Mr. T - a deposition tale

5:45 am.  Phone beeps.  Count backward down to the minute have to get up to get out on time.  5:56 am get up.

Race through morning ritual.  Clothes put out the night before.  Black crop jeans.  Black t-shirt.  Deconstructed BCBG black and gray striped jacket.  Black doc martens.  2 black bags.  Black raincoat.  Slick back hair that used to be black and now in places looks like tinsel.  Grab 2 luna bars, fat sumo orange and honey crisp apple for later.

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Time Machine: did my college frosh prediction come true

Saturday morning.  Am going through and dumping old files.  The box catches my eye:  "Business Junk - Old School Records."  All neatly organized.  Typical.

Find a two page writing sample entitled:  "Where will I be in ten years. Karen Kathryn Koehler.  English 181  Milbauer, May 9, 1979."

This would have been typed on an IBM Selectric.  The three pages of  onion skin paper are a bit wrinkled.

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Karen Koehlerlooking back
Bump Bounce and Roll: Trying to start a trial.

On The Good Wife or Drop Dead Diva, the attorneys get the cases in the morning.  Try them in the afternoon.

In the real world the case is filed and then has to wait a year and a half for a trial date.

If it survives for that long, there is a fifty-fifty chance  the defense will ask the judge for (and get) a continuance.  Delay is a friend of the defense: Deny. Defend.  Delay.

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Playing the "pot" card against an innocent driver

Driving while high is now being used as a sword by the insurance companies of bad drivers who cause crashes.

Let's say you live in a state where pot is legal.  You get high on a Sunday evening with a group of friends in your own home.  On Thursday, you are driving down a road and someone runs a red light.  You had a green light.  The bad driver tells the officer that you look high.  The officer doesn't see anything unusual but asks you to take a blood test.  Carboxy-THC shows up.  You are ticketed for driving under the influence.  Until a prosecutor looks at the blood work and realizes there's no case.  At which point the charges are dropped

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A convention speech and run around Gray's Lake, Des Moines Iowa

Get up before alarm rings at 6.  This means it is really 4.  Flop back on bed.  Alarm rings at 6:15. 

Search around for hotel phone on night table.  Don’t find it.  Sigh.  It is on the other side of the bed.  Scramble across.  Hit “O”.  Ask for front desk.  It is front desk.  Can I get a late check out.  Yes. 

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Lift off for Taos in Sonoma

Steve Gursten:  I’d like you to consider joining the TAOS group.
K3:  What kind of a group is it.
SG:  Plaintiff lawyers who have become friends and share advice.
K3:  Steve thanks for asking.  Honestly, I belong to enough groups.
SG:  This is unlike any group you belong to.  We are small but geographically diverse.  This is a real personal group where we are friends.

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Here Comes The Dean.

She is a stranger who sends me a handwritten letter after having read something about me.  I email her back and invite her to lunch.  She emails back and accepts.  Two months later...

"Hi!"  She says with her warm smile, walking into my room.  "I love this office.  You have great art."

I take her over to chat with Paul Whelan.  Tour her through the maze that is our office.  Down to the old racket ball court now turned into a courtroom.  Out into the cool sunshine.  Down and across the street to the Boat Street Café.  Where we spend a delightful hour over our tasty baguette sandwiches.

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Dear injured (or dead) person - hire me: The shame of being in a profession, where lawyers directly solicit clients.

Based upon a true story:

Last week, my wife of 35 years was driving to the store and was hit by another car.  The police came to my house to take me to the hospital to see her.  She's been there ever since.  We don't think she will make it.

Each day I drive or am driven to the hospital by our children.  I stay there as long as I can.  I just had surgery myself.  So I need to come home to try to rest in between rushing back to be with her.

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