I was reading Jamie Spencer’s blog, Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, where he writes about the importance of “expunction”.  Expunction?  What’s his beef?  In New York, we call expunction by a different name, expungement, and the significance of it is that we don’t have it. We would like it.  We think it would be the right thing to do.  But it doesn’t exist here. 

And yet, there’s Jamie, and Mark Bennett commenting about the unfairness of it all, complaining about expunction.

 

Personally, I think its a bit bizarre when Texas law is a step ahead of New York when it comes to something like expungement.  Remember, this is the state that puts defendants to death when their lawyer is fast asleep at trial. 

But the point of this post is that there are significant differences in the law and practice from place to place.  Having tried cases as far away as Anchorage, Alaska, I’ve come to realize and appreciate that understanding local practice matters.  I had a “My Cousin Vinny” moment when I traveled down to Bowling Green, Kentucky to do a case.  I opened to the jury with, “You probably can’t tell, but I’m not from around here.”  Got a good laugh out of them, which is always important.  Happy juries have a harder time convicting. 

Obviously, local differences abound and it would be impossible to mention, or even recognize, all of them.  But what is important is the recognition that they exist and they matter.  While I naturally believe that I am the best trial lawyer since Clarence Darrow, and there’s no successful trial lawyer who can believe otherwise, I always work with local counsel when I go to some foreign venue who can show me the local ropes, help me with local customs and even tell me what’s funny there and what’s not.  Humor in New York isn’t always funny in Galveston. 

This is true in both state and federal courts.  Even though federal law is (theoretically) the same across the country, the practical differences are often staggering and assumptions that life the Southern District of Florida is the same as the Southern District of New York can lead to some foolish mistakes.  The jurisprudence of criminal defense demands that we understand where we fit into the bigger picture.  I don’t bet my clients’ lives on assumptions, and they tend to be appreciate it.

So as you travel through the blawgosphere and read about how things are done in one place or another, never confuse the good life in Texas (with this expunction issue) with the hard life in New York (where your lawyer is required to be awake throughout the entire trial).  Take the information with a grain of salt (Lawyerus Emptor) and bear in mind that not everything on the internet will apply to you.