Carolyn Elefant, of My Shingle fame, in the course of noting the successes by solo practitioners, has an interview of Georgia lawyer Warren Caswell.  A 2003 law school grad, he filled his spare time with indigent defense appointments, even though his practice was relatively general and he had no background in criminal defense.

But Warren had something that mattered and compensated:  A strong drive to excel and the will to put in the time and effort to fulfill his obligation to his client.

Just five years out of law school and a solo for his entire career, Caswell received what at the time must have seemed like an impossible case: post-conviction representation of an indigent defendant found guilty by a jury of his second failure to register as a sex offender.   Based largely on hearsay, the jury concluded that the defendant had moved to a new residence when in fact, he was simply visiting his mother in the next county.   And as if Caswell wasn’t under enough pressure to reverse a jury verdict, the stakes were raised even further by draconian sentencing laws that resulted in a mandatory life sentence because of a failure to fill out necessary paperwork!   

After reviewing the transcript, Caswell initially intended to attack the verdict as insufficient due to admission of hearsay.  But an interesting conversation with jurors post-verdict lead Caswell to consider a constitutional argument that the duration of the sentence was so utterly shocking and contrary to societal notions of proportionality that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.  In the end, both the hearsay and the constitutional arguments carried the day.

Carolyn does a great interview, and for all you law students and young lawyers out there, Warren’s story is really quite inspirational.

For the more experienced lawyers reading this, Warren’s story has another side worthy of reflection.  Some of us become to jaded and tired, believing that the right thing happens so rarely that it’s just not worth the effort anymore.  Young guys don’t know that they can’t win, so they still try.  Warren’s story shows that every once in a while, we can and do win.  He didn’t know enough not to try. 

It’s important that experienced lawyers remember that one of the things that prevents us from overcoming adversity is lackluster effort and performance.  If you don’t make the effort, you are guaranteed to never achieve success.  I realize how difficult it is to face down the constant stream of bad results from bad judges in a bad system.  But if you can’t get up the interest and effort to try, then we doom our clients, not all those “bad” people.

So Warren, young lawyer with only limited criminal defense experience and background, scored a major win.  Maybe there’s hope out there?  Read Carolyn’s interview and perhaps it will get your juices flowing through your old veins again.  It’s good to remember why we bother waking up every morning.