Law Blog

Based on some stats compiled by our trusty IT department, we’ve learned that of all of LegalMatch’s city and county pages across the United States, locations in the South, particularly the Southeast, generate the most interest among prospective LegalMatch clients.

For example, LegalMatch’s article on Fayetteville, North Carolina appears to have generated the most interest so far in 2009.

Also extremely popular are articles about lawyers in Bell County, Texas, and Broward County, Florida.

As past blog posts have mentioned, many areas of law that prospective clients are interested in (wrongful termination, bankruptcy, etc.) might be indicative of the current state of the economy, so it is also possible that the geographic regions are also a reflection on the economy.

Common wisdom is that small towns and rural areas have been hardest-hit by the current recession. While a person is not likely to be able to litigate themselves out of poverty, sometimes, when someone has lost their job, or is facing foreclosure on their home, another party has acted wrongfully, and they are entitled to redress.

Another reason why smaller markets in general (not particularly in the South) are a rich source of pageviews might be the fact that there are simply fewer lawyers in those areas than in big cities. For example, if you do an internet search for “New York Lawyers” or “San Francisco Lawyers,” you’re going to get a huge number of results, simply because there are a huge number of lawyers in those cities.

On the other hand, in a small town, with the legal market dominated by small firms and solo practitioners, doing a search for lawyers in those areas tends to bring up a LegalMatch article.

This is good for both lawyers and prospective clients in those areas – prospective clients, when they do a search for lawyers in a small town, rather than finding hundreds of websites for firms that may or may not be taking new cases, they come across the LegalMatch page for that town, where they know that there will be lawyers who have affirmatively indicated that they are taking new cases.

If you’ve been watching cable news, you’re probably aware of the “Birther” movement – a loose coalition of individuals and organizations promoting the idea that Barack Obama is, for one reason or another, not constitutionally eligible to serve as President.

They make a variety of factual and legal arguments to support their conspiracy theories. The most common “factual” (a term I use loosely) argument they make is that Obama was not actually born in Hawaii, as is widely accepted. Instead, they claim, he was born in a foreign country (usually Kenya). Of course, they ignore that a Certification of Live Birth has been released, and confirmed to be accurate by the relevant officials in Hawaii.

Others concede that he was born in Hawaii, and rely on dubious legal arguments to support their claims. Some claim (usually without citing any supporting authority) that, in order to be a “natural born citizen” under the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, both parents must also be citizens of the United States. To be fair, the Supreme Court has never firmly ruled on what it means to be a “natural born citizen” under the meaning of the Constitution. So, the birthers have simply settled on their own definition, to the exclusion of all other possible definitions.

To support this point, they often rely on the writings of a Swiss political philosopher named Emerich de Vattel, author of the 1758 book “The Law of Nations.” This tome was apparently quite influential in the early development of international law, and it advocates the idea that, for a person to be a “true” citizen of a nation, both of his or her parents must also be citizens. There’s just one problem: no evidence suggests that this work particularly influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution when they were drafting that document. Even if it did, a Swiss book on political philosophy is not binding legal precedent in the United States.

None of this has stopped a dentist/lawyer named Orly Taitz from filing a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s eligibility to serve.

The result? The case was dismissed almost immediately. However, Ms. Taitz continued to file motions, and, after repeated warnings from the judge, was slapped with a $20,000 fine for misconduct, noting that she made no coherent legal arguments, and that her briefs and motions read more like political manifestos than court documents.

It should be noted that one of the best things about this country is the fact that you can say almost anything about anyone, especially elected officials, with relatively few legal ramifications. However, that does not mean that you are guaranteed a platform to air your views, or that you get to use the courts to air whatever crazy idea happens to pop into your head. If that were the case, I’d be in court right now, arguing the merits of hamburger earmuffs.

In the end, we should all remember that the courts are a place to settle genuine legal disputes, and the non-issue of Mr. Obama’s citizenship is not one of them. Ms. Taitz has every right to express her political views in any number of ways. She could buy space on a billboard, she could run spots on the radio, or she could simply make like this guy.

o hai. i can haz injunction?

Alright, I’ll stop now. If you haven’t already closed your browser in disgust (and I don’t blame you if you have), you may be wondering what this is about. According to the ABA Journal, the highest court in the UK has allowed an anonymous blogger to be notified of an injunction through a Twitter message.

The blogger in question was impersonating a well-known English lawyer, Donal Blaney, who also happens to be a frequent conservative commentator. In his blog, the anonymous blogger apparently held himself out to be Blaney, and wrote articles under his name, promulgating caricatured political positions.

Because the identity of the anonymous blogger could not be readily ascertained, and Twitter was the easiest way to contact him, the court granted Blaney’s request to serve the injunction via Twitter. The Twitter message sent to the blogger contains a link to a copy of the injunction, and orders him to immediately cease impersonating Blaney, and to reveal his identity.

This follows on the heels of a ruling by an Australian Court, a defendant was served with notice of a default judgment through Facebook.

Apparently, courts in Australia are well known for their tech savvy, already allowing service of process via email and text messages, so such a move is to be expected. The question, then, is when should we expect such forward-thinking actions from American courts? If I had to guess, I’d say we have a while to wait, considering that some of them haven’t yet mastered advanced staple technology.

In all seriousness, this does raise some interesting questions about how service of legal documents should be handled in the digital age. The courts of most U.S. states, and the federal government, call for service to be delivered personally, in a hard copy. This is certainly the preferable method, as it all but eliminates any uncertainty as to whether or not service was actually received. However, it’s not always possible, for a variety of reasons. In such cases, “substituted service” – leaving the documents with another member of the person’s household, or at their place of business, is acceptable, as is service by mail.

Really, though, given the fact that most people in the developed world use email, and many also use social networking sites, wouldn’t allowing service by electronic means make sense, at least if other methods of service fail? After all, you can now check your email on almost any device that has a screen, and most people check their email on a daily basis. It would be pretty hard for someone to claim with a straight face that they haven’t received service, if they could receive it via email.

Of course this raises issues, as well. Once it becomes accepted that you can receive notice of a lawsuit via email, it won’t be long before the scammers realize that they can separate fools from their money by emailing them fake summons, and telling them that this pesky lawsuit can go away for a reasonable fee.

So, there are a few kinks to work out of the system, but in cases such as this, when the defendant is clearly a real person, with ready means of contact, but cannot be identified for whatever reason, it seems that justice could be served much more efficiently if this method of service were allowed.

Remember in elementary school how your teacher would constantly harp on you about penmanship?  No?  Apparently, once again, I’m the odd man out as my first-grade teacher said my handwriting was comparable to Jeffrey Dahmer’s.  Well Mrs. Donaldson, at least I haven’t wasted my life for the past 20 years teaching a bunch of snot-nosed kids…  Anyway the point I was trying to make is that all that emphasis your parents, teachers, and adults in general have been putting on you since you were young about making things neat had a purpose after all.

It seems that our justice system is being run by a bunch of Catholic school nuns hell-bent on tidiness because court cases are being thrown out for completely arbitrary reasons.  How arbitrary you ask?  How about poorly-stapled-document arbitrary?

Yes, that’s right people, if you’re planning on filing a claim in the New York Supreme Court, you better make sure your papers are aligned properly and the sharp points on your staples are filed down because the nuns running that court are also made out of sugar.  According to Justice Charles J. Markey, “[T]he poor stapling of the papers was so negligent as to inflict, and did inflict repeatedly, physical injury to the court personnel handling them.”  That must’ve been one incredibly bad staple job…

I’d hate to be the attorney on that one, what an uncomfortable phone call you’d have to make to the client.

“My motion was denied?  But how, I thought my case had a sound legal basis??  What, a staple??”

Now to be fair, that staple from hell did draw blood, twice.  And at the very least the court gave a reason for denying the motion, as unjustified as it may be, which is much better than what some courts give those trying to shove their cases before an almighty judge.  The court also claims that the reason for the denial stemmed from the lawyer forgetting to include his signature as well as missing affidavits from the plaintiff.  Way to recover…

Seriously though, a staple?  Reading this story, one can’t help but think of the first rule of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: “all civil actions and proceedings in the United States district courts…should be construed and administered to secure the just…determination of every action and proceeding.”  Which any smart-ass first-year law student can tell you basically means that the court is supposed to look at all claims so as to do justice for all those involved.  Justice.  Denying a plaintiff’s motion because the staple they used to keep their documents from flying apart doesn’t sound very fair to me (and I hope it doesn’t to you either).  Whatever happened to, oh I don’t know, judging claims on their merits?  Call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I’m just one of the nutty guys who still believe that courts were created to judge everything fairly.  They should really start tearing down those blind justice statutes all over the place.

So what’s the moral of this story?  Evidently, it’s that when you hire a lawyer make sure you insist that they include their kindergarten teacher on their list of references.

Being a lawyer is tough.  If you work at a big firm, you have partners breathing down your neck to bill more hours, a seemingly endless pile of mind-numbing documents to review, and a constant sinking feeling that you may be axed on any given day.  Working as a sole practitioner isn’t much better either.  You have to constantly find clients or risk going under, do all your legal research on your own, and deal with something everyone hates: getting your clients to pay for services rendered.

Well, one lawyer has found a way around all of this.  I can’t for the life of me understand how no one figured out before.  Robert P. Mangieri, 68, discovered a way to outsmart all us dolts wasting our time with education and training.  He found that you can just practice law without a license.  It’s so easy and obvious, how did years of attorneys not figure it out sooner?  No need to waste all that money and time on law school or endure countless hours trying to understand how that freakin’ rule against perpetuities doctrine works, just lie and say you did all that crap.  Then all you have to do is open shop, maybe hang up some fake diplomas, and start raking in the money from hapless clients who are too poor to properly check out your credentials.  And the best part is that you don’t have to do any legal research since you’re already lying about your competency or that you’re even legally able to practice law.

I can’t tell guys – was I laying the sarcasm down a little too thick in that last paragraph, or not enough?

As I mentioned in a previous post lawyers in America already have a bad enough reputation without yahoos like Mangieri screwing it up even more for us.  If he had attended law school, he would have learned that lawyers are subject to an incredible number of rules on ethical lawyering, which cover everything from proper notice to guidelines on fees.  Though chances are as a fake lawyer, he probably already knew some of these and chose to ignore them.

Do any of Mangieri’s former clients have a legal recourse against him?  You better believe they do.  Not only is the would-be lawyer being subjected to criminal punishments including grand larceny, impersonating an attorney, and conspiracy to defraud (all of which carry an incredibly light sentence of 4 years – way to deter people federal government!), but he’ll also be open-season to a plethora of tort claims.  The most obvious being fraud and maybe malpractice, but since he’s not officially a lawyer that latter one might not be so obvious.  Though as the saying goes, you can’t get blood from a turnip.  Despite Mangieri duping people into paying him money for services he wasn’t qualified to render, most of his clients weren’t very wealth themselves so Mangieri himself might not be worth so much.

But don’t let Mangieri’s tale fool you into thinking all lawyers are shysters.  Though you should always be sure of your lawyers credentials, according to the latest LegalMatch statistics attorney malpractice cases are among the lowest received.  So don’t be scared to hire a lawyer, just make sure they are actually lawyers first…