The big news is I’m going back to school!  I’ve signed up for 3 months of Solo Practice University.  I’m way too excited for my own good.  I just started looking at all the classes, and I want to take ALL of them.  First and foremost, I guess I should take a real estate class since I’m getting ready to close on a house on October 29th.  But we’ll see…  I may get distracted by classes on legal blogging and the like.  I figure this is yet another way to prepare myself to open my own law practice.  So far I’ve read 3 books with 3 different perspectives: (1) How to Start and Build a Law Practice by Jay Foonberg, (2) The Ultimate Guide to Solo and Small Firm Success by Renee Caggiano Berman, and (3) Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be by Carolyn Elefant.  Now I can get some more perspective from real solo practitioners and learn some substantive law in the process.

In other big news, the Tennessee bar exam results are out one week from today.  It’s not normal for me to be stressed or nervous about something, but as it gets closer, I worry a little more.  I have a lot riding on this exam.  You can’t open a law firm if you’re not licensed in the state you’re operating in…  Time to throw myself back into some studying to prevent obsessing over something I can’t control anyway.  Let’s just hope that next weekend I won’t be planning how I’m going to study for yet another bar exam.

The TN suspension statute tolls the statute of limitations in a number of situations including when a defendant moves out-of-state.  The general long arm statute gives Tennessee courts jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants based on different “minimum contacts” with Tennessee like “doing business” in the state.  I’m sure you can see where this is going…  And if not, I’ll spell it out for you.  Why should the statute of limitations be tolled in a situation where the court has jurisdiction despite the fact that the defendant is out-of-state?  Well, it’s not.  Or at least, I think there’s a really good argument for why it’s not.

In Arrowood v. McMinn County, 121 S.W.2d 566 (Tenn,1938), the Tennessee Supreme Court set forth a basic rule that the suspension statute does not apply when the defendant’s absence or residence out-of-state does not affect the plaintiff’s right to sue.  In that case, the court had long-arm jurisdiction over the defendant based on the nonresident motorist statute.  Then, in Carr v. Borchers, 815 S.W.2d 528 (Tenn.App.1991), the Eastern Tennessee Court of Appeals noted an exception to the Arrowood rule.  Basically, the court found that the plaintiff could take advantage of the suspension statute, but only if he had exercised due diligence in ascertaining the defendant’s whereabouts.  Again, the applicable long-arm statute was the non-resident motorist statute.  The Tennessee Supreme Court reaffirmed and expanded the Carr exception in Lam v. Smith, 891 S.W.2d 207 (Tenn.1994).  There, the court found that if the plaintiff has no knowledge that the defendant is out-of-state, the Arrowood rule should not automatically apply.  Instead, the particular circumstances of a case might excuse the failure to use the available method of service of process.  However, plaintiff must use due diligence to discover the defendant’s location before he can rely on the suspension statute.  Surprisingly enough, that case was also dealing with the non-resident motorist statute.

Finally, I found an unreported Tennessee Court of Appeals case where jurisdiction was based on TCA § 20-2-214.  Grubbs v. Pilkington, 2001 WL 1660826 (Tenn.Ct.App.2001).  The Court even acknowledged that there were no cases in Tennessee where the court applied the Arrowood rule in an action that didn’t involve the non-resident motorist statute.  That was definitely a relief since I was beginning to doubt my researching abilities.  So I’m thinking that since the Tennessee Supreme Court did not explicitly limit the Arrowood rule to situations involving the non-resident motorist statute, and the Tennessee Court of Appeals unambiguously applied that same rule to the general long-arm statute in an unreported decision, the suspension statute should not apply in a case where jurisdiction is based on TCA § 20-2-214.  Ta da!

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t that interesting.  But you learned something, so that’s gotta be worth something, right?

Habeas corpus is one of my favorite legal issues.  Frustrating but fascinating.

My first taste of habeas came when I worked at the Federal Public Defender’s office as an intern after my first year of law school.  Sedley Alley was executed that summer.  Another story worth investigating.

My second year of law school I took a class on wrongful convictions, and we read the An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington Jrby Margaret Edds.  The book does a really good job of detailing the legal process for appealing a death penalty conviction, while also telling a compelling story about a wrongfully convicted man in Virginia.  And no offense to John Grisham, but for a law student/lawyer, I would definitely recommend Ms. Edds’ book over An Innocent Man(even though it is also an interesting book).  You’ll learn a lot more about the appeal process reading Earl Washington Jr.’s story.

Totally random but that article just got me thinking…

“I need a new will.  Do you think you can write it for me?”

Ummmm…  I knew I had just learned this for the bar exam.

“No…?”  Then I just babbled for a few minutes about undue influence, and my mom’s eyes glazed over as she realized that she wasn’t going to get free legal advice out of me but instead a lecture on professional responsibility.

But the whole thing got me thinking.  Being someone’s attorney is considered a “confidential relationship” and gives rise to a presumption of undue influence when that attorney then is a beneficiary in the will.  Also, sometimes children who are beneficiaries in the will can be found to have unduly influenced the writer of the will depending on their relationship.  So obviously an attorney daughter beneficiary who actually wrote the will would give rise to a big ol’ stinky presumption of undue influence.  But does that mean that it would be unethical for me to write it?  The presumption is rebuttable of course, so the will wouldn’t automatically be defeated.  Is it enough that the presumption is created to make it unethical for me to write it at all?

I did some quick research on the topic, and there didn’t seem to be much out there in Tennessee case law, at least with regards to this particular situation.  I’m pretty sure my response disappointed my mom and probably parents everywhere who want to get the most out of their children’s expensive legal educations.  What’s the point of having a lawyer in the family if you can’t get a free will out it?