By Tammie S. Haynes On a beautiful autumn day, I walked into the redbrick Montgomery County Courthouse annex to a nondescript back hallway. Halfway down a line of chairs along the wall, a lone man sat with his hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees, his head bowed. On a door, a plaque read “Dispute Resolution … Continue Reading
Editor’s note: State Bar of Texas President Tom Vick sent the following message to members on Friday. Dear Fellow Attorneys, I’m writing to update you on the State Bar’s Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and our search for a new executive director. Hurricane Harvey Relief Efforts I know that Hurricane Harvey and its related flooding have … Continue Reading
Editor’s note: This is the second of four special posts in the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series for National Suicide Prevention Week (September 10-16). TLAP offers confidential assistance for lawyers, law students, and judges with substance abuse or mental health issues. Call TLAP at 1-800-343-8527 (TLAP) and find more information at tlaphelps.org. … Continue Reading
Editor’s note: This is the first of four special posts in the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series for National Suicide Prevention Week (September 10-16). TLAP offers confidential assistance for lawyers, law students, and judges with substance abuse or mental health issues. Call TLAP at 1-800-343-8527 (TLAP) and find more information at tlaphelps.org. … Continue Reading
Whenever emergency situations such as Hurricane Harvey cause office closures and such offices are subsequently reopened, Texas employers must remember several points to stay compliant with employment laws. • In general, employees who are classified as exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime provisions must be paid a salary … Continue Reading
Editor’s Note: State Bar of Texas President Tom Vick sent the following message to members today. As I write these words, many Texans are suffering the ravages of Hurricane Harvey and many are still in harm’s way. This is a trying time for our state and our country. This is a time when mere words … Continue Reading
By G. Thomas Vick Jr. When disasters like Hurricane Harvey strike Texas, the State Bar of Texas serves as a hub of legal and recovery-related resources for Texans and Texas lawyers (visit texasbar.com/disasters). First, the State Bar operates a legal hotline—(800) 504-7030—that helps people find answers to basic legal questions and locate recovery resources in … Continue Reading
Editor’s note: This post is part of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series. TLAP offers confidential assistance for lawyers, law students, and judges with substance abuse or mental health issues. Call TLAP at 1-800-343-8527 (TLAP) and find more information at tlaphelps.org. We lawyers are all pretty clever. We spend our careers trying to distinguish our facts … Continue Reading
I have lived in Houston almost my entire life and have always considered myself an urbanite. My wife and I love the trappings of the city—musicals, museums, and dim sum, to name a few. But in June I moved to San Angelo, with a population of about 100,700, and you cannot convince me to go … Continue Reading
Editor’s note: This post is part of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program’s Stories of Recovery series. TLAP offers confidential assistance for lawyers, law students, and judges with substance abuse or mental health issues. Call TLAP at 1-800-343-8527 (TLAP) and find more information at tlaphelps.org. I feel like alcoholism just appeared in my life overnight. Logically, however, … Continue Reading
In the past year or so, there has been great public debate about whether someone can be considered a successful business person if his or her business has filed for protection under “Chapter 11.” For many people, Chapter 11 is synonymous with bankruptcy, but it is actually only one of several chapters of the Bankruptcy … Continue Reading
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 defined a modernized retirement system, or MRS, for individuals entering military service on or after January 1, 2018. Service members with less than 12 years of service on December 31, 2017, have the option of remaining with the current military retirement system or switching to the … Continue Reading
Recent court of appeals rulings in Texas have been split on issues involving email signatures. The 1st Court of Appeals in Houston issued an opinion March 30 on Khoury v. Prentis B. Tomlinson Jr., No. 01-16-00006-CV, a case that arose from an agreement where John Khoury invested in PetroGulf, a company that Prentis Tomlinson ran … Continue Reading
The Every Student Succeeds Act, enacted by the federal government in late 2015, recently amended the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act to address the educational effects of homelessness. The legislation alters the definition of homeless, commissions new methods of identifying homeless students, attempts to keep students in their original school district as long as possible, and … Continue Reading
1. Constructive Receipt and Lawyer Trust Accounts Lawyers often face constructive receipt tax issues, whether they know it or not. Constructive receipt—a tax term used to determine when a taxpayer has received gross income—is one of those subjects that many people think they understand in part because it comes up frequently. Around year-end, chances are, … Continue Reading
A new batch of Texas lawyers was sworn in this past November, and I realized that now would be a good time to share some pointers and direct my fellow colleagues to three key websites in the real estate law field. First, the Texas Real Estate Commission, or TREC, website at trec.texas.gov is your home … Continue Reading
When I teach legal writing to first-year law students, I surprise them with an in-class exercise around halfway through the first semester. I have the students break into groups, tell them to take out pen and paper, and pose this question: “What is the goal of legal writing?” Puzzled, they just stare back. I ask … Continue Reading
For a divorce, it has been as amicable as possible. But the inevitable disputes over property and finances have left everyone drained. With the primary custody questions—such as conservatorship—finally settled, the only thing left to discuss is the holiday visitation schedule. Texas has an established standard possession order, spelling out how school breaks and holidays … Continue Reading
Email interactions among attorneys are prevalent. Very often attorneys send emails with a standard signature block denoting the attorney’s name and contact information. A simple click of the mouse and an attorney’s name is transmitted to another attorney or party’s inbox. You may wonder, now, what’s in a name? But unlike the question Juliet poses … Continue Reading
David is a foreign lead engineer for a major oil and gas company. His successful U.S.-based career has followed a familiar path: Perhaps he attended an American university on an F-1 visa, took advantage of optional practical training to get his foot in the door with a great company, and was lucky enough to get … Continue Reading
During the initial consultation between an attorney and a person or couple considering divorce, matrimonial lawyers frequently encounter issues like alcohol abuse, drug abuse, mental illness, child abuse, infidelity, emotional abuse, psychiatric illnesses, and personality disorders. In addition, clients who are considering divorce often have to talk about difficult issues, such as loss of assets; … Continue Reading
Lawyers are built to succeed. Lawyers love to win. Lawyers understand that we work in an adversarial world, which means that some litigants win and other litigants lose. But are the concepts of victory and loss in the legal arena so straightforward? Is there not room for interpretation, for debate, for dissent? Can we always … Continue Reading
To maintain a thriving practice, lawyers must constantly find ways to grow and expand their client base. In an effort to cast a wider net, especially when work is slow, many expand their list of practice areas. But in today’s world, many people want to work with a specialist, and these clients expect their legal … Continue Reading
For peace is a process—a way of solving problems.” —John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Peace Speech 1963 We lawyers have heard about collaborative law and its array of protections for managing conflict and developing trust … etcetera. Yet we remain hesitant, even after giving bonus points for its 90 percent success rate. At the end of the … Continue Reading
