The job market is hot, your student loan balance is, well, eek, and you’ve been asked to do some legal work on the side—maybe it’s document review for a contract firm, or overflow for a solo practitioner friend.
Can you ethically do this?
Tread carefully, if at all.
First, check with your employer. Your firm or agency may have specific rules governing side work—and this may extend to non-lawyer employment such as teaching as an adjunct at a law
Continue Reading Can Lawyers Moonlight?
So you’ve received an inheritance and you’re married. The person who left you the inheritance probably intended for it to benefit you, not your spouse, if you get divorced. How do you protect the inheritance?
Wisconsin law provides limited protection. Under Wisconsin’s Marital Property Act, which governs the classification of assets during marriage and on the death of a spouse, property received by one spouse as a gift or inheritance from a third party is classified as the recipient’s
Continue Reading Protecting Your Inheritance
There’s a metal stick in the hedgerow between my house and my neighbor’s that tells us how much yard we need to mow and how much of the sidewalk is our responsibility to clear each time it snows. For such an insignificant piece of metal, it holds a lot of power (see Figure 1).
Each time I see it, I’m transported back to U.W. Law Professor Gretchen Viney’s real estate class. It was there, while practicing reading legal
Continue Reading Beyond Geocaching, There’s Benchmarking: Finding Markers of Property Law in the Wild
If you’re a legal practitioner or scholar, you’re almost certainly familiar with The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. But you may not have heard of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation. ALWD, from the Association of Legal Writing Directors, is designed to complement the Bluebook. Whenever I have a legal citation question that the Bluebook can’t answer, I turn to ALWD.
ALWD recently released a new 7th edition. The CRIV Blog offers some insights from
Continue Reading Newly Updated ALWD Guide to Legal Citation Complements, Illuminates the Bluebook
The annual supplement to the criminal jury instructions has been published. It includes new instructions and updates to existing instructions. A list is here. The new and updated instructions, along with all the other instructions, are available at the Wisconsin State Law Library’s website.
Continue Reading 2021 Updates to the Criminal Jury Instructions
State v. Scott William Forrett, 2019AP1850-CR, petition for review of a published decision of the court of appeals granted 9/14/21; case activity (including links to briefs)
Issue presented
Wisconsin’s escalating OWI penalty scheme counts a person’s refusal to consent to a blood draw as a basis for enhancing the penalty for future offenses. Is that scheme unconstitutional because it penalizes a defendant’s exercise of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from an warrantless search?
As our post on
Continue Reading SCOW will Address Whether Refusal of Blood Draw Can Be Used to Enhance OWI Penalties
A well-drafted personal guaranty of payment and performance provides peace of mind for the diligent lender. It is not only irrevocable, but also covers future extensions of credit and includes broad waivers of defenses. Even when a lender is faced with a bankruptcy proceeding, the guarantor’s promise to pay the full amount of a debt is inviolate: a claim against the guarantor need not be reduced to account for recoveries from other sources unless and until the creditor is
Continue Reading Lenders Beware: The Effect of Bankruptcy on Personal Guaranties
It’s not uncommon for clients to tell me that they’ve added their adult child or children to their bank account. My next question to them is what they mean by that? Did you add the child as an owner to the account, a signatory, power of attorney, or beneficiary? The answer makes a big difference in what rights, if any, they may have transferred to their child and if their assets will transfer after death. Knowing how the accounts
Continue Reading Should I Add My Child to My Bank Accounts?
This article was put together by Noah G. Buhle, a law clerk with our firm and a Senior at Marquette University Law School, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thanks for Noah’s great effort and nice summary!
Biden Tax Plan and Ramifications
President Joe Biden, in his campaign and in several speeches after being inaugurated, has stated his intent to change the tax code. One common theme of his statements has been that the average lower and middle class American will not
Continue Reading Biden’s Tax Proposals: What They Mean for You
On Thursday, September 9, 2021, President Biden announced his new COVID-19 plan entitled “Path out of the Pandemic” (Plan). While this Plan includes several provisions, this e-alert highlights a few of those of most interest to employers:
Continue Reading Biden Orders Vaccine Mandates for Certain Employers
From the Wisconsin State Law Library:
The Wisconsin Criminal Jury Instructions have recently been updated, with a 2021 release approved by the Wisconsin Judicial Conference’s Criminal Jury Instructions Committee. The fifty-ninth supplement to the Criminal Jury Instructions updates the publication on legislative actions and judicial decisions through August 2021.
The update includes revisions of twenty-nine existing jury instructions, as well as five new instructions:
Continue Reading 2021 Release of the WI Criminal Jury Instructions Now Available
The US Dep’t of Labor has announced the beginning of an effort to modernize unemployment claim-filing to make the process both more equitable and less susceptible to fraud.
This effort is centered around the creation of “tiger” teams that are “composed of experts across many disciplines including fraud specialists, equity and customer service experience specialists, UI program specialists, behavioral insights specialists, business intelligence analysts, computer systems engineers/architects and project managers.” These teams will not only work on hardening a
Continue Reading Tiger Teams and Unemployment Reform Coming to Wisconsin
Like any other civil action, family law matter outcomes are decided on the facts. Those facts are typically collected directly from the client, and through interrogatories and requests for production of documents.
Typically these methods alone are sufficient to collect the discovery you need to engage in settlement negotiations and prepare for trial.
However, there are other methods of collecting facts that may be appropriate and necessary in some matters. To best represent their clients, family law practitioners should
Continue Reading 3 Discovery Tools Underemployed in Family Law
“I know Lavinia can never earn a steady living.”
Maria Frost, April 10, 1865
It is doubtful that Lavinia Goodell ever enjoyed extended periods of good health. She was a sickly infant and youngster, and as an adult she was often ill. (During the years she practiced law, in addition to physical ailments, she suffered from frequent bouts of severe depression. That topic will be covered in a future post.) In spite of her many maladies, Lavinia rarely complained,
Continue Reading “I know Lavinia can never earn a steady living.”
On August 18, 2021, President Biden announced that his administration would require all nursing home staff be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition to continue to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. The same day, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it would develop emergency regulations to enforce President Biden’s initiative. CMS indicated it will issue the regulations by the end of September 2021.
In light of this announcement, nursing homes should review their obligations related to
Continue Reading COVID-19 Updates for Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities
Cox v. City of Madison Zoning Board of Appeals, Appeal No. 2020AP478 (July 8, 2021)
Kathleen Cox purchased property on Lake Mendota with the plan to demolish and rebuild the existing house and wet boathouse. A wet boathouse is one that is built over excavated shoreline with the lake water underneath, into which a boat can directly navigate. Cox learned after rebuilding the wet boathouse and completing design plans for the home that a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Continue Reading Denial of Variance Request Regarding Lakefront Yard Setback Requirements