Here are the five posts published in 2012 that drew the highest traffic over the past year:

Dressing psychiatrists as wizards on the witness stand [January]
Doormat warning [December]
Long-necked beer bottle maker not liable for barroom assault [August]
“Structuring”: who can get away with it, and who can’t [April]
Reluctant to recant rape accusation [May]

Some posts continue popular long after they’re published. Here are the five from previous years that drew most traffic in 2012:

The burglar and the skylight: another debunking that isn’t [2006]
Urban legends and Stella Liebeck and the McDonald’s coffee case [2005]
Lawyers making clients worse off: Nicholas White’s elevator ride [2008]
Lawyer presidents [2008]
From comments: lawyer referral fees [2008]

Finally, here are the five 2012 posts that drew the largest number of reader comments:

He couldn’t prove it was legitimate [May]
Deaf girl’s family sues Girl Scouts for disbanding troop [August]
That treehouse has to go [January]
May 18 roundup [May]
NHTSA to mandate accelerator overrides [April]

And see also our subjective, recently concluded month-by-month list of highlights starting with January.

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