RUMPOLES RULES FOR THE NEW YEAR

First, congrats to the 2019 Justice Building Blog Fantasy Football Champion Gary Bass, who bested Rumpole over the last two weeks. While not making an excuse, we did lose our top two RBs to injuries for the finals, as well as a starting TE. But injuries are part of the game and give Mr. Bass credit for snagging the QB we dropped earlier in the year- Jameis Winston from Tampa Bay. He was a big part of Mr. Bass's run to the championship. We have made the finals for the last two years, and won last year (our ability to brag officially ended on Sunday so Judge De La O can now rest easy). 
See you in 2020 Mr. Bass. 

Rules for the new year. 

1) No more Merry Christmas. That ended over this past weekend.

2) You can say "Happy New Year" through Sunday, and at five days that's stretching it. If you see us in the courthouse Monday (and you won't-see below) and say "Happy New Year" we will ignore you and keep on walking. 

We have a few rules for trials. We don't like Friday afternoon verdicts. They tend to be bad.  We don't believe in coincidences. It's usually not happenstance when two bad things happen to your client in a case.  As Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, once wrote- Once is a mistake, twice is happenstance, and the third is enemy action. 

But our number one rule for criminal defense attorneys, and this is inviolate, is do not- under any circumstances, allow a case to be set for trial for the first week of the new year. There are many factors at play during week one of the new year, and all of them bad. 

First, prosecutors have returned from vacation, refreshed and raring to go and one of their resolutions is to "get tough on crime". 

Second, and more ominously, Judges have returned from time off. And to the limited extent any of them engage in serious introspection, they have also decided that their case load is too high and they have the reputation of being too lenient. So, within the dark crevices of their black robes and hearts, they have decided  the best way to get people to plead and lower the case load  is to slam a few defendants right out of the box in the new year. The word will get out, lawyers (not your blogger) will fold their tents and plead their clients guilty. 

All of this leads to the inescapable conclusion to NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES allow a court to set your client's case for trial during the first week of the new year. Schedule surgery. Get married or divorced or both. Take you holiday vacation late. Donate blood. Volunteer for Lawyers without Borders. Do something. Do anything but make yourself unavailable during that first week of the new year. 

You ignore Rumpole's advice at your own peril.   

Happy New Year. We will be back in town sometime around January 15, 2020.