Remember, whatever you publish online will be available to (most of) the entire planet indefinitely.  Please be careful with the information you post on your firm's bio about you.  Many online marketing consultants will advise you to include personal information in your bio, including your hobbies, interests, and personal activities.  While there is nothing specifically wrong with doing this, you should make sure to keep your descriptions vague and general.  "Chris enjoys spending time outdoors" is better than "Chris meets with the Maricopa Hikers every Saturday morning to hike up Camelback Mountain."

Look at your bio as though you were someone sworn to your destruction, and consider whether it provides any clues that might reveal your habits or routines.  If you could take any of the information from your bio, and perhaps add it to other information available online, to pin you to a predictable location, then you should change it.  You can still make yourself relatable without making yourself vulnerable.

I have been reading "Security for Court Interpreters," published in 2006, and I would recommend it as a good foundation for learning about safety in courtrooms and other typical legal settings.  It is a bit long (310 pages -- though many are blank or contain little information), but reads quickly.  Though it is directed towards court interpreters, the advice it contains is applicable to anyone who works in a legal setting.

Many law firms, especially those in medium and large cities, employ a runner service to take filings to court and to other attorneys using the service. These services are a cost-effective way of handling routine filings, and can really save time and money.  Keep in mind, though, that a person seeking access to your offices or information may be able to make use of your runner service by impersonating one of its workers.  Many such services assign one runner to a daily route, so you should see the same person every day.  

Be alert for any change in your runner -- if you see a new face, particularly one that shows up at an unusual time, ask the service about it.  Make note of the physical description of the person, to help with a report to law enforcement if it becomes necessary.

This advice applies to any service that visits your offices on a regular basis, including bottled water, coffee, copier machine, office supplies, or other services.  Do not assume that a person coming into the building is safe just because he or she wears a familiar uniform.

Recent news has indicated that a threat was posted on Facebook against a prosecutor working with the two recently slain in Texas (story here), and that a psychiatrist had warned that the alleged Colorado theater shooter was a threat to the public (story here).  Sadly, these developments highlight the need to take every threat seriously.

Few of us wish to live in the kind of world where even an obvious joke about committing violence may be reported to the authorities.  But when a threat is made, it should be noted and taken seriously.  The analysis of a threat should be a two-step process: 1) you should determine if there is any credibility at all to the threat; and 2) if so, a formal threat assessment should be conducted.  The U.S. Secret Service specializes in threat assessment, and has some good resources here.

You should not rely exclusively on this information for an assessment, though.  Report any information you have to law enforcement, and ask them to follow-through on it.  Consider hiring a threat assessment professional (many private security firms or private investigators will do this -- look for one with prior experience in the area, especially prior service in the Secret Service or U.S. Marshal's Office).  It may seem like a needless expense, but the cost is minimal for the safety and peace of mind it can bring.

Most people who use social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook know that they can be very useful for keeping in touch with large groups of interested people -- which makes them great online marketing tools.  Unfortunately, the wide reach of social media sites can be exploited by those who wish to do you harm.  If you use any such tool on a mobile device (and even on a laptop or desktop, depending on the service), be aware that your posts can be geotagged.  This means that your current location will be annotated to your post when it is made.  If you routinely make posts from familiar locations such as your favorite coffee shop or home, then you may be broadcasting the perfect location to find you.  This can make the sensible precautions you take to protect yourself useless.


If you use any such site for marketing (and there's no reason not to), please be aware of the geotagging feature, and disable it if you do not want your current location to be reported.  You can add a location to a particular tweet or status update if you want people to see where you are, but as a rule you should disable this feature.  Fortunately, Twitter's geotagging feature is disabled by default (read more here), but your phone may automatically geotag photos it takes, which can then be tweeted with the information included (read more here and here).  So check all of your devices and services for geotagging, and make sure you are in control of how your location is reported.

Forewarned is forearmed.  We cannot always be prepared for every contingency, but being aware of a particular threat can help you prepare for that one.  Lawyers should consider, as part of their regular case/client screening process, conducting a threat assessment of the individuals involved, including the client and the opponent.

In addition to checking each name for conflicts of interest, you should also check each name for prior legal involvement (both criminal and civil).  A previous order of protection against the person, or a prior conviction for a violent offense, should raise a red flag.  In Arizona, most court records are available here, though the records are not complete and local courts may also require checking.

Finally, you may wish to screen the client for indicators of domestic violence, particularly in a domestic relations/family law practice.  Even if the domestic partner is not the opposing party, an abusive partner can easily become violent towards the attorney if he is unhappy with the case.  The Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness has prepared a useful interviewing tool that can be found here.  The American Bar Association also has some very useful information and guidance here.

I have some far-flung governmental clients whose meetings I have to regularly attend, and I have a fair amount of work in Tucson (about 120 miles away), so I spend a lot of time on the road.  Given that amount of time, it is a certainty that I will encounter some driving hazards (and I have!).  I thus feel that it is important for me to drive as safely as I can, to account for those hazards -- both human-made and natural.

When driving, you should remember all of the safety rules that are taught in driver's education or defensive driving courses -- stay 3 seconds behind the car in front of you, stay alert, keep an eye on the traffic around you, etc.  But these rules may not help you in a serious road rage incident or deliberate attack on you or your vehicle.  To prepare you for these scenarios, consider attending a tactical driving course.  Such a course will give you skills that you will not obtain from a typical driving course.  You should be able to find some by searching for "tactical driving course" in your area.

Yesterday's post suggested that you should take advantage of training from the Red Cross that will be useful for emergency situations.  This includes First Aid and CPR, both of which should be learned by everyone.

After you have your certification cards, though, be careful about the situations in which you use those life-saving skills, as you could actually be jeopardizing your own life.  Any time you administer aid to another person, you expose yourself to him or her in a compromising position.  If an in-custody criminal defendant collapses to the floor, for example, restrain the impulse to rush to his aid, as it may be a ruse to obtain an improvised weapon or a hostage.  This is not to say that you shouldn't help those in distress -- just be careful and alert when doing so.  In risky situations, proceed only when you can ascertain that it is safe to do so.  If you can summon others to provide help (and to watch your back), this is best.

Yesterday I was searching for a passage from the Tao Te Ching that I think is helpful (it's chapter 15), and I came across a martial arts blog that lamented the culture of non-violence in America. Sure, you shouldn't be violent, it said, but we've gone too far -- now you can't even stand up for yourself and get into a shouting match with someone without being accused of "making terroristic threats."

Such an attitude is more likely to cause problems than to solve them. As people become more prone to expressing their animosity with gunfire (such as in the Mark Hummels tragedy), having a "you gotta stick up for yourself" mentality can lead to violence, rather than avoid it. I prosecuted a disorderly conduct/threats case once in which the defendant claimed that, as a trained martial artist, he felt justified in telling a store loss-prevention officer, "if you don't get away from me, I'm going to f**king kill you." This, he claimed, was a response to concern about the person following him in a crowded store.

If you are concerned for your safety, do not seek a confrontation with the person(s). Seek safety and assistance. Engaging an unknown assailant -- even verbally -- should be a last resort, because you do not know how that person is armed, trained, or influenced by drugs or alcohol. Sure, it may sting your pride to "back down," but that sting hurts less than a bullet.

While it's clear that she didn't mean it as a genuine threat, Lindsay Lohan apparently recently became very dissatisfied with the performance of her attorney in court and said, "I'm going to kill you" (link here).  Again, it doesn't look like he should be afraid that she'll try, but this is the kind of warning sign that should catch your attention.  If your client is upset with your performance or the outcome of a case or case event, and especially if your client makes any statements about retaliation, you should take it seriously -- even if she's a celebrity.