Blog Posts

Are trial lawyers supposed to have good bedside manners?
The question itself should not be answered uncritically, or too quickly. Packed within it is an analogy between lawyering and doctoring that may well be too facilely drawn. A recent article by Atul Gawande, a surgeon, in The New Yorker,...

I once stumbled upon a description of my dream job in a John Grisham novel. (I don't recall which one, they do tend to look a like from a distance.) A firm rolling with cash had one partner devoted to pro bono work. He was paid handsomely, never had to worry about fees, and was free to dive head...

Milford Superior Court Judge Eddie Rodriguez Jr. was in the hot seat the other day. The editorial board of the New Haven Register took aim at him for comments he made while sentencing a man who pled guilty to the possession of child pornography to five years in prison.
"You're being sentenced...

What's all this fuss about Dr. Laura Schlessinger and, gasp!, the N-word? I confess that I have not followed it closely. It struck me as even less consequential than the Don Imus dust up. So she said "nigger" on the air. That doesn't exactly make her a white supremacist now, does it?
I was...

The United States Government huffed, puffed and blew an elected governor out of office in the State of Illinois. But at the end of the day, all prosecutors have to show for their efforts in the prosecution of Rod Blagojevich is a single count of making a false statement. The jury could not reach a...

If you think that trial experience doesn't matter for a Supreme Court justice, I urge you to read Justice Sonya Sotomayor's dissent in Skilling v. United States. Having actually tried cases, albeit as a prosecutor, Sotomayor is not uncritically seduced by the embrace of a cold trial record. She...

Here's something I have never understood. In a criminal case, the government has the burden of proof. It must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. To do that, all jurors must agree. In other words, it takes a unanimous verdict to convict a man. Anything less amounts to a failure on the part of...

I swear it almost happen the other day. It really did. I was sauntering into a bookstore when the barbershop nearby caught my eye. "Why not?," I thought. "How long's it been?"
In truth, it's been a good twenty years since I checked into a barbershop. Oh, I get hair cuts every so often. We've...

A recent issue of The New Yorker carried an article George Packer that painted an unflattering picture of the United States Senate. "The Empty Chamber," The New Yorker, August 9, 2010. Far from the greatest deliberative body on the planet, the Senate looks more like a geriatric Animal House, with...

One of the most dismal experiences a trial lawyer can have is reading a transcript of a case you have already tried. The only thing worse is having to sit through a read back or replay of testimony> I think of myself as fluent, sometimes even eloquent. My transcripts betray me to be a stuttering...