Lack of posts
Apologies to my hypothetical and probably fictional readers for the lack of posts of late. I've been too busy being a lawyer to post regularly about the law. Ah, irony. I'm not sure how other lawyers (check out the panel to the right for some links) can keep such great blogs running.
This week has primarily been criminal court, with one detour into Family Court in Mayville for a case that just won't settle. I never planned to do criminal law at all, which is in part due to the fact that my Crim Law professor in law school was such an arrogant little pri...well, let's just say he wasn't a very good teacher. First day of class, he scolded us for not doing the reading when, in fact, he hadn't assigned the correct chapter, but when someone (me) pointed that out, his take was that we should have known to read further. Reasons to do away with tenure, I present Professor Binder. It was sort of funny, though, to watch the distribution of students in the class. In the beginning, people were spread around the room. By the end, those few that still showed up had joined me and my friends in the back of the room, hoping to avoid any contact with the professor.
Later on, I took "Federal Criminal Procedure" from John Humann, a long-time litigator and current Federal PD, and that class was possibly the best I had taken in law school. Unfortunately, I spent a large part of it wishing I had enough crim law/crim pro knowledge to truly get a grasp on the material. Not only because he was a good teacher, but he loved his job, and that's infectious. And in my practice, at least, crim pro is easily 150 times more valuable than crim law. For all the talk of actus reus and mens rea, when they have your client on videotape setting up a crack sale while pimping three hookers and a there's a visible body in the trunk, there's not a lot to lean on except procedure.
This week has primarily been criminal court, with one detour into Family Court in Mayville for a case that just won't settle. I never planned to do criminal law at all, which is in part due to the fact that my Crim Law professor in law school was such an arrogant little pri...well, let's just say he wasn't a very good teacher. First day of class, he scolded us for not doing the reading when, in fact, he hadn't assigned the correct chapter, but when someone (me) pointed that out, his take was that we should have known to read further. Reasons to do away with tenure, I present Professor Binder. It was sort of funny, though, to watch the distribution of students in the class. In the beginning, people were spread around the room. By the end, those few that still showed up had joined me and my friends in the back of the room, hoping to avoid any contact with the professor.
Later on, I took "Federal Criminal Procedure" from John Humann, a long-time litigator and current Federal PD, and that class was possibly the best I had taken in law school. Unfortunately, I spent a large part of it wishing I had enough crim law/crim pro knowledge to truly get a grasp on the material. Not only because he was a good teacher, but he loved his job, and that's infectious. And in my practice, at least, crim pro is easily 150 times more valuable than crim law. For all the talk of actus reus and mens rea, when they have your client on videotape setting up a crack sale while pimping three hookers and a there's a visible body in the trunk, there's not a lot to lean on except procedure.
posted by TM at 10:26 PM
1 Comments:
I can relate, having Prof. Binder for Crim. Law in Spring '03. He wrote the textbook, but could never help us get a handle on the material...
Anyway, good to know some UB grads are out there working!
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