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There’s a side effect of having a robust appellate practice in Georgia. If you handled the appeal, and your client has a lengthy prison sentence, you will likely become a witness as your former client tries to demonstrate your ineffectiveness. In Georgia, the client has the right to effective assistance of counsel during the trial…

Law is a business. But it’s not just a business. It’s a calling that brings with it certain duties to advise with the client’s best interest above the lawyer’s profit motive. If there’s a theme that runs throughout the stories clients and families tell me at consultation, it’s hopelessness combined with desparation and mistrust. By…

at the New York Times website is disturbing. She cites a recent Pew Research Center poll where people were asked the current chief justice of the United States. To make the result even more disquiting, the test was multiple choice. And here were the choices: John Roberts Thurgood Marshall John Paul Stevens Harry Reid 53%…

Since I’ve started this whole blogging thing, I’ve made it a point to put fantastic bloggers who are great at it into my RSS Reader. Kendall Gray’s Blog, the Appellate Record, is a great resource even though he does his craft over in Texas. He always has something to teach me about writing, appellate strategy.…

The Supreme Court of Georgia is back in full swing. The Court has already heard oral argument in several sessions. Yesterday, the Court granted certiorari petitions on three criminal cases. Each case has important implications for the criminal defense bar. While I am not entirely thrilled with some of the decisions the Court has made…

The August break for the Supreme Court of Georgia is over. The Court is back in full swing next week with two days of oral argument to be followed by more argument the week after next. Earlier this week,famed convicted murderer Lynn Turner was found dead in her cell at Metro State Prison. What do…

I am helping out at Mercer University Law School by teaching a course there called the Habeas Project as a fill-in. The course is more of a small law firm than it is a class. Eight 2Ls and 3Ls work on real cases involving habeas corpus cases at the trial court level and on appeal,…

I really loved Maxwell Kennerly’s blog post yesterday, Titled “Young Lawyers: Be Careful Emulating Great Trial Lawyers.” I loved the ethos though I am not wild about the application. Mr. Kennerly’s post is a reaction to another blog post offering advice for trial lawyers. Essentially, Mr. Kennerly wonders whether it is a good idea for…

It’s one thing to get practice tips from judges at a seminar or in a bar publication. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Yvette Miller has some tips in appellate advocacy in this Month’s Georgia Bar Journal (PDF page 28 – worth the wait for it to download). It’s quite another thing to get advocacy advice…

Professor Ellen S. Podgor reports in her White Collar Criminal Prof Blog that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed several convictions in Kottwitz.pdf because of a trial court’s failure to charge the jury on the defendants’s good faith reliance upon an accountant’s advice. The Court has also held that, regardless of the strength…