Similar to a retail shop that increases its product lines to meet customer demand, the law firm of Jonathan D'Agostino & Associates, has ventured into additional areas of jurisprudence.

The expansion wasn't part of the original game plan for the 18-year-old firm, which began specializing in personal injury.

"I never wanted to be that law firm that claims they do everything, because I do not believe you can do everything well," said founder Jonathan D'Agostino.

But when his clients indicated a need for other legal services, D'Agostino didn't want to let them down. He brought legal experts, in a variety of specialties, on board.

"We would settle large cases, and clients would ask us to help with estate planning," D'Agostino said.

At other times, he said, personal-injury cases would involve clients who were so injured they didn't have the mental capacity to make decisions or handle their settlements, so the firm would be prompted to draft special-needs trusts.

Today, in addition to personal injury, the Eltingville-based firm offers a range of legal services, including medical malpractice, estate planning, elder law, criminal defense and Social Security disability.

"Rather than refer those types of matters to other firms, we brought in trained and seasoned attorneys to handle things. This also assured our clients the same exceptional service they were used to," D'Agostino said.

The firm's Social Security department grew out of the need to service clients who, due to their injuries, could not return to work.

Attorney Edward Pavia helps clients like these with Social Security paperwork, hearings and appeals.

Now, nearly 15 years later, Echols is hoping to convince the judge who oversaw his original case to grant him a new trial. His attorneys say DNA tests clear him and the two others in prison for the crime.

Attorneys for Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, known to supporters as the "West Memphis Three," were to appear Wednesday before Craighead County Circuit Judge David Burnett, along with the case's original prosecutor.

Together, the lawyers and judge will lay out a schedule for a three-week slate of hearings in September on DNA evidence and claims of juror misconduct in their 1994 trials over the murders of 8-year-olds Steven Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore.

Burnett has barred both prosecutors and defense lawyers from speaking with reporters about the case, saying he was tired of reading about it in the newspapers. It dominated newspapers and television sets throughout Arkansas and the nation after police found the three boys' water-soaked bodies in a drainage ditch a day after their May 5, 1993, disappearance from West Memphis.

The boys' hands were bound to their legs by shoelaces and their bodies showed signs of suffering severe beatings. One boy's body had been mutilated. A month passed and the community posted a $30,000 reward before police arrested the three teens. Misskelley told investigators how he watched Baldwin and Echols sexually assault and beat two of the boys as he ran down another trying to escape.

A separate jury gave Misskelley, who refused to testify against the other two, a life-plus-40-year sentence for the killings. Baldwin received a life sentence without parole after standing trial with Echols, who preened at times during the trial and quoted Shakespeare to reporters. Echols was sentenced to die.

It can hardly come as a surprise that Barack Obama, Harvard Law Class of '91, is popular with lawyers. They've given him $21 million in donations so far, compared with a measly $7 million for Republican rival John McCain.

But like all things Obama, the picture is cloudier than it first appears. Most of Obama's lawyer money came from defense firms. He got the single biggest slug of cash from Kirkland & Ellis, the Chicago law firm that represents Marlboro merchant Philip Morris and asbestos manufacturers, among others. He also co-sponsored a bill designed to cut down on malpractice litigation in 2005, and voted for the Class Action Fairness Act, a law that made it harder for trial lawyers to file some of their most lucrative cases.

Those actions send pangs of doubt through die-hard supporters of the unfettered right to sue, such as Graham Steele, a staff attorney at consumer watchdog group Public Citizen.

If liberals are worried, however, conservatives should be terrified. Whether Obama or McCain wins in November, tort reform appears dead in Washington for at least the next two years. A catchall phrase for legislative measures designed to make it harder for individuals to sue businesses, tort reform has long been a pet project of Republicans. Not coincidentally, it reduces the earning power of plaintiff lawyers, some of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party.

The detective accused the mayor of pushing another investigator while recently trying to serve a subpoena on a friend of Kilpatrick. The two counts of assaulting or obstructing a police officer are each punishable by up to two years in prison.

"In my almost 20 years, first as a prosecutor and now as an attorney general ... I cannot recall ever seeing let alone hearing of a situation where a police officer trying to serve a subpoena was assaulted," Attorney General Mike Cox said at a news conference.

Kilpatrick spent Thursday night in a one-man jail cell with no TV for violating his bond in a criminal perjury case that has dogged him for months. Then Wayne County Circuit Judge Thomas Jackson altered the ruling of the lower court judge who ordered the mayor to jail.

Jackson said District Judge Ronald Giles went too far by not attaching some kind of cash bond to his ruling.

In order to get out of jail, Kilpatrick must pay a $50,000 cash bond and wear an electronic tether. He won't be allowed to travel.

NCAA officials announced Thursday that the U.S. district court in Los Angeles had approved the proposal Tuesday.

As part of the deal, the NCAA will create a $10 million fund for former student-athletes, thousands of whom joined in the class-action lawsuit. Those students, who attended school between Feb. 17, 2002 and Aug. 4, 2008, have three years to file claims with the NCAA.

As part of the deal, the NCAA denied it any wrongdoing in the case and said it agreed to settle to avoid additional expenses.

A judge has disqualified a lawyer from representing a woman suing former state Sen. Gary George, saying his law firm has a potential conflict of interest.

The firm must withdraw because it employs former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and her deputy, who have confidential information that could be used against George, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled.

She ordered Victor Arellano of Lawton & Cates to stop representing Delilah Tucker, who once worked in George's Capitol office.

Tucker is suing George and his former chief of staff Dan Rossmiller for violating her constitutional rights to free speech. She claims the two retaliated against her after she raised concerns about having to do personal and campaign work for the Milwaukee Democrat. She says she was ultimately fired and replaced by "a European beauty."