Kolata, as it turns out, really knows rain and humidity. We swam out of the hotel lobby this morning into air with the viscosity of lassi. Now we're taking refuge as the streets go Venice style. Yesterday we returned from the sundarbans, the…
This week Jules and I are holing up in the storied and fascinating city of Kolkata. The ex-seat of the British raj, this steamy metropolis with its crumbling colonialism channels Myanmar's Yangoon more so than it's larger Indian sister city,…
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried." -Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried "How much does your life weigh? . . . You start with the…
Hard to know which was the last straw. But one of the straws was Christmas 2012, which Jules and I spent refinishing our kitchen floor. Earlier that year we'd bought our first house - a great place - in the…
Yesterday our colleague, Deborah Niedermeyer won the top annual award from the Washington State Bar Association along with attorney Manny Rios. Deborah received the Award of Merit for her work bringing the first Washington lawsuit against an unauthorized immigration practitioner…
It is surprisingly common for individuals to engage in self-harming behavior, such as cutting. Under U.S. immigration law, when this behavior is linked to a mental illness and is likely to recur, the person is barred from the country. This…
In flat fee cases, sometimes the attorney wins and sometimes she loses. But sometimes an attorney stands to lose much more badly than others. Take a family law or immigration matter, for example, where the client is represented on a…
This February, I headed up to Vancouver, B.C. to have a kid and spend some time as a “lawyer in residence” at the legal technology startup Clio. Regarding objective number one: my wife is a psychologist who practices part-time in B.C., and…
A version of this article was published by the King County Bar Association, co-authored by Greg McLawsen and Gutavo Cueva Immigration law is often viewed as a niche practice area. Perhaps for this reason there are a number of common…
I was lucky to join a behind-the-scene’s tour of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operation at SeaTac International Airport. (The tour was organized for local members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association). We spent about two hours going through the…