You may recognize Judge Lorna Alksne from your living room. Or, possibly, your patio.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Viking Cruises v. Moriana decision broadens the impact of PAGA claim arbitration clauses in employment agreements, potentially restricting the ability of employees in California to litigate claims under the Private Attorneys General Act.
Hello all:
My name is Hannah Theophil, and I am honored to serve on the New Lawyer Division’s Executive Committee where I help organize networking and social events for new lawyers in the greater San Diego area. I graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 2019 and moved from Boston to San Diego shortly thereafter to begin practicing law. I am in my second year of practice.
As a practicing attorney, most of us operate solely within our niche. We become masters of our wheelhouse and we rarely venture outside of it, except for when the occasion family member is seeking free legal advice. We come to thrive within the one or two areas of law that we practice on a regular basis.
When John H. Wilson first took the California bar exam in 2008, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake rumbled through the Ontario convention center, sending him scrambling under the table for cover.
Only 24% of Americans ages 18-34 and 27% of Americans ages 35-54 have estate planning documents according to a recent survey. Why are so many young Americans without estate plan documents? In Caring.com’s recent survey, a large number of respondents (40%) indicated that they have simply not gotten around to it. Other reasons cited included not having enough assets to leave to anyone (33%), not knowing how to get a will or a living trust (12%), or believing estate plan documents are too expensive to set up (13%).
Jodi Cleesattle “accidentally” fell into the practice of law, but now she can’t picture herself doing anything else. After working as a political news reporter post-college, Cleesattle attended law school in the early 1990’s with the goal of pursuing a career in political or legal news. During her time at Washington College of Law in D.C., Cleesattle co-founded The National Jurist, a national magazine for law students that still thrives today with an estimated reach of 100,000 law students and educators. Passionate about media and First Amendment issues, Cleesattle also founded her law school’s Burton D. Wechsler National First Amendment Moot Court Competition, which the school continues to host annually.
No trial attorney is perfect. Even the most prepared and experienced trial attorneys should expect their adversaries to attack not just their clients’ actions and inactions, but also claimed missteps by the trial attorneys themselves. This is especially evident in appeals, where parties regularly argue that issues have been waived or forfeited; that deadlines have bene missed; or decry alleged attorney misconduct in the trial court below.
By Andrew A. Servais
Wingert, Grebing, Brubaker & Juskie, LLP
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