One of the partners at my law firm is a walking legal database. Whether I need to know a case dealing with fiduciary duties of a prior owner of a company or the last case in Maryland dealing with notices for mechanic’s liens, there is a high probability that he will know the case (or have information to quickly locate the case).

We all know of these individuals (and some of the readers of this blog may be those individuals). I’ve heard of stories about recently retired Court of Appeals judge who could not only cite cases regarding various legal topics but provide footnotes and pin cites.

Alas, I am not one of those individuals. To make up for my inability to recall the specific passage and verse of every single case I have ever read, I needed to develop a system to ensure that I was up to date with each new opinion pertinent to my practice. Fortunately, as a business attorney with a focus on construction law, I do not need to read every single opinion that is drafted and published (though I enjoy reviewing some of the criminal law opinions because they made for some good story telling).

So, I’ve developed a personal law library. In order to keep track of new opinions, I initially review the Maryland Lawyer section in Monday’s Daily Record, which provides a list of all of the previous week’s cases and a handy summary for each case. I circle cases I deem important for my practice and then have my legal assistant download them from the Judiciary’s website (a process that is free and environmentally friendly).

After I review the case and make electronic notes (I’ve only scratched the surface of PDFs’ wonderful features, though John Cord has written about this), I save the electronic version of the case in a folder in my Dropbox account (a cloud account that is free for the first 2GB).

Over the past few years, I have created an online, readily-available personal law library for myself. If a legal issue comes up, I can quickly determine if it’s something I already have researched. Obviously, I make sure the law is still good, but its the start that saves me time and our client’s money.

While this method works for me, are there any other methods that you use to help organize relevant cases you use?

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My old boss, Vice President Joe Biden, weighed in on “American exceptionalism” during a speech Monday. In subscribing to the idea, the former chairman of both the U.S. Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees provided the unique perspective that our exceptionalism is particularly demonstrated by our “deep commitment to the rule of law.” I think he’s got a good point. And, I think it’s notable how his view was shaped.

Biden, a lawyer, is as aware as anyone of the importance Americans place on the rule of law at home and abroad. He presided over some of our nation’s most controversial judicial nominations and later, as the Senate’s point man on foreign affairs, met with countless leaders from  different countries, territories and international organizations while pushing President Bill Clinton and the United Nations to punish rulers who flouted the rule of law.

Our own commitment to the rule of law was demonstrated to the world during the 2000 presidential election in which we accepted the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore. Without a coup, civil war or violent rioting in the streets, the public and the losing candidate moved beyond the controversy because of respect for the rule of law and the greater good of the nation.

The respect may be especially profound to those entrusted with determining the rule of law in specific cases. It is a topic of Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent book and a favorite subject of Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell.

When speaking to youth about the judiciary and separation of powers, Bell often laments the court’s status as the weakest branch of government. With the legislature possessing the power of the purse and the executive having the power of the sword, the courts have only the power left to it by the willingness of the public to accept its judgments. The fact that we regularly do is truly exceptional.

Talk of American exceptionalism often seems tinged with arrogance, and this perception can be counterproductive when trying to collaborate with foreign governments. But I think Biden’s perspective gives us something to be very proud about when comparing ourselves to the rest of the world and something both sides of the political spectrum can embrace.

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I understand that many people have a love/ hate relationship with their GPS. It can be a godsend for the directionally-challenged, but it can be an endless source of frustration when it loses its signal or only gets you in the general vicinity of your destination. (I’ll admit I’ve experienced mostly the latter, as recipients of my frantic emergency calls can attest.)

It looks like our legal system is going to have a similar relationship with the technology; the Supreme Court ruled Monday the use of a GPS device to track a suspect’s behavior and location qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment.

However, the justices left it an open question as to whether it’s an invasion of privacy to use GPS devices to track people through a device that comes installed with a GPS, such as a cell phone. The justices hinted that they might have to modify their ruling if GPS devices were used in this manner in order to protect privacy rights.

I know phone records can be subpoenaed in cases and these records can also show the location of the calls, or at least what tower the cell phone call is routed through. But it’s interesting to think that law enforcement could have the capability to monitor your every move through the GPS device on your phone.

Considering that it’s a virtual necessity, if only for safety reasons, for adults to carry a cell phone, this means just about anyone’s location could be tracked at anytime.

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Almost every national CLE program I attend has something about voir dire. I remember one in particular — about a year after I passed the bar — where some hotshot lawyer from another state was regaling us with stories about how voir dire took two days for a medical malpractice case.

He described tactics — how to begin laying the case theme in voir dire, the ability to use voir dire as a preliminary opening statement and what questions were crucial for discovering those jurors who could not decide cases fairly. I worked on a few cases in other states, and the voir dire process was long and drawn out and seemed to require days of preparation.

Fast forward to my first experience with a Maryland-style voir dire. It’s best described as short. In some cases I’ve since been involved in, it can be done in less than an hour. Some of the longer ones have lasted about 3 hours.

The hardest part (although not that hard) is understanding the process of counting in order to make strikes as effective as possible. Other than that, there is little that a trained monkey can’t understand.

Here in Maryland, our judges typically ask all of the questions. The parties submit proposed voir dire questions before the trial. The judge will look them over, decide what he/she wants to do, and if you’re lucky, might ask for some oral argument on the more unusual questions proposed by counsel.

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I rooted myself at the dining room table and attempted to chip away at the next day’s 8:30 a.m criminal docket. The dockets in Rockville’s district court are always heavier than in Silver Spring’s. The types of crimes vary with the demographics.

Rockville covers the more affluent areas, like Potomac and Bethesda, where auto thefts, prescription fraud and financial crimes are more common. Silver Spring invites cases from Wheaton, Takoma Park and other areas bordering the District of Columbia; the majority of cases are drug possession, disorderly conduct, public drinking and the occasional shoplifting.

I immersed myself in docket preparation shortly after dinner. The first step was to create my “sticky” for each case scheduled on the docket, the art of summarizing an entire case file within the confines of a 4-by-6- inch Post-it note.

On the top left corner, I write the defendant’s name. In the top center, the date and location of the violation. To the right, the name of the attorney, if any. Also included is the list of the charges, the witnesses subpoenaed, the factual proffer, the defendant’s criminal history, the state’s offer and recommendation and a blank space for the disposition of the case when resolved in court.

The objective of the sticky is to have uniformity in case preparation so that any other ASA could pick up a file in court and try the case based on the information on the sticky. Once complete, it is meticulously placed (or stuck) on the left corner of the front of the case file.

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As young lawyers, we are often expected to push our comfort zone, which can mean taking on new matters to gain experience and advance in our profession. We all have our “firsts”– our first business transaction, our first trial, our first motions hearing and our first administrative proceeding, to name a few.

So, where, as young lawyers, do we draw the line between pushing our comfort zone to gain valuable experience versus adhering to our professional responsibilities to our clients to provide competent representation?

I was confronted with this issue recently. At 4:30 p.m., a colleague requested I cover a criminal matter the following morning. My professional experience is in civil litigation, and my gut reaction was to say no. The attorney assured me this was a simple proceeding and I was more than competent to handle it. He explained that, due to unforeseeable circumstances, I was the only one in our firm available to handle the matter.

Nonetheless, I could not shake that uncomfortable feeling I was not competent, given that I had very little experience in criminal matters. Moreover, I felt I had inadequate time to perform the necessary study to become competent. If I had a day to prepare, I would have felt more comfortable in my ability to competently represent the client. Although my ego protested, I spoke openly and honestly with my colleague about my discomfort and concerns.

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