Gizmo Project Rocks

I've had the pleasure in the last couple of weeks to talk to a number of fun, interesting, and knowledgeable people as I prepare the podcast to end all podcasts—the back-to-school podcast for Blawg Review #22, which will be hosted by Blawg Wisdom on September 5. As you may recall, I've been trying to figure out a good way to record phone interviews for podcasting purposes. I started with Slapcast, which allows you to record 5-minute bits of conversation with someone just by creating a 3-way call. Simple, easy, cool, except that 5 minutes is kind off limiting. It's a pain to get into a conversation and then be cut off at the 5 minute mark, redial, get back into it, get cut off, etc. Plus, it means lots of editing to put the bits together later. Then I Iooked into using Skype to record calls, but the only way I found to do that seemed incredibly complicated (and a bit costly in terms of software required). Then the good folks at Slapcast invited me to try a Skype recording beta that allows you to make a 3-way conference call in Skype to record your call—way cool! It's pretty darned close to one-click call-recording. The only real drawback is that Slapcast costs $5 month.

Enter GizmoProject. It's free, it allows you to call any phone in the world (or any other Gizmo user, obviously), and it has true one-click recording that works, well, pretty great. It seems to add a bit of a break to your recording every few minutes—I think it has to do w/disk speed and saving the file as you talk or something. But still, the quality is better than most recorded phone calls, you can talk as long as you want, and, like I said, one click and you're recording. And did I mention it's free? Ok, it's not totally free. The ability to call actual phone numbers requires you to buy call-out credit which is about 1.8 cents/minute. That's not much, and Skype has the same requirement, so on balance Gizmo definitely wins b/c of its ease of recording.

So if I could channel Strongbad : Everybody to the Gizmo! (Go here and download the song “Everybody to the Limit” if you don't know what I'm talking about. You'll be glad you did.)

Posted 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | voices

Congrats to D.C. area law students from the ABA

I got an email a couple off weeks ago on the heels of the national ABA convention that said the 11th Circuit of the ABA Law Student Division won a nice handful of awards at those meetings. Since that apparently includes my own school, GW, congratulations to the following:

Student Bar Association Award:
George Washington University Law School
 
Best Law School Newspaper Feature Article:
Matthew Schwartz - “Ethics Journal Loses Member Over Copyright”
Georgetown Law Weekly - Georgetown University Law Center
 
Best Law School Newspaper Editorial:
Marcus Ehrlander - “Abusing the Democratic Process”
Nota Bene - Georgetown Washington University Law School
 
Best Magazine:
Business Law Brief
American University, Washington College of Law

Oh, and while the GW SBA is doing so well, hows about we get some storage space for the EJF so we don't have to basically prepare the public interest auction out of the trunk of someone's car every year, hmm? ;-)

Posted 01:52 PM | TrackBack | 3L

Wisdom Request: Calling Couplers

There's a great new request for wisdom over at Blawg Wisdom. Please check it out—especially if you're a law student who has managed to make it through law school with a relationship/marriage intact, or if you're the spouse of a current or former law student.

Posted 11:06 AM | TrackBack | advice

Reality: Expect the Unexpected

So pickup yesterday went mostly as planned, but you know what? The real thing is never as simple as the theory and that may be nowhere more true than when you're dealing with indigent criminal defendants. I'm leery of revealing too much about yesterday for fear of compromising my client in some way, but these things I will say:

Interviewing a client in lockup is tough. You're standing there, talking through the bars, basically shouting over the roar of the 20 other guys in the cell with your client. Your client will always have bad breath—count on it. He's been in jail for possibly as much as 24 hours and he has not had a mint, or brushed his teeth, or anything else in that time. But that's nothing. What's hard is the shouting, the fact that you have to hold your papers and write standing up, and the fact that your client probably doesn't trust you any further than he can throw you—especially since at least 5 people standing nearby can probably hear everything he says. And to top it all off, your client might be belligerent, or crazy, or crying, or any number of extreme things that you just can't simulate or prepare for in a theoretical way. So you can practice client interviews all you want, but until you've done them in conditions like this, you won't know what you're talking about.

Note: I've done 15-20 interviews w/indigent criminal defendants but none has ever been this challenging because I conducted them all in a Public Defender's office, sitting down across a table or desk from the client, with the door closed so we could talk freely without fear of anyone else listening in. Very very different.

Pickup can take all day, or just a few minutes. If you're an experienced attorney and you get lucky, you could show up to the courthouse at 12:30 p.m., pick up your client's PSA (if it's ready), interview your client briefly, get your case called in the first half hour, get your client out, interview him, and you're outta there by 1:30. Unfortunately it seems that many lawyers never interview their clients prior to arraignment so they can do the whole pickup process even faster. Not us. As students (aka: puppies) we're eager and earnest and we want to do the best possible job so we're there at 10 a.m., we run our client's record, we interview the client, we call people to verify information, we check on client's drug tests, we interview our client again to discuss anything we've learned, and then we sit in court waiting waiting waiting for our case to be called. I was actually one of the lucky ones yesterday: I was there at 10 a.m. and was mostly busy until 1 p.m., but then my case was about the 5th one called so I really was out by 1:30 p.m.

Luckily, I got my client out, but for a second I thought I wouldn't. I read my litany, I passed the prosecutor my business card, I handed the clerk my praecipe (basically saying my client agrees to allow me to represent him, since I'm a student), and I asked the court to release my client on his own recognizance. Everything was going swimmingly and then the prosecutor said, “Your honor, may we approach?”

Approach!? Wha!? Hey, this wasn't in my script, dude! You're killing my buzz here! Approach!?

But whatever, we approached, and since the approach was necessary I won't go into its purpose, but the prosecutor made a motion and a little argument, I countered, my supervisor (who thankfully followed us up to the bench) added one very important point I'd forgotten, the prosecutor had little response, I argued just a little more (basically repeating what I'd said and folding in what my supervisor had added), and the judge concluded to the prosecutor: “Denied.”

Ha! I just won my first sidebar!

Ok, so I'm totally making this sound like more of a big deal than it is/was, and it truly may have gone the other way had my supervisor not been there, but it was a bit tense, very exciting, and it definitely was a relief to not lose that little skirmish. After that, the prosecutor didn't seem to want much more from me or my client—she had no further argument against his release on his own recognizance so she just asked for a stay-away, we didn't object, and my client was free to go.

Although that was great, the day ended on a less-great note because I basically didn't get much out of my client in terms of a defense. As I walked my client out of the courthouse, I tried to convince him to come back to the office with me to discuss his case and develop a defense. He wasn't interested; he was free and he had places to go, man! But first, he needed a cigarette. I walked with him for a few blocks, stopping every few steps so he could ask someone new if he could bum a smoke. Finally I stopped at a street cart and bought a pack of cigarettes for him, then I sat him down and tried to get him to talk to me about his case. He was much calmer and more patient as he smoked, but he still didn't have much to say. After a few minutes of this and two cigarettes, he said he had to get going and what was I going to say? I told him I'd see him in court in a couple of weeks (and I told him over and over how important it was that he be there!), and that was that.

A good day. A challenging day. And even though this was all very small potatoes and not everything went according to plan, it felt great to return to the office knowing my client was no longer behind bars and that I'd had a hand in helping to set him free. We'll be back in court in about two weeks and I have a lot to do between now and then for the case, but for now, I'll consider this a good start for the year.

Posted 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | 3L

The Litany

I'm heading over to the courthouse to pick up my first case(s) soon. This means I called in last night to say I wanted to pick up cases and left my D.C. Bar number. Yeah, I have a Bar card now! It's a student practice card, but still—the Bar number will get me into the jail and allow me to represent clients (w/supervision), so it's still pretty cool.

Anyway, now that I've called in, I head to court to learn who my client(s) will be, pick up their pre-sentence assessments (PSAs), then head to the cellblock to talk to them about how we're going to try to get them out of there. After that, I'll make calls to verify information the clients have given me (if necessary), see if the drug unit has completed testing a urine sample for my clients, try to talk to the clients' probation officer(s), if they have them, to see if the PO is going to recommend a hold for any reason. Finally, I'll run my client(s) records and, if there's time, verify that they are correct by pulling the relevant case jackets for any prior convictions.

All that is to prepare for arraignment where I'll stand beside my client in front of the judge and recite the following litany:

Good morning, your Honor, Mr. Imbroglio from D.C. Law Students in Court, here with my supervisor, Mr. Supervisor, on behalf of Mr. Client. On behalf of Mr. Client, we waive a formal reading, enter a plea of not guilty, assert Mr. Client's 5th and 6th Amendment rights to counsel in this and all other matters, and request a speedy trial.

After that the prosecutor will probably ask the judge to hold Mr. Client, in which case I'll get a “Gerstein”—a statement of probable cause to justify such a hold as required by Gerstein v. Pugh. If at all possible I'll argue that the Gerstein does not constitute probable cause and that the court should release Mr. Client on his own recognizance. If the prosecutor does not ask for a hold or does ask but loses the argument, he or she will probably then ask for conditions of release such as stay-away orders (client must stay away from anyone involved in alleged crime and from the place where the crime took place or where client was picked up), drug testing, etc. If all goes well, I'll leave the courtroom with my clients and have a chance to interview them before they head back out into the world to await trial.

That's how it's supposed to work, anyway. I guess I'll see what the reality is in a couple of hours. This is both exciting and a little frightening. I stood up for three clients during my summer internship, but that felt much more familiar and controlled than this because I had so much more time for preparation of each case before going in front of the judge and because I knew all the people involved—the attorney I worked with, the prosecutors, the judge, the deputies in the courtroom, etc.—because I'd already spent literally months working in and around that courthouse. In contrast, today I'll go to at least one place I've never been (the cellblock) and I'll be working in a courtroom and courthouse wehre I've spent all of a couple hours. Sshh! Don't tell my clients!

I'll let you know what happens.

Posted 08:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | 3L

DC LSIC: Orientation Notes, Day 4

I got a little busy over the weekend but here are the final few bits from my last day of orientation last Saturday for D.C. Law Students In Court:

1. Rule #1: The government always wins.
2. Rule #2: The quickest argument can trump Rule #1. (The court wants things to move fast and with the least possible hassle, so if you get there first w/your point, you're more likely to win.
3. Court-appointed attorneys are not free if you lose. In D.C., if you're found guilty in a case where you have a court-appointed attorney, you court costs will be somewhere between $50-$250 for a misdemeanor. It's more for a felony. (I still need to find out what the income cap is to qualify for court-appointed.)
4. The U.S. Attorneys speak of “allocution” when talking about sentencing arguments. E.g., “we reserve allocution,” or “we waive allocution” in a plea offer. Why don't they just say “argument”? Silly lawyers.

That's about it. Of course, we covered a lot of material that I haven't mentioned here, but these are the high points. I'll pick up my first cases on Thursday and the clinic runs from now until graduation, so expect further updates in the coming months.

One more note: We need to appear as lawyerly and professional as possible, and one way to do that is to have business cards ready to hand to clients when we meet them. If you find yourself needing business cards for any reason, check out VistaPrint, where you can get 250 cards for $5.25 (the cost of shipping).

Posted 10:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L

Guest Computer User

I left my computer sort of laying around the other night when we had a houseful of guests and when I opened it up the next morning I found a browser window open to the Westlaw version of U.S. v. Johnson, 123 Fed.Appx. 240, 2005 WL 589976 (C.A.7 (Ind.)). Another window was open to this recording of the oral argument in that case in which an exasperated attorney is apparently arguing a position that would contradict the U.S. Supreme Court and the 7th Circuit is having none of it. I have not investigated beyond this point to really understand what this is about except that the attorney is arguing that pretextual stops by police are really really bad. I certainly agree. When he's done, it sort of sounds like he tries to walk out and the clerk won't let him. It's all very strange.

But who was looking at this case and why? The mystery may never be solved....

Posted 11:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | crimlaw

You Suck and That's Sad

What “Happy Bunny” phrase are you? you suck and that's sad You are a very compassionate and sympathetic person. You use your divine sense of humor to cheer up a situation.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

[via TSC Girl]

Posted 11:07 PM | TrackBack | life generally