Welcome to the ShTexaslawyer.com Blog

We are pleased to announce that we are now taking cases for DWI / DUI Defense in Dallas, Denton and Tarrant Counties. We will offer the same level of personal service we have given to our civil law clients. We will continue to offer 24/7 phone support and house callas as well.

A drunk driving charge is an unfortunate challenge in the life of an individual. Sometimes the charge is unfounded, sometimes a person just needs help to get the best defense possible for the best possible outcome under the circumstances.

I have always taken a personal interest in the best possible customer service for my clients. I will bring the same level of personal service to my representation of these criminal charges to my DWI/DUI clients. There is no way to guarantee that any single DWI/DUI charge can be beaten, but with the personal cost of facing such charges, it is in your best interest to try.

More on this topic will follow soon.

I was meeting with two prospective clients yesterday. Their daughter died in a tragic motorcycle accident and they came to me via a referral from another attorney. As I sat with the older couple in their dining room, surrounded by papers related to their daughter's estate, the deceased's phone rang. They were unfamiliar with her iPhone and handed it to me, saying they were not very tech oriented. The call had gone to voice mail as they handed it to me, but I showed them how to slide the unlock button, and was surprised there was no password. More shocking, was the list of recent callers. The third call down the list was a prominent, aggressive, local "TV Lawyer".

I asked if the deceased had any recent accidents, giving the benefit of the doubt to the TV lawyer. They assured me there had been no prior accidents. That confirmed what I didn't want to think. The TV Lawyer was obviously gathering police reports of major accidents and directly calling those involved in the accident to solicit business. I was appalled and disgusted.

The State of Texas is in an ongoing battle over the use of police reports. Legislation is written, attacked in court, and then re-written. It is obvious what the public and the legislators want; they want lawyers to leave people alone. If the people involved in an accident want a lawyer, they know how to find one. They do not want letters and phone calls offering services.

The Texas State Bar Association has made its position very clear over a longstanding rule:
Rule 7.03 Prohibited Solicitations and Payments
(a) A lawyer shall not by in-person or telephone contact seek professional
employment concerning a matter arising out of a particular occurrence or
event, or series of occurrences or events, from a prospective client or nonclient
who has not sought the lawyer's advice regarding employment or with whom the
lawyer has no family or past or present attorney-client relationship when a
significant motive for the lawyer's doing so is the lawyer's pecuniary gain.

As a lawyer, I understand how attorneys feel like this is an infringement of their First Amendment Rights of free speech. I also understand the frustration of finding quality cases in a highly competitive market. It is irksome that while I stay within the rules, never seeking to make first contact, other lawyers are out there buying police reports and cold-calling people in hopes of being the first lawyer to contact and secure the case. As a lawyer, I am also embarrassed. I am embarrassed that this family is seeing the greed that plagues my profession. They are seeing the vultures descend on their tragedy, pretending compassion, while what they are really attracted to is a potentially lucrative case, based on the corpse of their dead daughter.

I visited with the family for about two and a half hours. We discussed the death of their daughter, how to wrap up the affairs of her daughter's estate, and personal issues in dealing with a loss. I left them cards, gave them a battle plan for approaching their problems, and told them there was no pressure or rush to make a decision or take an action today. They were very appreciative of the advice and time. Although I had told them upfront that the consultation was without a fee, they offered to pay me for my time. I refused, reminding them it was a free consultation. They assured me that if they decided to hire a lawyer, it would be me.

I drove away thinking, maybe I'm not pushy enough with potential clients. I have an office and a staff dependant on me for signing cases. If the competition is cold calling people, maybe I should. However, I quickly remembered my disgust for the lawyer who had cold-called this grieving family. I can't bend my principles in the name of profit. What good would it be to hate myself and not be able to enjoy the fruit of my efforts? Instead, I focused on the relieved look of the older couple who had some answers, and who wanted to hire me, not that TV Lawyer who called them looking for a buck off their dead daughter.

We have a Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hurst-TX/Stephen-Howard-Attorney-at-Law-PC/192282399742?ref=nf

I encourage you to check out the writings of a good friend who is a talented writer as well.
His FB fan page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Juggling-Writer/268576838364
His blog is at http://www.christophergronlund.com/blog/tjw/

This article at CNN frustrates me (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/law.technology/index.html). There is a repeating theme among some lawyers and the general public that somehow we do not have laws to deal with emerging technological issues. I would argue we in fact do have such laws.

The article begins with a discussion about defamatory statements made on Twitter or other social networks. The article implies that the laws of defamation are somehow no current with the times. How could they not be? Defamation is defined as, "... the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always, a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation).

A statement on Twitter, MySpace?, Facebook, e-mail, is the same as a statement made in person, in print, or televised. A statement is merely a communication of ideas. The media is irrelevant. So the laws of defamation would apply to a Tweet, as they would any other statement. The defenses to the statement would be the same as well. The person making the statement might not be thinking it was the same, but it is.

The article goes on to imply that the law is missing in areas of intellectual property rights. Yet, it is well settled in American Jurisprudence that the person who creates a writing or thing has the automatic copyright to that creation, unless otherwise modified by contract. Where the conflict arises is that unwitting creators are posting their ideas in electronic media where a EULA or contract has granted rights to the website's owner. That, or the creator is unwittingly placing the creation in the public domain.

The issue is less a failing in the law, than it is an issue with those who do not understand the law. Even some lawyers will fall into this trap. The think that because the media in which the thought or communication is different that past forms, that the old laws do not apply. Non-lawyers unfamiliar with the laws, do not know how to extend how a law created for a different time or media would apply to the current situation.

The reality is that all of our new-fangled, high-tech, means of communication and information sharing are not all that different than before, despite the need of electricity, computers and networks. There is no difference between me telling people a unsubstantiated, careless lie in the grocery store line, than there is posting the same statement to all my friends online. I still made the statement, and if the careless, wrongful statement caused harm, I am responsible for the statement.