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(photo Dec. 2008)

Over 25 years of experience as a lawyer (since '998) have taught me:

1. if we're not determined to protect our rights through the law, no one will ever knock at our door to offer us what we are owed;
2. a good personal rapport between client and lawyer and a common view of things are essential to best work on the case and, to this end, communication must be direct and transparent from the very beginning;
3. with the clients' best interests at heart, their requests and proposals of unreasonable defense strategies won't be supported ("the lawyer doesn't sell rope");
4. applied law, which has relative certainty and objectivity, is the summation of value judgements crystallized in law rules (the private law, thankfully, less tied to politics) and fluid emotions expressed by those who are called to interpret the law and to frame the facts within it;
5. clients, counterparties, lawyers, judges and the many actors and extras on the big stage of "justice" are human beings, before anything else;
6. not to be surprised by anything, in and out of the courtroom, and to draw in the here and now, from the facts and situations being analyzed, the best possible outcome for the client, as for the rest letting the river carry those facts away, without emotional ravages;
7. "all comes back" and honesty, coherency, fair play and respect always pay.

F.N.