The Practice

Opinion gives guidance for legal services lawyers on advising with nonlawyer professionals

A recent opinion from the New York City Bar Association’s Professional Ethics Committee illustrates how legal services lawyers can help clients navigate the legal complexities of Medicaid while leaving it to the clients’ caseworkers to provide other necessary help.

Nov 1, 2017 1:20 AM CDT

Discover valuable information through interrogatories before deposition notice

Interrogatories ferret out the facts of an opponent’s case before giving notice about taking a deposition.

Nov 1, 2017 1:15 AM CDT

What Alfred Hitchcock can teach lawyers about villains and villainy

Litigation attorneys are storytellers who shape evidence into courtroom stories fitting genre conventions embedded in jurors’ imaginations. And we have much to learn from masterful popular storytellers, such as Hitchcock, who also do this work so artfully and so well.

Oct 1, 2017 2:50 AM CDT

Eye for Errors: Test your skills at editorial triage

Take the Editor’s Quiz: Give these briefs a minimalist edit—confining yourself to outright errors. In each sentence that follows, find one or more glaring errors and one or more venial errors.

Oct 1, 2017 2:40 AM CDT

States split on new ABA Model Rule limiting harassing or discriminatory conduct

States have been divided on whether to adopt new ABA Model Rule 8.4(g), which prohibits lawyers from engaging in harassing or discriminatory conduct.

Oct 1, 2017 2:30 AM CDT

Advocacy: Beating a Dead Horse

Do you have some purpose in mind in your persistent questioning? Are your questions a tactical gambit with a strategic goal you can articulate, at least to yourself, and hopefully it becomes apparent to others? Or are you just belaboring the obvious?

Sep 1, 2017 1:45 AM CDT

Ethics: Innocence Awareness

Prosecuting attorneys are supposed to be ministers of justice and, as a result, have enhanced ethical obligations. The ABA included enhanced duties in its Model Rules of Professional Conduct requiring prosecutors to reveal information about a wrongful conviction. Now, some states are extending this duty beyond prosecutors to all attorneys.

Sep 1, 2017 1:40 AM CDT

Garner: Pro Tips on Speech Prep

You’ve been asked to give a speech. If you’re well-versed in the subject, you may think you can wing it. Don’t try.

Sep 1, 2017 1:35 AM CDT

Alas, Poor Atticus! Trials are supposed to be all about winning

The storylines that capture the popular imagination these days, at least in politics and commercial movies, assuage our losses and momentarily fill our neediness with, at least, the promise of victorious outcomes.

Aug 1, 2017 1:15 AM CDT

A Tradition of Jailhouse Lawyers: Amateur attorneys fill vital need for inmate access to the courts

Jailhouse lawyers still serve a vital need in prisons. However, prison officials generally do not view jailhouse lawyers as valuable purveyors of knowledge.

Aug 1, 2017 1:10 AM CDT

How architecture affects communication during meetings

Design decisions subliminally influence people’s experience at work—even their job satisfaction. The relative success or failure of meetings, whether with clients, colleagues or outside speakers, depends in part on how the space makes people feel.

Aug 1, 2017 1:05 AM CDT

How lawyers can effectively cross-examine psychiatrists and psychologists

Psychatrists or psychologists are among the toughest witnesses to challenge because their testimony can have elements of hearsay as well as subjectivity.

Jul 1, 2017 1:30 AM CDT

Lawyers must secure client communications from cyber breaches

Lawyers must make reasonable efforts to ensure that communications with their clients are secure and not subject to inadvertent or unauthorized cybersecurity breaches. The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility updated an opinion that predated tablet devices, smartphones and cloud storage.

Jul 1, 2017 1:25 AM CDT

Learn the fundamentals of writing first—experiment later

It’s often said that you must know the rules before you break them. But why is that, exactly?

Jul 1, 2017 1:20 AM CDT

Alternative facts and the law: Is justice a reality?

I tell students in my first-year classes the practice of law anticipates the interaction between law and facts; legal doctrine matters only as applied to “the facts.” If we exist exclusively in a hall of mirrors where there are no actual facts but only alternative facts, then there may be judgment but not justice.

Many students find my perspective naive. One of my students put it this way: “As a general rule, the justice system seems to favor the ‘knowable’ version of the truth. Lawyers tend to believe the opposite.”

Jun 1, 2017 2:30 AM CDT