Justice Scalia was in town last week. Maybe you had a chance to hear him talk. His visit prompted me to pick up one of the books he’s authored with Bryan Garner. Making Your Case is a short, readable guide to written and oral argument. I found some familiar principles laid out clearly and […]
Discuss the ethical issues, if any, with respect to Lawyers A, B, C, and D in the following hypothetical. Lawyer A represents Jane in her bitterly fought divorce from Nick, the wealthy son of an extremely wealthy father, Norm. Lawyer A threatens to withdraw from the case and does withdraw from the case 41 days […]
Civil litigators, in particular, are familiar with the term “bench slap” but I expect lawyers on the criminal side of the system know it too. A “bench slap” is public criticism of lawyers in a judicial opinion (here’s one slap, for example from a post a while back). Fortunately, bench slaps are fairly rare because, I think, […]
Update (October 17, 2015): Another example of why trial lawyer marketing is difficult is that a huge trial win might, sometime later, be a smaller trial win or, worse, ultimately a complete loss. There are appeals, remands, and then additional appeals in some cases (like the case described below (see here, here, and here). So winners become losers […]
A while back, Minnesota Litigator profiled a poet-lawyer, Tim Nolan, who suggested that good legal writing should not be literature. It should not draw attention to itself. It should not have “a voice,” like the writings of, say, Ernest Hemingway or Oscar Wilde most markedly do (but who all professional writers do, if only to […]
I have been posting original content on Minnesota Litigator (with the help of MANY guest posters over the years, admittedly), five posts/week, 50 weeks/year since September 22, 2008 (roughly 1,785 posts). This has been a huge pleasure. I have received accolades, laurels, gratitude, pity, and furiously indignant telephone calls along the way. This all has […]
Economic events cause shock waves as dramatic as earthquakes but the reverberations are not physical and they do not resound from epicenters by the laws of physics. The North Dakota Bakken formation oil boom (and, when slowed, the bust for some players in the market) has predictably resulted in a litigation land rush for North Dakota and Minnesota […]
A few years ago, a younger lawyer emailed me that she was shortly to be on a “vaca.” That’s the Spanish word for a cow. It is also, I then learned, sometimes pronounced “vay-kay” and then it means “vacation.” Minnesota Litigator will be out to pasture on a vaca from October 3-10 but, after that, will […]
From time to time, Minnesota Litigator busts out of its jurisdiction (defined as “News and Commentary on Minnesota Civil Litigation”) to neighboring states or to bloviate randomly as to some other distantly related subject matter. Minnesota Litigator is particularly prone to wanderlust when Minnesota civil litigators are in the news outside of Minnesota, and even […]
Update (October 1, 2015): Below, I argued for a permissive and flexible application of a rule concerning a scheduling order but, for reasons stated by the judge from the bench (but not published in a written memorandum or order), U.S. Mag. Judge Hildy Bowbeer (D. Minn.) denied the plaintiff’s request to amend its pleadings after the deadline for […]