Federal Defense Stories covers one subject: how criminal cases work in the federal courts of the United States. It exists because that system is unusually opaque from the outside, and because most of what determines an outcome in it happens long before anything is visible on a public docket.
What this publication is
This is an independent informational publication. It reports on federal criminal procedure, on the statutes prosecutors charge, and on documented dispositions in federal district courts. It publishes two kinds of work. Case reports pair a verified outcome with explanatory reporting on how that category of charge actually operates. Explainers answer a single procedural question in depth, beginning with a direct answer and then going as deep as the subject requires.
What this publication is not
It is not a law firm. It does not provide legal advice, and nothing published here creates an attorney-client relationship with anyone. It is not an advertisement for any law firm or lawyer.
It is not a ranking, a "best lawyers" list, or any other form of comparative evaluation. This publication does not assess which practitioners are better than others, does not score them, and does not use superlatives about them. Practitioners whose work appears here are described as featured practitioners or contributors, and nothing in a profile should be read as a recommendation.
It is not a lawyer referral service. There are no intake forms on this site, no consultation offers, no telephone calls to action, and no mechanism by which a reader is routed to a lawyer. Practitioner profiles link out to the practitioner's own firm site. That is the only path from this publication to a lawyer, and it is entirely in the reader's hands.
The domain name should not be read as a claim. This publication does not assert that any attorney featured here is the best at anything.
Who this is for
Three audiences. People who have received a target letter, a subpoena, or an indictment and are trying to understand what happens next. Lawyers, journalists, and researchers who need an accurate account of federal procedure without wading through a treatise. And readers of general news coverage of federal prosecutions who want to know what the procedural terms in that coverage actually mean.
How the reporting is done
Explanatory material is drawn from the governing statutes, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the United States Sentencing Guidelines, published decisions, and the public policy documents of the Department of Justice, including the Justice Manual. Where a proposition is contested, the reporting says so. Where a rule has exceptions that matter in practice, the reporting names them.
Case reports are held to a narrower standard. This publication reports only the year, the charge category, the court by jurisdiction, the disposition, and the firm that obtained it. It does not publish client names or case numbers, does not reconstruct case-specific narrative, and does not quote participants. Everything else in a case report is general explanatory material about how that category of case works. Those rules are set out in full in our editorial standards.
Corrections
Accuracy in this subject matter is not optional. Where this publication gets something wrong — a statutory citation, an element, a procedural sequence, or a reported disposition — the correction is made and noted rather than quietly revised.
Independence
No practitioner pays to appear in this publication. No profile, case report, or explainer is purchased, sponsored, or reviewed for approval by a subject before publication. Editorial decisions about what to cover are made by this publication alone.