by The Shadow There’s been at bar a guileful attorney named John Dicken, Whose duty of candor’s been dashed by his cherry pickin.’ By selectively citing from transcripts of many a witness, He changed “up” to “down” and “black” into…

by The Shadow A nervous attorney was conflicted ’tween two courts. Simultaneous hearings ’fore two judges left him all out of sorts. After consulting a surgeon to resolve the riddle, With a scalpel he divided himself clean down the middle,…

by The Shadow

In compliance with the law of unintended consequences the Georgia legislature has raised the per-page price of preparing an appellate record from $1.50 to $10. (H.B. 1055.) Thus, the typical cost of a 2,000-page transcript of the trial court record has gone from $3,000 to $20,000 with the stroke of the Governor’s pen. See O.C.G.A. § 15-6-77(g)(12).

Needless to say, the average litigant who’s already blown quite a bit of “di-ne-ro” on his own “Ci-ce-ro” is now effectively excluded from access to the appellate courts due directly to the greed of the legislature.

by The Shadow

Something wicked still prowls our legislatures and courthouses.

In the Shadow’s last missive (Zombies and Muslims) it was observed that the current political environment threatens to disinter monsters known as “zombie jurisprudence,” creatures that could stalk American Muslims as readily as those which have historically pursued other classes of innocent people.

Korematsu v. United States, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia were Supreme Court cases that failed to erect constitutional protections against abuses of governmental power. Such zombie jurisprudence, according to modern sensibilities, should remain dead and buried in a cemetery of legal anachronisms – never to be disturbed or disinterred.

by The Shadow

Public opinion can be like a grave digger’s shovel.

From a legal standpoint, that there exists a debate as to whether a Muslim community center should open its doors blocks from Ground Zero represents a metaphorical grave-digger’s shovel – a shovel that could disinter creatures that should be resting in peace.

Some of these creatures include such legal “zombies” as Korematsu v. United States (holding that “the military urgency of the situation” justified indiscriminate internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during WWII), Dred Scott v. Sanford (holding that descendants of African slaves were chattel and not people), and Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia (denying the Cherokee nation standing to sue for protection from Georgia’s seizure of persons and property).

by The Shadow

Psychological studies suggest the existence of a human characteristic known as “optimism bias.”

“Optimism bias” has been defined as the tendency for people to be over-optimistic about outcomes of planned actions. This includes over-estimating the likelihood of positive events occurring and under-estimating the likelihood of occurrence of negative events. In other words, humans tend to plan their lives with the expectation that their toast will always land butter-side-up. Let’s consider some examples of optimism bias:

by The Shadow

We lawyers tend to equate living in the electronic age with having reached a new pinnacle of evolutionary progress. But we can’t deny that much of what we consider to be part of the “e-revolution” is in fact a repackaging of old-fashioned skills and tools that lawyers have employed for millennia.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Esquire – whom many consider to be one of the greatest advocates and orators of all time – never performed Internet-based legal research, e-filing, or telecommuting. But what is not evident to many is that in the first century B.C. Cicero actually engaged in an activity that so many of us assume was invented just years ago: “blogging.”