David Soares - One of the most feared and respected politicians in NY?

The 1/18/07 issue of the Metroland features Albany District Attorney David Soares on the front cover. The photo has him in a "tough" pose - arms crossed, no smile. There's a similar photo at the first page of the article, which you can also see on the online version: http://www.metroland.net/back_issues/vol30_no03/features.htmlThe cover text indicates that Soares is now "one of the most feared

Verizon idiots and debt collection, redux

See update at bottom of this post--------I posted more than a year ago about problems we had with Verizon mistakes and their debt collection practices. Like Poltergeist, they're back!Before getting into this, I should also mention a more recent post I did about debt collectors.Briefly on the older Verizon story, a long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Verizon misspelled my name and used the

Someone should have hired a lawyer sooner ...

I'm often asked by prospective traffic ticket clients as to whether they really need a lawyer. The answer is no, but that depends on your definition of the word need. The other day I saw someone who didn't think she needed a lawyer. She was wrong, and the consequences were severe.I walked into this small-town court a few minutes after the session was supposed to start. The judge was sitting at

AdWords runaround

I've been having this odd problem with AdWords lately, and am very displeased with the folks at Google about how they've handled it so far. This isn't really lawyer stuff, so much of this will be in Greek for those who are not into SEM and PPC.First I'll describe the problem. I run a campaign targeted to the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York State. One Ad Group is for keywords related to

A Call for Stimson's Head

I was tipped off to a news story about Charles Stimson, in the Defense Department, criticizing law firms who represent Guantanamo detainees. If I read the story correctly, he called for corporate CEOs to boycott these firms.The Pentagon has "disavowed" Stimson's remarks. Not enough. Stimson should not only be fired, but also disbarred.I am not a fan of large law firms. It is common among small

Our traffic court directory continues to grow

I was stunned just now. Our traffic court directory has been growing. We're over 700 courts now. Lawyers in local courts come up to me and compliment me on the site. Seems like it's helping a lot of people.Traffic to the site has been growing, and I thought we would soon have a week with 3000 visitors. I checked our statistics today and we had nearly 4000 in the past 7 days. I checked it three

I've been pretty lucky

I was thinking recently about how lucky I've been in my life. I see so many people who have so much and yet complain about their problems, which are usually trivial when compared to the problems of others. Most of us in the US have very good lives compared to certain parts of the rest of the world.How have I been lucky? For starters, I was born into a family that cares about me. I don't just mean

Sad thought - human suffering

I'm not sad at the moment, but I was nearly overwhelmed recently when I thought about the volume of cases I see in the courts. I'm not talking about the amount of cases we have. We're quite busy, but that's a good thing for us.I was just noticing how many people I see in court. In a typical week I might go to a several courts. In a two-day swing I was in Albany City Court - Criminal Part, plus

The face of a DWI defendant

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article by Michael M. Phillips about a marine dealing with the loss of a fellow soldier who fell on a grenade for him. The article mentions somewhat briefly this marine's arrest in a drunk driving incident and the consequences he faces. If you can access that article, it puts a good human face on a DWI defendant. Our current system dehumanizes defendants in

Another judge with a policy

I just recently did a post criticizing the notion of judges having policies. So I was in Court the other night and had another such encounter.This again is a judge I like, arguably one of my favorites. He has a warm personality, a good sense of humor, respects not only the lawyers but the people who come before him as well. He also has policies, or at least one policy.My client was accused of