About
Maxwell S. Kennerly is a civil litigation and trial attorney at The Beasley Firm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I represent plaintiffs, people and businesses who have been harmed by someone else. My practice is unlimited: at any given time, I generally have multiple cases representing people who have been physically injured by accidents or medical malpractice, and multiple cases representing people and businesses who have been financially injured through breaches of contract, breaches of fiduciary duty, unfair competition, or downright fraud.
If you'd like to know about The Beasley Firm's services in general, please visit my Services page or visit The Beasley Firm's Areas of Expertise. Our cases are typically in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware counties near Philadelphia, with some cases in Washington, DC and New York City.
If you're looking for contact information, please go to my Contact page.
If you're looking for more content, I also have a Twitter feed, I share Google Reader links, and I share interesting legal stories on Friendfeed. My blog posts, tweets, and shared links all show up together on my Friendfeed page.
The rest of this page is my standard legal biography (the same type of information you find on most lawyer's websites) plus several questions and answers about the site.
Standard Legal Biography
Maxwell S. Kennerly litigates and tries cases in fields as varied as business torts, civil rights, copyright infringement, defamation, insurance coverage / bad faith, personal injury, professional malpractice, and wrongful death. He has represented a wide variety of clients, including doctors, lawyers, police officers, retirees and university professors against a wide variety of opponents, including health insurance companies, multi-national banks, national publications, and private military contractors. He has also taken on the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the United States government.
Max is frequently retained to investigate potential claims and recommend litigation or ways to avoid litigation, to resolve complex issues of law that arise in litigation, and to simplify complicated facts at trial. In that capacity, he has tackled issues as diverse as the scope of government contractor immunities, the specificity required for title insurance exceptions, the meaning of pre-revolutionary state constitutional provisions, the calculation of shareholder damages in speculative ventures, and the obligations attorneys have to their former clients.
He has convinced opposing attorneys to withdraw on the eve of trial, has prevailed over assertions of client-attorney privilege, peer review protection, and trade secret confidentiality, and has prosecuted multiple simultaneous actions against the same defendants in different forums. He has also successfully defended suits alleging a wide variety of claims, from breach of contract to fraud to wrongful use of civil proceedings.
Max was graduated from Yale University with Honors in History and from the Beasley School of Law at Temple University as a Law Faculty Scholar and a member of the Rubin Public Interest Society. While at the Beasley School of Law, he served as a Teaching Assistant in Constitutional Law to Dean Robert Reinstein. He also participated in the Federal Clerkship Clinical Honors Program directed by Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, during which he clerked for Chief Magistrate Judge M. Faith Angell of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He returned to the school to become a Fellow of the Academy of Advocacy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's a weblog?
A weblog, or "blog," is a website comprised of short entries displayed in chronological order and organized by subject matter. It's like a public journal.
The internet hosts millions of these weblogs, covering virtually every subject imaginable. If you're looking for weblogs, the best of the large-readership blogs can be found among the winners and nominees of the annual Weblog Awards, as well as the "Top Favorited" and "Top" weblogs at Technorati (here's a list, sorted by topic, of the Technorati 100), or the Alltop weblog aggregator. If you want to find quality niche blogs, you should look through old blog carnivals for a given subject.
You can also dive right into the ocean and find whatever you're interested in via one of the search engines listed at Blog Search.com.
What's this weblog about?
This site is a "legal" weblog, sometimes unfortunately called a "blawg." There are about 2,000 active "blawgs" in the United States, listed at places like Blawg.com, Justia.com, and the former 3L Epiphany.
As a lawyer I typically represent plaintiffs in civil litigation and at trial, and that's the focus of this weblog. This weblog is geared towards lawyers, law students, and people interested in the law. Most of the posts talk about the details of litigating and trying cases. Non-lawyers may be interested in the posts discussing the law for non-lawyers, in the posts about productivity & office management, and the brain food.
I only care about some of the issues you post about, and I only like some of your posts, what should I do?
That's the beauty of weblogs. I recommend you get a "feed reader" (I use Google Reader with extensions, and there are dozens of other feed readers), subscribe to every weblog you find interesting, then skim through the titles and read only what you like. You waste minimal time on the content you don't want while catching most of what you do want.
My Google Reader says I have over 300 subscriptions, sending me over 2000 posts a day. I skim the titles of most of these posts and read, on average, 100 posts a day. I don't think I'm going overboard, and it really doesn't take that long. For comparison, tech-blogger Robert Scoble reads 622 feeds a day and Lyndon Johnson supposedly read the Congressional Record and all the major Washington newspapers every day. Knowledge is power!
Do you provide legal advice?
I do, but not through this site. I don't know of any lawyers who offer legal advice through their website or weblog. You shouldn't take anything you read on the internet to be legal advice.
The discussions you see here aren't any different from reading a newspaper or magazine article by a lawyer or watching a lawyer on a television show talk about a case. I might write about a legal issue relevant to your situation, but professional legal advice requires an in-depth discussion with you about your case, a thorough investigation into all the relevant facts, and substantial research into the relevant laws.
If you think you have a case, I'm happy to review your situation free of charge. You can call, write, or email me at the following:
Maxwell S. Kennerly, Esquire
The Beasley Firm
1125 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
max.kennerly@beasleyfirm.com
(215) 592-1000
If you call, the quickest way to start the process is tell the receptionist you think you have a case and would like to speak with Patti or Paula.
Most importantly, if you think you have a case, contact a lawyer as soon as you can! There are all kinds of time restrictions that can affect your legal rights if you don't act soon enough.
How do I find a lawyer?
You can ask me; if for whatever reason I don't take your case, I'm happy to refer you to other experienced attorneys that I know and trust to handle cases diligently and competently.
The standard advice is: ask the people you know! Do you know anyone else who had a similar situation? Ask them who they hired, and what they liked/disliked about their lawyer. Do you trust the opinion of, say, your accountant? Do you know your local politicians? Professionals and politicians frequently work with lawyers, and they'll likely know a lawyer who can help you, or at least a lawyer who knows a lawyer who can help you.
Did you work with lawyers when you bought your house? When you were involved with an estate? When you got a permit to do contracting work? Do you know any police officers or court staff? These people, too, will likely know lawyers who can connect you with the lawyers you need.
Do you know or respect any local judges or professors at the law school? Most judges and law professors feel a dedicated to ensuring access to legal counsel, they know plenty of lawyers, and they'll take the time to refer you to the lawyer they believe will best represent your interests.
Spend some time thinking about it - chances are you know a lawyer, or someone who knows a lawyer, or someone who knows someone who knows a lawyer.
If you come up short, or simply don't like your choices, you can call your county and/or state Bar Association, both of which likely have lawyer referral services.
Can you give me some examples of your work?
Usually, no. The rules governing lawyers strictly limit what we can say about our work. Here in Pennsylvania (see the Rules) multiple Rules of Professional Conduct govern:
- Rule 1.6 imposes a broad duty of confidentiality on everything relating to the representation;
- Rule 7.1 imposes a duty on lawyers to make sure statements about themselves and their services could not be misleading when interpreted as a whole;
- Rule 7.2 prohibits
- paying anyone for recommending a lawyer,
- endorsements by celebrities or public figures,
- endorsements by anyone without disclosing compensation,
- re-enacting situations, or having actors portray clients,
- any "written communication" without disclosing the geographic location where the work will be performed,
- paying, "directly or indirectly," for advertisements for other lawyers,
- advertising that a lawyer or firm has a practice limited to particular types of cases unless they handle all aspects of those cases from intake through trial.
- Rule 7.3 prohibits in-person, telephone or "real-time electronic communications" with a prospective client unless they initiate it; and
- Rule 7.4 prohibits lawyers from calling themselves a "specialist" except in particular circumstances.
In addition, numerous Pennsylvania Supreme Court opinions have frowned upon lawyers showing public documents used in litigation to third parties, even when that third party could have just gone to the courthouse and picked up a copy.
Sometimes, I can give broad descriptions of results or public hearings / trials. That's about it. The most impressive parts of any lawyer's work -- the dedication, the compassion, the foresight -- usually remains private forever.
I try to be careful with what I say. Please don't assume any comment here relates specifically to any particular case I worked on, or is a guarantee of any particular result, or is some type of warranty or representation about what the law is.
As I wrote above, this weblog is intended to be no different from, say, a column in a legal publication. Those columns don't guarantee results, don't provide legal advice, and don't perform any other professional service. They're solely part of the public debate. A weblog is just a different form of that. As with everything else online, use your common sense and take it all with a grain of salt.
What about the copyright for the content of this blog?
Litigation and Trial Blog by Max Kennerly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
A similar license was recently upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Congratulations to all the hard working lawyers and technology professionals who made it happen.
