The VLW Blog

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners has posted the results for the July 2010 Bar Exam. Of the candidates who sat for the exam this past summer in Roanoke, 1,139 received a passing score, for a pass rate of 75.2%. The VBBE website also provides pass rates for each Virginia law school. Bar passers will [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board has imposed a public reprimand with terms on former Floyd County Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon Earl Hannett Jr. The reprimand stemmed from the removal and destruction of three computer hard drives in the prosecutor’s office by Hannett just before he left office and was replaced in January 2008 by Stephanie [...]

[Read more →]

Lawyers for the commonwealth and the federal government took two different views of the so-called individual mandate in argument today over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, perhaps better known as Obamacare. Virginia Solicitor General E. Duncan Getchell Jr. contended that the requirement that an individual have insurance or pay a [...]

[Read more →]

Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne will allow a plaintiff to pursue his auto accident case despite the earlier “settlement” of the claim by a dishonest lawyer acting without the client’s authority. Woodbridge lawyer Stephen Conrad, now disbarred and imprisoned, settled hundreds of claims without authority, usually pocketing the proceeds. A string of decisions held [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia State Bar and former president Jon D. Huddleston have received a national award for excellence in marketing. The “Virginia Is for Good Lawyers” project that Huddleston developed during his tenure last year includes “The Big Picture,” a video project about the pro bono and civic work of individual lawyers, and “Reflections,” a collection [...]

[Read more →]

Law students at Regent University’s law school blow off steam playing intramural flag football. Not so weird, you might say, but these people really take this stuff seriously. There’s even a website where the team rankings are listed (the 3L team “The Gong Show” is the odds on favorite so far). Check out the team [...]

[Read more →]

It took a power outage and mandatory evacuation to get Andrew McRoberts out of his office last week, according to an account he posts on his blog. McRoberts’ firm, Richmond’s Sands Anderson, was one of the offices affected when a power transformer exploded in a vault under the sidewalk at 12th and Main last Thursday. [...]

[Read more →]

HOT SPRINGS–Defense lawyers take divergent views on whether to divulge a defendant’s lack of cooperation to facilitate a settlement. Under established principles, a lawyer defending a civil claim cannot jeopardize his client’s coverage by telling his insurance adjuster that the client is failing to cooperate in the defense. But members of the Virginia Association of [...]

[Read more →]

The Virginia Judicial Council recommended yesterday the adoption of a rule on juror privacy that leaves the matter largely to the discretion of the trial judge rather than having jurors in criminal cases identified only by number as a matter of course. The original proposal, which would have jurors identified by numbers in all cases, [...]

[Read more →]

The Fairfax Bar Association’s convention last week at The Tides Inn in Irvington provided an opportunity for banter and good humor not always present when one of the county’s 15 circuit judges is in earshot. At least one was in hearing distance when an attorney commented about the “30 or 45 personalities on the court.”

[Read more →]