As a blawger, I have the latitude to write pretty much any thought or question on a screen, and the worst that will come of it is the occasional gun pointed at my head or a judge or prosecutor’s pointed reminder that they read what I wrote and will savor the opportunity to make my life miserable.  Nothing to be concerned about.

But when a senior judge publicly opines, it reflects a level of honesty and boldness that’s, well, remarkably admirable.  Nebraska federal judge Richard G. Kopf replies to my question of why the Second Circuit panel put the screws to Judge Shira Scheindlin.  Regardless of whether his views confirm your own, the fact that he offers them is worthy of our enormous respect.

Some saw my challenge, after Judge Kopf had already called the ruling a “cheap shot” to be impolite. I asked too much of him. Continue reading →

Everybody says they’re allergic to something these days, which has resulted in a tendency for claims of allergies to be taken less seriously than they might otherwise.  Add to that the generic sensitivity and concern of a corrections officer toward a 22-year-old and the mix is fatal.

At least it was for MIchael Saffioti, whose sin was failure to appear on a misdemeanor pot charge.  But he surrendered on the warrant and was treated to a courtesy stay at Snohomish County Jail.  When time came for breakfast, he tried to make sure the oatmeal was up to snuff.  In his case, that meant it wouldn’t kill him as he had a severe dairy allergy. Continue reading →

In an Atlantic article that scares the daylights out of me, Alex Seitz-Waltz writes that it’s time for a new Constitution.

America, we’ve got some bad news: Our Constitution isn’t going to make it. It’s had 224 years of commendable, often glorious service, but there’s a time for everything, and the government shutdown and permanent-crisis governance signal that it’s time to think about moving on. “No society can make a perpetual constitution,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, the year ours took effect. “The earth belongs always to the living generation and not to the dead .… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” By that calculation, we’re more than two centuries behind schedule for a long, hard look at our most sacred of cows. And what it reveals isn’t pretty. Continue reading →

It appears that there isn’t a single, credible voice that wasn’t astounded and offended by the Second Circuit’s needless and brutal sua sponte attack on Judge Shira Scheindlin in the process of granting a stay to the City in Floyd v. City of New York.

Even in the New York Times’ Room for Debate, there was agreement that this was an outrageous smack, a gratuitous beating of a judge who was denied the opportunity to explain, and perhaps had nothing to explain anyway.  It was seen as undermining judicial independence in a hotly political issue, but worse, an insertion by the Circuit panel, Judges Jose Cabranes, Barrington Parker and John Walker, for no conceivably legitimate purpose other than to teach Judge Scheindlin a lesson.

Why?  Why would they do such a thing? Continue reading →

When Keith Lee started his acclaimed blog, Associate’s Mind, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.  Clearly, Keith wasn’t a whiner, nor afraid of hard work, adversity or the role he was to play as a lawyer.  He understood that we serve clients, not the other way around.  What was wrong with this kid?

Today, Keith’s book The Marble and the Sculptor, published by the ABA, is officially released.  Much as I would like to review it as I would any other book, I can’t.  Having written the forward to the book, it’s a bit disingenuous to make it appear now as if I’m reviewing it as a neutral.

But had I not thought this book worthy of being mandatory reading for law students and new lawyers, I wouldn’t have written the forward. See how that works? Continue reading →

For those new to the blawgosphere, which means most of you, it’s likely you’ve never seen a Blawg Review. You may have read that the anonymous Ed passed away, but that didn’t have any greater significance than any other person who was well-regarded to others but unknown to you.

It mattered to me.  It mattered to others as well.

It mattered to Dan Hull at What about Clients Paris?

It mattered to Gideon at A Public Defender

It mattered to Antonin Pribetic at The Trial Warrior Blog.

It mattered to Mike Semple-Piggot at Charon QC.

It mattered to Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion®.

It mattered to Bob Ambrogi at Lawsites.

It mattered to Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise.

It mattered to Vincent LoTiempo at his blog.

It mattered to Howard Bashman at How Appealing.

There is a thread running through these people, Continue reading →

My managing editor, Marilou Auer, sent a link over to a 4th Circuit opinion that shocked and outraged her.  She wondered whether I felt the same about it, and while I share her outrage, I cannot share her shock.  It’s business as usual.

The opinion in United States v. Crawford affirms a sentence of 135 months following a plea to crack dealing.  The indictment charged distributing 38.3 grams of crack, bad enough but hardly stratospheric.  But as is the federal way, that was just the starting point.

The district court deviated from the PSR and found that Crawford’s relevant conduct period began in October 2005, not 2003. The court consequently attributed 321.9 grams of crack cocaine to Crawford, including 38.3 grams from the six offenses of conviction and 283.6 grams that Ready, Latta, and drug dealer Lionel Lewis described. Continue reading →

The New York Times does a feature-length profile of Gary Vaynerchuk, who went from wine seller in New Jersey to social media phenomenon. It took forever in social media terms, days, but he got there. clawing his way to the top of twitter, where he’s known as @garyvee with almost 100,000 twits and more than 1 million followers.

He’s bootstrapped his social media fame into a thriving ad agency, though I doubt he would call it that since ad agencies are so 1950’s Mad Men-ish.  Gary is early-adopter all the way.

Mr. Vaynerchuk, 37, is a social media marketer with some very big clients, and he’s a tireless self-promoter. Anyone fitting that description is all but required to find novel ways to win attention and coin catchphrases, and his new favorite is “jab, jab, jab, right hook.” Continue reading →

Transparency on Facebook is a two-way street, which is clearly shown in the screen cap from Ken at Popehat:

After the Columbia Police Department announced its latest victory in the War on Drugs, which somehow failed to thrill at least one local nearly as much as Richard Nixon would have expected, Continue reading →

One of the core contentions of the future of the new normal of the @reinvent law crowd is that our changing paradigm demands that we throw off the chains of law firm ownership so that non-lawyers (as in for-profit corporations) can own law firms. The usual justification is the infusion of capital and systems to make lawyers more 21st Century-ish, which will allow us to maximize profits due to less costly iPads.

But in the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (of all places), Jennifer Smith writes of a new, largely unimagined reason to let Verizon take the lion’s share of DLA Piper: To bring legal representation to the underserved working poor, who can read all about it if only they have a WSJ subscription. Continue reading →