I received an early morning call from a woman who was in tears. Long story short, she made a mistake at the GAP and didn’t pay for everything that had been placed in her stroller. After tendering several hundred dollars for clothing, she was pinched on her way out of the store for a forgotten trinket. Believe her or not, it’s not important.
She was in tears because, not being an experienced criminal, she didn’t know what to do and decided to search the internet for a lawyer to represent her. Naturally, she called the number listed for the number one choice on Google. In New York, we all know who that is. She was informed that this was a very serious offense, for which she could go to jail for a year. Thus, she should rush down immediately with cash in hand so that her four children wouldn’t be left motherless.
Do you wonder why she was hysterical?
Of course, this is sheer and utter crap. No first offense petty theft charge, alone, will mean jail time. It’s remarkably unlikely to be any worse, no matter how badly screwed up by the defense lawyer, than a plea to a violation, a non-criminal offense, and a couple of days community service. At worst. Chances are fairly good that a better disposition, including dismissal, can be obtained by a halfway decent lawyer.
I talked with her for a while to calm her down. I was outraged that some lawyer, or perhaps lawyer’s flunky, chose to cause this woman such horror and pain. For what? A fee? They would cause her to fear jail, the loss of her children, to scare her into racing down to the office with cash in hand? Not even a decent legal fee, though more than enough for the charges involved, yet they would do this to someone. I am outraged.
I spent about a half hour undoing the damage this heartless miscreant did, assuring this crying woman that she will not be going to jail for a year, not be separated from her four children, not be a statistic. I referred her case to a young, extremely competent and understanding lawyer, who I have no doubt will take exceptional care of her.
Still, my blood boils at the tactics used to make a buck at any expense. This is not how human beings behave toward one another, and this is most assuredly not how criminal defense lawyers behave. This cannot happen, and it cannot continue. We do not practice law purely to see how much we scare a fee out of a client, and we do not scare people under any circumstances. This “money at any cost” mentality that is permeating the bar is going to ruin us; it’s a disgrace.
I’m begging you, please don’t to this. It doesn’t matter how hungry you are, how desperate you are for a fee, how successful you are at lying, deceiving, scaring and harming potential clients. This has got to stop. This cannot be tolerated.
Please stop it. Please do no more harm. I’m begging you.
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Maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t sound like “money at any cost” — sounds to me like abuse for no benefit to anybody.
How much would it have cost — statistically and financially; in this case I’m assuming that the soul is already spoken for — the lawyer or flunky to have said, “Relax. You’d have to be incredibly unlucky [this is my amateur way of avoiding the solecism of the promised result; a pro would probably do it better] to do jail time for a first offense petty theft charge. It’s the sort of thing that almost always gets a fine, or a maybe even dismissal — if you want to hire us, come on down to the office and we’ll talk in detail about what to do, or we could point you to some other folks. It’s scary for you, but it’ll be okay. Just don’t do nothing, ignore it, and hope it all goes away.”?
In that sort of situation, isn’t the competent-sounding, reassuring firm at least as likely to get the gig as it is with the scare tactic? (That’s not a rhetorical question, although, in this case, the answer is clearly, “yes” — after all, she apparently didn’t rush down with all that cash to Scary Law Firm.)
If the low road doesn’t pay better, what’s the temptation?
It’s not a vote for the efficacy of scaring clients out of money, which as you note didn’t happen in this case. It’s the pervasiveness of “anything for a buck,” even if the direction is misguided. Who would scare a client to the point of tears to score a case? It’s just mindboggling.
I need business just like the next lawyer, but I have never lied to client to get it. I’d rather sell women’s dresses.
Sir,
It’s Post like this one with summations intended to educate, redirect, scold, and reform the profession as a whole that inspires folks like myself to nominate S.J. for Best Blawg.
I’m willing to bet that every single follower (excluding those with eyes on the prize themselves)feel the same.
Currently, there are only two attorneys / lawyers that dedicate such blawgtyme. (Yourself & Mr. Bennett) both would probably prefer to have only law types read & comment but kindly allow us “all” entrance.
In a perfect world, S.J. & B&B would be required reading for law students so they wouldn’t have to learn the ropes the hard way, leaving shame and disgust in their wake. It would be great if those in the old school train of thought & the retired got a daily dose as well. Thanks.
Sadly, I think the behavior described above is par for the course for a very large part of the defense bar. But the really sad part is that I suspect most of these lawyers don’t think they’re lying to get the business. When they say that’s a serious offense which could carry a year in prison, so its important that you come to my office with cash, all they think they’ve done is educate the client as to the maximum penalty for an A misdemeanor and earned their money.
I think you’re being too kind. I think they know exactly what they’re doing, do it deliberately and hope that the scare tactic works.
This reminds me of what I think was probably one of the worst things I ever witnessed in a courthouse hallway- it sounds tame, and I’m sure there are much, much, worse horror stories, but once I overheard a defense lawyer tell a prospective client who was entitled to a mandatory adjournment in contemplation of dismissal on a marijuana charge, “if you hire me, I can get this case thrown out.”
A lawyer who can do nothing more than parrot a statute isn’t much of a lawyer.
Lawyers aren’t just paid for knowledge of the law. They are paid for experience and wisdom – a lawyer and counselor at law.
Any idiot can cite a statute or tell you a maximum penalty. You don’t even need a law degree for that. A counselor tells you – based on his or her years of personal experience and reflection on the law – how the law will actually apply to you.
Are expectations so low – and competency so rare – that a lawyer who does nothing a first-year law student couldn’t do (parrot the maximum sentence) that you don’t view the lawyer SHG mentioned as contemptible?
I assume you’re addressing me since you’ve replied to a comment of mine. Nowhere did I intend to suggest that the lawyer SHG refers to as contemptible, and nowhere did I suggest that all a defense lawyer needs to do is inform a client of the maximum penalty for violating a particular statute. I was referring to what I think SHG was referring to, i.e., the common and despicable practice of scaring a client into thinking that they better run down to a lawyer’s office with some cash, otherwise they’ll wind up in jail, tommorow, and forever. I wasn’t at all referring to how a case should be handled in its totality- just the dishonest manner in which a client and his cash are separated and I’m not sure why you thought I was referring to anything else. Nowhere did I suggest that the entirety of a lawyer’s role was to tell the client what the max is.
My comment that I don’t think those lawyers think of themselves as lying is not my reflection on whether they are lying or not, but my reflection on their own self-perception, and my point is simply that the practice is so common and accepted, they don’t realize its lying, similar to the way that people in a cash business ultimately come to believe that income received in cash is actually not reportable as income. But that’s another subject.
I didn’t take Dan’s comment that way, and from his other comments, I’m sure that he wasn’t suggesting that he thought the scare tactics were acceptable. He knows what’s what.
“but my reflection on their own self-perception”
I didn’t mean to imply that you viewed their conduct as proper. My apologies if that’s how I cam off. I am not passive-aggressive, and would have been more direct if I was directing the comments to you personally.
My audible sigh was directed more towards today’s lawyering gestalt. “Listen while I tell you some banality about the law.”
This individualized self-perception of competency is becoming more common due to the debasement of the culture. Today merely appearing to know something is enough to demand a paycheck. Think about it like this.
The person who says, “You might do a year in jail” has revealed himself to as a total bozo. A true idiot. A real lawyer would know that the woman wasn’t facing a year in prison.
Yet many of the lawyers popping off about a one-year max probably lacks the self-awareness to realize how foolish and shame worthy he is. He probably considers himself knowledgeable.
Elevating the perception of knowing something (which is easy; see the legal marketing blogs) to actually knowing something (which is hard and takes decades) is of course not limited to lawyers. It’s like that in most industries.
It also reminds me of a despicable practice here in New Jersey. My wife has gotten a few tickets for moving violations. Each has been followed by no less than a dozen solicitations all telling her how serious her case was and how successful they are. It straddles the ethical line with such precision, it almost warrants a little respect. But just a little. Because, in addition to the 12 we get in English, I suppose because my last name is profiled for being Hispanic, we get another 4 or so written in Spanish.
The folks sending this stuff stopped practicing law a long time ago. I’m hungry for business, but not that hungry. Once you trip over that line, I think you’ve traded in your law license for the right to sell life insurance – whole life insurance, of course.