The VLW Blog

“Just showing up” is 80 percent of the formula for success in life, we’re told. Indeed, “just showing up” may be all it takes to become a successful police informant, if one reads a dissent in a gun case released yesterday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Here’s how the car-search scenario played [...]

[Read more →]

A Norfolk federal jury found former lawyer Troy A. Titus guilty on 33 felony counts of wire and mail fraud, money laundering and conspiracy for a $2 million Ponzi scheme involving real estate. According to The Virginian-Pilot, Titus faces a maximum of 20 years in prison after this morning’s verdict. U.S. District Judge Raymond A. [...]

[Read more →]

Here’s a golf item and no, it’s not another Tiger tale. Tiger famously had his dad to coach him, but a lot of golfers come to the game through a high-school coach. This is a story about one of those coaches. James Purdham has coached golf for 15 years at Hayfield High School in Fairfax, [...]

[Read more →]

Former Page County Sheriff Danny Presgraves was handed a 19-month sentence for his guilty plea to racketeering this morning. According to the Northern Virginia Daily, Presgraves’ voice cracked as he apologized before U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad.  “I failed the people of Page County miserably,” he said, according to the paper. After the sentencing in [...]

[Read more →]

Lawyers and others in the Roanoke legal community pitched in again this week to help make Christmas time special for kids who might otherwise go without. At the annual “Santa in the Square” party in downtown Roanoke, 35 lawyers and paralegals provided holiday cheer for some 200 local children.  The kids got to have pictures [...]

[Read more →]

The Supreme Court of Virginia may get a say on whether the Virginia Constitution allows the use of public money for a Norfolk Southern rail project planned for Montgomery County. The county supervisors, who oppose the proposed freight yard, are fighting the project by attacking the state funding deal.  Richmond Circuit Judge Melvin Hughes rejected [...]

[Read more →]

The Fairfax delegation to the General Assembly has selected General District Judge Lorraine Nordlund and substitute judges Michael F. Devine and Brett A. Kassabian to fill pending vacancies on the county circuit court. Del. David Albo, the Republican who chairs the House Courts of Justice Committee, said members of the delegation interviewed candidates for the [...]

[Read more →]

Washington and Lee University Law School Dean Rodney A. Smolla has been a man on the move in recent years, and he doesn’t appear to be slowing down. He will be introduced tomorrow as the 11th president of Furman University in Greenville, S.C. He will succeed David Shi, who will retire June 30. Smolla was [...]

[Read more →]

A circuit court judge appeared skeptical about the plaintiffs’ efforts to overcome sovereign immunity defenses for state officials in the Virginia Tech shooting cases. Franklin County Circuit Judge William Alexander heard arguments Monday on various defenses raised in two $10-million lawsuits filed against state officials and others by the families of two victims of the [...]

[Read more →]

Just how friendly judges can be with the lawyers who appear before them has always been a difficult ethical question. Facebook and other social media don’t make it any less difficult, as an opinion by the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee illustrates. A majority of the committee finds that a judge may not add “lawyers [...]

[Read more →]