Not too many youngun’s remember the Junior Birdmen.  They were kids who built model planes, and wanted to grow up to be aviators, back when becoming an aviator was the coolest thing ever.  Then came a song, Up in the Air, Junior Birdman, which mocked those who were aviator posers.

Defendants, and more often family members and friends, want to play junior lawyer.  It often stems from two well-intended motives, to either contribute to the cause by helping their lawyer to defend, or to let the lawyer know that they are watching carefully and scrutinizing the quality of the representation. 

To a point, both motives are useful and appropriate.  This is the defendant’s life, and he should be both involved and concerned.  Both defendants and family members should be sufficiently interested to try to help and, probably the more important of the two purpose, keep a close eye on their counsel to make certain that he is providing the representation they require and deserve.

But they don’t get to steer the plane.

The situation differs when the defendant has retained counsel as opposed to assigned.  Having not chosen the latter, there is no particular reason for there to be a relationship of trust between lawyer and client.  One may, and in the best of circumstances, will be created based on the defendant realizing that this unknown quantity has both the chops and desire to serve him well.  Much of the time, the undercurrent of mistrust of the system and lawyers in general makes development of trust extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Ironically, however, it’s with retained counsel that most defendants and family members feel entitled to play junior birdmen.  While they may have chosen a lawyer, thus providing them with the opportunity to select a lawyer in whom then repose trust and respect, there is an undercurrent that they have bought and paid for the lawyer, and hence own him.  They are entitled to direct him.  They paid for the right  to call the shots.

Some lawyers acquiesce to the demands.  The constant communications and questions, about how they should get a better plea offer (the woman on the corner said the guy down her street murdered 12 people and got probation) or argue a specific point (Joe was denied due process because the cops slapped the cuffs on too tight). 

Some lawyers do it to be agreeable, lest they never have another meeting with Mr. Green.  Some do it because they don’t care enough, or lack sufficient self-respect, to manage their clients.  Some do it because they’re tired of the phone calls, emails, meetings and misdirected anger of clients and family members who beat them up because the system sucks.

To what end?  If being a lawyer was easy, then there would be no need for lawyers to exist.  Anybody could step into the breech, argue the cause, try the case and win the day.  Nothing to it, right?

Yet it never seems to work out quite that way.  Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the assistance and oversight of clients and their family members who, as it happened, were either lawyers or attended law school.  Whether they merely wanted to help, or wanted to use their law-fu to make sure I knew they were watching me like a hawk, they sought to insert themselves into the defense. 

These were the junior birdmen.  With a never-ending stream of “help” ranging from hornbook law, the stuff taught to first year law students so they learn the basics, to the wholly irrelevant, with the follow-up demands as to why their help isn’t brilliant and compelling.

If your criminal defense lawyer doesn’t know criminal law better, by magnitudes, than a real estate lawyer or, worse still, the kid who finished his third year, then your issue isn’t with his embracing your help, but with your choice of lawyer.  Assuming that you haven’t chosen poorly, however, then consider what is really happening. You are sucking the most valuable resource the lawyer has out of him: time.

There is no good lawyer who won’t put in whatever time it takes to do everything possible to defend a client.  But that means putting in the hours, the research, the investigation, the writing, the thought, needed to fight.  It does not mean spending time dealing with junior birdmen, explaining why everything isn’t a violation of due process, or why the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine doesn’t preclude admission of drugs in their pocket at the time they were arrested with the gun in their hand.  You think it matters?  That may be, but then why bother to retain a lawyer?  If you have the answers, go for it.

The fact is that you realize you don’t have the answers.  You have Google, which can turn anybody into a junior birdman in minutes.  You may even have a little knowledge, though not sufficient grasp to recall that a little knowledge is dangerous. You likely have great interest, and feel that you should be doing something, anything, to be involved.  You may even feel the need for control in a situation where there is no control to be had.

This isn’t going to help.  Ask yourself whether you have the capacity to help, to contribute to your lawyer’s ability to do the job for which your retained him.  If you’ve put in the thought, the effort, to find the right lawyer for the defense, does he need that sort of help from you?  Do you believe the lawyer you retained to defend lacks the knowledge and skills to do his job?

There are things a lawyer needs of a client and family, and he will no doubt let you know what you can do to help and contribute to the cause.  It’s likely not the sort of stuff that feels particularly fulfilling, but it’s still needed.  Beyond that, however, you are just sucking time and, if pushed hard enough, interest.  It can reach a point where the demands of wasted time are too great, and the time spent dealing with junior birdmen is taken from the time needed to defend. 

It can be hard, almost impossible, to sit on the sideline and watch a lawyer from afar.  We get it.  But it’s all you can do without becoming a detriment to your cause.  We have our roles, lawyer, client, family.  Realize your roll and fulfill it, but no more.  Don’t play junior birdman.