I’m teaching at Solo Practice University!

I’m going to be teaching a course at Solo Practice University!

The course I’ll be teaching is on Federal Criminal Practice. It’s designed for students who already know how to represent someone in state court on criminal charges but wants to expand his or her practice into federal court. I’ll talk about the parts of criminal practice that are unique to federal court – Federal Sentencing, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Bail Reform Act, and some of the constitutional challenges to a prosecution that one can make in federal court more frequently than state court. It should be fun.

Solo Practice University, for those who don’t know, is a resource for lawyers and law students who have started, or what to start, a solo law practice. There are courses in substantive areas of law (such as my humble offering) as well as the logistics and details of starting a practice, getting clients, and handling the other stresses, challenges, and joys that come from helping folks in our legal system.

I’m looking forward to teaching the course to help lawyers who are coming to federal court represent their clients better. I remember one day, as I was walking into the U.S. Marshall’s cell block in federal court, I saw a friend of mine who I knew did a fair bit of state criminal work. He asked if he could bend my ear to talk about a case he had. He’s a good lawyer, and he really cares about his clients, but he was so lost in the federal sentencing scheme that applied to his client that he really was not going to do the job he needed to. To his credit, he was asking for help, but I fear what happens when lawyers in that situation don’t reach out to someone with federal experience. My hope is that by teaching this class I can better equip state court criminal defense lawyers to go into federal court and represent their clients well.