WELCOME

This blog is for people who are looking for a lawyer to suit their needs. 

Lawyers acquire experience in different fields. 

Mine is the law found in the Halls of Justice of the San Francisco Bay Area.  I prosecuted for seven years and have defended for over thirty. 

I teach Constitutional Law, at San Francisco Law School, to keep the knife sharp and to pass along the qualities that I think make for a good lawyer.  If the police are involved, you may want me.

I've represented business people who've been sued or otherwise needed representation and have recovered substantial sums of money for individuals injured in accidents, usually involving motor vehicles.

Clients have ranged from poor people where I've been court-appointed to some of the wealthiest philanthropists you could ever dream of meeting.  It turns out that they're all just people and what you learn from one applies just as well to another. 

This is why they call it law "practice."  You're always practicing to get better by learning from what you've done. 

Medical friends advise that in medical school they're taught by hands-on example:  learn a procedure, do the procedure, then teach the procedure.

Lawyers should do something similar:  pass on what you've learned, somehow.

My way is by teaching, writing, and blogging, mainly on the other blog, Sheridan Conlaw.  You can arrive there by clicking the Sheridan Conlaw link in the margin to the right.  In the lower right margin you'll find articles published in professional journals.  They mainly consider the failure to conduct a proper investigation, where false accusation results, and there's hell to pay. 

False accusations are particularly challenging, and I've represented in my fair share, with considerable success. 

You can read about some of them below. 

I write in hope of teaching how not to make the same mistake again, and again, and again. 

It doesn't always take, as we keep seeing the same mistakes again, and again, and again, don't we.

But we try.

WHAT KIND OF LAWYER ARE YOU?

When asked that question I often gave the wrong answer.

While it is true that much of my work has centered on the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Sonoma and Alameda counties, not to mention Fresno, Monterey and Santa Barbara, the fact is that I work in other legal areas as well and have for a long time.  I didn't want that broad law school education to go to waste.  I worked too hard to let it go by the boards.

When meeting new people, they would often ask what I did.

If I said, "Law," they wanted to know what field of law, trying to narrow me down, I guessed.

"A lot of it brings me to the Hall of Justice," I'd reply.

"Criminal law?" they might ask, or I might declare.

That was usually enough to stop the conversation right there.  Most people see themselves as solid citizens who have no use for a "criminal lawyer."

Until their spouse picks up the phone and the police arrive after an argument, or one of them gets pulled over with alcohol on the breath, or their kid gets picked up because he hopped a ride in the wrong car, one that happened not to be registered to the other kid who was driving, and oh, yeah, the baggie of Mj wasn't mine, much less the gun in the trunk.

My argument is that if criminal lawyers are good enough for presidents of the United States to keep in their Rolodex, my name should be in yours.

But since I don't like conversations to stop when I say what I do a lot of, criminal law, appearing in the Hall of Justice here, there, and wherever, a better answer is to say that I represent people who have legal problems because of psychological problems.

Most of the people I represent are decent people who've messed up.  Either that or someone else has, and they're catching the brunt of it.  Either way, one can usually find a psychological cause for an unfortunate situation.  Since most  people understand that, this usually opens the way for a nice conversation, for we've all known someone who had emotional problems that led to drinking or drug or domestic relations problems.  Now we can talk.  People respect this, unlike the way they react to the term that closes down conversations.

When people ask what kind of lawyer I am, I try to remember to say that I'm a good lawyer, someone who keeps up with developments, in part by teaching and writing about them.

Everybody needs to be able to call a good lawyer once in awhile.

Which president do you admire the most?

Abraham Lincoln?

Good.  Me too.

He was a good lawyer.

We should all be like him.

Honest Abe, they called him.