Current legal news is of interest to almost every attorney; seemingly, small decisions may make large inroads or changes in current laws. Changes within the legal field affecting ethics can have expanding ripples and is of great interest to most practicing attorneys. Not every case of interest or decision that affects every attorney makes it to the front page of the national news. Instead, most attorneys use a legal newspaper or publication to keep up to date with landmark cases, or even seemingly innocuous decisions that point to larger issues.
There are news items of broad interest to the trial lawyer such as a recent Philadelphia case where a defendant attempted to fire his lawyer and represent himself. The accused was subsequently denied admittance into the courtroom for his own trial.
After accused murderer Eric DeShann Floyd tried to fire his own lawyer and said he would rather be executed than continue with the court appointed lawyer, Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes, refused to allow that. She further declared the defendant was irrational and relegated him to watching his own trial from closed circuit television due to his disruptive behavior during jury selection.
Even tax laws have a very broad appeal when a billionaire dies at just the right time, for his heirs. The death of the billionaire even three months prior would have put his 9 billion dollar estate in the 45% estate tax bracket, and living until 2011 would have placed his estate tax in the 55% bracket, as it is due to a window in the law, his estate was exempt from that tax. This episode may go a long way toward proving that wealth is partly about timing.
Current law news may not always be current business news, or trial decisions, it can be about interactions between attorneys. An attorney's job is never easy no matter what path they have chosen in law. It requires a great deal of knowledge and patience and interaction with clients who may not always share the same values and views as well as other attorneys.
Attorney versus attorney conflicts have made the current legal news with a Chicago traffic court lawyer facing charges of "name calling" over a period of 7 years referring to opposing attorneys as "Jews, fags, faggots, child molesters, homosexuals". Last year, the same attorney Thomas Guadagno faced a similar charge and was convicted of disorderly conduct for referring to an opposing attorney as a homosexual, and scumbag, he was sentenced to anger management and court supervision.
Chicago must be a rough town for attorneys since in current legal news, a 47 year old assistant public defender, Henry Hams put a Cook County prosecutor in a choking head lock and "rode him down the wall" according to the Chicago Tribune reporting on this unfortunate incident.
An attorney's interest in current legal news and issues may not bear exclusively on his specialty since there are ethics issues being decided as to judges being permitted to receive "some" pay for artistic endeavors which speaks to the financial crisis that faces most judges and attorneys practicing law today. It is necessary to the practicing attorney, law clerk and paralegal to keep abreast of all types of legal news today.
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