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“The Man and the Dog.”
Life is more than conflict. It’s also about love, emotion and devotion. And as regular readers know, with three rescues in our household, I have a particular soft spot for dogs and their special...
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Exalted justice.
“The bench was at an elevation that permitted me to look down on everyone in that impressive room. One has to experience such wondrous looking-down to appreciate it — to have the glorious feeling of...
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Tamales and state bars.
Christmas nears. Visions of sugar plums and tamales dance in some heads, including mine. So imagine my dismay on news that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had interdicted 450 carefully wrapped...
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Digesting post-Thanksgiving turkey.
Proving there are turkeys after Thanksgiving, a couple of career law school académicos opined in Black Friday’s Washington Post championing “low-bono” legal services so that “talented young lawyers...
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Billing time push-back.
$112.50 to prepare a client’s invoice? Anecdotally, I’ve heard of lawyers charging clients for the time it takes to prepare a client’s bill. But from a client’s perspective, it’s a practice almost...
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Pho, lies and CLE.
I was having my weekly bowl of pho — but not at the phonetically mischievous Beaverton, Oregon restaurant pictured above. If you don’t know, the Vietnamese rice noodle and beef soup known as pho is...
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How about a raise?
By a 4-0 vote the members of Arizona’s Commission on Salaries for Elective State Officers recommended that Arizona’s state supreme court justices, intermediate appellate court and county superior court...
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Half a clue better than no clue?
Mandatory state bars long ago lost their ability to surprise. Just when you think tin-eared insularity reaches its limits — wait two beats — there’s always more. Last month, for example, in his...
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Black and tan and leaning on a lawyer.
“What’s black and tan and looks good on a lawyer? A Doberman,” was the answer to an unfunny lawyer joke. Anna But it was no joke for me. Our beloved Doberman, Anna, spent her last day on earth...
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First Amendment rights and the end of mandatory bar extravagancies?
On Monday morning, January 11, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case with potentially positive impact on the First Amendment rights of lawyers. The case is Friedrichs v. California Teachers...
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Starting off on the wrong foot with Arizona’s newest supreme court justice.
Hat’s off — I think — to State Bar of Arizona President Geoff Trachtenberg for exercising his free speech rights and speaking his own mind. Last month, Trachtenberg emailed the General Counsel to...
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The Arizona Bar has no Member Assistance Program. They just want you to think...
(As a lawyer assistance program volunteer first in Texas and now in Arizona, attorney Karyl Krug has years of demonstrated commitment to providing peer assistance, intervention, and rehabilitation...
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Not walking a mile with moccasins.
Oscar Wilde said he loved “talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” This week I shook my head reading that the Hon. Jonathan Lippman, former chief judge of New York’s highest...
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Big billing, big slacker and big burger.
At one end of the spectrum, there’s news that lawyer hourly rates among the so-called guilded circle have topped $1,500 per hour. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, these aren’t even the...
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Arizona House passes consequential state bar bill.
How fitting that following an almost hour debate, the very last bill that passed out of the Arizona House at 5 o’clock last Thursday was historic legislation to protect the free speech rights of...
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Arizona Bar horses around with a compensation survey.
Talk about questionable timing. Within days of the coming vote by Arizona’s Senate on a Bill that protects attorney free speech by requiring mandatory State Bar of Arizona dues be used only for...
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Another bigoted day in the neighborhood.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” asked the thickly accented Germanic voice through the trees. I’d just parked my car and planned to walk one of our dogs on a recent afternoon. After riding over 3 hours...
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Mandatory bars and their predisposition to tread on lawyer First Amendment...
Right now, the State Bar of Arizona can spend attorneys’ mandatory dues on anything it wants to so long as the expenditure is related to improving the practice of law through the regulation of...
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Compassionate judge administers timely Law Day tonic.
In some parts of the world, the first day of May is May Day or International Workers Day. But thanks to a proclamation during President Eisenhower’s administration, May 1st in the U.S. is Law Day. It’s...
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Arizona Bar calls itself “exceptionally transparent” after beating back...
May 11th is Twilight Zone Day, an unofficial holiday that celebrates The Twilight Zone, that iconic 1960’s era television anthology replete with unexpected twists, surprise endings and of course, the...
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