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The weekend edition of USA Today leads with a story on the sanctions law schools are facing based upon poor bar passage rates. The ABA will convene a conference to require accredited schools to ensure that at least 75% of graduates pass the bar within two years. Right now 75% of student must pass the…

At yesterday’s GACDL Winter Seminar, Dean Strang spoke, not so much on Making a Murderer but on systemic failures of the criminal justice system that are on display in the documentary series. Those issues include poverty, the fact that the treatment of juveniles has not caught up with the research on brain development, and issue…

I enjoy reading opinions by Eleventh Circuit Judge, Ed Carnes. And Brewster v. Hetzel may be my new favorite. It’s a rare habeas case out of Alabama (or anywhere) where the habeas petitioner wins. And the subject matter is a deadlocked jury and the lengths a trial court went to flip the holdouts for acquittal.…

I was at the Georgia Supreme Court for argument on a habeas case today. This was my first appellate argument of 2019. I’ll be at the Georgia Court of Appeal on February 12. You’ll find a link to the recording here. I won’t comment on a pending matter except to say that this is a…

Appellate lawyers are rarely the first lawyer on the case. Sometimes, the trial lawyer stays on for the appeal. And sometimes the appellate lawyer was part of the trial team. But appellate lawyers are very often the lawyer who renders a second opinion. Frequently trial and appellate lawyers are consulted to render a second opinion…

I’ve spoken at 2 CLEs in the last few weeks. Both presentations were to groups of public defenders. The first was on the topic of preserving a record on appeal. And the second was on motions practice in child abuse cases. Whenever I speak on these topics, I invariably hear the same response from folks…

If you have an upcoming trial, try this: spend thirty minutes, and draft one single motion. Don’t know what to ask for, then think of it this way. What’s one decision you would like from the judge that would make the trial more fair for your client. That’s it. One motion. You obviously could set…

I now have my doubts about The Genius Bar at the Apple Store. On Friday, after court, I stopped by an Apple Store to get some technical help from the folks at The Genius Bar. A few weeks ago, I left a set of airpods in their charger in a pair of pants and ran…

I just finished up Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan. I offer neither a review nor a summary below. What you will find are all the passages I highlighted as I read this book on the kindle. I’ve done some lite editing. But there are places where I may have pulled passages in the middle of…

Yesterday, I spoke on my aversion for offices and love for working pretty much anywhere. Here are a few more details. This morning, I had calendar in Gwinnett County, Georgia, which is pretty far away from where I live. Since I was taking over for another lawyer, I had to file a document known as…