Legal

On March 8, 2019, the Maryland Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, issued a 4-3 decision reinstating the murder conviction of Adnan Syed. Previously a trial judge and the intermediate appellate court had ruled Mr. Syed was entitled to a new trial because...

Late last month a panel in California recommended parole for a 69-year-old convicted murderer who had spent more than forty-five years in prison. In and of itself, that information is probably not too shocking. Forty-five years is a long time in prison. Presumably the...

November was a busy month for legal and political news. It is nearly impossible to stay on top of everything happening. So what if I told you I wanted to focus on a state-wide election in Florida? Something happened in this election which may be a very big deal in the...

Welcome back to This Month in the Law, my attempt to update you on a regular basis about interesting things happening in the legal world. The first two months I looked at First Amendment issues. Even though I am always fascinated by those topics, I thought it might be...

Welcome back to This Month in the Law! This marks our two month anniversary, which is a fancy way of saying I actually wrote something before July ended. I am pretty proud of this because it means This Month in The Law remains a valid title for at least another month!...

“This Month in the Law” Begins Publication Growing up, I loved This Week in Baseball (TWIB). Every Saturday I could tune in to get a snapshot of everything happening around major league baseball. This was the era before ESPN, so there were no nightly highlight shows...

Several months ago my sister recommended a TED Talk to me. The Talk was given by Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. In her TED Talk, Ms. Phelps-Roper explains how she was encouraged to change her worldview as a result of several...

I have been exploring a four-step process for difficult conversations. The idea behind the process is that there is a way to discuss even the most difficult of subjects and, potentially, find consensus. Megan Phelps-Roper presented this method in a TED Talk.  She is a...

In my last article, I discussed a four-step process for having better conversations on difficult matters. Megan Phelps-Roper, a granddaughter of Fred Phelps and former member of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, suggested this process in a TED Talk. The four...

“Business succession planning” deals with your eventual exit from the business, both intended and unexpected. In the case of your death, succession planning includes how to handle legal ownership of the business, how to ensure business can legally be conducted, and...