lawyers
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
lawyers Citydesk Gets A Look at Concordia Law School
Posted by George Prentice on Wed, May 2, 2012 at 9:27 AM
While most schools are counting down the days of their current school calendars, faculty and staff at the new Concordia University School of Law are gearing up for their inaugural session, slated for this fall.
"Our first class will report for orientation on Oct Aug. 22 and classes begin the 27th," said Tamara Martinez Anderson, assistant dean of admissions.
Citydesk joined a group of Idaho media to tour the newly finished 54,000-square-foot building on Boise's Front Street. The state-of-the-art building, tapped into Boise's geothermal heating pipeline, is already being considered for LEED Gold certification. In addition to its vast law library and study and conference rooms, the school holds seven classrooms, ranging in size from 24 students to stadium-style seating that can hold as many as 132 students.
Law school Dean Cathy Silak also showed off the school's mock courtroom.
"This is where our students can be videotaped and critiqued on their courtroom skills," said Silak. "Introducing evidence in a courtroom is critical, and this is where they can practice those real-life skills."
Silak also said local law offices may be using the mock courtroom to rehearse opening and closing arguments or to prep witnesses for upcoming trials.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
lawyers High Court Reinstates Attorneys' Right to Remove Judges
Posted by George Prentice on Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:41 AM
In what is traditionally a slow news week, the Idaho State Supreme Court has issued an order that reaches into every corner of the state court system. In effect, the high court ordered the reinstatement for attorneys to disqualify a judge without cause. The reinstatement goes into effect with the new year, which begins Saturday.
In July 2010, the Idaho Supreme Court suspended a part of Criminal Rule 25, saying it had been "used excessively and abused so that the use of the rule should be curtailed." But Monday, Chief Justice Daniel Eismann ruled the reinstatement comes "upon reconsideration." Citydesk confirmed the ruling Tuesday morning, and a deputy clerk of the court said the order would be officially posted soon.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
lawyers How Many Lawyers Does It Take to Fill a Boise Courtroom?
Posted by George Prentice on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 3:49 PM
How to describe the MDL panel hearing?
At times it was not unlike choosing sides on a playground. More than a hundred egos being whittled down to a precious few to represent one "team." And at times it was not unlike trying to lure an Olympics to your home city.
Yes, it was a bit surreal. As one attorney told me: "Anytime you hear a seven-figure lawyer say they're arriving an hour early, you know something big is up."
Boise was chosen just by pure luck. On occasion, Multidistrict Litigation Panels are selected to consider consolidating major lawsuits in high-profile federal cases. The MDL's rotate from city to city, and Boise was up. Thus began the "why Boise conversation?"
By now, you may have heard of last weekend's blog on the Wall Street Journal website, which questioned if Boise even had a five-star hotel. The Chairman of the MDL, Justice John Heyburn II addressed the question as the proceedings got underway.
"Just because they don't charge $350 a night, doesn't mean it's not a five star hotel." Heyburn also got in another zinger later into the hearing. "You can't get a good $100 meal here, but you can get a good $35 meal here."
But the somber reason for the proceedings was never lost.
Steven Larson, a Florida attorney said, "The whole world is watching."
Before arguments got underway, a major issue had to be settled: How are all sides represented in a very short time-frame? The MDL Panel made it quite clear that they would not spend much more than an hour on the case. That's right, an hour.
So, attorneys had do something they're not accustom to: get along with one another. Attorneys began huddling in groups of three, or six, or ten, or more. They were attempting to find "common ground." Lawyers were instructed to consolidate shared viewpoints, especially if they agreed what city the trial (or trials) should be held in. And then an administrator for the court started handing out very short time allotments.
"You have three minutes. You have two minutes. You have one minute," he said.
Within a few minutes, the seven justices entered the courtroom and sat at a two-tier bench; four on top, three below.
And then it began, with the majority of the attorneys arguing why a trial should be held in Houston, or Miami, or New Orleans, or Mobile. They boasted about their airports, and their fine federal judges. But even when they were given very short time-frames, some attorneys made impassioned pleas:
"Our culture rises as a gumbo of Cajuns, Creole, French, German and Spanish," said Louisiana attorney Russ Herman. "We rise out of our myth and mystery ... which is now threatened. This disaster threatens our hope and faith, and that's why New Orleans is the best avenue for justice."
"Mobile is the correct choice," said attorney Robert Cunningham of Alabama. "Mobile is the dead center of the impact of the oil center."
"Florida represents 90 percent of the losses," said Rudy Moscowitz of, you guessed it, Florida.
"Lafayette is the compromise location between New Orleans and Houston," said Pat Morrow of the western district of Louisiana.
And the defendants were in the room as well. As in BP. As in Haliburton. Andrew Langan of the high-profile firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP of Chicago is one of BP's top lawyers.
"All the defendants (BP, Haliburton, etc.) have headquarters in Houston. That's why Houston would be ideal."
In a little more than an hour and a half it was over. We witnessed possibly the most expensive hour and a half in modern legal history.
We'll have much more on the proceedings in next week's BW,
Monday, March 16, 2009
scotus / lawyers / ysursa Restricted speech
Posted by Nathaniel Hoffman on Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 4:51 PM
The full ballroom at the Boise Centre on the Grove, usually a pedestrian affair, was austerely appointed in ceiling to floor black cloth on Thursday night. The University of Idaho College of Law, celebrating its first centennial, projected a dramatic pair of school logos on the black backdrops. A long, raised dais loomed over the front of the hall, lined north to south with chairs and referred to as the Head Table.
The large crowd of fresh-faced U of I alumni, left- and right-leaning Boise lawyers and state dignitaries picked at their fruit course while somewhere behind the stage an elite group of Idaho politicos mingled in The Perch room with John G. Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court chief justice, sans robes.
The beslinged governor, C. L. “Butch” Otter (recovering from a calf roping injury) introduced the boyish Roberts to Idaho’s portly Secretary of State, one Ben Ysursa.
Ysursa, of Basque heritage, does not have a very common family name.
About two weeks prior, Roberts had handed down a bittersweet victory to the State of Idaho in the case of Ysursa, Secretary of State of Idaho, et al v. Pocatello Education Association et al.
“We won the case, but we lost most of the law,” Ysursa commented after the gala, heading across Boise’s Grove Plaza on his way back to his silver Benz. (Ysursa’s Democratic-leaning relations in the Midwest were none too happy that their Idaho brother was taking on the unions.)
Roberts ruled that the state can prohibit school districts, fire departments and other political subdivisions from taking contributions to union political funds directly out of public employees’ paychecks.
“Idaho’s law does not restrict political speech, but rather declines to promote that speech by allowing public employee checkoffs for political activities,” Roberts wrote in the 6-3 decision.
Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little, who carried the 2003 Voluntary Contributions Act—the target of the Supreme Court ruling six years later—also chatted with Roberts in The Perch. The Chief Justice reportedly complained to Little that the Ysursa decision required a lot of work on his part.
Roberts’ speech in Boise, a prelude to a Friday lecture at the law school in Moscow, for which he was paid an $11,500 honorarium, did not take nearly as much work. The nation’s top jurist spoke for about seven minutes, opening with a lawyer joke about not telling lawyer jokes and recounting the journey to the American West for this western audience: Explorers, trappers, miners, ranchers and farmers.
“Each of these groups made their initial appearance without the assistance of counsel, but the lawyers were, of course, not far behind,” Roberts intoned. “Idahoans have a well earned reputation for self-sufficiency.”
Roberts tipped his hat to federalism, invoking New Deal-era Justice Louis Brandeis’ notion of states as laboratories for experimentation, and gave a nod to Western American jurisprudence, which informs his conservative rulings on natural resources.
“My court’s cases recognize, the pioneers who were drawn to these lands found a climate and topography radically different from that east of the 100th meridian,” he said.
Roberts also quizzed the audience on the name of the chief justice a century ago when the College of Law was founded. None could recall the name Melville Fuller.
Ironically, had Roberts been the speaker at the Republican State Convention last June, he might have found a more knowledgeable crowd; Fuller ruled portions of the federal income tax unconstitutional in 1895, a popular position among one segment of the state GOP.
College of Law Dean Donald L. Burnett, Jr. also invoked Justice Brandeis’ vision of a great university in thanking Roberts, saying that an institution—like Idaho’s only law school—that aims high and broad can inspire great loyalty.
Then Burnett, perhaps subconsciously, spoke to the difference between Roberts’ jurisprudence and that of the more scholarly justices.
Idaho’s law community gathered that Thursday night, Burnett said, as “a great manifestation of the impulse for justice, whether it’s the common sense justice described by the Chief Justice and Idaho’s history, or the scholarly justice that the Supreme Court is charged to produce for us, year in and year out.”
Hundreds of common sense lawyers arm in arm with their dates, flooded out into the daylight savings time twilight.
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