WA: new RPC 1.8 (m) - the air up there, state bar version

Yodelling Llama and I went to the same CLE, and both were a bit chagrined to learn that most contracts for conflict defender services in this state are now considered unethical:

Now, I suspect this result of RPC 1.8(m) is an unintended consequence of poor drafting, and no one should really be too worried about losing his license just by getting paid to provide indigent defense services...

...because as p.d.'s we truly do not have enough to watch out for already. At the CLE, this rule was referred to as something along the lines of, "public policy preference posing as professional responsibility requirement" (fine sentiment though it may be).

Planning your next CLE?

Consider holding it in your state capitol building:
It's where I spent Friday, courtesy of the Washington Defender Association and OPD. Funky acoustics, uplifting surroundings.

Competencies

I stumbled on these Resources for New Legal Aid Attorneys. Wish they'd been available back when I was a new legal aid attorney. Of course, I wish they'd had the internet back then, too.

I thought this one was pretty good reading for those of us on the indigent side, civil or criminal: Representing the Whole Client

When we understand the nuances of clients’ experiences and the lenses through which they see the world, we are in a better position to serve them and achieve the best outcomes on their behalf...

P.D. bacchanal

This post reminded me...

(A) bunch of public defenders in Las Vegas? I'm guessing (a) the parties will be good; and (b) there may be booty to be had.

It's getting to be time to sign up for the 8th Annual Public Defender Retreat:

A yearly gathering of public and private criminal defense attorneys, investigators, staff, law students, spouses, or anyone with a Public Defender Attitude.

"Public Defender Attitude" If you have to ask what that is... you probably don't have one!

And for cheap! One year I sent some lawyers and staff from the Twin Falls office; no arrests were made.

CLE's are better with animals

Best two hours of continuing legal ed ever: "Service Dogs: Our New Partners in Criminal Prosecution."
Now bear with me. Dogs as we know are natural libertarians. I obtained hands-on proof that some staff members of the King County Prosecuting Attorneys Office, like Jeeter and Ellie here, will roll over to get their bellies rubbed by just about anyone, including the odd public defender.

While the dogs primarily are tasked to work with child witnesses, when they're in the courtroom they're available to anyone who could use some canine attention. They don't do suggestibility. Of course there are objections, but I'd sooner have one dog by the witness stand than any victim / witness human. In one trial supposedly, defense counsel scratched one of the dogs behind the ears throughout his cross (which sounds both pleasurable and a good way to neutralize any pro-prosecution "aww" factor). If the accused wanted the dog up on the stand, too, that's allowable they say. These dogs will give you a tail wag and a big brown-eyed gaze no matter which side you're on.

And what great dogs! These weren't nippers, sniffers, scratchers or biters, all of which will wash you out of doggy boot camp, along with begging and an inordinate interest in cats. The dogs I played with were creampuffs, a mix of Labs and Goldens (I was expecting at least one GSD). They have been trained by volunteers (cuteness overload warning: contains many pictures of puppies) for Canine Companions for Independence. I learned their various job categories: service dogs, skilled companions, facility dogs, and (one they don't list on the website) "change of career dogs" for retirees and flunkees. If the puppy you raise can't cut it, you may get to keep it (for an extra $500 fee).

The last part of the seminar was given over to a dog and human play date. Seldom have I had a better time in a CLE, and never before have I left a CLE with my slacks covered in fur.

Child left behind

Greetings from Seattle and the Children's Justice Conference, where intentions are good and defense lawyers are scarce.

Today's keynote speaker was Regina Louise, a foster care survivor, joined on stage today by the one person as she was growing up in the system who cared.

WA: Indefensible world tour coming to Seattle

David Feige is coming to speak in the Pacific Northwest Metropolis on November 16 about eyewitness identification issues. Sources say that there will be "some other excellent speakers, too":

Hot Topics in Criminal Law: Witnesses

* Eyewitness Identification Issues: A moderated debate regarding new developments in eyewitness identification and double blind sequential line-ups.
* Dealing with Children as Witnesses
* New Developments in the Right to Confront Witnesses: Davis v. Washington and its ramifications
* Moderated panel discussion regarding new developments and challenges in dealing with witnesses in the criminal context

November 16, 2006 - 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Washington State Bar Association
2101 4th Ave., Suite 400 in Seattle
$40 for 4.5 General CLE Credits
Registration Deadline: November 13, 2006

CLE by the sea

If you were a member of the Washington Defender Association, you could have spent your Saturday morning by the Pacific Ocean soaking up free CLE's.

You might have preferred a conference room with a big picture window, so you could watch the seagulls outside hang gliding in the cold breeze, but then you might have missed the Power Point presentation, "New Washington Criminal Statutes - With a Spoonful of Sugar," featuring legislative updates accompanied by pictures of cute fuzzy animals.

Favorite slide: "Bestiality - Now Illegal. Still Legal - Putting a Helmet on Your Cat"

You could have learned about the Racial Disparity Project by The Defender Association of Seattle, and heard how two lawyers won for a wrongfully accused African-American client whose only reason for being stopped by the Seattle cops was his bandana, the color of which kept changing depending on which officer was testifying. You would've seen the actual bandana to judge for yourself.

You would have heard super - p.d. Bob Boruchowitz speak and inspire you to do great p.d. things.

Then you could've gone out on the beach to commune with those seagulls. But you might've needed to plot out your tsunami evacuation route first.

You'd also want to look both ways before crossing the beach, also known as one of Washington's public highways. This ain't Oregon - they loves them some beach motoring in this state, even if the speed limit on the sand is 25 MPH. Of course, not all Washingtonians approve of the tidal zone traffic jam.

If you had the time on the way home from your coastal CLE, after learning a bit more about how to help the sad kids and beautiful losers in your caseload, you might have stopped to pay your respects at Kurt Cobain's childhood house, two blocks from the muddy banks of the Wishkah. Then you'd be all set.

CLE, Koolhaas, and Winco, oh my!

On Friday, a fine day out to the Jet City! We woke to genuine snow here on the South Sound, then I made it up to Seattle for a WACDL CLE.

Not too bad, but a few of the sessions illustrated the Trial Lawyer's Paradox: being able to sway a jury doesn't automatically make you an effective or even interesting lecturer. The better presentations mixed visuals, anecdotes, and stats, like this one from the Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel: in 2002, Pierce County (Tacoma) had the highest per capita consumption of lithium batteries in the world - due to a local abundance either of photographers or meth labs.

The best presentation was pushed to the last. I listened to a real public defender hero, Robert Schiffner of Moses Lake, Grant County, a small-town lawyer with enough backbone to take a leading role in exposing the public defense scandal in his own county.

(I also saw another great p.d. who passed on me once before, but we're cool now. The lesson I learned from that experience was, if you want to shine with a potential employer, it's better not to spend the night before the job interview getting stuck in the snow in the Cascades and spending a few hours trying to dig out, then hitchhiking to the top of the pass and sleeping about five hours there, then riding back to the scene in the morning in the first-available tow truck, extracting your vehicle, and hauling ass to your interview town. Even if you arrive with minutes to spare, you don't exactly arrive fresh or impressive.)

Another good thing about the CLE was this cool house down the street, where Seattle stores most of its library books and some of its pretensions of being a "world-class" city. I spent the lunch hour there navigating the place, being impressed and perplexed in turn, and I guess I'll have to check out S M L XL to learn whether the cheap-ass aspect of much of the $165 million building resulted from Koolhaas' post-modern assault on the privileging of quality materials and workmanship, or just from a lack of funds after the dot-com bust.

Then from the high-brow delights of downtown Seattle to south King County and Winco! Every southern Idaho expatriate in the Puget Sound needs to make a pilgrimage here! Friday night in the Winco in Kent combined highlights of Idaho and Western Washington: Falls Brand meats, bulk food bins and white guys with garments visible under their shirts sharing the polyglot camaraderie of working-class Seattle. I loved it.

I know, I know, it's not a union shop, but it's closer in spirit and practice to Costco than to Walmart. Thinking of Winco's ESOP eases my mind as I feast on made-in-Idaho Basque chorizos and reflect on my continuing education, legal and otherwise.

NCDC from the inside

This is cool for alums of National Criminal Defense College - a blog entry from one of the actors:

i played a homosexual framed for murder in chicago's grant park, a c.i.a. special agent..., a cross-dresser being cross-examined over a double-crossing client, and a bad cop willing to say anything... all without changing my hair or wardrobe.

Back from college

Alaskablawg is in a reflective mood following his successful completion of National Criminal Defense College.

If you do criminal defense and ever get the chance to go to NCDC, take it.

Friday NCDC blogging

Inspired by Alaskablawg, here is my National Criminal Defense College group, Section D, from July 1998:

Instructor Steve Rench, me, Elizabeth, Susan, Luther, Horatio, Bonita, Mel, Donna

A fine band of brothers and sisters for a fine boot camp.

Suburban caseload ecstacies

Seth Abramson has returned from the NLADA training in Dayton with some fresh insights about public defense in the USA:

What I learned is that the sort of caseloads we see here in New England (55 to 80 distinct clients at any one time) are in no way representative of public defense in America. In fact, it's far more typical for a public defender to have 200 to 250 clients at a time. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that I met, in Dayton, a multitude of honest, hard-working, well-intentioned folks who were absolutely and irretrievably in over their heads.

My only quibble is, he needed to go to an out-of-state CLE to realize this?

Maybe some of us need to take the refresher course on "The Case - Against - Auschwitz" first

Hello? Unfortunately-Named Continuing Legal Education Classes Department? Is there still time to sign up for "The Case For Auschwitz"?

Friday, February 4, 2005, 8:30-11:45 a.m. (Registration: 8:00-8:30 a.m.), Seattle University School of Law, 3.00 CLE Credits

Honestly, it looks to be really interesting, and especially timely, but the title makes it sound like it's 10% off with your Aryan Nations club card. Puts me in mind of the complaint (Gilbert Gottfried's I think) about "The Sound of Music": "How come the Nazis didn't get any good songs?"

(Bonus link goes to a promo for the 2005 Sundance Audience Award world documentary about a hero of our times, "Shake Hands With The Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire", showing tonight on CBC.)

Update: For another documentary about Dallaire and the Rwandan genocide, tape or TiVo "The Last Just Man," on the Sundance Channel February 2 at 6:05/5:05 a.m.

News: ethics actually discussed at ethics CLE

Glad to say I've met my needs for a rental in the Olympia school district for the pets and us, found the new office with a 15-minute commute that avoids I-5, and picked up 4 (pending) Washington ethics credits.

Compliments to presenter Mike Gaffney of the Division of Governmental Studies & Services at Wazzu. The class was arranged for us public defenders and prosecutors by the local county extension agent; I liked that a land grant school sees its teaching mission extending beyond farmers and stockmen. Then our instructor got up and started talking about Aristotle of all things. This was going to be interesting.

Just about every other ethics CLE I've attended has been an uninspired slog through the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility. The format has been something like, "okay, let's hypothetically that say you do X; Model Rule X.XX says that you can't do that; everybody got that? okay, let's move on to Model Rule X.XY." If they really wanted to spice things up, they'd add, "but let's compare that to what the ABA proposed revisions to the Model Rules say." Riveting, what?

By contrast, the CLE this week was about, well, ethics. Imagine that, morality and right conduct being addressed in a room full of lawyers. Not the minimum we can get away with to avoid a Bar complaint, but what we ought to aspire to. Talk about the public trust and our own inner compasses. Those words "moral" and "morals" being bandied about, and John Stuart Mill thrown in for good measure. All this on the taxpayers' nickel, in a Blue state no less. Felt like I was back in undergrad - it was great.

Andrea Lyon, public defender hero

If you're ever on trial for your life, Andrea Lyon is a good name to know. She can say proudly that she has saved the life of an innocent man. As a public defender for over thirteen years, she took some 130 homicide cases to trial, including over 30 potential death penalty cases. Now she directs the Center for Justice in Capital Cases at Depaul University.

I've benefited from Andrea Lyon's example and dedication in person two times. She directs the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, one in-depth (and cheap!) week of CLE in Ann Arbor. She was also one of the best instructors at National Criminal Defense College, two intense (and cheap!) weeks of p.d. boot camp in Macon. The finest thing she taught me was by example. I'm a lawyer "of size." She is, too, and a confident and prosecutor-crushing one to boot. For a fat cat like me, it's really invigorating to meet a mentor who's large and in charge! She showed me how to stand tall in the courtroom and throw my whole weight into forming a bulwark between my clients and their accusers. "If you want to get my client, first you're gonna have to come through me" is not a bad motto for an XXXL p.d. Thank you, Andrea.

Good question

The National Legal Aid and Defender Association will be sponsoring a lawyers' retreat immediately preceding its annual conference. The day-long session on December 1 is in collaboration with the International Centre (sic) for Healing and the Law. Participants in the retreat will try to find answers to questions such as:

"* How do I continue to practice with passion and integrity as pressures within in the legal profession build; as dysfunction, poor management or funding cuts plague my organization; and as the external political and socio-economic environment continues to demoralize my clients?

* How do I stay centered on my core values when so much of legal practice is life draining and at times feels compromising?

* How do I reclaim my wholeness and authentically integrate who I am with the profession and the clients and communities that I serve?

* How do I learn to "lead by listening" to my clients and colleagues?

* How do I balance life-giving and life-draining aspects of practicing law?"

If they do come up with some answers, I hope that they'll share them with the rest of the class. As long as we don't go overboard with the drumming circles and psychodrama, it seems that asking these sorts of questions in the context of continuing legal education would be beneficial for all of us. There's a lot of emphasis in criminal defense training on the manly art of dominating the judge and jury, almost none on how to keep your head in the game for the long term without going nuts.

At NCDC, one of my Section D team-mates, a kind woman from Milwaukee, tried to bring up questions like these, of how to cope with losing so often, with so many cases, working through burn-out and discouragement, with clients who mistrust you, many of whom are (major third rail here) of a different race or culture than you. Our famous defense lawyer instructor of the day, who I won't name (but whose name rhymes with Boglevest) ripped her a new one, flamed her for being weak, and made her cry. We studied no more that day. It was a good team-building exercise, though; we rallied around our classmate, and froze out our tormentor.

So if individual poor people's lawyers are asking the questions internally, it strikes me that they need to be aired among ourselves, in relatively safe flame-proof settings, and not be censured or pushed aside by this tough-guy p.d. legal culture. The alternative seems to be to accept the drip-drip-drip of attrition of good people from the ranks, until only the biggest *ssh*les remain to defend the downtrodden.

Night of the Lepus, CLE of the Jackalope

My fellow Idahoan Steve Nipper of The Invent Blog is teaching a CLE this week about using the Internet to increase your law firm's business, something my p.d. pals and I probably don't need.

He states: If you have a blog and want to really mess with me (and my CLE), add a post mentioning "Idaho rabid jackalope bite attorney" to skew my rankings." And he throws a good jackalope picture into the bargain.

Thus do I oblige him.