Legal Writing Notebook: ‘And/or’ persists because writers love it

Karin Ciano February 5, 2018

No authority on grammar or writing recommends using and/or.

Check on Trump is politics, not Constitution

Bloomberg Opinion January 31, 2018

President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions attend the FBI National Academy graduation ceremony Dec. 15 in Quantico, Virginia. Over time, a compromise developed that the post of attorney general remained political, but presidents accepted the de facto rule that they would not politicize investigations or prosecutions, and would not fire the attorney general over such decisions. (AP file photo)

Unwritten constitutional norms say that the president may not politicize criminal investigations and prosecutions.

Quandaries and Quagmires: Legal ethics and risk issues as of January 2018

Charles Lundberg January 29, 2018

The national legal press has been buzzing recently with breaking news in the areas of legal ethics, law firm risk issues, and the law of lawyering.

How To: How to work downtown during Super Bowl week

Nancy Crotti January 29, 2018

Downtown Minneapolis is seen from the upper deck of U.S. Bank Stadium. Most Super Bowls have not been held in such a compact urban setting. (AP file photo: Scott Boehm)

Attorneys often work long, unpredictable hours that may not mesh well with bus and train schedules

FBI agents have to zip it with today’s politics

Bloomberg Opinion January 25, 2018

Liberals are outraged that President Donald Trump asked Andrew McCabe, then acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom he had voted for when they met last May. This photo shows McCabe appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP file photo)

Rather than changing the Constitution to create truly independent police and prosecutors, the way most other liberal democracies do, the U.S. has made do with strong unwritten norms that demand the depoliticization of criminal justice.

It’s time to review clients’ estate plans

Karen Ciegler Hansen January 24, 2018

Tax changes offer opportunity to revise provisions

Forensics Foreshadowing: Phishing, vishing and smishing — oh, my!

Mark Lanterman January 23, 2018

Smishing is a real term. So is vishing.

Sybil Procedure: What I learned from ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’

Sybil Dunlop January 19, 2018

Martin Luther King Jr. leaves a Birmingham jail April 20, 1963, after posting bond on charges stemming from a desegregation drive. His release came four days after he wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail. (AP file photo)

As lawyers, we are particularly well-positioned to identify the difference between just and unjust laws and fight unfairness when we see it.

Even final, irreversible deal can be broken

Bloomberg Opinion January 18, 2018

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, meets at a Seoul hospital Jan. 4 with Kim Bok-dong, who was forced into sexual slavery by Japan's military during World War II. (AP photo: South Korea Presidential Blue House)

From a formal legal perspective permanent agreements are tricky to create.

Perspectives: Trump’s book ban attempt far from Near

Marshall H. Tanick January 18, 2018

Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham and Execuctive Editor Ben Bradlee leave U.S. District Court in Washington on June 21, 1971 , happy with Judge Gerhard A. Gesell's ruling the the paper could publish further articles about a Pentagon report on Vietnam. Later however, the U.S. Court of Appeals extended a ban against publishing the documents. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v. United States that the Times and the Post could print the documents, basing the decision largely on the precedent of Near v. Minnesota. (AP photo)

President Trump’s misbegotten attempt to stop publication of the “Fire and Fury” book, which understandably spurred its sales, was not only of questionable strategy, but legally doomed.

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