On Tuesday, the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility released Formal Opinion 487, which addresses fee splitting arrangements when a lawyer in a separate firm replaces the first counsel rather than works together on a contingency-fee case.
In a self-imposed Sisyphean task, the team at Measures for Justice travels the U.S. unearthing, collecting and publishing criminal justice data. Today, Christian Gossett, district attorney for Winnebago County, Wisconsin, says more people are being released quicker pretrial, and he’s working with researchers to improve equity in diversion, thanks to the initial data made available by Measures for Justice.
“People have no idea on how much stress this has had on our family and business for almost three years,” said David Gibson, the 64-year-old business co-owner, after the punitive verdict. “But from the beginning, we just didn’t understand why they were punishing us for something we had nothing to do with.”
According to the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction of the Council of State Governments (a project launched by the ABA Criminal Justice Section in 2014), there are more than 44,000 state and federal laws and regulations that can stand in the way of the person getting back on their feet, and the commission is seeking ways to curb those barriers.
A tenured associate professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law has filed an Equal Pay Act complaint, claiming that she earns significantly less than others in her academic category.
Updated: On Friday, attorney and philanthropist Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. was wired $21.5 million of a $26.5 million pledge he made to the law school at the University of Alabama, after its board of trustees voted in favor of giving him a refund, following his call for a boycott of the state after it passed a new law that effectively outlaws abortions.
As misdemeanor unlawful entry prosecutions rose between 2017 and 2018 in the five federal districts along the southwest border, federal prosecutions for nonmarijuana drug offenses dropped. U.S. Customs and Border Protection drug seizure statistics were largely up, suggesting no lack of referrals.
California became the third state in the U.S. to adopt a law that allows judges to consider what’s in the best interests of the animal rather than treating the pet like other inanimate property, such as a car. Alaska and Illinois have passed similar laws since 2016. The new laws are groundbreaking because they come amid growing interest in protecting pets and settling disputes over them.
Lawyers draw from their expertise to explain the law to a wider audience. But whether they appear on cable news or local morning shows, the demands of the format take a leading role.
Because so many decisions are made outside of the public eye, the prosecutor’s office is often referred to as the “black box” of America’s criminal justice system. But a wave of new reformers are intent on letting in the light—through transparency, community engagement, and most important, regime change.
