Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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Hey this isn’t law practice management but occasionally we can indulge the blog’s editor. Last month the U.S. Supreme court ruled on a case involving the intersection of child support collection and indirect civil contempt of court. The case is Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10 decided June 20, 2011.

The issue was, does the U.S. Constitution’s 14th amendment due process clause guarantees a defendant’s right to state appointed counsel where incarceration is possible?

The majority answered no and yet went ahead and vacated the state court’s contempt finding anyways, go figure. But seriously if you’re a learned lawyer particularly if you practice within domestic relations land there’s no topic you must know better than the many uses and defenses to a contempt of court claim. The opinion is an interesting read, contempt proceedings in child support enforcement have become something akin to debtor’s prison. Plus, wouldn’t it just be funny to drop a U.S. Supreme Court citation on occasion down in Daley Center parentage court?

Our federal legislature hasn’t been too confidence inspiring of late…as of 10pm Washington, D.C. time the House has just passed the debt reduction legislation with the Senate likely to follow suit Tuesday at noon. For those of you keeping score at home that’s less than 12 hours before the United States of America would default on debt and face a myriad of treacherous financial results. A crappy, last-minute compromise.

And yet a ton of lawyers do the same thing every day…don’t do it!

This is a repeat post triggered by an excellent presenter at the child welfare CLE I attended Friday. I wrote about this topic previously:  Your Most Important Lawyering Occurs Outside the Courtroom.  The question she posed was:  Are you a hearing-based lawyer? Meaning, are you like Congress and just scrambling at the last minute to slap something together or are you giving your clients well-considered and intentional representation based on their goals and not the court’s schedule.

I agree with this quote from the program:

The most important stuff does not happen at court hearings but rather between the court hearings.