After screwing around on my blog and reading updates and looking at youtube, I finally made it to the Litigation Roundtable hosted at Duane Morris and sponsored by the DC AILA litigation committee.
It was great. It would have been greater if my criminal defense breatheren and sisteren (if there is such a word) had made it out there. As it was, I was the only person from the criminal defense bar there. They were excited to hear from a criminal defense attorney since Padilla is a criminal decision. Don’t worry, fair reader, I did well by you as a criminal lawyer. I wowed them with fancy words like coram nobis and mentioned the second prong of Strickland, I encouraged them to get to know us criminal defense lawyers (I said we were really nice) and I didn’t let on that most of us are on the crazy side of sane.
I don’t have any words of wisdom to give you, nothing that I haven’t already said, anyway. But I am glad I went. It was entertaining and informative to see what the immigration peeps make of this case and it is clear that this case is a really BIG DEAL everywhere. The end result is this: The immigration practicioners need the criminal defense bar to step up to the plate on this one. We’ve won a huge victory and we need to Carpe Diem, etc. etc. Criminal defense attorneys need to befriend an immigration attorney (drinks and dinner work for me) and pick their brain before entering into a plea for a non-USC client. Immigration attorneys need to befriend a criminal defense attorney to find out how post-conviction proceedings work (again, I’m fond of french foods and wines) and the procedural requirements for them.
Both bars need to come together to forge a united defense against the common enemy: The Man.
