Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
AUGUST 27, 2020 – Normally, my law practice doesn’t involve really bad behavior. In other words, I don’t practice family law or criminal defense law. My practice is mostly commercial real estate and business law. (Did I detect a yawn?) But one day along came a real estate case involving enough skullduggery to pinch over …
JUNE 25, 2020 – When I started law school, I figured the easiest subject would be “ethics.” I thought I had a solid handle on “right” and “wrong” and would know intuitively such foundational rules as, you can’t lie and you can’t steal from client funds in your firm’s trust account. Little did I appreciate …
JUNE 22, 2020 – In my first year of practice, I handled “misdemeanor prosecutions” under my firm’s contract with a small suburb. Most cases involved traffic violations, though occasionally a bar scofflaw produced disorderly conduct charges. I usually negotiated deals but drove harder bargains in DUI cases. Several went to trial, which I relished for …
JUNE 7, 2020 – If relaxed curfews now allow us to catch our collective breath, we’re not out of the woods yet. We might well be facing more serious danger ahead—too little reform too late; another case of overt police brutality; some other flashpoint, starting with the prosecution of the four Minneapolis cops. All four …
MARCH 28, 2020 – The full financial fallout from Corvid-19 is currently unknowable. What’s foreseeable, however, is a tsunami of mortgage defaults. Depending on when the contagion dissipates, the blowout of real estate values will keep us in a major post-corvid-19 recession. In addition to other pressing concerns of responsible governance, governors and legislators must …
FEBRUARY 9, 2020 – When I was in law school, I had a legal-writing professor whose class was a real downer. At the outset of every session, he’d walk to the chalkboard, pick up a stick of chalk and write across the board, “THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THIS WORLD.” I thought this was a …
DECEMBER 19, 2019 – Earlier this week I had a spirited conversation with each of four lawyers, including a current sitting district court judge and a retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice. One exchange was over an impromptu lunch; the others were in downtown Minneapolis skyways. I’ve known each of these people for years, having practiced …
DECEMBER 18, 2019 – A few years ago I was asked to represent a faction of a local mosque, whose members were Somali immigrants. They claimed they’d been ousted from the board and other positions by a competing faction that had resorted to illegal methods, aided by the local police. After extensive interviews, thorough examination …
OCTOBER 20, 2019 – Fast forward two years. Another client, from Florida, had just bought out of bankruptcy, a short-line railroad running from a small manufacturing town 60 miles west of the Twin Cities to a railyard in Minneapolis. He hadn’t acquired the railroad for its freight-hauling business. He’d bought it for all the “sleeper” …
OCTOBER 19, 2019 – (cont.) I’ll never forget the settlement meeting that ensued. The developer was owned by two brothers who’d immigrated from Italy years before. The older brother had been a tank commander in North Africa under Rommel’s command in World War II. Of the Renowned Club principals in the room, one was a founder, …
JULY 12, 2019 – Recently I moved my offices from the Flour Exchange Building to the TriTech Center, two blocks closer to the center of downtown Minneapolis. What prompted the move was a big rent hike. The new space is fresh, “high-tech,” splashy, and appealing, especially to hipsters . . . like me. It even …
JUNE 2, 2019 – I immediately called my client at home in southern France. He’d been expecting me to call after the hearing. “How’d it go? Did we . . .” “Can you hear me?” I said, repeatedly. Bad connection. I tried ringing again but the call wouldn’t go through. To improve the signal, I …
JUNE 1, 2019 – Once we’d settled in, the judge took his seat behind his commanding desk and asked us one by one to identify ourselves and our clients—none of whom was present. My guy was the only individual party in the case. The other parties were giant corporations, and I’d wanted to position my …
MAY 31, 2019 – The case revolved around an arcane issue, and the resulting briefs were sufficiently dense to put any judge fast asleep. They had been a laborious undertaking for all of us lawyers involved—briefs in support of cross-motions for “summary judgment.” When the time for the hearing arrived—9:00 on a Monday morning in …
MAY 29, 2019 – Occasionally a client wants me to sue the pants off someone. The client is as indignant as can be over a business deal gone bad. The opposing side, he says, is dumb, lying and crazy. The client is so worked up s/he starts in the middle of the story, then travels …