Law Commons^™

The Practitioner’S Guide To Properly Responding To Requests For Disclosure Under The Texas Discovery Rules, Robert K. Wise, Kennon L. Wooten

St. Mary's Law Journal

Discovery, a pretrial procedure used to obtain information relating to the litigation, generally is the largest cost of civil litigation. By its very nature, discovery also is intrusive and invasive. Many practitioners are quick to dispute discovery requests, slow to produce information requested, and all too-eager to object at every stage of the discovery process.

This article relates to one of the most common types of written discovery—Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 194 disclosure requests, the responses to which are often incomplete and inadequate. Disclosure requests provide inexpensive, basic discovery without the delay relating to objections or work-product assertions. This …

Making The Modern American Legal Profession, 1969–Present, Michael Ariens

St. Mary's Law Journal

The American legal profession has changed dramatically over the past half-century greatly due to the solution and problem of “scale.” This was most noticeable after the American Bar Association’s adoption of the Code of Professional Responsibility. The reputation of lawyers and the legal community would continue to evolve in the eyes of the public. As such, the demand for lawyers and large law firms who had the capacity and means to handle such vast and varied issues would present itself. The increasing demand from large law firms over the years led to unprecedented growth and impact to the way in …

What Happened: Confronting Confrontation In The Wake Of Bullcoming, Bryant, And Crawford., Dibrell Waldrip, Sara M. Berkeley

St. Mary's Law Journal

Crawford v. Washington and its progeny demonstrate the difficulty of delineating both the core and the perimeter of the Confrontation Clause. Crawford abrogated Ohio v. Roberts, forcing trial lawyers to re-evaluate the use of various types of hearsay formerly admitted upon a finding of adequate “indicia of reliability.” Later the Court issued two decisions further altering the contours of Confrontation Clause jurisprudence. Michigan v. Bryant and Bullcoming v. New Mexico. With these options, the old Roberts “indicia of reliability” test transformed into the new “primary purpose” test to identify certain testimonial statements. By significantly altering the contours of Confrontation Clause …

Punishment Evidence: Grunsfeld Ten Years Later., Edward L. Wilkinson

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article deals with the admissible evidence during the punishment phase of a non-capital trial in Texas. In 1989, the Texas Legislature amended Article 37.07, Section 3(a) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to widen the scope of evidence admissible during the punishment phase of a non-capital trial. Grunsfel v. State, the leading case, the Court of Criminal Appeals interpreted the statute so narrowly as to render the changes meaningless. In 1993, the legislature amended the statute a second time; it provided for a more expansive range of evidence to be introduced, but deleted a critical definition of what …