The Wisconsin Lawyers Assistance Program (WisLAP) provides confidential assistance to help lawyers, judges, law students, and their families cope with problems related to the stress of practicing law.

Peterson Berk & Cross Attorney Michael Brown (this blog’s author) is a volunteer with WisLAP, and is happy to discuss the program with anyone who wants more information about it.

There are recent news reports about a company called Carrier IQ which has an application installed on millions of smartphones, including some Androids. Concerns exist that Carrier IQ’s application may be obtaining and transmitting phone users’ information without their knowledge.

My law firm handles individual rights matters, and I have been investigating the Carrier IQ situation.

If you have an Android phone and want to detect whether it has the Carrier IQ application installed on it, you can download this application called Carrier IQ Detector to do so.

If you have Carrier IQ installed on your smartphone and you have questions about your legal rights, please feel free to contact me at mbrown@pbclaw.com.

Attorney Michael Brown

Peterson, Berk & Cross SC

Peterson, Berk & Cross attorney Avi Berk was interviewed by Fox 11 regarding proposed rules by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The rules, if adopted, would try to make the WI Supreme Court more transparent to the public, and improve civility on the Court. The proposed rules would, among other new changes, allow the public to watch the justices deliberate cases.

The Fox 11 website article (here) and video both include commentary from Avi.

SCOWIS to discuss proposed changes: fox11online.com

I am an attorney, and every so often, a new potential client will email me, and will do so using their employment email address.  When this happens, often the person’s email will contain negative information about his or her employer, or other information the person would not want the employer’s management to read.

Please know this: most employers can, and will, access employees’ emails sent from their work email accounts. Even if your employer has “never” done this so far, and you think they never will, please know if you later file a legal dispute (or the employer thinks you may), the employer will likely become motivated to comb through your emails at that point.

You can avoid risks by simply doing this: if you email an attorney for your own personal purposes, use your personal (non-work) email account.

When I prepare with an individual before a legal proceeding in which he or she will testify– say, for example, when I meet with a worker before a deposition or unemployment hearing– I discuss with that person what it means to be a good witness.

Being a good witness does not simply mean telling the truth, although that is certainly a necessary and important part of it.

Being a good witness also means work.

And the hardest work involved is not memorization of facts (you already know them pretty darn well). Nor will you spend hard work on thinking of ways you’re going to tell your story, explain how your opponent was wrong, or convincing someone how you were right– or at least you shouldn’t put work into these things, or you’ll lose.

Your job as a witness is to listen carefully to each question, and to answer ONLY that question.

Sounds simple, right?

Wrong.

See, your human instinct (like all of ours) is wired to do the opposite. Your mind, during a legal proceeding, will NOT want you to listen carefully.  Your mind will have you hear questions as you WANT to hear them, and to answer with something MORE or OTHER than what you are asked for. Your mind, when asked a simple question (say, yes or no) will want to give the questioner an elaborate answer, with volunteered facts and opinions (often true) that explain your “side.”

This is where the hard work comes in.

To really focus on a question, and focus on only answering that question alone– directly, factually, and truthfully– well, for most of us, that does not come naturally. It takes practice answering questions, i.e. work, to get to the point you actually do what a witness is supposed to do.

One exercise you could do is to have someone– whether your attorney, trusted family member or friend, etc.– ask you questions. And then, your task is to closely listen and answer only the question you’re asked.  If the question is a yes or no question, the answer should be “yes” or “no.”  It should not be “Yes, but …[extra details to explain/tell your side]…”

Practice this act of listening and answering questions before your legal proceeding, repeatedly, until you are comfortable with your results. It’s much like physical exercise, like lifting weights.

If you want your metaphorical muscles as a witness to get stronger, so to speak, that will take practice and work.

But if you don’t put in time and work as necessary to improve as a witness, you won’t turn out as strong at the legal proceeding as you hope you will.

Perhaps you found this legal site’s webpage because you have a legal issue that you want free information about, and a Google search led you here.

As a consumer, I have often used a Google or other website searches to find free information.

Sometimes, that has been successful for me.  For example, my dryer once stopped running, so I did a web search, found a repair video for my particular dryer symptoms, and the video showed a fix (showed me how a dryer fuse was the likely culprit and how to install a new dryer fuse). So I followed the instructions to install a new fuse in my dryer and… it worked (!!).

For one cycle. Then my dryer went kaput again. So I was back at square one, and about $30 lighter for the new fuse that I’d purchased and ruined.

The fact my web-inspired dryer fix did not work does not itself mean the how-to- video was ineffective. In fact, my botched repair was almost certainly caused by my terrible repair skills more so than the video’s content. The video was in fact competent in diagnosing a problem like mine, and in advising a reasonable potential fix for my dryer’s symptoms. (When I later talked to a repairperson, he told me the video’s diagnosis and fix I saw were reasonable but just one of several potential matches for my dryer’s symptoms, and as it turned out, the wrong match).

I learned a lesson about internet searches and web-based fixes: sometimes, the nature of the problem– in my case, a $50-$500 problem of either repairing a dryer correctly and/or botching the fix and/or replacing the dryer– requires the actual presence and communication from someone who knows what they are doing.

The same is true of legal advice.

Doing a web search for legal information may be helpful to a certain extent.  A web search, for example, may tell you some laws and some important issues that you had not previously taken into account when considering your problem. It may make you a better-informed consumer.

However, if you take action based on that web information alone– without talking to an attorney about your legal situation– you may wind up with the legal equivalent of a botched dryer repair.  If the stakes involved are greater than a new dryer’s pricetag (which IS often the case with many legal situations, whether people realize it or not), then that’s all the more reason to get legal advice from an attorney as compared to a website.

Please note that does not mean I’m saying you must get MY legal advice, or that of any paid attorney, just that legal advice you’d get from a competent attorney (whether private, nonprofit etc.) beats website information however competent that information appears on its face.

[cross-posted from blog www.h1blegalrights.com]

In the wake of Maryland’s Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) settlement agreement involving H-1B wage violations, questions have been raised about the unfair effect this is having on the victims, the teachers who will be forced to leave their jobs and the United States once their H-1B time runs out.

As part of the settlement agreement, PG County schools are barred from filing H-1B and other employment-based petitions for two years, including extensions of existing H-1B workers. Once their H-1B time with PGCPS expires, these teachers will be out of a job and have to leave the United States unless they find another employer or other visa status.

It’s true. It’s not fair. The reason lies in the purpose of the visa regulations. H-1B and associated employment-based immigrant visa regulations, which include those of the Department of Labor and USCIS, were not created for the benefit of the foreign workers. Rather, the regulations were created for U.S. employers. These regulations enable U.S. employers to fill jobs that (per the theory of legislators) would otherwise go unfilled because insufficient numbers of qualified American workers (or other authorized workers) exist.

To prevent employers from using these regulations to undercut American workers, the regulations impose numerous obligations on employers. For H-1Bs, for example, the regulations set minimum wage requirements (known as the prevailing wage) for each job based on job type/skills and location, and prohibiting benching (the worker must be paid the required wage even if the employer has no project or work to be done).  By imposing these obligations, the employer is discouraged from seeking foreign workers who it might be able to pay less for doing the job. These obligations also protect the foreign worker from exploitation, but is not their only purpose.

The process of obtaining an H-1B and associated green card has become sufficiently complicated, expensive and lengthy that it also serves as a de facto discouragement against hiring foreign workers.

With this in mind, the regulations impose penalties designed to punish the employer, such as fines and being barred from participating in the visa programs. They do not focus on remedies for the foreign worker. In the case of the PG County teachers, they are to be reimbursed the money they paid, but this order is less about refunding the teachers their wrongfully paid sums, and more about preventing the employer from benefiting from its violations, which it would if it were allowed to retain the money paid by the teachers.

As to the victimized teachers, the system is for the most part not concerned with their re-employment once their H-1B with the school expires. The H-1B visa is market driven, so the system lets the market decide their fate. Once their H-1B with PG County expires, the teachers can stay in the United States if they can find another employer or obtain some other visa status (e.g. student visa, marriage visa, etc.). From the system’s perspective, if the teacher does not find another H-1B employer, for example, then that must mean sufficient numbers of American workers exist, so a foreign worker is not needed to fill the job and must return home.

To prevent this unfair outcome, a change in the focus of immigration policy must happen. When the policy changes, the regulations will follow. If U.S. immigration policy concerns you, you can advocate for change by contacting Congress or volunteering to help immigration advocacy organizations, such as the American Immigration Council.

If your employer required you to pay for your H-1B fees or you have been benched or underpaid, you may have remedies available and should seek advice from a competent attorney.

For more information about legal services we provide to H-1B employees, please see our page here.