Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer : Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Jamie Spencer Law Firm : DWI, DUI, Drug Possession : Serving Georgetown, Round Rock, San Marcos, Travis, Williamson, and Hays County, Texas

Why do so many criminal defense lawyers, who are solo practitioners mostly, insist on getting a DBA or incorporating as “The Law Offices of [John Smith]” plural? Instead of “The Law Office of [John Smith]” singular?

Actually it’s not just those in the criminal defense bar I notice doing this; it’s solos of all kinds.  I suspect they want to project an image of a big law firm where tons of attorneys are running around doing all sorts of busy criminal defense work all day. That’s what will attract clients (the theory goes).

In fact, the reason most of us are solos is that you need one attorney, not many, to handle all important aspects of your case. 

I office with two other Austin defense lawyers, Lance Stott and Dax Garvin, but we’re not partners, we are criminal defense lawyers who share some office space a few blocks from the jail. Well, we’re friends to, but from a business standpoint, we are all solos.

And we occasionally “handle” a court setting for each other if necessary, but it’s almost always the type of setting where nothing really happens. The case just gets reset. Most of those times it’s when the client’s appearance is not even required.

Or it might be that the resolution to a case has already been determined (plea of no contest for probation or backtime, or turn in a counseling certificate to get a dismissal, etc.) and one of us is wrapping up the case for the other because we have to be somewhere else.

But we all work substantively on our own cases. We don’t share the work load of a criminal defense case. (The exception to that is sometimes it’s helpful to run a PC affidavit or an indictment past a colleague to bounce ideas off of them. “Hey, so you see anything wrong with this charging instrument?”)

Another exception of course is in “big” cases. Big big cases sometimes require multiple lawyers. And it’s always helpful to have someone around to second chair a jury trial, even if it’s “just” a misdemeanor.

But none of these are reasons to call yourself “The Law Offices” of So-and-So, when really it’s just you, the one attorney, and your staff.

And when you explain to a potential client that you, the human being sitting in front of them, will be the one “handling” all of the important settings in their case, you’ll find out that most people appreciate that. So there’s no need to project the image of the multiple busy lawyer law firm with hundreds of attorneys, spread out over several law offices, possible several states plural.

It’s perfectly OK to be the “Law Office of”… Just you, one lawyer, who knows every aspect of each client’s case.

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A few months ago, before the election, a judge and I were talking about the presidential candidates (a discussion made easier by our complete and total agreement on our preference) and I asked her whether she had read Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father”. She hadn’t.

Oh you must, I insisted. The only downside is realizing that when someone can express themselves and turn a phrase as well as he does, my own dreams of becoming a published author, perhaps of the next Great American Novel, start looking, well, like pipe dreams. It’s all for the best, I said. I can write my book when I get done reading all the good ones I haven’t gotten around to yet.

She then recommended Barbara Kingsolver’s collection of essays “Small Wonder”, and it’s taken me this long to get around to it. Just started it in fact, but something in her dedication struck me.

The book was published in 2002 and some of the 23 essays are a semi-direct response to September 11^th. She ends the foreword with these words:

I dedicate this book to every citizen of my country who has suffered bereavement with honor, trepidation without panic, and the insult of fundamentalist condemnation without succumbing to similar thinking. We may yet show the world we are worth our salt.

Well written indeed, and better expressed than I could have. Downright prescient six years later. And the best Bush can come up with? Some other dude did it.

[Update: Well, no update update, that is...  As I waited 3 weeks to write my next post, I thought to myself, writing semi-often is also a component of writing well.  Use it or lose it...]

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Jeffrey Rosen’s article “Google’s Gatekeepers” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is an interesting read. Seems that Google has to employ a gaggle of YouTube censors to make sure it complies with laws in every jurisdiction it reaches. Laws that have not only civil but oftentimes criminal penalties:

[A] Turkish judge had ordered the nation’s telecom providers to block access to the site in response to videos that insulted the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which is a crime under Turkish law.

Which law exactly is this? Why it’s Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code which prohibits insulting Turkey, Turkish ethnicity and even government institutions. And it was originally punishable by up to 3 years in the pokey. And it’s no Club Fed either. From Wikipedia:

   Before amendments were made to Article 301 on April 30, 2008, the article stated the following:

1. A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

Prison is not necessarily a requirement. Noted Turkish journalist Hrant Dink received a suspended sentence in 2006 when convicted for his statements about the Armenian genocide . This apparently didn’t strike some as just punishment, so they murdered him. So what happened next? In January 2007:

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, on his way yesterday to Paris to participate in a conference on Lebanon, told reporters that there are "certain problems with article 301." The controversial article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code is the one which was used by nationalist lawyers to bring recently slain journalist Hrant Dink to court on charges of "insulting Turkey."

“Certain problems” indeed. The solution? Reduce the maximum punishment to two years, replace the words “Turkishness” with “Turkish Nation”, and require the Ministry of Justice to review and approve prosecutions.

Acess to YouTube – owned by Google - is still completely blocked in Turkey to this day.

Update: My two marketing experts, Scott and Mark, have simultaneously alerted me that by virtue of writing this post I should now make the following statement: If you or a loved one live in Austin, Texas and have been charged with violating Turkish Penal Code 301, please contact my office for immediate assistance.

Some in the legal blogosphere may complain about the propriety of the above statement, but I pay my marketers a ton of money to help me write this stuff. Not that I care about the cost; I just pass it along to the consumer.

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Given the state of the economy, it’s no surprise that everyone’s favorite curmudgeon Andy Rooney chose to speak about “thriftiness” last night. To be more like Andy you can:

• Make your own coffee at work, and save $1.50
• Ride the bus to the Giants home games costing $4.40 both ways, saving yourself the $8 fee for the Lincoln Tunnel, and $20 stadium parking
• Shine your own shoes (savings undisclosed, or at least not jotted down in my notes)
• Wear your shirts two or three times instead of taking them back to the laundry after only one use

I was particularly intrigued by his idea that since he wants to use 89 octane gas, he can save himself ten cents a gallon by filling up halfway with 87 and the other half with 91. It won’t help me any, because right or wrong I assume the higher octanes are all rip-offs, but corporate scams – like charging you more for the “middle-rated” gas unless you do the math and go half lowest, half highest – are always amusing when exposed. Well, amusing, depressing, whatever…

But then Andy’s final money-saving tip doubles as a challenge to 1Ls about to start cramming for their criminal law finals this December:

When I go to a good restaurant here in New York for dinner I often slip a roll in my pocket for breakfast the next morning.

Taking a roll at a restaurant, that's not stealing, is it?

Well, is it? Full credit available only for those that use both the Texas (or insert your state here) and Model Penal Codes as starting points for their essay…

[Update: I just found the embed for the video clip, here 'tis:]

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Private Monica Brown became the second woman awarded the Silver Star since WWII for helping rescue several fellow soldiers from a burning vehicle with bullets racing by and mortars exploding all around her. Tonight 60 Minutes ran a story about her and women “on the front lines” in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Apparently the Army gets around the so-called prohibition against women in combat by “temporarily attaching” instead of “permanently assigning” them to combat units. (One suspects lawyers with a genius for parsing were involved, e.g., but never mind.) Here’s my ad hoc transcript of various portions:

Lara Logan: Women are not supposed to be, according to the strict guidelines, are not supposed to be on the front lines of combat.

XO: We do not assign our female soldiers to the infantry and the armor. We do attach female soldiers to a specific unit for a specific mission for a specific period of time. Absolutely in accordance with Army policy.

Sounds like a policy with a few exploitable holes in it. Then when the reporter goes on to pose essentially the same question of the private and her superiors, there’s a good example of getting two seemingly opposite answers that are actually one and the same. First to the officers:

LL: Basically anywhere you are in Iraq or Afghanistan is the front line…

XO: That’s a great question. Anywhere you go outside of a forward operating base you can run into the threat. 

Same question to now Specialist Brown:

LL: The Army has very strict rules about women not being on the front line, and I mean, there’s no question that you were on the front line…

Brown: …there is no front line In Afghanistan or Iraq. You go out on missions whether it be humanitarian aid or, you know, help building schools or pulling support for another unit while they are building roads or searching for Taliban. You go out there and do your job.

‘Everywhere is the Front Line’ and ‘There is no Front Line’. Both answers put the lie to the Army’s ‘policy’ of not having women on the omnipresent/non-existent front line.

Isn’t it about time we stopped pretending that women are somehow either (a) too precious a commodity to risk in a ‘real war situation’ or (b) inferior to men in certain situations precisely because they are female and thus less able to do the job? Or is it a combination of the two? Must we cling to old prejudices and logical fallacies to justify the current policy?

Check out former marine J. Kaplan’s comment on a similar story from over a year ago:

Women in combat is a tricky issue. Some women in the military are well-qualified for it while some aren't. How to designate which women should and which should not be placed in combat roles in an official by-the book process would be impossible.

But all men assigned to combat are well-qualified for it? The comments section on the 60 Minutes story is alive with outrage that the two most critically wounded soldiers Brown helped save declined to be interviewed because, as one of them said, “Women have no business being on the front line.” This despite the superior officer’s affirmations that they were most likely alive because of her actions.

Still, I was left watching the entire piece struck by Brown’s words at the very beginning. Undeterred by the spirit of this administration’s insistence that coffins not be shown on the evening news, the MacNeil/Lehrer Report has ended each broadcast with pictures, names and ages of fallen veterans in Afghanistan and Iraq as the information becomes public. And every night I stare at the baby faces and sometimes exclaim out loud “Nineteen!”, “Twenty-Four!”, “They’re just children!”.

Brown was 18 at the time of the incident:

LL: This is a big deal, winning the Silver Star is a big deal for anybody and winning it at your age is an even bigger deal.

Brown: It’s overwhelming.

LL: You’re being treated like a superstar really, and you’re just a kid…

Brown: Yeah. I am just a child.

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Mom certainly gets points for going the extra mile…

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