A dear friend called me yesterday.  He’s a highly-skilled criminal defense lawyer with a ton of experience.  He’s one of the best.  If I was arrested, I would call him.  He’s that good.

So did he call me to tell me of his latest escapade, thwarting the forces of good in the name of the Constitution?  No.  He was depressed.  After a few minutes on the phone, I was depressed too.

My friend, who we’ll call “Steve” so that I can stop writing about “my friend” (which suggests I’m more likable than I really am), told me that his phone isn’t ringing.  “Is it broken,” I asked?  Yes, I can be thick sometimes.

“No,” he responded in a dreary voice.  “It works just fine.” 

So mustering all the empathy I could find, I asked Steve, “So are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to hang up my phone so I can get some work done today?”

“I’m dead.  There’s no one calling.  I haven’t gotten a new case in a long time.”  Silence.

Now I understood.  This has been coming for a while now.  But to hear Steve say it was hard.  Steve was a star.  Every year, a hundred kids leave the DAs and Legal Aid offices and hang out their shingle, thinking that if those morons can be private criminal defense lawyers, so can I.  They take a few cases off the top, but most usually disappear into the crowd of dabblers in criminal defense when they figure out that they will never make it in criminal defense.

But Steve?  He’s done it for 20 years.  He’s well known.  He’s extremely well respected.  He has earned that reputation from years of success in the trenches.  His business has always come from client and lawyer referrals.  When I asked what happened to the lawyer referrals, he told me that everybody is so hungry that they’re holding on to every case they get.  I know this to be true.

I keep my ear to the ground in the bad neighborhoods of New York.  The word on the street is that nobody is making any money.  How this can be I don’t know, since somebody is still selling drugs and robbing bodegas and murdering others.  But I know that it’s true.  My peeps tell me so.

So Steve and I talked about why.  Sure, it’s not like the good old days when the criminals were more business-like in their dealings, putting money aside for the lawyer when the arrests inevitably came.  These were the guys who saw prosecution as a cost of doing business, and appreciated having a good lawyer to call.  These guys were now retired, if they were fortunate enough to avoid being in the crosshairs of some snitch.

But there are still plenty of criminals, right?  Well, of course, and there always will be.  But that doesn’t help someone like Steve.  He was a high-profile guy.  He could perform miracles, and he charged for the service.  Was the silence of his telephone a sign that nobody believes in miracles anymore?

I’ve posted recently about the lawyers who take felonies at $1,500 a pop.  The New York Times editorial page informed me that criminal defense lawyers are making money hand over fist, unlike our underpaid judges.  I read about others having more work than they know what to do with.  So why is it that nobody calls Steve anymore?

There is plenty of work out there for criminal defense lawyers.  It’s just not the work that anyone wants.  Some will take it because they have no choice, even though they are bringing down the rest of us in their personal struggle for survival.  This plays into my worst fear for the private criminal defense bar. 

When there are fifty lawyers willing to take your case for $1,500, and you have lost faith that the quality of your lawyer matters because (a) no one wins, (b) someone will rat you out anyway or (c) there is no justice, then why bother?  When the great lawyers like Steve aren’t getting any business, they will be forced to leave the law and open up a flower shop.  Who will be left? 

Other lawyers I talk to make it sound like they’re on top of the world.  I don’t believe most of them.  There are a lot of liars when it comes to self-promotion.  This doesn’t help to figure out what, if anything, can be done to stave off the potential implosion of the criminal defense bar.

It appears that things are different in other parts of the country, and that gives me hope that it’s a transitory problem.  But if we can’t thin out the herd on a basis other than price, we will be left with a bunch of lawyers who will take cases at any price just to keep the lights on, but few, if any, stars.  Why anyone would hire some hallway hack to be their lawyer when their life is on the line rather than a honest-to-God star like Steve?  Is this just New York?  I wish I had the answer.