The hot traffic court story of the week is Vikings running back Adrian Peterson ticketed for going 109 mph in a 55 zone. See the story on ESPN.My favorite quote from the story is this from Peterson: I need to be more aware of the speed I was going ....I should add this to my speeding ticket excuses post, because I've heard it before. "I didn't realize I was going that fast."Maybe this excuse

Do AdSense ads increase the bounce rate?I've heard concerns about AdSense making a site look spammy in the past, and saw the idea mentioned in this discussion about link building and advertising.The concern some in the SEO community have is that webmasters will not want to link to sites that have ads on them. There are varied reasons discussed in the above forum. One that stands out to me looks

Noticed an interesting set of statistics about our directory of traffic lawyers just now. The image below shows the number of visits to the various pages within the directory. Click on the image to enlarge it. The stats are for the last October 21 to November 20.Most interesting numbers:a. 11,424 total pageviews and 7737 unique pageviews. As a rough guess, it looks like maybe 5000 people a month

Searching the web for something else, we came across the image below. It describes the fine and point schedule for Texas traffic tickets. If you click on it, it should enlarge.Looks like on the high end, it's almost $500 for a very high speed in a work zone with workers present. On the low end, a low speed is $158.As for points, most violations appear to be either zero or two points. If you have

Prospective clients frequently ask how their NY ticket will affect them in their home state. Since it's next door, we get this question a lot from Massachusetts drivers. One of the best places to get the answer to this question is your state's DMV. In Massachusetts it is known as the RMV - Registry of Motor Vehicles. This post is about Massachusetts, but for a more general discussion, see my Do

We spoke recently with a NJ insurance agent. He had received a ticket in NY which was an 1110a. This was a "road-side writedown" where the cop was giving him a break from a speed. The agent told us that an 1110a would increase insurance rates by as much $900 per year for three years. He said he wished the cop had written him for a low speed because ...NJ insurance companies treat a first-time low

The Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal on a drunk driving case that was dismissed. Virginia's highest court threw out the conviction in Harris v. Commonwealth (a pdf file). It found that the stop was unconstitutional - based only on an anonymous tip.Chief Justice Roberts (and Justice Scalia) felt the Court should have reviewed the case. Below are some excerpts of Roberts' opinion). His

Most of our speeding ticket cases are straightforward. We get hired, get all the information in order, contact the court and prosecutor, negotiate a reduction to something less, and let the client know the result and what they need to do. There's more to it than that, but that's the essence.Every once in a while we get a client who needs a trial. This story is an example of that.I'll call her

Halloween is coming up, so it's time for a ghost story:

For a new kick, I'm starting a series of stories about past cases I've handled. This one's a DWI story, from a few years ago. As part of my pattern for stories about cases, some elements will be fictionalized mainly to protect the client. In this case there was a trial, so the truth is really a matter of public record, though practically it would be difficult to find the record if you don't know

Yes, the Albany Lawyer has a wedding photo story. This has been one of my favorite stories for the past six years, and I finally get to tell it. Some details have been changed to protect the innocent and perhaps the guilty too.Back in 2003 there was a wedding. A friend of mine was starting his photography business. The bride was an acquaintance and asked him to help. New to the business, he

I guess it had to happen after I turned 40 a few years ago. I'm really starting to notice the aging process.Examples: We attended an intern's "Kegs on a Deck" party. Some attendees did "keg stands". This is a handstand (supported by others) on top of a keg while drinking from the tap. I did not do a keg stand but I did eat three chili dogs - which is probably worse. They did taste really good

A conversation with a law student led to something coalescing in my mind about good lawyers. Experience matters when you hire a lawyer. I'm biased, but I think trial experience is critical. Of course it's most important when you need a trial lawyer. Even for other kinds of law, it can still matter. A good lawyer has to understand what happens when something goes to court.When a new case comes in,

Interesting website I happened upon - it's about a guy from South Dakota who ran for the US Senate: Joel Dykstra. Love the name - we were big Lenny Dykstra fans back in the 90s when he played for the Mets. The two are probably not related, though the name suggests they have Dutch ancestry. Lenny has had some issues recently but we're still rooting for him. Meanwhile, Joel Dykstra is apparently

Not sure why, but it seems like a lot of people are searching for the San Bernardino Superior Court. Maybe it's because of the corruption scandal in the Assessor's office: LA Times story. But we think they just write a lot of speeding tickets in the traffic court. Maybe that's a revenue measure?For more info on the topic, see California speeding tickets and California Traffic Courts.

It looks like NY DWI cases will become more interesting in light of Melendez-Diaz (129 S.Ct. 2527), which just came down from the Supreme Court in late June. That case follows on the 2004 Crawford (541 US 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354) decision on the Confrontation Clause in the Sixth Amendment.The defendant in a criminal case has the right to confront his accusers. Melendez-Diaz holds that lab technicians

If you have a ticket in New York, please check out our New York Traffic Lawyer page.This is one of the most common questions we get: Do points transfer? Or: "Will the points transfer to my home state?"The short and misleading answer is No. The points themselves do not transfer to other states.So what does happen? In most situations, the state where you got the ticket will report any conviction to

Making life easier for phone calls with clients. We registered a new domain name: rlaw1.com. It's quicker to tell them that than redlichlaw.com. And the rlaw1.com domain just redirects to our traffic page.

We had a garage party last night. With all the DWI cases I handle where people had a few drinks and then drove home, this idea came to me. Wouldn't it be nice if you could go somewhere, have a few drinks, and not worry about driving home?There's more to this. First, one of the motivators was that we now have a refrigerator in our garage. We bought new appliances. While we got rid of the others,

Happy to have a guest blogger on our blog. My associate David Cooper is now contributing. His first blog post is on suspended licenses.

Why should you care? If you are driving in New York State and you have forgotten to answer a ticket or never heard back from the court you may be suspended. If your license or privilege to drive (for out-of-state drivers) in New York is suspended and you are stopped while driving in New York, there is a very good chance you will be charged with a crime, known as Aggravated Unlicensed Operation in

Saw something on the web that got me laughing. Back in '05 I did a post about lawyer marketing on the web. I critiqued some websites that claimed to help people with their tickets.Well, someone from speedticketbeaters -dot- com tried to post a comment on that old blog post. I don't allow these sites to promote themselves through my blog. But it was funny. The comment asserted, among other things,

Two good articles in the Wall Street Journal this week.Yesterday there was a discussion of drunk driver data by The Numbers Guy - Carl Bialik. It talks about statistics on the risks of driving at varying blood-alcohol content (BAC) levels. Bialik briefly mentions flaws in breath testing. Hopefully he'll do a more complete discussion in the future. The day before there was an article, Drunk

A new milestone for our court directory - we now have 6000 courts in our database - see below.There's about 1500 in NY; 240 in CA; about 200 in the New England states (MA, CT, RI, VT and NH - we haven't done Maine yet); 600 in NJ; 168 in FL; GA has 500 and we're still adding more; 132 in Illinois; nearly 300 between MD, VA and DC; 220 in NC; roughly 600 apiece in Ohio and PA; and there's

We added a new page to our website with a breakdown of a typical New York speeding ticket. Please post any comments or suggestions on this blog post.

I was just looking at a lawyer website and it had some animated graphics. Below is an image I clipped from the animation.Maybe it's just me, but I think clients are a bit less likely to hire a lawyer who spells poorly. Click on the image below and it should enlarge a bit and be easier to read. The key words should be "traffic" and "rights".

We've been using an Advanta MasterCard for our business for several years now. So today I get an e-mail that they're canceling all their credit card accounts - in four days. Thanks for giving me time to get a new card.Apparently we have not been like their typical customer. We paid our bills on time consistently. This article in Consumerist says that they had a 20% default rate. Hmm ... maybe we

If you don't find this funny, you don't get SEO.And if that doesn't persuade you, this is from one of their sites:Apparently optimizing for misspellings. Or Mineloa is an fff'ing long Hawaiian island.On the bright side, the lawyer probably ended up paying them $19.99.Seriously, today's keyword is proofreading!

New milestones for our traffic court website. As shown below, over 150K visits in the last 31 days, and over 130K unique visitors.For those unfamiliar with our stats, the peaks are Mondays and the valleys are weekends.Moreno Valley Court in California is the busiest on the site, with over 1400 pageviews in that 31-day stretch. They must write a lot of tickets out there.I just looked back and we

Great decision by the New York Court of Appeals, in the case of People v. Weaver. Police, without a warrant, placed a GPS tracking device on the underside of the defendant's car - for 65 days. They later used the GPS evidence against him in a criminal trial where he was convicted.The Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 decision, reversed the conviction and held:Under our State Constitution, in the absence

Here's a picture for ya!I'm kidding about the "some other guy" in the title. That's Peter King, a congressman thought to be a candidate for US Senate in 2010.The Rudy thing is funny. I have been critical in the past of him: Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul. I've never quite figured out why he's a hero for 9/11. He showed up and made a speech or two.If he had recognized that the buildings were unstable

Just stumbled on an article by Andrew Fischer on LewRockwell.com. It's one of those "hate lawyers" stories. Normally I like what I see on that site, and I'd probably agree with a lot of Fischer's other articles, but I have to rip this one apart. Quotes from the article are in italics.I had three college chums who ... decided to become lawyers simply because it was a way to "make a good living."

Great story on Capital News 9 last night. The NY State Assembly has a bill (A-7196) that would require ignition interlock devices for everyone convicted of DWI. Specifics from the bill are below.In the News 9 story, Laura Dean-Mooney of MADD said: "If there are detectable levels of alcohol, their car simply will not start." So in other words, if you have any alcohol on your breath whatsoever,

There's some kind of irony or poetic justice in this. I got rear-ended yesterday. Stopped at a traffic light, and an SUV behind me bumped my car. Even though my kids were in the car, it's easy to laugh about it because the damage seems so minimal. There's a crack in the top of the rear bumper. That's the only visible damage.I'm going to get it checked out. Bumpers have something inside to absorb

For those who are interested in following lawyers on the cutting edge of technology, Nicole Black is it. In addition to being a well respected criminal defense lawyer, she is a whiz at various technology issues. Her main website is Nicole Black, Esq., and she is also one of the most followed lawyers on Twitter: Niki Black - Twitter. On top of that she has at least a couple blogs. All recommended

So here's the latest with our directory of traffic courts. For starters, the directory now covers all or part of 19 states, the District of Columbia, and even a few in Toronto. We've completed Illinois and North Carolina, and are almost done with Maryland and Georgia. We're making progress on Texas again (it's a really big state). We're now over 140,000 visits and 125K unique users a month. The

Saw Google Similar Images mentioned on Twitter. Was goofing around. Disappointed that there were none for my images. But here's the link to what happens with an Andrew Cuomo photo. Image below in case the results change.And while I'm disappointed that I'm not famous enough to merit similar image treatment, neither does Kirsten Gillibrand, and she's a US Senator.

--Update: New letter at the bottom--I got a letter from Phil Steck. An image is below and I think if you click on it you get a bigger version.I love this line: "Please cease and desist from using philsteck.com without my permission."Mr. Steck - I don't need your permission. You let your own domain name lapse. I'm just recycling your waste. And you had plenty of notice of this kind of thing: All

Something caught my eye yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. It was an ad for Fidelity's HR/Payroll service. We use an online payroll service now. I'm happy with it, but I've always liked Fidelity and figured it might be a better option because of the potential linkage with retirement accounts.The ad referenced a website: http://www.fidelitypayroll.com/thinkIt's an attractive website, but it

Troubling story from London:So often today police are offered as the solution to this problem or the other. Could be drugs, DWI, prostitution or the latest - sexting. We need to remember that police are far from perfect. This video is a reminder.With drugs, we keep arresting more and more people, and stuffing our prisons, despite overwhelming evidence that treatment is more effective. Not to

In a previous post I mentioned that New York was set to add speed cameras to our highways. That has apparently disappeared from the budget.The budget does have a substantial increase in red light cameras. They say it's not for the revenue but rather for safety. Right. Check out this Corpus Christi article on red light cameras. The National Motorists Association has a great page on it too.It's not

Saw these great breath test videos on YouTube. I mentioned them on my other blog recently, but thought they deserved their own post. For those who believe in the Breathalyzer, these videos will give you something to think about.The first video demonstrates the problem of mouth alcohol. I've seen this myself at a seminar. The individual swigs something with alcohol in his mouth (like Scope, or in

The two images below show web traffic to our county court site and to my Albany restaurant review blog. They come from Google Analytics. Very helpful for monitoring our websites.What stands out about this is the difference in traffic by day of the week. The usage of our court site has a clear pattern with Monday as the big day, with a gradual decline to Friday, and then significantly lower

DWI lawyers frequently get clients who just want the case over with. We lawyers can usually get the charge reduced to DWAI. Then everything's hunky-dory, right?Here's a sobering lesson from a client who took a DWAI:is there ANY WAY to get this charge changed to something else?? i cross the canadian border A LOT for work, and every time i cross i have to pay $200 canadian, and risk not getting in

This New York Times article about a school strip-searching a 13-year-old girl pretty much says it all. The Supreme Court will decide soon on it. This does not sound like the America I was raised to believe in. Would you want your school to do this to your kid?

Thanks to Liz Bishop for interviewing me about DWI and DWAI cases. The video is here.You can also read my blog post about it on my other blog: Stop Wasting Money on DWI.

Well, I'm in the paper again.It motivated me to do a blog post on my Stop Wasting Money blog about DWI.I included some great videos, so check it out!Here's the Times Union article.

One of my local-interest websites was mentioned in the Times Union twice recently. The graph below shows the effect of that on website traffic.The two spikes, each about 150 visits, constitute about one third of total traffic to the site during that period. At first that might suggest that the mainstream media has a great deal of power. But it really cuts both ways.On the one hand, the stories

I was on NewsChannel 13 last night. I don't see the video online, but here's the story:Tough Times Keeping Lawyers BusyThanks to Abigail Bleck for doing the story and for including me. I'm flattered.The story relates to at least a few of my past blog posts:Recession, Crime and LawyersCriminal Defense Lawyer ThoughtsandThe Surcharge Tax Increase

Below is a great TV expose on a dubious Florida traffic court practice.

Update on my HP Chat experience. The call never came. E-mails at bottom.-------------------------------My mom has been having problems with her new printer/fax/scanner/phone. So after messing around with it I decided to try to get an RMA from HP. They have a feature where you can "chat" with someone online. I think it said you get instant customer service. I'm copying and pasting the chat as we

The Albany Lawyer will shortly enter his mid-forties. Oh, that's me. Maybe age causes you to talk about yourself in the third-person. Remember Bob Dole? If not, you're either very young or really getting old.Anyway, so far the 40s aren't going so badly. Well, maybe the world economy is going in the tank, so that's not so great. But I was referring to daily life for me.You'd think I'd be worried

It has come to my attention that a lot of people are unfamiliar with the law regarding domain names, cybersquatting, and the law. I researched the topic and will discuss it below. Keep in mind that the law may change. This is as of March 2009.First how it came to my attention. I'm active in politics and that unfortunately leads to finding political opponents. Since I started serving on the

We took a little excursion yesterday to see how things work in Massachusetts Traffic Court. It was educational. Massachusetts speeding tickets and other tickets matter to drivers from there and from other states.For MA drivers, most moving violations put two "surcharge points" on your driving record. Major violations, such as a DUI, are 5 points. The official explanation is at the Massachusetts

Maybe I'm not as good at math as I thought. How can I get only 7000 visits from over 10,000 keywords? See image below from Google Analytics.Okay, so after I started posting this, I figured out what happened. On the above image, I had it set to compare to a previous period. I think it counted the keywords from both periods. Once I unchecked the "compare to past" box, it came down to 5690 keywords.

I ran across a mention of Tom Spargo today and figured I'd look into his situation. I've always liked him. I knew him before he was a judge. He handled an election law case in front of the judge I worked for, and was a pleasure to work with. I knew him as a judge, and he was one of my favorites. He combined brains, hard work and common sense. That last one is very special.I also worked with him

I just read this op-ed piece by Dan Abrams in the Wall Street Journal. He responds to criticism about media ignoring the presumption of innocence. In one sense he is correct -- that the presumption really applies to juries. The general public is not required to presume someone innocent. But his characterization of the criminal process is what got me.My favorite quote is this one: Essentially we

I just got one of those speeding ticket phone calls ... the kind that leaves you scratching your head.I got a ticket for going 96 in a 55.Okay, so that's an 11-point speed which leads to a suspension unless you take defensive driving, and the fines are up to over $1300 ($685 on the ticket and $675 from the DMV assessment).I already went to the trial date. The judge wouldn't let me put my case in,

I just thought this was funny. If you want advice on getting out of a speeding ticket, check out Dan from Expert Village. I'm not saying you should follow the advice, keep in mind. Use your own judgment on this.

I got motivated today and added the State of Delaware to our traffic court directory. There are only three counties with a total of about maybe 20 courts. If you get a ticket in Delaware, check out the Delaware county courts.

We took a recent trip to Curacao. It was quite an experience.Fairly short flight from Miami, maybe 2 ½ hours. We stayed at Breezes Curacao, an all-inclusive resort. I describe the experience including a number of complaints below, but I should start out by noting that it seems pretty inexpensive. We paid $3500 for a week at the resort in a nicer room, including airfare, food, and a number of

Cool new website up for those interested in Guilderland. The infamous Ken Runion is now discussed in detail in a website about him. Quality stuff.

Our traffic court site has cleared some new hurdles. We not only surpassed 100,000 visits in 31 days. We've hit 130K visits, and over 114,000 unique visitors. We also cleared 300,000 pageviews. These numbers are one day short of a peak -- going a day forward we'll lose a Sunday and pick up a Wednesday - an extra 5K visits and 12K pageviews.Oh, and we're doing well on Alexa too:So according to

Big news in Albany - this past weekend had a "blanket patrol" per Capital News 9.Nice bit from the story - 944 traffic stops and 21 "drunk driving" arrests. If I've got this right, they interrupted the lives of about 1100 people (figuring 1.2 people per car) to make 21 arrests.Also seems like 21 DWI arrests on a weekend for 11 municipalities is less than normal, not more. Maybe they should just

I got a call the other day from a prospective DWI client. His BAC was 0.16. It's already difficult in Albany to negotiate a reduction with a BAC that high. But it's worse than that. He had a previous DUI offense 3 years earlier and his lawyer pled him to a DWAI. That causes a big problem - he is ineligible for a conditional license. This guy won't be driving for at least a year.On the prior

Just a pointer to a great: drug policy reform blog. I've been involved with ReconsiDer for many years and am a big fan.

The video below shows inappropriate conduct for a prosecutor, or any attorney, in a courtroom, and I'd say the same for the judge. The witness is Stacy Castor in Syracuse. Read more about it at the Syracuse Post-Standard. You think a defense lawyer would be allowed to scream at a cop like this?

The Traffic and Criminal Lawyers Club is up and running. We are approaching 30 members. I've put together a draft user guide and posted it on my firm website: Traffic/Criminal Lawyer Club User Guide. This is a large file in "pdf" format. It describes how to join and how to use the club features.I will be updating the guide over the next few weeks.

We're currently in the process of hiring a new associate. Since I started this firm, nearly 6 years ago now, I've hired several people and fired some. Based on my experience so far, I have to say that firing people is much easier than hiring them. That may sound harsh, but it's true.Say you get applications from about twenty people for one job. You're going to have to say no to 19 people. When

Something weird on Google Analytics just now. This blog had nearly 300 visits in the past two days from a single keyword phrase search from Yahoo. The search was for "funny speeding ticket excuses".Ordinarily I'd figure it was some kind of glitch on one computer somewhere. But I checked and the searches come from 255 different cities. See image below. I also checked operating system -- 273 from

Our traffic lawyer club is up and running. This is a feature on our traffic court website.Membership in the club is for lawyers only and it's FREE. We are going to verify that those who register are lawyers.If you're a lawyer who handles some cases in traffic court or local criminal court, please register on the site.There are currently 14 states in the directory, plus DC. A couple of the states

Just a quick hit on the Florida-Oklahoma game. Oklahoma is playing dirty. There was a horse-collar tackle on a FL running back (#3) - no call and it took him out of the game. A wicked facemask on Demps (FL #2) as he neared the end zone - called but just a nasty facemask. There was the uncalled and obvious cheap shot on Harvin (FL #1) when the Oklahoma defender yanked his legs after the tackle.

2008 was a good year for our traffic court website. Here are some numbers:Almost 900,000 visits (897K)Over 700K unique visitors (different people using the website)Over 2 million pageviewsThe site's homepage was viewed over 220,000 times by over 150,000 people. The NY page had over 80,000 views by nearly 55,000 different people.The top court pages were:Jersey City Municipal Court (over 10,000

Here's an interesting ethics question that came up in our practice. We have gotten a number of cases dismissed on "geographic jurisdiction" under Article 20 of the CPL. In short, our client is charged in a town, but it turns out that the location where the incident occurred is clearly in a different town.When it's a simple traffic ticket the police are unlikely to reissue the ticket. It's just

Interesting data on the web about speeding tickets on the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle website. There's another data set on DWI: RocDocs DWI.Now, I say the data is interesting. Partly that's because it doesn't look accurate to me. For example it appears there are more DWI arrests in Albany County than in the Bronx. And there also appear to be no speeding tickets in New York City.But it's

Here's an article in the Times Union. Albany County couldn't get a program together to provide free bus rides home for New Years Eve drinkers. For various reasons we ended up with nothing at all.Government is just fine at getting the arrest and prosecution programs together. Prevention must be too difficult.I wrote an article about the policy choice between mass transit versus DUI enforcement