Articles Posted in Legal Profession

The blogging gurus have told me not to write blog posts like legal briefs. So much for short, bullet pointed blog posts.  If I want to write a law review article and put in on my blog, complete with exhaustive legal citations, in order to share some creative legal thinking with lawyers, judges and judicial…

This morning I met with a family who suffered a tragic loss when a tractor trailer ran over the parents late in 2008.  The mother was killed and the father seriously injured.  They got me involved a couple of weeks after the crash when one of the sons found me on the Internet and invited me…

Since it’s a tough budget year in which even I can’t advocate spending  money on a new web site, I’m working on ideas for a low-budget refreshing of the State Bar of Georgia web site. I would appreciate any suggestions for things we can do to make it more interesting, up to date, streamlined, easy…

Seldom if ever do I plug a book in my blog. But I just finished one on legal writing that I recommend to my colleagues. Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner, is an extremely practical guide for those of us who earn our keep through…

The organized Bar across the country makes a big point of supporting judicial independence. We should make just as big a point of supporting judicial integrity. An article by Ian Urbina in The New York Times tells the sad tale of how two Pennsylvania judges have pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court to accepting…

Here’s an excellent post by Ron Fox at the Lawyer Satisfaction Blog about how poorly law schools prepare their students to actually practice law and run a law office and something called “Solo Practice University.”  Nothing in law school prepares one for the responsibility of running the business of a law practice.  Law schools traditionally…

On Saturday, I became the sole nominee for election as Treasurer of the State Bar of Georgia for a one-year term beginning in June. Fortunately, the Bar is in good financial condition and has an excellent CFO on board. I expect to spend a lot of quality time with spreadsheets over the next 17 months.…

According to Ben Evans of Associated Press, President-elect Obama’s appointments have notably excluded Southerners. It’s hard to see where he’s going to fill in that gap.  However, there is speculation that my friend from Atlanta, Teresa Wynn Roseborough, could be the next Solicitor General of the United States, representing the government at the Supreme Court.…

Biographical profiles on lawyers on law firm web sites tend to be stuffy and boring. Mine included. But someone recently called to my attention the refreshingly light-hearted bio of Martin D. Ginsberg, who if Of Counsel at Fried Frank in DC and a law professor at Georgetown University.  Here are a few excerpts:    …

I noted earlier that a pay raise for federal judges had been included in the bailout bill for the auto industry.  Now the judicial pay raise has bitten the dust, at least temporarily, because it was draining votes from the legislation. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri announced on the Senate floor she would oppose the…