Legal

After reading Daniel Sockwell's article about writing legal briefs that you expect a judge to read on an iPad, Scott Greenfield is a little bummed out over the suggestion to eliminate footnotes: Initially, Sockwell’s point about eliminating footnotes is a critical one, not just because they’re hard to read on a tablet but because that means footnotes won’t be there to be used. … [Read more...] about A Modest Solution for Handling Multi-Format Legal Briefs

Over at Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger writes about one of the philosophical problems with the exclusionary rule: For many years, the U.S. Supreme Court has been pruning back one of the most repugnant notions of criminal procedure -- the idea that a clearly guilty criminal can suppress rock-solid reliable evidence of his crime on the basis of how it was obtained.  If … [Read more...] about A Challenge for Prosecutors

Over at Popehat, Ken White has another of his posts explaining that the most important thing you can do when talking with cops is to stop: One of the most consistent messages I offer here is about interactions with law enforcement, and can be expressed in two words — shut up — although "oh you dumb son of a bitch will you for the love of God shut up" might capture the flavor … [Read more...] about We Talk to Cops All the Time…

I write a lot about laws and lawyers, but I normally avoid commenting on issues of client representation. I feel comfortable opining on civil liberties or the justice system in general because while I may not have expert knowledge, these things are of general importance to all citizens, and we all have a stake. But it's a very different matter to question a lawyer's … [Read more...] about Maverick Ray At Large

Scott Greenfield has a post up at Simple Justice talking about how often people get legal advice from sources other than lawyers. I'll skip to the ending: The law is hard to understand, hard to navigate and very hard to practice. If you are not a lawyer, you have no business giving legal advice because you don’t know what you’re talking about and someone, somewhere, will be … [Read more...] about Non-Lawyers Talking About the Law