Legalese

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, […]

In my last column, I talked about sections one through six of the new Georgia Constitutional Carry Act. (If you missed Part 1, click or tap on this link). Once again, I will point out that […]

There’s been a lot on the news and social media about Georgia’s new gun laws.  Some praise it as a law enforcing the Constitution, some vilify it as putting more guns in the pipeline for […]

Many times, people don’t come see me when they should have.  Then they find themselves having messed up with their DIY legal solutions provided by Google, J.D. and then they have to pay me a […]

When people come to me for estate planning, they have some idea that powers of attorney, wills, and trusts are involved.  They usually aren’t sure what the difference is between them, or, they have some […]

Powers of Attorney are useful things to have.  I advise my clients to have both medical and financial powers of attorney, not because they may need them in the present, but because they may need […]

Most of us have heard the word ‘arbitration’ at some point, but not everyone is sure about what it is.  Arbitration is a type of alternative dispute resolution, like mediation, but the neutral third party […]

Whatever our political divide, we can all agree on one thing: babies are cute.  Babies make people smile, and are a physical reminder that whatever happens, life goes on.  Babies are life going on.  Unfortunately, […]

I learned how to drive in New York, where snow was something that you expected every winter.  People knew what to do.  Here in Georgia, where it only snows every few years, and rarely more […]

One of the things I like most about the law is it gives us a set of rules.  Don’t know what to do?  Go to the rulebook.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of pages […]

I recently had the pleasure of attending a dinner held in honor of the 175th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Georgia.  Honestly, until I received the invitation to the dinner, it hadn’t occurred to […]

I call this column “Legalese” because to me, “Legalese” is a language that looks suspiciously like English but isn’t.  It uses many of the same words, and because of that, many English speakers think that […]

Mens Rea is one of my favorite Latin legal terms.  It means, literally, “criminal mind.”  That’s such a great image – it brings forth a picture of a brain that is itself criminal, wearing black […]

Once people become the executor (or administrator) of an estate, they get a little bit confused about what they do (and can’t do) next. Obviously, I can’t talk about everything here in this short column, […]

These days there is a lot of confusing information on the internet and social media.  The fact that we are still in a pandemic that affects public policy only highlights the problem. One of the […]

Friday, September 17, 2021 was Constitution Day this year, as is every September 17th of every year.  September 17th is Constitution Day because that is the day that it was signed by the constitutional delegates.  […]

If nothing else, the COVID-19 Pandemic has resulted in the creativity and cooperation of the legislature to create solutions to problems that didn’t previously exist, or maybe only existed on much smaller scales.  Although services […]

I had to drive to Savannah not too long ago, and it began to rain.  I mean rain, the kind of blinding rain where everything outside the car is grey and slippery.  The car in […]

HIPAA (not HIPPA, that’s not a thing) seems to be brought up in public debate quite a bit these days, so I thought I’d write about what it is (and isn’t).  I’ve noticed a good […]