Idiot’s Guide to Practicing Law

We’re Back – An Empty Promise’s Story

Hello and how the hell are you fine folk? Wow. It’s been a while since the last time I, the Boozy Barrister, attempted to restart this site up to talk about law, lawyering, legal things, etc. etc. etc. To the extent that, as I write the words “The site is coming back on February 1, 2021” each and every one of you are staring at the screen and sighing heavily with the belief that this is yet another empty promise. And you know what?

You may be right. But unlike the prior times I’ve sworn like a drug addict giving up the needle that this is the time it sticks, I’m trying my damndest this time. I mean that in the way that I’m not going to start making pie-in-the-sky promises about updating three times a week or anything like that. Because I know I won’t. As the ancient Greeks used to say: “Know thyself,” and MYself is prone to getting distracted, down, depressed, sluggish, and intensely focused on case work and therefore unable to dedicate the time I had back when my office was staffed up to the hilt to writing my thoughts down on these things.

But I’m gonna try, and I’m gonna try by saying that from here on out you can expect a post from me EVERY MONDAY unless I advise you well in advance. A little missive from the drunken whiskey glass/sentient comedian badger/overworked lawyer to start the week off. Always written on a Sunday night, in fact, so I can make sure it actually is done before I wrap myself in bed and dream about all the money I’ll never make hacking away at nickel and dime lawsuits. Because, to be honest, I miss it. And by setting myself ONE comprehensive post a week at the least, I can dedicate several days to writing it.

So here’s hoping it works.

Other things that are going on?

Monday Nights at 7 PM Eastern I’ll be over on Twitch streaming a roundup of whatever legal matter has caught my attention for an hour with a show I’m calling “Boozy’s Legal Funhouse.” You’ll be able to tune in at 7 PM Eastern HERE.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I’ll be over at that same Twitch stream in my screaming persona of a giant badger man doing video games for an hour at the same time and generally chatting.
I’m sitting down this year to actually try and finally write “Boozy’s Guide to Law for Dipshits,” a book that I’d love to actually get done.

All that said and done, if you’re still here I want to thank you for reading through all of this. I’ll be back again next week. So long as I don’t get distracted.

Peace.

-BB

An Open Letter From Your Lawyer: We Don’t Know What We’re Doing.

Hello!

So here we are, in the midst of a pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen in the United States in over a century, and we here at the Law Offices of Boozy Barrister would like to reassure and comfort all of our clients. We know that you have many questions regarding this virus, COVID-19, and how it may have an effect on your pending legal matters, your plans, hearings, bankruptcy payments, child support obligations, custody hearings, evictions, etc. We greatly appreciate you reaching out to us and providing us with the opportunity to address your questions as they arise. However, due to the sheer volume of calls and emails we have been receiving over the past month, our partners have all ascended from their well-stocked emergency bunkers and gathered six feet apart in the conference room to draft this open letter to reassure you:

We have no goddamn clue what we’re doing.

FurPlanet’s Furry Friday – The Law of Donations

Good Morning (or Afternoon, you know, whatever time it may happen to be when I get this post up. I’m a busy man.) and welcome back to the triumphant return of Furry Friday here on Lawyers & Liquor, brought to you by FurPlanet! Want a bit of furry reading to do? Need a comic that you haven’t seen on the shelves in years? Just want to convince them that investing in sponsored posts on my site wasn’t a horrible use of their time and money? Drop to all fours and dart over to Furplanet to peruse their collections of literature! Plus, and I want to point this out, these folks have been really patient with me over the past year of getting the site back up and going, so they really deserve the love from you.

Additionally, let me give a “lots of love” shoutout to my Blended Whiskey level Patreon supporters, who you can find listed here. I don’t know why you folks keep handing me monthly money, but you do, and I will gladly accept it.

That said, let’s fling open the cages to the technicolor zoo and discuss a topic that tends to hit pretty goddamn hard in the furry community: the giving of money or goods to others or charities in order to help them out. Specifically, what you can and can’t do when you make a charity bid, give to someone who’s about to be on the street, or donate to a good cause.

Even more specifically, why you don’t have any goddamn right to take that money back.

The Model Penal Code and Trent’s Teabagging: Insanity as a Defense, Part 4.

Welcome back to Lawyers & Liquor where we’re going to keep the crazy train slamming down the tracks today as we lean into part 4 of our examination of the insanity defense in the courts!

If you missed the first three posts discussing the evolution of the insanity defense through the ages, the M’Naghten rule, the Durham rule, and what the hell an irresistible impulse is, you can find those here, here, and here respectively. You don’t really need to read them to understand today’s discussion of the fourth insanity as a defense standard, the “substantial capacity” test, but I’d really suggest it because – as you’ll see in a few – they all sort of tie together in how we got here.

So with that said, let’s get what is essentially a criminal law review out of the way so in a year some law student can be like “Wow, this was really unhelpful and confusing! Thanks Boozy!”

But first, let’s get the form disclaimers out of the way.

“Policeman At The Elbow”: Insanity as a Defense, Part 3.

Welcome back to Lawyers & Liquor where we’re going to keep the crazy train slamming down the tracks today as we lean into part 3 of our examination of the insanity defense in the courts! If you missed the first two posts, where we examined M’Naghten and Durham as standards by which to determine if a defendant has the proper mental state to be guilty of a crime, you can find those here and here respectively. but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today, so we’re just going to dive in without much of a recap because I don’t see why it’s my responsibility to summarize a bunch of shit for you. Seriously. Go read them. I’m not your momma.

But first, let’s get the form disclaimers out of the way.