Guilderland Town Board

Well Guilderland, it's official. I'm running for Guilderland Town Board, along with Mark Grimm. I created a website for our campaign -- Guilderland NY -- at guilderland-ny.com.Mostly I will keep that off this blog and on my other website -- wredlich.com.

Profile: Rodney

My last post was about one minor player in the local criminal law community, and this one is about another. I've named him Rodney after Rodney Dangerfield, one of my favorite comedians. Unlike the comedian, I'm happy to say that this Rodney is still alive.Dangerfield's signature line was about not getting any respect. Our local Rodney is a bit like this. He often makes negative remarks about

Profile: Snidely

One minor figure who stands out to me in the Capital Region legal community is a criminal lawyer whose nickname, for purposes of this post, is Snidely. I don't know him well at all. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like me, though I don't know why (there are plenty of good reasons).There are things about Snidely that I noticed the first day I saw him. He has what seems like a permanent sneer on his

Batman, Robin, Batgirl and ... The Joker

There's one particular firm in the area that stands out in so many ways. They are clearly the best at what they do. They exemplify what it means to be good lawyers. They are passionate about their work, ethical to the extreme, decent and polite to all they deal with, diligent in researching the law, and to top it all off, they're interesting.I struggled with this for a while -- what to call them,

Profiles

It's been a while since I've done a profile. I checked and it looks like I started on this idea in August of 2006, and ran out of steam. One profile I did seemed to get a lot of attention: The Bully. It was a semi-fictional and unflattering profile of an area judge. A surprising number of lawyers seemed to know who I was talking about, and they all thought it was the same judge. I even heard that

Unsolicited attorney mailings to prospective clients

One of my clients got a letter from a local lawyer that I thought was inappropriate. Images of the letter (with information about both the lawyer and the client whited out) are at the bottom (click on them to see them enlarged). Let's take a look and see what's wrong with this:1. Notice the enlarged fonts, boldface, and underlining. Maybe it's just me, but lawyers shouldn't shout. The only time I

Another DWI Win

I mentioned that we keep winning DWI cases in a recent post. Well, we won another one. This time the DA responded very late to an "omnibus motion" (well after the judge had already given them a generous extension). While we were waiting, I made a further motion for dismissal on speedy trial grounds. The DA did not oppose the speedy trial motion.I'd like to claim that we're brilliant, and we're

A busy DWI lawyer

Got a call yesterday from someone with her third DWI case. The second was fairly recent, and third time is a charm so it's a felony.Was talking about the second time to find out what had happened. She had hired a lawyer with a big web presence for DWI cases. She told me his name, and I started laughing. I'll call him Smelly to avoid making it too obvious who he is.You see, this one DWI lawyer is

Why are phone companies so difficult?

I had a call today from a prospective client who left two numbers to call him back -- both overseas in different countries. I've been burned before making international calls and getting socked with huge bills, so I wanted to check the rate before I called.First I dialed "0". The operator forwarded me to some automated system that was not helpful. Then I checked out the website for our phone

Spotting difficult or unpleasant clients

I had a call today and turned away a prospective client because I picked up on signals that made me uncomfortable. One very difficult thing for lawyers is deciding which clients we don't want. It's very important, because unpleasant clients require a lot more work than pleasant clients. It's often difficult to do but sometimes we're lucky and we pick up on the warning signs.Today's caller had a

More about phony lawyer websites

A comment on my most recent post on fake lawyer websites asked how the scam works. The scam is that potential clients see a somewhat attractive website that gives the appearance that it is a law firm in New York State. For example: "Our professional staff of Lawyers and Paralegals specialize and concentrate solely on NY traffic tickets." (from the home page)This is not a law firm, at least not in

Virginia Speeding Ticket Fines Make the New York Times

Seems the State of Virginia has decided to up the ante on speeding ticket fines. According to an article in yesterday's New York Times about Virginia speeding fines, getting ticketed for a speed of, say, 20 mph over the limit, carries a civil penalty of over $1000, plus the fines from the Court (up to $2500 more), and then maybe court costs too. Ouch!!So as a result, of course, we are working on

Another dubious "lawyer" website: New York Traffic Ticket Solutions

I found another dubious traffic lawyer website today. It's nytrafficticketsolutions -dot- com. It does not identify who the lawyers are, if any, that work with this "company" - New York Traffic Ticket Solutions. I did a whois lookup and the administrative e-mail address is a Canadian site. Indeed, the site looks remarkably like the Canadian site, trafficticketsolutions -dot- ca. The whois shows a

More problems with AdWords -- Audio Ads

Back in January I posted about a problem with AdWords, the advertising service I use for sponsored links on Google searches. I do generally like AdWords and continue to run ads. I also carry Google ads (AdSense) on our traffic court directory.AdWords has a new feature for "Audio Ads," and I'm trying it out. Once I started with it I had some problems and requested a review. I'm not satisfied with

DWI Laws and "The Joe"

On a previous DWI post, I got a comment from pml, a regular commenter. Originally I was going to respond in a comment on that post, but decided to do a whole new post once I realized how long it was going to be.I certainly agree with pml that all drivers should know about the .08 law and that they should not drink and drive. However, a recent experience hit me with the contradictions of the

Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

Our associate David M. Cooper went to court last night and talked with a prosecutor I've always liked (since before he was even a prosecutor). This particular prosecutor made a remark to David, saying "Warren thinks everyone is innocent."I am quite flattered by this remark. There's this long-standing phrase that sticks with me -- "innocent until proven guilty."Now I am aware of the reality that