ing was said to be like a ghost when trying to push him in martial arts sparring, but with the...
In the courthouse and other potentially tense battlefields, some factors that can interfere with powerful softness are tension, stress, distractions, poor health (physical, mental and spiritual), fear, anger (which is rooted in fear), judging, and typecasting others. ...
Victor Crawford mailed me pamphlets of several area taijiquan teachers, along with a handwritten note on his former state senator stationery foreseeing amazing doors that were about to be opened through learning t’ai chi...
When another person is yelling at us, our first instinct may be to fight the yelling, to avoid getting wounded and to avoid looking weak to the yeller, others within earshot or both. Once the seeming subject of the yelling reaches equanimity and solid grounding,...
Nothing can harm pure energy, but pure energy can be infinitely powerful, like a tidalwave whose water cannot be harmed, a hurricane whose wind cannot be pushed, and a lightning bolt whose electricity cannot be moved Being pure energy is the way....
Recently, I asked a police officer a few very direct questions about his actions with my client. Had I asked the questions more gently, I may have gotten no less a beneficial result, but I asked them as I did. The officer got irritated. He...
