Traps for Iowa Lawyers

There are tons of traps for lawyers – little deadlines or rules that could easily be missed and screw up a case. Good lawyers know what they are and how to avoid them. Here’s one:
Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.906 states that the clerk shall set a trial-setting conference in all cases within 90 days [...]

Tips For New Attorneys – How to Dress for Court

This post is for the guys only. (Sorry Ladies… women’s professional fashions are soooo complicated, I wouldn’t know where to begin).
Most of this I learned on my own through trial and error. My purpose for writing this is not to chastise bad fashion choices, but to educate young lawyers like me who don’t know [...]

Want to know who your foreman is going to be?

 
(Image courtesy of stockxpert.com)
Next time you pick a jury, see if this study concluding that leaders emerge by talking early and often is correct.  Is the person who spoke first and the most in voir dire the foreman? More accurately, if you talk to jurors afterwards, ask how they picked the foreman. Did he/she lead the group [...]

Illinois Litigation Attorneys – Don’t Forget Rule 222 Disclosures

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m trying to get back into it. Here’s a potential pothole for attorneys who handle cases worth between $10,000 and $50,000, but don’t do a lot of litigation: Rule 222.
Rule 222 provides for limited and simplified discovery in these cases. The big sticker here is that the [...]

Lessons from voir dire… don’t upset Cubs fans

Just a quick story from a recent trial.
Here in Illinois, and probably everywhere Cubs fans reside, people thought this was the year the Cubs would go back to the World Series. That didn’t happen. Not too long after the Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs, I had a two day jury trial.
There were four attorneys, [...]

Advice to Attorneys Representing Themselves

I was talking to a judicial magistrate in Iowa today (magistrates are part-time judges who hear routine traffic/criminal matters, small claims cases, etc) and he told me something interesting.
Attorneys who represent themselves on traffic tickets and such tend to be very arrogant at trial and act like they’re better than the witnesses, the police officer, [...]

A reason for your clients to reconsider chiropractic treatment

Most car accident cases involve some level of injury to the neck and/or back. Sometimes it’s just a strain that lasts a couple of days – sometimes it’s more severe.
Many victims of car accidents go to a chiropractor for treatment. Sounds reasonable, right? Not always.
I’m not a doctor. I don’t pretend to give medical advice [...]

Medical Malpractice or Medical Mismanagement?

The Deliberations blog points us to a post from David Swanner at the South Carolina Trial Law blog. Mr. Swanner’s post points to the fact that medical malpractice trials are becoming harder to win, and suggests the following way to help the jury understand the case:
Don’t call it “medical malpractice” – call it “medical mismanagement.” [...]

Has a prospective juror heard about your case? Strike ‘em!

Sometimes, as we pick a jury, we run across someone on the panel who has heard about our case. This happened to me with several jurors in my last trial. The jurors who had heard about the incident were reluctant to really say everything they remembered hearing, but I really had the feeling that they [...]

Jury selection – do I pick more men or women?

Picking a jury is one of the most discussed and agonized-over topics in all of trial practice. One of the big questions is demographics – what types of people should be on the jury?
I’ve always believed that pure demographics (age, sex, income, race) don’t help much, if at all, when picking a jury. Many lawyers [...]