The other day, the Charleston School of Law was kind enough to invite me to speak to its student body as part of its Professionalism lecture series. My theme was, of course, professionalism in the law. But in the context of why we practice law. If you’re interested, have a...
Judgment is the criminal lawyer’s stock-in-trade. The ability to assess the risks of a situation, and choose the better course of action, is the value that lawyers bring to the criminal justice system. It doesn’t matter if they’re defense attorneys negotiating a deal or fighting it out at trial, or...
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” This is not something you want your lawyer to be asking you in the middle of trial. Or worse yet, in the cells after you’ve lost your trial. And yet it is a perpetual ostenato heard in every criminal courthouse. The head-shaking...
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions Guy Kawasaki Portfolio/Penguin, coming March 2011, 211 pages, $26.95 As a rule, we don’t much care for books for business-types. They’re like a print version of a cable-channel documentary — five pages of useful information, padded out with a couple hundred...
Plenty of us are familiar with the basic skills of cross-examination: Always lead, Don’t ask that one last question that lets the witness deny the conclusion you want to draw, Don’t ask a question if you’re not pretty sure of the answer, Don’t let the witness explain, Take it...
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