He messaged me just a few weeks ago out of the blue, and it was good to hear from him because he's written so much advice that has been useful to others and to me, personally. He was the type of person that got me excited about law even before I started any formal training. And all these years later, I was about to ask him if he'd consider coming aboard as a moderator because he obviously had profound legal expertise.
In the last message I got from him, he asked to have his
post on generic sentencing questions saved so that he did "not have to repeat it every month or so." The generic sentencing questions addressed in his post, where a client effectively asks you to predict how a judge will rule in the future, are the bane of a criminal lawyer’s existence, since they are impossible to answer without a crystal ball. And I'm glad his post was saved and put at the top of the forum for him to see. In fact, I just checked and it looks like there are nearly eight years of advice from PottedMeat. He has contributed longer to the Legal Discussion community than anyone else. That probably equals a lot of billable hours for a lawyer, but he was willing to help people here for free. I cannot say that I knew him well, but the fact that he willingly gave so much for so long, says a lot about the man.
I had a reply, including a ‘thank you,’ saved in Notepad in response to his last message but regrettably I never sent it to him. So if it's not too late, a big thank you and best wishes for a safe journey to PottedMeat, and in case he's reading, here's the message from 4/1 that I never got around to sending...
Hi PM --
There used to be a "What's going to happen to me?" sticky to deal with the deluge of threads in which people ask for a sentencing prediction. It might be time to incorporate your post and sticky this back up for a while (or maybe we can start a handicapping and betting thread to take wagers on the outcomes for each case

).
Always appreciate your help, PM.
cheers,
bq
Best wishes to you and your family, Britney.

Your father was a great help here.