Originally published in The Champion, November, 2011 Basics of a Client Interview A lawyer can meet a client in many ways, including a referral by court appointment or in the waiting room of the lawyer’s office. For purposes of this…
Originally published in The Champion, November, 2011 Basics of a Client Interview A lawyer can meet a client in many ways, including a referral by court appointment or in the waiting room of the lawyer’s office. For purposes of this…
Originally published in The Champion, November, 2011 Do You Believe That I’m Innocent? On occasion, some clients desperately insist that their lawyer must believe they are innocent. A tempered response goes something like this: Your innocence is not the standard.…
Originally published in the Champion, November, 2011 The Client Has Been Accused of What Crime? It is essential to know what happened both from the client’s perspective and from the government’s point of view. Before the attorney starts, she should…
By Thomas G. Wilkinson, Jr. and Michael P. Zabel Can joint representation with independent counsel remedy a conflict of interest? In a recent criminal case in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, a federal judge denied…
By: Hayes Hunt and Brian Kint An omission, or failure to act, is a crime only where the law imposes an affirmative duty to act. Historically, the law has been reluctant to impose such duties. Yet in some instances, the law does…
In an effort to deal with the ever increasing misuse of social media at trial, the California Legislature amended the criminal contempt definition to include juror misconduct as outlined below. CA Assembly Bill 141. Signed into law by Gov. Brown…
By Benjamin E. Zuckerman How do jurors reach their verdicts? It’s simple: they vote for the party whose witnesses they like best. Early in my career, I handled a criminal defense matter. The client had been charged with burglarizing a…
By Benjamin E. Zuckerman of Cozen O’Connor Nothing is more boring than watching a witness testify on videotape. Especially after lunch. Jurors who don’t nod off should be given prizes. We live in an age of hyper-active movies, videos and…
After publishing “Search Warrant Protocol – What Every Company Should Do to Prepare”, I received a number of requests for a sample notice-of-warrant email from a company to its employees. Here you go: Our offices are being searched by law…