The Tennessee Plan is the best plan for selecting judges we have ever had in our state's history. But as things stand now, the Plan will vanish on June 30, 2009. In '78, '82 and '90, I lived through my late father's three tough judicial campaigns. I deflected calls from litigants trying to give him campaign money. I went to judicial endorsement committee...

Circuit Court Judge William B. Acree Jr. of the 27th Judicial District has been elected president of the Tennessee Judicial Conference. Acree has been circuit court judge since 1994, and has served as a special judge on the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, the Tennessee Court of Appeals and the Tennessee...

On June 26, Mississippi lawyer Dickie Scruggs was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge. On the next day, Scruggs's picture was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. We lawyers are like preachers. When televangelist Jimmy Swaggart gets caught with his pants down (literally), the national press tries to make it...

By Vincent Bugliosi | W.W. Norton | $49.95 | 1,612 pages | 2007

Should you read this expensive book that weighs 5 pounds? Probably so, but I have an alternative solution.

Order the abridged audio version read by Edward Herrman from Simon & Schuster. It will also cost you $49.95, and the compact discs run for 18 hours. But Mr. Hermann is...

It's nice when the IRS concedes a position it really couldn't have won anyway, but could have used as a threat. It's nicer still when its concession encourages the use of a powerful estate planning tool too little used. Specifically, in a recent revenue ruling,[1] the IRS confirmed that when a grantor of a trust retains a Code  §675(4)(C) power to...