Yesterday, I wrote that Avvo was utterly useless.  After a good night’s sleep and some more fooling around with Avvo, I realize that I was needlessly generous.  It is as yet unworthy of a look or a try.  It is the Segway (not seguey) of the law, a seemingly good idea that simply never measured up to its potential.  Will it ever?

From yesterday’s story, you will note that my first search of my good name at Avvo showed me to have a rating of 6.5.  A short time later, I’m a perfect 10.  Go figure.  The fact is, when a rating is based on a mathematical algorithm, it’s purely quantitative.  It may be free to the user, but even so Avvo may be overcharging.  It offers nothing qualitative.  It never will.  And when you look at the jury with your life on the line, qualitative matters a whole lot more.   The rhetoric sounds great; the reality doesn’t match up.  I’m betting that the good folks at Lexis/Nexis, owners of Martindale-Hubbell, are sleeping like babies tonight.

But even without a qualitative ability, it just doesn’t work.  I tried searching for myself again this morning.  Guess what?  I wasn’t there.  Go ahead and try it.  Avvo tells me there is no lawyer with my name.  Not in New York,  Not anywhere.  I figure I must be somewhere, but I can’t find me no matter how hard I try by searching.

So, I hit the support button.  Where’s the telephone number?  Avvo has no stinkin’ number.  The only access is an email of the problem, and we all know how the lowest level of customer service responds to emails.  Well, a few hours later, I received a response and my very low expectations were fully met.  I received the “official” thank you, apology for my inconvenience, whatever.   What I did not receive was an answer having anything whatsoever to do with my question.  Wow, it’s just like calling the phone company.  Now I have yet another business that wants to treat me like a blithering idiot.  Hey, Avvo!  I’m a 10 out of 10, baby!  Don’t mess with me!

But the news isn’t all bad.  Avvo has so many problems that its continued existence, if not vitality, is in serious jeopardy if it doesn’t clean up its act.  As I see it right now, it has a lot of cleaning to do.  Until then, think of Avvo as just another lawyer joke.  Enjoy the laugh.

UPDATE:  Within minutes of posting this, I was suddenly back on Avvo, searchable in the usual course.  It’s like magic.  Maybe there’s hope for them yet?  Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2:  Shortly after posting the first update, I received an email that actually came from a real person.  No pat answers.  I was given a phone number, and an offer to have them call me if it was more convenient for me.  I was told that they went to work on my problem to fix it.  Holy Cow!  Maybe, just maybe, they mean to make this work for real?  I still have the quantitative v. qualitative issue.  I still don’t get how any mathematical formula is going to tell anyone who really goes to trial or who can cross a witness and make them cry.  But perhaps they are really trying to make this happen?  Stay tuned some more.

Paris Hilton, one of the primary targets of Nancy Grace’s venom, is out of jail after having served only 3 days.  According to LA County Sheriff spokesman Steve Whitmore, jailhouse exposure to polyester caused Paris to suffer a potentially lethal rash which, when combined with the lack of a proper medicinal dose of Chateau Haut Brion, could have been fatal.

Whitmore denied that the rash had anything to do with close contact with lonely young men working in the jail who had certain yearnings and desires. 

Rash that may or may not have anything to do with Paris Hilton’s surprise release.  
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on June 7, 2007 by SHG.

Scooter Libby awaits his fate for lying.  It’s bad enough that his real name is I. Lewis.  It’s bad enough that lying is now considered an actionable crime for appointed (note, not elected) government officials.  It’s bad enough that he was Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.  Sitting there, awaiting sentence, Scooter Libby had much to ponder about his streak of bad luck.

But then, the news spreads like wild fire around the courtroom.  The hum is deafening.  The judge has received a letter on Scooter’s behalf.  It calls Scooter a patriot, with the ring of G. Gordon Liddy (anything about the respective names strike you as odd?) echoing in his ears. 

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton received a letter from Paul Wolfowitz.  AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH

Question:  How many Henry Kissinger letters does it take to undo one Paul Wolfowitz letter?
Answer:      If the defense attorney managed the letter writing properly, there wouldn’t be a Paul Wolfowitz letter to undo.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on June 6, 2007 by SHG.

The past few days have been spent preparing for trial.  Research.  Review of documents, statements, grand jury testimony, police reports, you name it.  Every paper parsed for the 5th time.  I’ve run through my opening, the issues, the phraseology of key questions.  The theme of the defense is fully developed and ready to go.  Trial to start Thursday.  And then…

The dreaded telephone call from the prosecutor. A young fellow.  Very polite, and frankly a very likable guy.  I’ve asked him to call me Scott a dozen times, but he still calls me Mr. Greenfield.  I can’t break him of his terminal manners.

“Mr. Greenfield, we won’t be ready for trial.”

“And why would that be?”

“One of my cops is going on vacation next week and won’t be available”

Well, I certainly wouldn’t want that to happen.

“And you didn’t know this when you asked, two weeks ago when the People weren’t ready, to adjourn the trial to this Thursday?”

“Uh…no.”

Now any lawyer who tries criminal cases will tell you that this conversation has been had about a zillion times.  There is absolutely nothing remarkable about it.  But…

My client had worked himself into a frenzy in anticipation of trial.  He was, to put it mildly, freaking out.  Now, with all due respect (which is lawyerspeak for “you idiot”), he’s neither the most stable nor intelligent of fellows, but the anticipation of a criminal trial can break even the strongest of men.  The stakes are high.  Years in prison if you lose, or an ecstatic walk out of the courthouse into the waiting arms of your family if you win. 

I call my client to inform him that there will be no trial this time.  He’s deflated.  He’s depressed.  He’s almost crying.  He can’t take it anymore, the high and the low, the waiting and then the rushing.  All the sternness about being there on time, following the rules, being prepared.  Yet it only seems to apply to him, with the prosecution immune from any responsibility to the court to be there and be prepared.

Is it right?  No, but right has never played any role in the real world of criminal law.  We want it to, and we wish it did.  The other side doesn’t see it as a problem of right or wrong at all, but mere logistics coupled with being too busy to attend to all the details.  After all, putting bad guys in jail can be a lot of work.  And there’s a lot of bad guys. 

Or as the pat response to the defense generally goes, if your client doesn’t like the way the system works, tell him to stop committing crimes.  I can’t tell you how many times, and variations, of this cute yet trite statement have been uttered in the courthouse.  I felt badly for my client, knowing how waiting for the outcome of this trial was ripping his heart out.  But not badly enough that I forgot to remind him that there is a balance remaining on my trial fee.  At least he’ll have a few more weeks to get it together.

For as long as I can remember, Martindale-Hubbell used to be the only game in town.  Lawyer were peer rated under a screwy lettering system for competence and ethics, with AV being the top rating.  But there’s a new player in town, Avvo. 

And so, I decided to check Avvo to see how I was rated.  Lo and behold, my rating was a 6.5, good but not excellent. Mind you, I received the same rating as David Boies (a lot of people confuse the two of us).  I was deeply offended, so I checked the other tabs to see what the rating was based on.  Surprise!  They had absolutely no information on me.  So, I wondered, what the hell did they base the 6.5 rating on?  From what I can tell, it was utterly baseless.  I could be the worst lawyer in New York, possibly the world, and could have gotten that rating.

My next move was to check out the ratings given other lawyers that I knew, and knew to be excellent lawyers.  Same deal as me, no info and nonsensical rating.

So then I came up with a brainstorm.  Check under the genre of criminal defense lawyers.  I wanted to see who was there, and see how they were rated.  In my case, they didn’t even have the information that I was a criminal defense lawyer.  I guess I was just plain old good for a PI lawyer, even though I’m not a PI lawyer.

So I dove into New York criminal defense lawyers, and there was a long list.  The only problem was that I saw name after name that I had never heard of.  Never.  Now if you’ve been around for a while, you get to know pretty much everybody who works in your field.  But these names were utterly foreign to me.  The one recurring theme was that they all worked for firms.  Now while there are a handful of firms that do criminal defense (to some greater or lesser extent), this is a business that is very personal and largely a small and solo practice.  These names were often Biglaw, and as we all know, they don’t REALLY do criminal defense. 

But there were a few names I recognized on the list of criminal defense lawyers, like that famed defender of the downtrodden, Rudy Giuliani.  Unfortunately for Rudy, like me, they had zero information on him.  I guess they hadn’t heard much about him yet, which doesn’t bode well for his presidential run.  What about Gerald Shargel, one of the best in town.  A 6.5 rating, just like me!  Well at least they got that right. 

Turning to the establishment, what about former EDNY United States Attorney and United States Magistrate  Zachary Carter.  Bingo, Zach got a 7.0 rating, meaning very good.  Still not excellent, but finally we moved off the dime.  And finally, I decide to slum a bit by checking out fellow blawger, Mark Bennett. Ouch, only a 6.3 rating.  Like me, they have absolutely no info on Mark, but I figure I got an extra 2/10s because I’m just better looking, and that’s got to be worth something, right? UPDATE: Even as I was writing this, Mark’s rating went from a mere “good” to “excellent”, proving that I am not better looking (and more importantly, that Mark IS an excellent lawyer).

So having spent about 10 minutes looking around Avvo, a thought occurred to me.  That’s 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back.  Maybe someday the Avvo ratings will mean something, but for now, they are so utterly, completely and totally useless as to make me wonder what compelled them to open up their shop before they had their act together.  But I have no doubt that the Biglaw guys will be jockeying for Avvo position, because they have no other way to prove their self-worth until they get their once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually go to court and play lawyer.

It’s always amazing to hear what people think happens in the legal system, and to wonder how it is possible that their ideas could be so blissfully far from reality.  Listening to a presidential-contender who shall remain nameless (to avoid the command that I give equal time to another contender who shall also remain nameless, though she has been rumored to sleep with former President Bill Clinton.  I can say this, as this presents a fairly large universe.), talk about his policy to help former prisoners re-integrate into society.

While the candidate never mentioned what exactly he planned to do to facilitate this re-entry, I was happy to hear it mentioned at all.  This is one of those pesky gaps in people’s understanding of the system that tends to cause problems only for the poor miscreants who have to live through it, their wives, children, some close friends and a few million potential victims of recidivism.  Nothing much there.

Most people have never given this much thought.  The next time you’re at a cocktail party with the Beautiful People, making polite conversation, ask the crowd what they think happens.  Unless Paris Hilton is in attendance, chances are that they say, “Gee, I don’t really know.”  Then ask them to guess.

People generally assume that there is some mechanism to deal with ex-cons.  Jobs, housing, drug and alcohol treatment are the needs, so somebody has to fill them, right?  As noted by Chicago Sun-Times writer Tom McNamee,

We love the front door of a prison, but we hate the back door. We love to spend money to send lawbreakers away, hiring ever more cops, building ever more prisons. But we cheap out on the help they need to go straight when they get out, which is stupid.

Late at night, a bus drops off ex-cons in the Bronx.  Some have family to meet them and bring them home.  Others have no one, and find themselves standing on the street, free-at-last, but without a clue what to do now.  Try to get a job when you’re an ex-con.  Try to buy some clothes to wear when you try to get a job when you’re an ex-con.  Try to get a shower before you put on clothes to try to get a job when you have no home when you’re an ex-con.  Well, you get the picture.

Many “tough-on-crime” people complain that it’s wrong to provide prisoners with an education.  After all, people who live their lives lawfully have to pay for college, yet we give it away to people who commit crimes.  That’s crazy, right?  well, it is unfair in the sense that we penalize people who are honest but poor by denying them a higher education to life themselves out of poverty and make their way into a fulfilling career.  True enough. 

But the reason for giving prisoners an education is not so much for their sake, but for ours.  If they leave prison without the ability to do something, get a job or simply survive on the outside, they are going to return to crime.  The options are limited; commit a crime or starve.  And if they commit crimes, they need victims.  This is where the rest of us come in.  We prefer not to be crime victims, and so it is in our self-interest to help ex-cons lead a law-abiding life.  For those “tough-on-crime” at all costs folks, the alternative is the death penalty for everybody, which may well be okay with them but is too ludicrous to be worth discussing here.

It would be a good think if this extended Presidential campaign seasons makes a little room to discuss what will happen with these ex-cons as the back-end of the prisoner boom of the 1990s is exploding. We were very busy locking them up for a decade, and now they are coming out through the back door.  If this discussion doesn’t happen, and result in some systemic answers, we should expect to have another big problem on the horizon of dealing the product of our conservative politics and knee-jerk solutions to crime.  You go, Barak.  I hope you have some good answers, and I hope the others have something to say about it as well.

I’m supposed to start a trial on Thursday.  In anticipation, I had a chat with my client yesterday, who asked me that same question that every client asks in anticipation of trial.  “What’s gonna happen?”

This is great question.  It covers many subjects, such as:

1.  Will we really go to trial, or will this be just another false start?
2.  Will the prosecutor cave in and offer me some sweet deal to avoid trial with you?
3.  Will we go to trial and beat the living daylights out of them?
4.  Will I be going to prison for the rest of my natural life?

Unfortunately, I am not Madam Esmerelda, capable of predicting the future.  Naturally, I understand the anxiety felt by the client, and the desire to have firm answers to all pressing questions.  But I just cannot provide answers, and any attempt to do so would mislead my client.  I do not mislead clients.  More to the point, any attempt to provide context tends to create further confusion and, more often than not, further anxiety.

When I speak to my clients, I try to be precise.  But my sending information is only half the communication process.  The other half is what the client hears.  Experience tells me that clients have the uncanny ability to pick out those words and phrases that they want to hear, and construct an entirely different message than the one sent.  For example, if I say “We have strong witnesses and are well prepared, but you never know what a jury is going to do,” they hear “We have strong witnesses and are well prepared, so I guarantee we’re going to win.”

The problem is bad enough when discussing the past.  It is horrible when predicting the future.  Honest lawyers don’t predict the future. 

When we tell clients that we cannot predict the future, the next question is invariably, “But what are my chances?”  To this, I always respond that I’m not Jimmy the Greek.  I don’t handicap trials.  They persist.  I continue to refuse.  They are unsatisfied with my response.  Clients want lawyers who can provide answers with certainty, no matter what.

As clients walk into the great unknown, afraid, unfamiliar and desperate to have something to cling to like a life-preserver, they look to their lawyer to comfort them.  The criminal defense lawyer becomes the focal point of their insecurity, and he shoulders the blame for a system that offers very little comfort and absolutely no assurance.  Suddenly, we are to blame for this terrible system, unfair and unyielding, because we cannot tell them that when the trial is over, they will prevail.  Mind you, certain details have been long forgotten, such as the fact that we didn’t arrest them, or that they engaged in conduct that may have something to do with their current situation.  We are now the nexus between the client and this mass of future uncertainty.

Often, the client will default to the position that “I paid you all this money, so you have to tell me.”  It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve discussed with the client that the legal fee is for the work and effort that you’ve put into their defense, not for a guarantee of outcome.  Lawyers aren’t plumbers:  We can’t guarantee at the end of the case that the pipes won’t leak.  Of course, we don’t charge as much either.  (See lawyer joke at bottom.)

I wish I could provide honest, accurate responses to perfectly reasonable questions, but the fact remains that this is a game for people with a very high tolerance for ambiguity.  There are so many variables outside our control that we cannot possibly predict the future.  Even when we have a fairly good estimate of what will happen, we are reluctant to share it because it becomes written in concrete to the client.  If you predict (this is just an example) that there is a 90% chance we will win, that doesn’t mean the client won’t fall into that 10% losing group.  And what do you say when the jury foreman utters the word “guilty” after you’ve said this to a client?  Nothing will take away the pain of that word, and the client will blame you for not only having failed him, but for misleading him into a false sense of security.  And the client would be right.

This is a good point to make one thing perfectly clear.  There is no criminal defense lawyer who tries cases who has not lost.  No matter how good you are, you lose some.  Any defense lawyer who says he hasn’t lost a trial doesn’t try cases (and there are a lot of those type lawyers around). 

I wish I knew what will happen next Thursday, but like my client, I’m just going to have to wait to find out.  Until then, I will prepare and prepare and prepare for trial.  If we go, I will be ready.  If not, I will be ready the next time.  That’s how it goes.

LAWYER/PLUMBER JOKE:   Plumber is called in to fix a stuffed drain at a lawyer’s house,  When he’s done, he present the lawyer with a bill. 

The lawyer screams, “That’s outrageous!  Even I don’t charge that much!”

The plumber responds, “Neither did I when I was a lawyer.”

I realize that this is a blawg, but believe that since most of our readers enjoy a relatively privileged and blessed life, it wouldn’t hurt you to think about others for a moment. That said, I apologize in advance for my pedantic rant.  But since it’s my blawg, I get to do it anyway.

Charity plays a significant part of my family life.  We are deeply involved in a number of good causes because they matter to us.  For my family, including my children, charity has a special meaning.  Charity is giving something of significance without the expectation of anything in return.  Not recognition.  Not even a thank you.  It is giving for its own sake.

Charities routinely “recognize” donors under the belief that it is required of them, and that people will not give unless they are recognized.  Unfortunately, it has created an expectation of donors that they will be recognized, thus creating a vicious circle.  When I give, I do so anonymously.  On occasion, I will find my name mentioned, or listed in some program or brochure, for something I’ve done.  It shames me to see this, as it is violates my definition of charity.

In my neck of the woods, charity galas are a grand source of social entertainment.  Ah, the black tie events, with bejeweled women in their flowing gowns.  But this really has little to do with charity.  This is fun, a way to pretend that we are doing something worthy while really having a wonderful time for ourselves.  If you analyze the cost/benefit ratio of these affairs, which is quite easy given the tax deductibility percentage included on the invitation, you realize that very little of the very expensive tariff actually goes to the cause at all, and of that, far less actually makes it to the intended beneficiaries.  But hey, let’s party!

I’m one of those weirdos who actually analyzes a charity before I decide to support it.  I want to know that my donation will be used for its intended purpose.  There’s one local charity around me that uses every penny of its funds to pay its staff to manage more fundraisers.  Nice little circle, but utterly useless. 

I am also quite concerned that donations targeted for specific purposes actually go for those purposes.  Do you remember the Red Cross after 9/11?  Billions of dollars flowed into their coffers from people across the country who wanted to help.  A few pennies actually went to those in need, but the vast majority went to administration (read salary increases for the management) or was held for future needs.  Plenty of rhetoric in the pleas for donations, but nowhere did the fine print ever say that they would actually use the money for those purposes.

What about pro bono legal services, you ask?  Here, we get into something of a sticky subject.  Law is my profession, not my charitable outlet.  While I have served as a pro bono arbitrator in New York County Civil Court since 1989, I do not otherwise seek out ways to use my practice as a charitable endeavor.  I do, on rare occasion, represent a client free of charge, but I reserve the right to pick these clients with great care.  I receive requests constantly from defendants who decry their innocence and poverty, but to accept such cases would be to strangle my practice. 

And yet, we who enjoy so many wonderful things in our lives have an obligation to give back and help others.  I implore everyone to find the charity that suits their life and give to it.  And I hope that you will do so without expectation of any benefit, but solely to be a part of humanity.

For most of America, Rudy Giuliani didn’t exist until 9/11.  In a flash, he became “America’s Mayor,” beloved and admired by people across America.  But for those of us who lived in New York City, and particularly for criminal defense lawyers, our memories of Rudy go back a little bit further.

Rudy came to New York from Washington to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.  Ah, those heady days when there was a TV camera at every Wall Street bust.  Back then, Rudy was the self-promoting, mean-spirited and overly-aggressive (or as we like to call this, a New Yawker) prosecutor, capable of causing outrage at both the highest and lowest levels of society.  Prominent (and innocent) Wall Street brokers say their lives wrongly destroyed by Rudy’s hubris, while the poorest of society were stomped under Rudy’s heel.

One of my personal favorite memories is when Rudy and Al D’Amato (that other paragon of virtue) decided to go uptown to buy crack.  Rudy, who loves to dress up, donned a Hell’s Angel vest over his suit pants and government issue white shirt.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on June 3, 2007 by SHG.

Warning: Foul Concepts




Please note, I am a Cornell Alumnus.