I had planned this blog since last week, but first, I want to express my deep sympathy for all those who've been touched by the recent tragic shootings at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. They are in my thoughts and prayers.

MY NEW CAREER: WEEK 1

Hi there friends. I know I've mostly been blogging about local news events lately, but this will be a little different. You see, although it doesn't say so on my tv.com profile, I'm actually a member of the Oregon State Bar, and have been for just over a year now. For various reasons, I've been unemployed for the past year (ranging from losing my voice for a few months to plain old procrastination.) But a very dear friend (whom I met here on the site) recently inspired me to get my a – er, act together, career-wise, and I've decided to blog my experiences because, to be honest, I can use all the moral support I can get. For those of you who haven't read my profile, this will be my third professional career in as many decades, but I'm surprisingly insecure for someone with so many degrees.

Between that and the current job market – our state is nearing the 12% unemployment mark – some creative approaches will be required, but the good news is, there is a lot I can do besides just submitting resumes to companies that are already up to their eyeballs in younger candidates. (Unlike Alicia Florick, I don't have any law-school pals who can offer me a job, either. And if you didn't get that allusion, look up The Good Wife, which I heartily recommend. )

With that, let's get to my Week One report. About three weeks ago I got a bit of a shock: A letter from the Bar telling me that I needed to complete 15 Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits by the end of the year! D'oh! I had completely misunderstood the first-year special requirement… I won't bore you with the details, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I started combing through my recent emails about CLE seminars and found two very interesting & useful ones. The first one was a "pro-bono" fair featuring a free CLE about domestic violence & restraining orders. ("Pro bono" means working as a lawyer for free.) I picked up many brochures and a handbook of pro-bono opportunities. This is a great way to get practical experience without having to have a "job". They teach you almost nothing that's practical in law school, unless you could somehow jump right into arguing appeals before the Supreme Court so if you want to figure out how to do something useful, pro-bono work where they will train you is the way to go. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

Catholic Charities: Specializes in immigration law. Opportunities range all the way up to handling whole cases including going to court!

Northwest Constitutional Rights Center: Specializing in protecting civil rights of political activists, minorities, and immigrants. They also will let volunteers do full case representation.

Oregon State Bar Military Assistance Panel: They give advice and counseling in a variety of legal areas to active service members and their families.

That's just a few, but there are many more, in family law (i.e., divorce and custody), domestic violence, bankruptcy, and other areas. I'll be signing up for some of those this week…

The second CLE I signed up for was a 2.5-day seminar that was designed to fulfill the entire first-year requirement. (Guess I'm not the only one who's ever got caught out like that. ) This was held one Wed-Fri of last week, and 200 people attended. It was aimed at those of us who are just starting out, although there were a fair number of people there who were even older than me, who had practiced in the past, then stopped for a while, and were trying to get back in the swing of things again. (Well, the ones I met were all women, no surprise.) Also, there were people who were contemplating starting solo practices, because advice on doing so was a big part of it. Here are a few funny highlights:

The first day at lunch I sat next to a judge who won't hire a clerk unless they've lived in the Pacific Northwest. He says it's because otherwise, they get here and can't take the rain! Btw, It's been bucketing down here for DAYS now. Wow, as I'm writing this, at 4:30 pm, the Western sky cleared and there is a gorgeous, huge double-rainbow visible in the sky outside! Amazing!

There was also a session with two judges who were pretty funny. (It's not just tv judges who crack jokes.) One of them gave us this tip: When the other side's lawyer is just going on and on and on, and you can't think if a good objection, just say "Objection!", and the judge is sure to sustain it. Somebody asked what to say in case the judge asks for grounds (which you're always supposed to provide), and the judge said, "Say, 'It's cumulative.' The real grounds are 'Because it's boring.' but you can't say that."

They also scared us with how easy it is to screw up. For example, about 20% of all Oregon lawyers end up needing to defend themselves against a claim by a client or the bar every year. The good news is that, unlike any other state, we have an insuring body that can't ever turn any lawyer down. Of course, it isn't cheap (almost $4,000/year), and everybody is required to buy insurance to practice here… (Another pro-bono perk is, most organizations carry their own insurance, so I don't have to buy it to do that.)

Some of the horror stories were funny, though. Like the process-server who told the lawyer he'd served process on the guy's mom, but neglected to say that the reason he did so was that the guy himself was in an URN, i.e., DEAD. (It's a no-no to sue the dead.) Then there were the horror stories about the many creative ways office staff can find to embezzle money from you… and get you disbarred in the process if it happens to be client money!

The final session of the meeting was by members of IRCO: Immigration and Refugee Community Organization, about working with interpreters, and the special cultural problems of refugees. Often, for example, they may not even have a word for "lawyer" in their native language, or have any concept of a government that is not totalitarian. Also, many cultures have no concept of "mental health". Either you are sane or crazy, period. If you're crazy, your entire family can be shunned.

Then there was the case where a lawyer explained to a man, through an interpreter, that his child needed to wear a bike helmet. Later that day, the child was struck by a car. He wasn't hurt, but the police were trying to get the man to take him to a hospital anyway. The man refused, and blamed the accident on the interpreter, saying he had cursed the boy by saying that if he didn't wear a helmet, he would be struck by a car. It turned out that the interpreter was from a tribe that was dominant over the family's tribe, which is why the father didn't trust him. The whole session was really interesting, especially since most of the panelists had originally come to this country as political refugees themselves, from Ukraine, Chad, and Laos.

Well, that's it for week one. I may blog more than once a week if there's something especially interesting going on. They probably won't be this long after this one, though. Thanks for reading. Hope you weren't too bored!

Wish me luck…

My New Home Office:

By Bryan Denson, The Oregonian

A wisp of a woman sat before a Multnomah County circuit judge this afternoon and described a morning last December, the day after her 88th birthday, when she found a naked man in her home.

She had just let her dog in and swept up tiny crumbs of kindling from the wood stove when she saw a pair of sneakers and bare legs. "I thought it was someone playing a joke on me," she told Circuit Judge Edward J. Jones.

It wasn't. The man knocked her over. "I was forced face down on the chair," she said. The tiny woman heard herself shouting the same word again and again. "No!"

On Friday, she sat spitting distance from her apologetic attacker, 47-year-old Michael G. Dick, whom Jones sentenced to prison for sex abuse and burglary. But on that day last December, she found herself confronted in her home east of Gresham by a 6-foot-1 man she described as wearing "not a stitch." He was, she said, very clearly ... aroused.

The old woman said a swift prayer. Coaxing every bit of strength from her 5-foot, 103-pound frame, she fought back. Precisely what she did is grab the man's crotch and squeeze as hard as she could.

Her attacker ran away.

Today, Jones praised her quick thinking. "Few people would have been as brave and" – here the judge smiled – "as creative, I suppose."

When it came Dick's chance to apologize, his words came in abundance. "What I did was inexcusable," he said. "I wish I could go back and make it all not happen. I'm so ashamed."

Dick, his lawyer, a forensic psychologist and a physician testified that the drugs he took for Parkinson's disease elevated his libido and caused him to act out in peculiar ways. Testimony revealed that Dick had taken to walking around naked...

Dick's wife and daughter wept as they described how out of character it was for him to commit such a crime. The said his health was so fragile he would die in prison. The old woman's family also wept, saying the attack had turned a spirited widow into someone fearful of leaving her own home. They wanted Dick put in prison for five years.

Left with those competing notions of justice, Jones split the difference. He sentenced Dick to 16 months in prison, followed by five years of post-prison supervision.

The judge told Dick that his crime put an end to what could have been a disastrous path. "That was your lucky day," he said, "when she grabbed you."

(I only wish there was a photo&hellip

Hit-and-run driver claimed he didn't see 6-foot-tall orange rabbit on the pedicab

By Aimee Green, The Oregonian

October 28, 2009, 8:58PM

Pedicab driver Kate Altermatt still can't believe the driver of a Mercedes didn't see her pedaling down Southwest Fourth Avenue last Easter. Altermatt, who is 6 feet tall, was wearing a bright orange bunny suit, and the Cascadia Pedicab was lit up with reflectors and a blinking red light.

"I was very visible," she said. (Ya think?)

The crash sent her flying and totaled the pedicab. She lay stunned on the pavement for a minute, then walked over to the driver's side window. She said she smelled alcohol on his breath.

"He was like, '$100! $100 and I leave,'" Altermatt recalled. "And I was like, 'no'. I started screaming. I said, 'You're drunk! You're going to go to jail! I don't want your money!'"

Wednesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Altermatt finally got to confront the driver, who testified that he didn't see the pedicab because he was fumbling for a dropped cell phone.

After a daylong trial, Judge Karin Immergut found Edward Cespedes-Rodriguez guilty of hit-and-run driving for leaving the scene of the crash.

But Immergut cleared the 34-year-old Southwest Portland man of recklessly endangering another person. That disappointed Altermatt, who testified that Cespedes-Rodriguez looked her in the eye and intentionally hit her a second time as he sped away sometime after 2 a.m. April 12.

Altermatt said a second pedicab operator tried to get Cespedes-Rodriguez to step out of his car. Instead, Altermatt said, the driver jerked the car into reverse and backed half a block onto Davis Street. She said she and the other pedicab driver, Damon Kelly, managed to step in front of the car, and that's when Cespedes-Rodriguez stepped on the gas.

Altermatt testified that she rolled over the hood of the car, later suffering soreness to her head, shoulder and thigh and a jammed finger. She also said that Kelly, who didn't appear in court to testify, rolled over the hood, too. In the process, he must have cracked the windshield with the brass knuckles he was carrying for protection.

Defense attorney David Lesh tried to discredit Altermatt's testimony by questioning why Kelly didn't appear in court to testify. Portland police Officer Susan Abrahamson said she wrote in her report that Kelly told her he wasn't struck by the car, but that he hit the car as it was leaving the scene.

Lesh accused Kelly of bashing Cespedes-Rodriguez's car, causing $5,000 worth of damage. Lesh argued that his client had to choose between two evils -- sticking around to exchange information or fleeing for his own safety.

In the end, the judge agreed, saying the dents and cracked windshield must have been caused by someone purposely striking the car.

But the judge said Cespedes-Rodriguez could still have stopped his car at a safe distance and notified the police. He faces a penalty ranging from probation to up to one year in jail when sentenced next month.

Cespedes-Rodriguez was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in 2005, but he entered a diversion program that required treatment, and a judge dismissed the case in 2006.

Prosecutors didn't charge Cespedes-Rodriguez with drunken driving for the April 2009 crash. Deputy district attorney Michael Schmidt said Cespedes-Rodriguez twice dodged the attempts of police to contact him later on the day of the crash, so no alcohol test could be taken. Authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in June.

"He hit somebody. He panicked because he was worried he was under the influence of alcohol," Schmidt said.

Altermatt said pursuing criminal charges against Cespedes-Rodriguez has been a struggle from the beginning. After the incident, when she ran to a nearby Portland police officer, she said, he dismissed her pleas for help. Perhaps, she thinks, because she was wearing a bunny suit. (Good call.)

About 45 minutes after the incident, she found another cop, who took a report.

Altermatt said the reason she pressed for prosecution was because she felt that Cespedes-Rodriguez treated her like a piece of garbage -- something that could be run over without another thought.

"This is probably the worst thing that has happened to me - being intentionally run over by a car. I felt like a Burger King bag."