Somebody sent me a twit about a horrible injustice, an innocent convicted of a heinous crime, and won’t I support the cause. So I looked at the website. Everybody has a website these days, and it set forth their claim without any of the unfortunate details that tend not to support it. That’s fine. It’s to be expected.
Having a few minutes, I read. Midway down, I saw that the defendant, believing in the honesty and integrity of the legal system, cooperated fully with police. He never once suspected that even their informing him that he was the primary suspect, his cooperation might be a problem. The argument was that since he was an innocent man, the truth would save him.
Then came the part where he complained about his incompetent conflicted assigned counsel. Again, no mention of the notion of getting a lawyer whom he trusted, but just bitterness about how awful his lawyers (two of them) turned out to.
And finally, there was the part where he needed legal help now. Not someone “who wants a fat pay check,” but someone who truly cares about him. And will work for free. I was unmoved.
Then I read Eric Mayer’s post at the Unwashed Advocate (formerly known as the Military Underdog before an unfortunate incident in a Baghdad rest room).
At 9AM on December 7, 2011, I read an email. It was a desperate plea for help and court-martial representation.
The email was sent after 5PM on December 6, 2011.
The court-martial was scheduled to begin at 7AM on December 7, 2011.
So close. When I read this, I was taken back to a sign I saw in the Manhattan civil supreme clerk’s office: “Your poor planning doesn’t make it my emergency.” No one behind the counter ever moved with a sense of urgency.
There are a lot of complaints, and properly so, about lawyers. Many are predicated on the fact that people need us and we aren’t there for them, whether financially, temporally, competently or emotionally. It’s true.
It’s also true that many defendants do themselves no favor.
This isn’t a one way street, where lawyers are supposed to compensate with their magical powers for every blitheringly stupid thing you do. At what moment does it occur to you that retaining counsel might be a good idea? At when moment does it occur to you to become sufficiently knowledgeable about the world, the legal system, your government, anything other than yourself, so that you are prepared to confront the problems you face?
Lawyers are not capable of defying the laws of nature, our superhero capes notwithstanding. We cannot do a week’s worth of work in an hour. We cannot appear in a state midway across the country for the appearance in 10 minutes. When we go to the supermarket to buy food, they charge us at the cash register just like you. I know, I can’t believe they do it either, yet they do.
As much as people on the interwebz, or the TV commercials, or your neighbor’s Aunt Melba tells you otherwise, there is no guarantee that we can pull a rabbit out of a hat and make the overwhelming evidence, from the video to the confession to the eyewitness identification by the last six popes, disappear. And it’s really not terribly likely that he got probation for a murder. And if he did, use the same lawyer. No really, he has magic powers that others don’t.
But even those defendants who do not hate us while attributing magical powers, the very least you can do is give us the time and opportunity to do the work necessary to give you a fighting chance. It must occur to you at some point prior to the opening statements that having counsel in whom you trust is a good idea. Perhaps it even occurs to you that a prepared lawyer is better than one who just shows up out of the blue.
As much as I would like to tell you that we really do have magical powers, superhero powers, the ability to fly and shoot rays from our eyes, we’re just people who defend other people. Some are better than others. Some are better at some aspects of the work than others. Some are awfully good. Some are just awful. But all are people, subject to the limits and constraints that apply to all people. Even the best of us have to function within the confines of reality.
We’re used to emergencies. We’re used to problems. That’s our world, Screw-ups-R-Us. We take our cases and clients as they come, because that’s just the nature of our work. But when you come to us the night before, don’t be angry the next morning that we haven’t had a chance to read through the 17,000 pages of discovery. It’s not that they aren’t fascinating, or that we wouldn’t want to. I promise. And yet you are deeply upset that we haven’t cured your disease by the break of dawn the next day. And you tell us of your displeasure. We have failed you.
Most of us don’t really care much about being called names. We know it’s a highly emotional experience, and your concern is for yourself, not for us. And that’s how it should be. But in your own self-interest, give us the opportunity to do our best for you. If you wait until you’re absolutely, positively, unequivocably certain that all hell has broken loose, chances are pretty good you’re too late.
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Wonderful – thanks!
There was a time when, confronted with a potential client who was seeking last minute assistance, my first instinct was to see whether he or she had the resources to retain us and calculate whether it would be possible to shift around other matters to put in the 24/7 work before the imminent deadline to do a suitable job.
Now I just turn them down flat.
I learned, the hard way, that leaving things to the very last minute is associated to strongly with entitlement issues and incapacity to be satisfied with what I am able to do for them. Not worth it.
Our clientele tend to have a variety of issues, which is how they end up as our clientele. There is an underlying assumption by entitled folks that the people they need to serve them sit around doing nothing all day awaiting their call. It never occurs to them that we might have other obligations, or equal if not greater importance, that cannot be dropped on a moment’s notice because they decided that now would be a good time to demand service.
And we are bad people for not being there upon demand. Yes, this is the life we chose.
Sadly, in the near future we’ll be seeing more websites like the one you mentioned. Since the average layman gets their legal knowledge from someone like Nancy Grace, they’re under the impression that if the cops think they’re the #1 suspect, cooperating with them will clear everything up, and asking for a lawyer only means you really are guilty.
I’m not a lawyer, but I can certainly speak from experience on the other side of the table. In my wilder teenage days, I was suspected of vandalizing a bunch of cop cars at a car lot. I didn’t do it, but for about a year, the cops would pull me out of school or pick me up off the street and bring me in for questioning. I didn’t do it, and I didn’t know who did it; yet the police wanted me to “cooperate”, which, looking back, I can only assume translates into “implicate myself” or “flat-out confess”.
The only difference is websites, as cops have been playing this game forever. With the internet, the information is readily available to anyone who looks. We can tell people. We just can’t do the looking for them. At some point, they have to take the responsibility.
As with the website I mentioned in the post, they screwed up everything they possibly could. The defendant may very well be innocent as can be, but every move he made was another nail in his coffin. And now, it’s everyone else’s fault that he did nothing to help himself at any point along the way.
After one guy wouldn’t stop ranting about greedy lawyers who wouldn’t take his case pro bono, I interrupted to ask him, “Do you even give blood?”
It’s always the people who give nothing to charity (and if a person is broke, the least he can do is give blood or volunteer time) who expect the most charity for themselves. Amazingly, they make a moral case out of their entitlement to charity.
Ah yes. The “Lawyers are evil, and won’t you please be mine?” pitch.
Some lawyers are incompetent. I’ve filed IAC motions for people. But when someone comes to me saying their last 2 or 3 or 4 lawyers were terrible, I usually smell trouble and say no.
Used to donate to the Red Cross. Until I found out just how much $$$ they were making on “Blood Services” while I can’t even get a tax deduction.
Final nail was when they illegally diverted 9/11 donations.
Today I’m a diabetic that needs to save my arm veins for dialysis 20 years from now.
I once overheard another lawyer, in a very angry tone, tell her client that she went to GMU’s law school, not Hogwarts.
Point taken. Clients should always ascertain a lawyer’s school before retention.
The most recent letter from an inmate I don’t know. I just fished it out of the trash: “…I just need some one to put together the briefs and check for the mistakes. …” Just. Huh.
That reminds me of a Craigslist ad I once read.
Kindred spirits.
Well, I can see how a person without much of a critical bent who’s never done anything wrong and lived by what they always believed to be the rules might get themselves horribly screwed by “doing the right thing”, ie cooperating fully with an investigation in which they know themselves to be, as a matter of fact, wholly innocent. The fact that they ought to know to clam up and retain an accomplished lawyer might pose some problems, not the least of which would be “how do I go about finding one of those from within a precinct after a sleepless night I only half remember”.
First, I’ve allowed your comment even though you demonstrated remarkable genius by putting in a fake email address, only because I assume there will be others who read this who, like you, are morons. And lest you complain that I’m being unkind, since you’ve chosen to be “me at here.com,” you are not entitled to complain about it.
Second, obtaining counsel between the time of arrest and the time of arraignment is done a thousand times a day. Unless there is absolutely no one in the world who loves and cares for you, there is someone outside who can accomplish the task.
Third, the question isn’t whether counsel is obtained in advance of the arraignment, but whether counsel is obtained ten minutes before the trial begins. Too sleepy the day of arrest to think about a lawyer? Fair enough. Pick a day in the following week. Still too tough, try the following month. Still too much for you to handle?
Fourth, your decision to leave this comment anonymously is a completely understandble decision, given that no one would want to associate their name with such a stupid comment. Thanks for playing.