Very funny retort, but the humor masks a truth.  Two truths, in fact.  First, the expectations of a criminal defense lawyer.  Second, the denial of personal responsibility for what happened. 

People don’t retain criminal defense lawyers because life is going swell.  They come to us after the shit has hit the fan, and they need the services we provide.  Despite my skill at stating the obvious, clients often don’t see it this way.  Almost immediately, they demand that we explain and justify the system that brought them to us, as if we were personally responsible for their current problem.

Some lawyers try to soothe the client at this moment, speaking kind words in soft tones.  It’s a way to calm their frayed nerves while deflecting their misdirected anger away from the lawyer.  Others will sit them down and have a frank discussion of how they came to find themselves in a lawyer’s office.  They will detail what they did wrong and how it was their conduct, not the lawyer’s, that brought them to this point. 

This talk isn’t what the clients want to hear.  Some already know it, but would rather deny it.  Others have spent their entire lives in denial, seeing consequences as a product of bad luck or external failures.  Most fall into the latter category. 

The exception, of course, is the professional criminal.  He is a businessperson, whose business happens to be against the law.  He knows it and understands that there are risks involved.  He sees the law and the lawyer as a cost of doing business, and has made a conscious decision that the benefits outweigh the risks.  He has no immature vision of what the system offers him or what a lawyer can do for him.  He wants the best result he can get, but realizes that there are no guarantees of outcome. 

Getting back to Skelly, who deals in the painful underbelly of criminal law, the juvenile “justice” system, his “thoughtful” response to the parent’s unappreciative comment was left unsaid.  In the comments to his post, Skelly explains further that his right to speak stopped “just before my client’s dad’s fist comes flying toward my nose.”  That’s a pretty clear image, and certainly changes the calculus.  No, a little dose of truth isn’t worth a good punch in the nose.

While I don’t specialize in juvenile delinquency, I’ve done my share of representing kids, some of whom were well down the road to a life of crime and misery.   As anyone who reads this blawg regularly knows, I have a serious soft spot when it comes to children.  I do not accept the “kids are just small, evil adults” theory.  As a person, and as a society, we cannot give up on children that easily.

Many years ago, I had a mother and son come into my office.  The kid was breaking into cars to see that he could steal.  The mother, kind and distraught, worked to survive as a single parent, and lost control of her son to the streets.  She knew it, but didn’t know what to do about it.  When the mother looked at me, it was not just about helping her son out of his current mess, but about helping her son to survive.  She knew that he needed someone to teach him how to fish.

I sat the kid down and started to tell him that he was a lousy thief.  He just wasn’t good enough.  He was a failure as a thief, as a criminal, and he would never amount to a big man on the street.  I was gaining momentum, my voice getting louder.  I reamed him good.  He became a model client, though it by no means meant that I got through to him.  They tend to listen for a while, then lapse back into their world once I become a distant memory, if they think of me at all. Later, I beat his case.  Mom was very appreciative, but that was only a small battle in a bigger war.  She sent me a thank you note, but I never heard from her again after that.

Cut to a few years ago.  I step into the elevator in my building and a young black man gets in with me.  The guy is staring at me.  Intensely.  He asks, “Are you Greenfield?”  “Uh oh,” I think to myself.  Here I am alone in an elevator with this guy, and I have no idea who he is or how he knows me.  Every client isn’t satisfied, and some witnesses for the prosecution really, really hate me.  “Yes, I’m Greenfield,” I respond.  So much for glib replies.

He was the kid.  The little kid who was a lousy thief.  He told me that my “lecture” made him realize that he couldn’t go on being a thief and had to become something.  He finished school and had gotten himself a job.  Not a great job, but an honest job. He didn’t have a gold and diamond necklace or drive a BMW like the drug dealers, but he was happy and proud of himself.  He never got into trouble again.  He put out his hand in that elevator, and thanked me.

I guess the whole story could have ended with a punch in the nose as easily as a handshake.  But it was not only one of those moments that make you feel that you haven’t wasted your life, but one that made you feel that it was worth the risk of a punch in the nose.