More conference. More distinctions between lawyers. The State Bar conference is comprised mainly of private practice, large firm lawyers. When you hear about starting salaries of $150,000 fresh out of law school, this is what you think of. (However, few of those starting associates are at this conference. It’s hard to do anything else when […]
The general public believes that all lawyers are very wealthy, drive luxury automobiles, and work tirelessly so they can greedily earn more money. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially lawyers that work in the criminal justice system. Criminal justice often involves a confluence of problems relating to substance abuse, mental health, and poverty. […]
Even Charlie knew the value of the Golden Ticket. I’m more like Willy Wonka clumsily committing faux pas after faux pas. I’m smart enough to watch my colleagues straighten up and engage in appropriate deferential talk when we’re at receptions and banquets. However, since the criminal courts have a completely different set of movers and […]
While the next few posts won’t exactly be live coverage from the State Bar of Texas’ Annual Meeting, it’s nice to take a break and reflect on how much has happened. Last year I applied and was somehow accepted into a problem called LeadershipSBOT, a group of 20 lawyers who spend the year in training […]
I’ve spent the past three days at the State Bar of Texas’ Annual Meeting in Fort Worth. I have so much to reflect upon and update the rest of the Firm about, but this afternoon provided the biggest take-away. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the Legal Innovation track. I attended presentations like, […]
So, we re-launched our website about six weeks ago on a new domain. We were at sg-llp.com, and now we’re at sumptergonzalez.com. The bulk of the content from the old site is up here, though there are some pages that seemed particularly obscure, and perhaps a little too overwhelming to people looking for information on […]
Dal came by my desk this morning, as he does from time to time, to tell me about a news story he’d caught before work this morning. The video’s made the rounds, and become a national news story. I watch so many videos like this one, though, that I was actually surprised it became a […]
The best criminal law blogs – ones like Simple Justice, Gamso For The Defense, Crime & Federalism, even Popehat (which is only occasionally about criminal law) – have something in common: they’re not so much about criminal law as they’re about social justice. (Mark Bennett’s excellent Defending People, meanwhile, is often about the actual practice […]
Every so often I’ll get a call like the one today: a potential client wants to know how I would handle a case while coyly implying that he’s trying to see “if I’m a good enough lawyer.”
It’d be far more efficient if people just asked, “Could I please have 5 minutes of free legal advice,” but that would spoil the fun, no?
The conventional wisdom is that you don’t ever give legal advice to a person who isn’t your client. It’s good advice: you have no idea if you’re giving the person the correct advice without understanding the full scope of the problem. The last thing you want is to get sued for malpractice when a person claims they took your bad advice –and you didn’t even get paid for giving it in the first place.
At Wednesday’s Mentor Appreciation Lunch for the Seedling Foundation, former PTA President and Board Member Kal’i Rourke began the event with a wonderful poem. As a parent of young children, I often lose my patience. Having heard this, I told myself that it’s not the end of the world if we’re late for school because […]