Well I think we finally have a plan

Well I think I finally have a plan for this blog. I have wanted to mesh both blogs for a while. (Long Island (Criminal) Trial Law and That Lawyer Dude.) I also wanted to kind of start over for a bunch of reasons. I was trying to get the thing redesigned but my time for this is kind of limited. SOOOOO:

I have decided that I will be moving "That Lawyer Dude" to a new site (sorry blogger but this isn't working anymore)then I've decided that the new "That Lawyer Dude" will continue to be an amalgam of thought pieces and law combined. I will continue to write the blog alone for now, though I am still interested in a group blog.

Since the time table for the move is not set, and since I feel like writing, I am going to start blogging here again. If people start reading me again, great. If not, well at least my thoughts won't keep getting bottled up inside of me.

Now for the few of you who wonder what I have been up to. Well, I have been answering questions galore over at both Lawguru.com and AVVO.com I also occasionally take questions on at Linkedin.com I have also been more active on Solosez and the NYSACDL Listserves. So I have been writing but just not here.

On the office front, I have expanded our Lawfirm to include 2 new lawyers and I am hoping to add one of our "Of Counsels" as a partner.

I have tried a couple of cases and have expanded our practice areas. We now have an active Appellate Practice Group and a fledgling Catastrophic/Medical Malpractice Group. Our Qui Tam (False Claims Act Whistle blower) practice has also picked up substantially, as employees of Iraq-war contractors begin to report employers who cheat our Government and our taxpayers. There appears to be some favorable federal legislation pending on this area and I am hoping that if it passes, our Qui Tam/False Claims Act Practice Group will continue to grow. It is one of the most interesting areas of our practice and frankly very important. After all, anything that cheats our soldiers is abhorrent to me so I feel really good about going after these companies.

Our White Collar Criminal Practice Group is also booming. We have been doing a lot of work in the area of Criminal Trademark Infringement and Counterfeiting. These cases prosecute (mostly in federal court) the alleged illegal theft, retention, and sale of trademarked, patented, and copywritten material. They also usually include conspiracy, money laundering, RICO, and a myriad of other charges. The prosecution can be large or of a small group. The Federal Sentencing guidelines make these crimes much different from other White Collar Crimes.

Because many of these crimes cross international boundries, we have had to add a number of people on the staff who speak other languages. At this time our employees speak Chinese(Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese), Japanese, Italian, French and French Creole,German,Hindi,Tagalog (Philippines)Erdu & Arabic. We may not all be fluent in all of these languages but I am proud of my colleagues for their efforts

For example we are working on a case which alleges a syndicated was bringing in over 20 million dollars in trademarked NIKE and ADDIDAS clothing; another where a group was illegally obtaining credit card numbers and embossing them on purloined AMEX and VISA cards; a third case where the accused is accused of obtaining and selling first run movies on DVD as they come out and even BEFORE they come out in theaters.

It seems that the federal government is cracking down on these crimes as in part because of greater security at ports a direct result of the changes in prosecution initiatives in the wake of 9-11.

Finally we continue to try cases of the more "traditional" criminal kind. I will be starting hearings on a Murder 2 case (America's Most Wanted highlighted the case here)and I have a Burglary case scheduled for trial in two weeks, following a very interesting assault case.

So, while I will be posting here more regularly until the big MOVE, don't plan on seeing too much too soon. On the other hand, you never know what could happen. Maybe a Governor of a big eastern state will be caught patronizing prostitutes...

I want to keep up with the Q & A posts at LawGuru and Avvo, but I need a place to rant too. Hence I am returning.