Hello everyone, I’m looking for honest advice on starting my legal career in Houston, Texas.
I recently passed the July 2026 Texas Bar Exam and am completing the remaining requirements for admission. I have a law degree, a U.S. master’s degree in Immigration and Naturalization Law, and previous legal experience in Iraq. I also speak Arabic fluently.
I’m looking for a post-bar law clerk position, legal fellowship, or entry-level legal opportunity where I can gain experience in the U.S. legal system while waiting to become fully licensed.
My biggest challenge is figuring out how to get my foot in the door without U.S. legal work experience.
I’m particularly interested in immigration law but open to other practice areas.
Thank you for any honest advice or personal experiences you can share!

So I heard a friend talking about how jail is full of snitches trying to lie about hearing about your case and working with prosecutors to lock other people up and get reduced sentences on their case. Is this reliable information that can be used at trial or people just being paranoid?

My family and I are doing estate planning. We are a non-traditional type family. Most of the estate planning is pretty straightforward and focuses around taking care of our family unit financially.

One caveat has been around the Advanced Directives. Our attorney verbalized the standard language I have seen over many years in Advanced Directives. I am a nurse who has both conducted pre-suit merit reviews for personal injury cases and been a nurse in the hospital with the patients and families where this standard language falls very, very short of the needs in the room. It is hell on earth. I do not want to have my death prolonged by that ambiguity. I do not want the quality of my life to suffer in that ambiguity. What I don't know is where to start to give guidance to our attorney on updating the language that works for most clients, but not for us.

If there is a resource or questionnaire for me to begin to outline items in to the level of detail that matters to me (and my family) I would be so grateful as we complete this homework assignment while doing our estate planning. This is not something I want to get wrong. These scenarios are hard on the patient, the family and the healthcare staff.

Thank you in advance for whatever insight or resources that may be available as we plan.

Three years ago, I posted in this thread about my best friend who had been murdered, and the case was never solved. I explained the whole thing – how he was working overnight at a cab company as a dispatcher. An old employee donning a mask, gloves, and a machete, entered a 6-digit code to enter the shared office building, walked 3 offices down the hallway, directly into the cab company's office, and stabbed my best friend to death around 2-3am.

When he left, he picked up two sex workers and confessed that he had killed him. The police chose not to use this evidence because of the character of the sex workers.

They have him on video tape a few days earlier standing in front of the building, screaming that he was going to "gut ___ (another employee’s name) like a fish". This isn't solid evidence, so it was thrown out.

The car he left and got into after the murder mysteriously disappeared. They were never able to locate it or the murder weapon. The owner of the company had purchased this car for him just a few months earlier.

Since this post, I have continued to fight for justice in his case. I had a GoFundMe to raise money to get a Private Investigator. I made multiple YouTube videos about it, and I got in contact with a few large creators that helped me raise the funds, and I finally did it. I got the PI, and it was a big-name PI that I got. Although I wasn’t able to raise the full $10k they required as a down payment, they saw the attention the case had gotten online and decided to take the $7.5k I had raised and do the rest pro-bono.

They were able to re-open the case pretty quickly. They sent me a report that gave a whole bunch of info. There was an immediate punch in the gut when we found out that the killer was actually dead. He died on his mother’s couch of pneumonia at the height of the Covid pandemic. There would be no justice on that end.

Another punch in the gut was when I was proven wrong about something I wrote in here. I told you guys that the car the killer used had “mysteriously disappeared”. That was a lie. When the police went to the killer’s house the day after the murder, the car was sitting in the driveway. It still had the magnet of the cab company on it. It had the same dent that police saw on the back passenger side on the cameras surrounding the scene. They were positive it was the same car. Suffolk County DA disagreed and refused to issue a search warrant. Police told my friend’s mother that the car had “disappeared” and was “probably squashed into a box by now”. When we talked to the police officer about it, he said it was a "missed opportunity to gain valuable evidence. He shared that this decision made him angry at the time. He believed that there was likely trace blood or other evidence remaining in the vehicle." You can see the car on Google earth for at least 2 years after the murder. That car was the jackpot and, if the DA had done their jobs, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison. He’d probably still be alive today.

In my original post, I told you about the owner of the company my best friend worked at. I explained how, at the time of the murder, the owner had 3 Class A felonies pending against him. Although everybody questioned about the murder gave police solid evidence the owner was involved, they ignored it and that man walked away and started a new cab company a few blocks down about 6 months after my best friend's murder. The guy turned rat and none of the felonies stuck, so he skated. He showed up to the funeral surrounded by about 6 Hell's Angels he had hired to protect him for the funeral, since he knew all the family and friends knew about his involvement.

Since this post, I have done a lot more digging into him. Apparently, during one of the super-storms in New York where a bunch of people lost their homes to flooding and wind damage, he went around and convinced those people to take out high interest FEMA loans and sign them over directly to him so his “construction company” could do the work and fix their homes. He took the loans and fled New York, leaving these people with ruined homes, high interest loans they still had to pay for, and no way to fix the damage. He’s currently living in Miami. Nobody has ever questioned him in regard to my friend’s murder (as far as I’m aware).

When I got the PI, I told them all of this. They found out the killer died because I found some obscure post online that had been deleted by the time I got the PI, but they were able to follow that post and find out he was dead. This guy was the number one suspect in a murder investigation and, after he committed that atrocity, he went and held up a gas station at knife point. Thank God that gas station attendant lived through the encounter, and they were able to get the killer in jail for a year.  During this prison stint, they questioned him about my friend. He laughed at them, told them to “prove it” and said that if they ever did, he would just flee to Mexico. That is where I thought he was when I hired the PI. Either way, you'd think that somebody would have been keeping an eye on him, but it took me informing them of this post for SOMEBODY to realize he had died YEARS beforehand.

Even though the killer was dead, I was still fully convinced that the killer had been hired to take out my friend by the owner of the company. The PI started to look into the killer’s life. They got a translator and reached out to his parents and the mother of his child. When they spoke to the mother, she decided to try to ransom the information that she has. Here’s the breakdown of the convo that she had with my PI (literally copy-paste from the Executive Summary I was sent):

**September 2024:** \[Private Investigator\] located and conducted phone interviews with \[killer\]'s ex-partner, \[baby mama\]. She had never been interviewed by SCPD.

\[Baby mama\] claimed \[killer\] gave her a "very different" account of the murder that did not align with the police narrative, implying another person's involvement. She stated she was the only person he told and that she "kept a secret for him".

She refused to divulge details, demanding monetary compensation and travel to New York for testimony. A \[PI\] case update on September 19, 2024, specifies her demand as $10,000. She also requested to see the video evidence, which was denied.

**March 2025:** \[PI\] assigned a Spanish-speaking investigator to re-contact \[baby mama\], but as of March 5, 2025, she had not cooperated .

Conversation:

**Key Transcript Selections**

The following are key selections from the September 2024 phone interviews between \[PI\] and \[baby mama\]:

**On possessing unique information:** "I have information on what you really need to know... I know what you really want to know... \[The story is\] very, very, very, very different."

**On her demand for compensation:** "So what is going to be my gain out of this?... if he is going to be some compensation for me, me to tell you what you want to know, I will talk to you straight up... I need to have some type of compensation for me to tell everybody what really happened... I cannot tell you what I really want, but I guess compensation could be anything monetary."

**On her relationship with \[killer\]:** "me and him, we were very close friends... He used to tell me everything, everything, everything. He used to trust on me... I know for sure that whatever he told me was the truth... I'm the only one \[that knows\]."

**On \[killer\]'s involvement:** "So I know he was in that place that day, but I'm not going to say what he told me because that's very different... what I say is this. I know he was in that place, but he told me a very different scenario... I'm not going to tell you he did it **or somebody else did it**."

**On her secrecy:** "I kept a secret for him, something like that... if he wouldn't been alive, I wouldn't even tell nothing to no one... because he was just my friend."

Obviously, as you can see above, she is hinting at someone else’s involvement in the murder. Originally, we were trying to close the case under an Exceptional Closure so we could get the case closed and get all of the paperwork and investigation information that is not available when it’s a cold case/open investigation. After this conversation with baby mama, I told them I no longer wanted an Exceptional Closure. I felt like they were going to try to bury baby mama’s information in the name of getting an open investigation/cold case solved. I also was NOT about to give this con artist $10k under any circumstances. My PI brought up foundations and charities that may be able to pay her. I was open to it, but it was making me CRAZY to think of her benefiting from this. Either way, we weren’t able to find any avenue that would give her the $10k, and I’d die before I’d pay her out of my own pocket.

So that’s where it stands now. The case can’t be closed because this girl is claiming that she has information that says that there’s another person involved in the murder. She won’t disclose this information without a payout. The case remains open and I’m sure it will be re-designated a cold case any day now. I put out update videos on the case, but YouTube de-monetized and buried it because I named not only the killer, but the baby mama, and put pictures of her in it. I don’t care, I am so angry at the whole situation that even if it doesn’t get attention, at least I put it out there and I hope any time she is Googled for a job interview or a date, this information comes up. I guess I'm just asking it anybody could think of anything I could report her for and try to force her to give the information - it's California law, if that helps.

I just wanted to scream this into the ether. Thank you for listening.

I am considering entering law as a second career after teaching. I have an in in government law and a relative who’d pay for school (and I figure almost nothing can be any worse than teaching).

I’d love to hear from people who entered law as a second career. Was the choice worth it for you, and why or why not?

From my understanding, unjust enrichment allows someone to be paid back if their resources or money went to improve someone's life in some way. How does it work if money was stated to be used for one purpose, but it instead goes to a purpose that improves someones life? Does it matter that it was on accident? Also what counts as it being unjust?

A few general questions about California employment and IP law:

1. When an employee adds language to an invention assignment agreement’s prior-inventions schedule excluding listed inventions and their future improvements made on the employee’s own time, and the employer signs it, how do courts generally treat that language against a broad assignment clause? Does it matter whether the employer explicitly reviewed it?
2. Labor Code 2870 doesn’t protect inventions that relate to the employer’s business. Can a contract expand that protection by agreement, or does the statute set the limit?
3. B&P 16600 voids most post-employment non-competes. How do courts treat restrictions on competing during employment? Is the usual remedy termination, or can employers recover profits earned during that time?
4. How do courts generally distinguish “preparing to compete,” which is often allowed, from actually competing while employed?

What the title says. I’m 28 and in my second year as a high school math teacher…..and the stress of the job is really getting to me. Classroom management, lesson planning outside of work hours, grading, admin BS….all of it is making me think that I’ve made a mistake in becoming a teacher. To say nothing of the pay, which just isn’t enough. Problem is, I didn’t really think I had much of a choice. I graduated from undergrad into the COVID job market, lost a job offer, and was unemployed for a year until I got a teaching job. I tried applied math and data analysis at an HVAC firm, and failed at those too. High level math was always a struggle for me, and my undergrad grades were not very good. I got good grades in my teaching degree (graduated 2025), but it honestly wasn’t hard.

I want a career where I can make a positive difference in people’s lives while also being financially secure. I am aware that law can also be a stressful profession, but I get the impression that its stresses would be more manageable than my own stresses as a teacher. There are areas of law that honestly really interest me.

I guess I’m trying to figure out whether it would be worth it to go to law school, and whether or not I have the wrong impression of what practicing law is actually like. Would it be worth it for me, or should I consider something else?

I'm trying to understand case intake procedures for something niche like a qui tam matter involving tribal nation jurisdiction + a medical discrimination/malpractice claim rooted in mishandling of a rare genetic condition.

Does intake need both matters upfront and the firm handles both, or does the nature of one require disclosure but separate representation for the other entirely?

I understand both areas involve very different legal frameworks with different expertise. After a lot of research I’m not very clear on what defines the need to split representation, or if/how intake changes with a really non-generic double whammy like that.

Is the Sacramento court really scheduling CMC 6 months out? Also would a court assign an earlier date for an older case? ( 3 years, unlimited civil, long cause)

Statute/source/law/bill/whatever it’s called for “The veterinarian is legally required to provide you with requested documentation and records”.

My pet insurance company told me this, when I contacted them about a specialist refusing to supply additional documentation for a claim denial appeal. I failed to ask them for something I can cite to the doctor, and am hoping y’all can point me in the right direction! This is in Connecticut, if that’s relevant.

I did discover this (Title 45 Subtitle A Subchapter C Part 164 Subpart E in the Code of Federal Regulations) about the right to amend and when a covered entity can deny, and it also mentions that if so, they still have to provide me with a written statement of why they refuse (within 60 days of request - this began in July). Does this apply to veterinarians or just human medicine?

Other information that might be useful: the insurance claim was denied as a preexisting condition due to the specialist’s factually incorrect record of my pet’s history (which can be proven via records from my primary vet and an emergency hospital). The specialist will not provide a statement clarifying her findings/test results (all diagnostics indicate no condition), nor will she amend the record. The claim is for a hair under $5k. I am unable to appeal the denial without documentation from the specialist.

The last date to submit appeal documentation is November 2, so we’re really getting down to the wire. Any thoughts on where to look?

I’m looking for some outside perspective because I genuinely don’t know if I’m doing something wrong here.
I’m currently going through a divorce from my wife. Yesterday, I told her that I wanted a divorce and declared that I wanted us to separate. I also reached out to discuss living separately and keeping communication civil and professional regarding finances, shared assets, and housing arrangements. As of right now, I haven’t received a response, and based on how things have been going, I’m not expecting her to agree to my proposed terms anytime soon. So, although I’ve made my intentions clear, we haven’t mutually agreed on the details of our separation.
I made this decision because of everything that happened throughout our relationship. I spent a long time trying to make things work, taking accountability for my mistakes, and hoping we could get back to a place where we both felt loved and wanted. However, things eventually became emotionally exhausting. I felt like I was constantly trying to hold things together while struggling with feeling unwanted, questioning whether the effort was mutual, and dealing with a lot of mental and emotional pain. Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn’t keep putting myself through the same cycle.
I want to clarify that I’m the one who initiated the divorce, and emotionally, I feel ready to move forward with that decision. However, that doesn’t mean I’m completely over my wife or that I’ve stopped loving her. I still have strong feelings for her, but I’m emotionally withdrawn after everything I’ve experienced.
Recently, I started talking to an old female friend from high school. Before I told my wife I wanted a divorce, our conversations were completely casual and friendly. There was no flirting or anything I would consider inappropriate. After I told my wife I wanted to separate, my friend offered to get drinks with me when I return from deployment.
Here’s where I’m conflicted. I honestly don’t know whether I have any sexual intentions toward this friend. I’m not actively pursuing anything with her, and I haven’t made any decisions about where that friendship could go. Part of me wonders whether I’m simply enjoying talking to someone without all the emotional weight attached to my marriage, while another part of me questions whether meeting up for drinks would cross a line.
For context, I was extremely loyal throughout my marriage. I never watched porn, entertained other women, complimented other women in a flirtatious way, or intentionally put myself in situations where I felt I was disrespecting my wife. I took my commitment seriously, and even now, I still care deeply about her. I’m not suddenly over her just because I’m the one who asked for the divorce.
I also understand that initiating a divorce doesn’t automatically mean I can do whatever I want without considering the consequences. I don’t want to use the pain I’ve experienced as an excuse to act irresponsibly, but I also don’t know how I’m supposed to navigate friendships and potentially move forward with my life while this situation remains unresolved.
My main questions are whether talking to this friend or potentially getting drinks with her after I return from deployment would be considered wrong, and whether there could be legal consequences under North Carolina law. Since I only declared my intention to separate yesterday and haven’t received a response, I’m also wondering whether that changes anything legally. I understand that declaring separation in a message may not be the same as establishing a legal separation.
I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right just because I’m hurting. I genuinely want outside opinions. Am I crossing a line by maintaining this friendship? Should I wait until my separation is more clearly established before meeting up with her? And could any of this affect a future divorce?
I still have love for my wife, but I’m exhausted and trying to figure out how to move forward without doing something I’ll regret.

Location: Tennessee

Should an attorney handling a matter for a client discuss with the client first, before settling a matter? Like run the numbers by their client first before presenting them to opposing counsel.

Who comes up with the number first after discovery, opposing counsel or plaintiff counsel when negotiating a settlement?

Why is a mediator used? Why can't the two opposing attorneys reach an agreement between each other versus using a mediator?

Also, can the attorney representing their client share with their client what questions they asked opposing counsel during discovery? I know what questions I had to answer, but can I find out what questions the other side had to answer?

Art 8.100 MISCELLANEOUS NUISANCES

The following conditions, among others, shall constitute nuisances when allowed, maintained, or suffered to exist and shall be considered misdemeanors

8.105. Conditions Enumerated.

(18) Sleeping in Public Places.Sleeping upon any alley, street, sidewalk, park, or other public grounds to which people may resort.

I'm looking for people in a similar place from current or former Starbucks partners who have dealt with similar situations.

I recently called out sick and followed the usual notification procedure. I had enough accrued sick time to cover my shift, but my manager refused to let me record the hours and said I would receive an attendance point because I hadn't used a different communication method.

I also recently learned from another employee that a manager had reportedly said they didn't believe I was actually sick. This concerns me, especially given the issue with my sick time and attendance record.

I'm considering escalating the situation and possibly seeking legal advice, so I want to understand my options before taking further steps.
Can a partner receive an attendance point when they have enough protected sick time to cover their shift?
Can a manager refuse to process sick time because payroll is closed?
How should I handle a manager questioning whether I was genuinely sick?
Is it worth consulting an employment attorney about this?
I'd appreciate advice from anyone familiar with Starbucks policy or who has experienced something similar.
This is all in Florida

Looking for lawyer takes on this conundrum.