It happens to family lawyers all the time. A new client comes in to meet with us for an initial consultation and tells us that his or her spouse controlled all of the money and assets. The new client is panicked, because he or she has no idea what the parties own, what the parties’
Judges Hate “Gotcha Games”
In October, I wrote about How the Practice of Law is Like the NHL. This article was about how rule changes in the practice of law, and changing skill sets in the NHL have made finesse and skill more important than brawling. Recent experience has shown that this trend continues in law, and that
Is the Practice of Law Like the NHL?
My father recently sent me a N.Y. Times article describing how the game of professional hockey and the NHL have changed in the last twenty years. According to veteran sports writer Dave Caldwell, the NHL has changed from a game that was equal parts speed and obstruction/fighting to a game that primarily is about
The Intersection of Litigation and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Outside of my work as a litigator I train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
I am a beginning white belt in jiu-jitsu, while I am entering my 17th year of practice as a lawyer. But the parallels were immediately obvious to me when I started
“Certify the Question!” Huh?
The other day I was in a multiparty deposition, with 15 or so lawyers sitting around a long conference room table. One lawyer was asking questions, and two or three lawyers were lodging the obligatory objections to questions that just did not sound right to the lawyers who were actually paying attention. Normally this scenario
Cast a Wide ‘Net: Witness Statement Disclosures in the Era of Social Media
Of all the methods of discovery permitted under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 194 Disclosures are often the most overlooked. Although this type of discovery is exchanged in virtually every civil matter, it is easy for attorneys to become formulaic in their