It’s not easy to be a stand-out criminal defense attorney.  Jerry Guerinot has managed to accomplish this difficult feat, earning recognition as the lawyer with more clients on death row than any other, according to Adam Liptak.

A good way to end up on death row in Texas is to be accused of a capital crime and have Jerry Guerinot represent you.

Twenty of Mr. Guerinot’s clients have been sentenced to death. That is more people than are awaiting execution in about half of the 35 states that have the death penalty.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s Guerinot’s fault.

“The easy ones, somehow, never came to me,” he said. “I think it’s a recognition that if I represent them, the state is in for one hell of a fight. Nothing goes down easy.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Guerinot’s self-assessment is accurate.

“People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said.

Of course, not every lawyer who has defended against a capital charge and lost would agree.

There are plenty of things to be said about the massive failure demonstrated by Guerinot’s spectacular record.  And others are quoted saying some of them in Liptak’s column, speaking to his failure to put in what most would consider to be minimal effort in a garden variety drunk driving case, except that his clients are facing execution. 

It seems to boil down to a failure to conduct even rudimentary investigations, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston and the litigation director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, including not a few of Mr. Guerinot’s former clients.

“He doesn’t even pick the low-hanging fruit which is hitting him in the head as he’s walking under the tree,” Mr. Dow said.

How bad a lawyer does one have to be before being held up for singular ridicule?  Guerinot sets the bar very low.  He’s a hard act to follow, based on his numbers alone.  But now there’s good news, and bad news.

Mr. Guerinot, for his part, has given up capital work and now handles more ordinary criminal cases, on a volume basis. An analysis in The Houston Chronicle last year found that he had represented 2,000 felony defendants in 2007 and 2008 — far above the caseload limits recommended by bar associations and other groups that take criminal defense work seriously.

No more defendants will be executed because of Guerinot’s representation, but many more defendants will be convicted.  Courts from Texas to Washington, D.C. appear aware of Guerinot’s incompetence, but nobody seem inclined to do anything about it, whether to rid defendants of this blight or to help the defendants infected by his representation.  And Guerinot continues to practice law, and his former clients continue to sit on death row.  Plenty of sighs, but no pen stroke to end the madness.

What if Jerry Guerinot was a very nice fellow?  Witty and well-intended, the sort of fellow who would make friends easily and charm other criminal defense lawyers with his supportive and empathetic thoughts.  But for Liptak’s revelations, he could join the blawgosphere and in no time at all, find himself surrounded by caring criminal defense lawyers proclaiming him a “kick ass lawyer.”  That seems to be the phrase most favored lately, though it’s unclear who is doing the kicking and who is getting kicked.

Over the past year, a spate of criminal defense lawyers from various parts of the country have joined the practical blawgosphere, with a vengeance.  In the past, Niki Black pointed out to me that the criminal law blawgosphere was a clique of sorts, with a handful of old-time blawgers who were both critical of, and reluctant to, let new people into the fold. 

Her point was well taken, though it seemed to me that it was more a matter of distinguishing those whose involvement was too self-promotional, too soft, too lacking in substance, to break their way into the circle.  One of the virtues of the practical blawgosphere was the ability to survive critical peer review.  It wasn’t enough that Guerinot was a nice guy to join the sphere and receive the support of others.

This appears to be changing.  It’s becoming more of a big group hug than peer review.  Nice, charming, witty posts, even though they reflect nothing of depth or consequence in the law, have become enough to earn the admiration of other new-comers, and even some old-timers, to the blawgosphere, and the title “kick ass lawyer.”  Being liked by another blawger seems to be enough for someone to be endowed with great skill and worthiness, even though nothing exists to suggest that it’s in fact the case.  Many who have fallen into this circle have very little experience, and very little history to know whether they deserve it, or whether they deserve the right to bestow it on anyone else.  This no longer seems to matter, to them or others. 

I fear that some of them might be more Jerry Guerinot than Gerry Spence.  I don’t know.  I can’t tell from what they’ve written whether they are any good or not.  It’s not that I don’t think they are likable, charming or witty, though the blind search for companionship on the internet is also disturbing to me. 

Some people think I’m too miserly with my respect.  It’s not a scarce resource, so I can hand it out to as many people as possible and still have more to give.  But then it doesn’t mean anything, if I give it to anyone who is nice to me.  I would like to think that one of the things that I’ve accomplished during my career is the establishment of credibility, and when I show my respect for a lawyer, it means something.  Others, old-time, battle-tested veterans, have fallen victim to flattery and sheepishly allow themselves to be sucked into the group hug.

As I watch others hand out the title “kick ass lawyer” to people they don’t know, attribute skill, courage, worth to anyone who will hug them back, they devalue themselves, as well as the battle waged by those who came before them to establish the credibility of the blawgosphere to distinguish between criminal defense lawyers who demonstrated their worthiness under the scrutiny of their peers.  We were harshly criticized for our refusal to endorse any pandering fool who showed up, but we withstood that criticism in order to maintain the integrity and quality of the lawyers and writings we embraced.  It wasn’t easy to obtain recognition, and it wasn’t meant to be easy.  Anybody could earn it, but it had to be earned.

If what you seek on the internet is validation, support, recognition, and you are willing to sacrifice your credibility and respect to pay for it, then proclaim that people you don’t know are “kick ass lawyers” so that they will say nice things about your in return.  Just remember that your new best friend may be Jerry Guerinot, the “undertaker for the state.”