Family Law

• Divorce
• Child Support
  A:  I led a team of Solo and Small Firm Lawyers in challenging the statutes that the Missouri Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE) operate under. The statutes violate due process, equal protection and the separation of powers clause. For the first time in the history of our country, in Missouri, a clerk for an administrative agency has the power to enter support orders and enforce those orders, (civil and criminal contempt, mandatory wage assignments etc.  all done extra-judicially).  The orders take effect immediately and unless the payer parent files for judicial review within 30 days, by statute, our courts are precluded from modifying these orders.
• Child Abuse
  Judge Soukup believed that people from the community, who had experience with life, would be good at presenting useful, balanced information to the court. As a result, the CASA movement was born.  In 1990, the US Congress encouraged the expansion of CASA with passage of the Victims of Child Abuse Act.

Criminal Law

• Criminal Defense
  A:  I was comfortable doing the criminal defense because I had done the internship in the DA's office and had spent a year in the Portland district court. While I was at Norman Hanson I had done a few family matters and they seemed to be interesting to me.
• DUI/DWI
  Here's an example.  I am representing a DWI client. He wants me to get him off. I ask him the elements. " Were you operating - a motor vehicle - on a public roadway - while under the influence of alcohol or other drug?"
• Sex Crimes
  I have also been the director of a rape crisis center and was the first managing attorney for the Legal Services for the Elderly Hotline in Maine.
• Fraud
  A:  When I graduated from NYU Law School in 1970, I was determined to avoid the boredom of private law firm practice.  Enthusiastic and idealistic, I first secured a plum judicial clerkship with the Chief Judge of New York, Stanley H. Fuld.  From there, I immediately became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and spent the next three years as a prosecutor involved in various criminal matters, such as securities fraud, political corruption, bank robbery, tax evasion, and drug trafficking.
• Robbery
  I can’t say I’ve been disappointed with what will hopefully turn out to be a 24 year FBI career by the time I (hope to) retire at the end of 2004.  Essentially there’s not too many jobs with a mission more important than what I’ve always interpreted to be the FBI’s mission of simply “catching the bad guys.”  Even better than solving a crime after it has occurred and getting justice for the victims and society, is/was (admittedly those far rarer occasions) when we were able to recover a kidnap victim or prevent a violent crime like a Mafia hit or a bank robbery from occurring.   I helped out with some of the Mafia investigations in the 1980’s that ended up making serious dents into the up-to-then dominant criminal enterprise in New York City.
• Burglary
  A:  We are experiencing an unusually high surge of methamphetamine use and production.  Because we are out in the boonies and there is very little law enforcement, a lot of druggers set up their meth labs in our county.  Meth is extremely easy to cook and its resale value is high.   Meth is a devastating and toxic drug.  The risks and costs of clean-ups are high. The druggers turn to burglary and theft to finance their habits, so we have seen a skyrocketing in our burglary reports.
• Theft
• Drug Crimes
  In the criminal realm I handle all sorts of cases from murders and rapes to traffic infractions.  We are a small office (4 attorneys) so the work is spread out and no one specializes in any particular area.  I handle most of the DUI's (driving under the influence) and domestic violence cases, with a few drug cases here and there.  Whenever we get a complex case or a murder case, the whole office is involved.  I am involved in every aspect of the case from the late night call from the officer all the way through the appeal to the state supreme court.
• Assault
• Murder
  I've been involved in a couple of capital murder cases, and I prosecuted the youngest murderers in the State of Washington.  Back in 1994, two 12-year-olds shot to death a homeless migrant worker.  The case gained national prominence and I was interviewed by all of the major networks.  My interviews even appeared on
• Juvenile Crimes
  A:  I went to the University of North Carolina and received a degree in urban planning and law because I thought I would become an urban planner. And it turned out that law was much more interesting. My wife and I moved to Maine in 1977 and opened an office up here on Munjoy Hill and basically ran a general practice for quite a while. I didn't begin focusing on juvenile law until the late 1980's. I began to concentrate on juvenile defense work and guardian ad litem work sometime around 1994 or 1995.
• Manslaughter
  [Editor's note: Logan Marr, a five-year old girl, died in foster care in January 2001.  Her foster mother, a former Department of Human Services caseworker, was convicted of manslaughter.]

Business and Corporate Law

• Corporate Law
  I had an offer from Van Meer and Belanger, a firm that did corporate work. I felt this would give me an opportunity to try corporate law. It was quite research-oriented rather than dealing with people. At Van Meer and Belanger I reunited with Diane Dusini, who had been a year ahead of me in law school. Some of what we did at the firm was property work for complex divorce cases. Practitioners in town would come to us and ask about tax ramifications or trust issues. And we would do the background work.
• Business Transactions
  You have these laws driving business transactions onto the internet.  The problem now is that you have a lot of information out there in the internet that usually is private information. It hasn't been information that you can easily access. We're going to have two pressures: pressure to take advantage of the tools of technology and pressure to protect and make private all that information.
• Intellectual Property
  For a while he practiced out of his house. Then he and another guy opened up a small law firm and he called me up and said, "Do you want to work with me? I know that you know nothing about intellectual property law. I can teach you that." I said, "Sure." It was time to leave Pine Tree. He taught me everything I know, except what I have learned since then, about intellectual property law.  He's a wonderful man.
• Antitrust

Employment Law

• Workers Compensation
  A:   I was interested in doing some type of litigation. And I went to work for Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau, Pachios, & Haley, a large firm, and was immediately placed in a workers' compensation division of the company. I was traveling all over the state. I realized that was not how I wanted to practice law. So I was looking to make a change.
• Employment Discrimination
  But just at that time the mandatory retirement provisions existing in other states came under attack as violating the federal age discrimination act. Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have, I believe, mandatory retirement of judges at age 70. Ultimately, in a Missouri case the US Supreme Court held that there were reasons that justify imposing a mandatory retirement age for judges and that the provision was not a violation of the federal age discrimination act. But by then I was approaching the retirement age of 71 that had become traditional since 1911.
• Employment Contract
  A:  I went to work for Mittel & Heffernan in Portland, Maine, now Mittel, Asen, Hunter & Cary.  They were generous about letting me do pro bono work.  I signed up with the Volunteer Lawyers Project right away and also started representing people with the Maine Civil Liberties Union.  In addition to the work assigned to me, I brought in a certain amount of work because at the time I was one of just a few openly lesbian or gay lawyers.  Many gay and lesbian people contacted me about their legal issues in everything from negotiating employment contracts to incorporating businesses to wills and relationship agreements.

Property Law

• Easement
• Land Use and Zoning
  A:  There are certainly differences among states as to how they view environmental issues.  On balance, however, I believe that the similarities outweigh the differences.  Having said that, here's the conventional wisdom regarding the environmental record of various states.  The leaders in land use planning are Oregon and New Jersey.  New Jersey got off to a bad start with the reputation, probably well-deserved, as a dumping ground for New York.  Over the past fifteen to twenty years, however, New Jersey has been in the forefront of both toxic waste control and land use planning.
• Landlord-Tenant Disputes
  HR:  Civil, criminal, disability and mediation students are formally trained through classes that are generally held twice each week throughout the semester. Classes include procedure, trial processes, evidentiary issues, and opening and closing argument. Classes are also held in substantive law regarding family, landlord-tenant, and disability law. In mediation classes students learn how to mediate rather than how to advocate.

Health Law

• Personal Injury
  In California, after I passed the bar examination, I worked ten years in Melvin Belli’s office and we did nothing but plaintiffs’ personal injury work. That is where my husband, Harry, and I met each other.
• Auto Accidents
• Social Security Disability
  A:  Sadly, no. Are folks outraged by reports of grandmothers being strip searched at airports after 9/11? "Freedom" or "Constitutional Rights" are an abstract notion until you are singled out by racial profiling or by some clerk believing you are behind in your child support obligation (which in Missouri is meaningless since DCSE has, as of this date, not been able to reconcile county child support payments with payments made to the Family Support Collection Center).  Currently, a DCSE clerk, without a hearing or notice, can have your passport suspended,  the joint bank account you have with your new wife attached, 65% of   your Social Security Disability benefits garnished, property transfers set aside, your inheritance attached, your drivers license suspended, ad nausium.   And, guess what? You aren't behind in child support because you have been paying your "ex" directly.  The most fundamental premise of "due process" is that an agent of our government cannot attach your property until

Trusts and Estates

• Estate Planning
  A: I went to the law firm of Bernstein Shur Sawyer and Nelson, a large firm in Maine. I went there because I wanted to get the feel for a large firm. I had the ability to focus in on certain areas of the law that is hard to do in a small firm because in a small firm you are focusing on managing the systems, marketing, meetings, and management compensation, spreading your time very thin.  I went to Bernstein and very much liked the attorneys I worked with. I was involved in commercial real estate and estate planning. I had a fairly broad exposure to large transactions there.
• Wills
• Trusts
  A:  When I started there were no real specialists. Everybody was a generalist. And so I did everything. I did title work, corporate work, trusts and estates. Not so today because everyone thinks he or she is a specialist. I desperately tried a case whenever I could get my hands on one. Once I was able to focus and didn’t have to do the rest of the work, I did nothing but trial work.
• Probate
  Judy Potter also had trial experience, in Washington D.C. on women's employment cases before the EEOC and in the federal courts. She stopped in at the old law school building on High Street in the summer of 1972 and Dean Godfrey hired her on the spot. Judy not only ran and expanded the Clinic program, but she continued to consult on her EEOC cases and has personally helped hundreds of us women lawyers by now. Sigrid Tompkins had practiced probate law with Pierce Atwood since 1941.

Finance Law

• Bankruptcy
• Foreclosure
  A: My primary responsibility as a judge is hearing cases in the chancery courtroom where I am assigned. These include injunctions, mortgage foreclosures, and mechanics lien litigation. I also serve as Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Division, and so I supervise the work of our two juvenile judges and handle administrative matters arising out of Juvenile Court. I also handle a few juvenile matters, which I really enjoy.
• Tax Law
  A:  In simple terms, somehow we must find a way to simplify a very complex field or we will find ourselves drowning by the mere weight of our laws and regulations.  I recognize the hyperbole in the previous statement.  Nevertheless, the fact is that the practice of environmental law has become just as complex and hyper technical as tax law.  Laws, and especially regulations, must be written in plain language, comprehensible to the general public.