tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28005552219980844032024-03-16T23:25:52.228-07:00THE LEGAL WATCHDOGLaw, politics, and businessMichael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.comBlogger451125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-80737348046765513402024-03-02T15:57:00.000-08:002024-03-02T15:59:50.311-08:00Don’t worry, the FBI is on it!Sass wards off the FBIPhoto by Kristi StorzI
suspect that most people view the FBI the way they view the IRS—yes, those
organizations have some legitimate functions, but both are highly politicized. The IRS has already established this to be
true. Don’t take my word for it; read
the IRS’s own confession in this mildly-worded, apologetic NPR story.
Sure,
you’ll still find hack media Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-89826678127633718582024-03-02T15:39:00.000-08:002024-03-03T17:00:48.326-08:00Business and Campus SpeakAs I
wrote in my newest article, The Preliminary-Hearing Swindle (forthcoming), I’m
sometimes embarrassed, for my profession, by the judiciary’s blatant disregard of the law. But despite that, the law is still, sort of,
a profession. And in that regard it
stands in stark contrast to “business” and “academia,” which are not
professions. What differentiates a
profession from Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-81636337705953871472024-03-02T15:26:00.000-08:002024-03-02T15:26:00.691-08:00Now in Print!Check
out my newly published article, The Myth of Fundamental Decisions, 112 Kentucky Law Journal 261 (2024). The final digital version is available
here. All of my articles, including this
one, are organized by topic and available on the articles page of my
website.Enjoy!Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-49999609994240702842024-02-21T08:25:00.000-08:002024-03-03T12:42:21.721-08:00L.A. Law (Review) and Wisconsin PrelimsCheck
out my new article on preliminary hearings, titled The Preliminary-Hearing Swindle: A Crime Against Procedure, just accepted for publication in the Loyola
of Los Angeles Law Review.
I’m
very happy that this article will be published in a California
journal, as Cali stands in stark
contrast to Wisconsin when it
comes to prelims. My favorite example is
The People of California v. FrankMichael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-72521811242144677802024-02-04T12:41:00.000-08:002024-02-04T12:47:24.286-08:00Where does all the money go?Sass is looking for the moneyWhenever a defendant gets convicted of a crime in Wisconsin,
the judge will soak the defendant with seemingly innumerable fines, costs, fees, and
surcharges. There’s the DNA
surcharge (even if the defendant has already given a DNA
sample and has already paid the fee in a previous case), a Domestic Violence surcharge in many
cases, “victim-witness” fees, of Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-22990410356648027442024-01-27T11:33:00.000-08:002024-01-28T08:00:45.448-08:00Can you be “released from custody” when you’re in jail?Sass can't believe the state's argument(photo by John Storz) The question seems paradoxical, if not outright nonsensical. And the answer to the question can be equally
goofy—enough to flummox even the sharpest legal watchdog. Take for example, the Miranda
warnings. The police must read them before
they interrogate an in-custody suspect.
Certainly a person in Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-16643132898203792132024-01-06T11:19:00.000-08:002024-01-26T20:35:11.808-08:00Logjam: An Unintended Consequence of the Preliminary-Hearing SwindleOne of my new articles, which is currently under submission for
publication, is titled The Preliminary-Hearing Swindle: A Crime Against
Procedure. In it, I explain a swindle
happening in criminal cases throughout Wisconsin. The preliminary hearing, or simply the “prelim,”
has been replaced with a mere in-court reading of the prosecutor’s unchallenged
allegations in the complaint. Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-37228185971217267602023-12-31T10:12:00.000-08:002023-12-31T10:12:07.209-08:00Organization that created the accountant shortage forms “advisory group” to fix the accountant shortage I remember back when I was an accounting major, the AICPA
was pushing its 150-credit requirement to sit for the CPA exam. It just wasn’t enough, apparently, to get a
bachelor’s degree in accounting; another 30 credits were needed. But instead of requiring additional courses
like accounting theory, the history of accounting, accounting systems, or case
studies in accounting fraud, for Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-69708753708004776222023-10-27T17:25:00.090-07:002024-01-25T15:57:24.146-08:00Bernoulli, Bearnaise, and Statistics for LawyersI’m no statistician, but I do like mathematics, statistics, and quantitative methods in general. That’s why I hate to see lawyers use confusing language when writing or talking about these subjects. Take this recent quote from an
article on the US News website about lawyer salaries. Here’s the part that’s troublesome (emphasis
added):
Law school graduates “can
expect a startingMichael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-89576829795476661652023-10-06T16:35:00.002-07:002024-01-25T15:58:18.842-08:00The LL.B., the J.D., and the C.P.A.The law degree used to be called the LL.B., or bachelor of
laws. Pictured below is the relevant
portion of a re-issued J.D. degree, or Juris Doctor, replacing an LL.B. that had
been awarded earlier, back in 1940, by Marquette
Law School. (The re-issued J.D. degree belonged to the
now-deceased William Rose, and still hangs in the law offices of Rose &
Rose, Attorneys, in Kenosha.)Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-6474637146468106332023-10-04T19:37:00.002-07:002024-01-25T15:59:09.100-08:00What will the next generation of criminal defense lawyers look like?No, I’m not talking about their race or gender. Only rich, elite corporate
clients care about such things. My
clients, on the other hand, don’t care about my skin color or whether I run a
BIPOC-compliant operation. Rather, they
want to know if I can draft and argue a motion to dismiss, negotiate a favorable
plea deal, and, most importantly, effectively try a case to a Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-55720905104017277002023-08-20T10:05:00.002-07:002024-01-26T20:35:28.621-08:00Plea Bargains, Prosecutorial Breach, and the Curious Right to Cure, 89 Brooklyn L. Rev. __ (2024)Check out my new article on prosecutorial breaches of plea bargains and the rather curious "right to cure." The article exposes this doctrine as another pro-prosecutor tool of the courts, and provides ways for defense counsel to respond to prosecutorial breaches of the sentence concession component of plea bargains. It will be published next year in the Brooklyn Law Review, Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-25405192804837058902023-08-20T09:58:00.006-07:002024-01-26T21:13:57.184-08:00Preliminary-Hearing Waivers and the Contract to Negotiate, 2023 Pepperdine L. Rev. __ (2023)Check out my new article on preliminary-hearing waivers and how they create the prosecutorial obligations to respond to defense lawyers' plea offers and to use good faith in plea negotiations—something defense lawyers either aren't aware of or typically forget about. It will be published later this year in the Pepperdine Law Review, but you can find a pre-publication draft of the Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-7925339205719967172023-07-15T15:33:00.001-07:002023-07-15T15:33:25.188-07:00Beyond mission creep: law schools and mission explosion (or the big bang of nonsense)Mission
creep is when original objectives gradually expand into other areas until, before
you know it, those original objectives are a distant memory. If you’re not alert, mission creep can go unnoticed
until it’s too late. It’s sort of like
the metaphorical frog sitting in a pan of water on the stove. If the temperature is raised gradually enough,
the frog doesn’t even realize Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-24254686826259129432023-07-15T11:44:00.002-07:002024-02-11T14:15:17.268-08:00UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky at it againErwin
Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC-Berkeley law school, has made some ridiculous statements,
including once uttering “the worst analogy in the long and storied history of
analogies.” But it’s not just that some
of his statements are goofy—most people slip up from time to time, and the
more a person talks the more opportunities he will have to make nonsensical
gaffs. The problem is Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-80477901408909965242023-05-23T11:04:00.010-07:002023-05-23T11:22:01.538-07:00Writing tip from the Legal Watchdog (or, don’t write like a law professor)This is my second law professor-bashing post today. This one will be especially valuable to
soon-to-be One-Ls, but hopefully will be useful to lawyers as well.
For those of you starting law school this fall, you’ll soon
learn that, if you play the game correctly and educate yourselves before
walking into class, the law profs don’t really add anything to your education. Many of Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-71323467155584751152023-05-23T10:49:00.006-07:002023-05-23T11:06:49.984-07:00Law profs just virtue-signaled their way toward irrelevanceThis is the first of two law prof-bashing posts today.
I have previously explained how several law schools copied
Yale and “boycotted” the US News law school rankings. I use quotes around that word because the
schools weren’t really boycotting – or even withdrawing from – the
rankings. Rather, they were just succumbing
to the irresistible urge to copy Yale and signal their virtue in Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-25876714513704277042023-04-24T14:57:00.016-07:002023-04-24T20:18:46.205-07:00Pseudo-EventsIn Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, he argues that, given the wealth of news outlets in America,
there are an awful lot of pages that reporters have to fill. Therefore, “[t]he successful reporter is one
who can find a story . . . If he cannot find a story, then he
must make one . . .”If the reporter’s digging and imagination both come up dry, then
the Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-11901948684036247282023-04-21T18:19:00.011-07:002024-02-11T14:15:19.421-08:00Law school sheep and the US News rankingsCountless news stories
now litter the web proclaiming that Yale and Harvard, followed by a slew of
copycat schools, “withdrew from,” “pulled out of,” or “abandoned” the US News
law school rankings. But as I explained in a previous post, these
schools are not withdrawing from, pulling out of, or abandoning the US News
rankings at all. They are just not
submitting data. They are Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-14674169320063301422023-04-11T20:08:00.010-07:002024-01-25T16:02:44.424-08:00Text messages and phone banking – what’s next?A couple of months ago, I said to someone that banking on
your phone just isn’t right. The ease
and convenience did not fit the seriousness of the activity. Paying a bill, transferring money between
accounts, and other banking transactions are just too important and shouldn’t be done
so casually or quickly. Among other
risks, the risk of error on that tiny “keyboard” is way too Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-75587495881118907872023-04-11T19:56:00.007-07:002024-01-25T16:05:11.814-08:00Ready to pass the bar, not to practice lawThe above headline could apply to most new law school
grads. (Not all new grads, of course;
not all new grads can pass the bar.) But
I’m using the headline to describe an A.I. named Chat GPT.A few years ago, I was convinced that A.I. had taken over legal
tasks (if not entire legal jobs). Not
all tasks; you can’t send A.I. into the courtroom to try a case, for
example. But Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-79372725738645495132023-03-04T07:13:00.007-08:002024-01-26T21:13:54.760-08:00The Myth of Fundamental Decisions, 112 Kentucky L.J. __ (forthcoming 2024)Certain decisions during the course of a criminal case are so important, so personal, that only the defendant is allowed to make them. Not even defense counsel may tread on this hallowed ground. These decisions include whether to waive the jury in favor of a bench trial, whether to testify or remain silent, and whether to plead guilty and accept a plea deal. But while the Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-25292497100097087012023-03-03T14:32:00.004-08:002024-01-25T16:06:11.524-08:00 Follow the Science?In recent years we’ve heard cries of “follow the science” in
support of all kinds of agendas and political movements. But science is a methodology and, in many cases,
has exposed those agendas as unsupported by, and sometimes even contradicted
by, the science.
Claiming a word as your own and attaching that word to your agenda
is a neat trick, if you can pull it off.
(Prosecutors do Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-28794612093103421212023-02-11T11:43:00.015-08:002024-01-25T16:06:51.099-08:00Accounting: How to Wreck (and Rescue) a ProfessionIn my earlier life, becoming a CPA was, in a sense,
easy. To be sure, the two-day exam
itself was very tough. Unlike state bar
exams which sometimes have an 80% first-time pass rate, the November 1996 CPA
exam, for example, had a 17% pass rate for first-time test takers. But the process of becoming a CPA was very
simple. Just get a B.S. or B.B.A. in
accounting, sign up forMichael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2800555221998084403.post-68935295785380014182023-01-15T08:43:00.005-08:002024-01-26T20:35:52.275-08:00Idaho and Wisconsin: A Tale of Two Preliminary HearingsIn the Idaho quadruple homicide case, defendant Bryan
Kohberger is accused of murdering University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle,
Kaylee Goncalves, and Madison Mogen. The
defense waived the right to a timely preliminary hearing (14 days
in Idaho) and set the hearing in June so it
has enough time to go through all of the evidence. The judge cleared five
days on the Michael D. Cicchini, MBA, CPA, JDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13734180053800866578noreply@blogger.com0