What Was She Thinking?

Perhaps some of you in the San Antonio legal community haven't yet heard about the local attorney busted for marijuana possession as she tried to enter the Bexar County Courthouse. The punchline to this story: She claims she was holding it for a client. (Note that the E-N article calls her a defense attorney, but her State Bar web page lists her primary practice areas as labor law and construction.)

High-profile defense attorney Regina Criswell was arrested Thursday after courthouse officials reported finding a bag of marijuana and a chrome pipe in her purse. Her defense, according to the Sheriff's Office: The items belong to a client.

Criswell, 50, told a security guard that she knew the marijuana and paraphernalia were in her purse and that she was holding it for a client, said Deputy Ino Badillo, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff's Office. Badillo said the items were discovered at a screening station at an entrance of the courthouse.

Walking through a security checkpoint with pot on you isn't too smart, no matter what your profession. But for a lawyer to hold contraband for a client is even more foolish. Local blog Strange in San Antonio also notes the "lack of good judgment, at the very least," while Man O' Law just calls this stunt "pretty stupid."

Criswell, by the way, is the attorney who recently won $175,000 for a UTSA professor whose research notes got trashed when they cleaned out his lab, but the federal judge tossed that verdict. She plans to appeal the judge's decision to overturn that award.

And yes, she's a St. Mary's grad.

Lessons Learned- Diana Minella and Taking Responsibility: Part 1

The heat surrounding the recent "scamming" of several hundred traffic ticket clients by attorney Diana Minella seems to have died down recently with lots of questions left hanging in the wind. The natural question - "How could this have happened?" - expresses only a small portion of the outrage felt by clients and attorneys alike, but does it also indicate a need to rethink the attorney-client relationship? Should clients, much as patients are now being urged to do with their doctors, take more "ownership" over their legal problems? 

As an attorney, I am left conflicted regarding these basic questions. You see, I was there in the Municipal Courts for two days in January, struggling to undo what had been done, trying to repair the damage done to our profession by volunteering my time and efforts toward helping Minella's clients fix what really couldn't be fixed. Was I a knight in shining armor - a champion of truth, justice and the American way - coming to the rescue of these veritable damsels in distress, righting their wrongs with the silver sword of a legal professional? Or was I just another suit, shucking and jiving to distract these poor people from an inherent problem in attorney-client relationships? As with most of our work, the real answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

(To Be Continued)

What Lawyers Do

Colleague and co-blogger Ralph Perez notes over at his website that:

I recently had a client say, “there’s a reason the bar exam is so hard, you guys are expensive.” Her statement reminds me that clients often aren’t sure exactly what I do. They understand that they are receiving some sort of value for what they pay me but because legal services are generally intangible, it is sometimes hard for them to put a dollar value on what I do. I thought I’d explain exactly what lawyers do.

Ralph goes on to answer the question, "What do lawyers do?"