Links About Lawyering

This is an interesting essay by a lawyer who graduated in 2007 into the waiting arms of unemployment. He decided to begin helping people who were deep underwater on their mortgages by trying to get them loan modifications. This is the story of his first client and his first encounter with Wells Fargo. Also includes an interesting side note about new California law that discourages lawyers from taking on these types of cases.

-- JohnSchwab - 26 Feb 2010

Here's someone who needed a good lawyer.

"At his urging, she pleaded guilty and went to jail for a felony that turned out not to be a felony at all. “It seemed like he was on the D.A.’s side,” she said later...

Usually, such a minor case would go unnoticed; a little test of the constitutional right to a lawyer, results unknown. Instead it has made Mr. Barber an emblem of the problems of the state’s ramshackle system of providing lawyers for indigent defendants. On Tuesday, New York’s highest court is to consider a class-action suit, filed by civil liberties lawyers in Ms. Hurell-Harring’s name, that seeks broad changes in the state’s frayed network of public defenders, who are routinely unmonitored and often overwhelmed. Her case, now being pored over by some of the state’s leading lawyers and judges, offers a window into the everyday corners of the legal system, where no one is usually watching."

Info about the suit from a previous article here

-- DevinMcDougall - 21 Mar 2010

Another story about a situation where good lawyers are needed - School Suspensions Lead to Legal Challenge, By Erik Eckholm, Published March 18, 2010 in the New York Times. I don't have many statistics about these types of suspensions or about the exact effects of zero tolerance policies in U.S. schools, but they are becoming increasingly common and have lead to some pretty absurd results.

As these school discipline cases are being brought out of the traditional setting (principal's offices) and into police stations, there is more of a role for lawyers. Even in cases that don't end up in the criminal justice system, students facing very severe punishments that can potentially play a huge role in their futures need good advocates to stand up for their rights and represent them.

-- DavidGoldin - 21 Mar 2010