It’s not part of the job, but one of the things that comes naturally after the parenting hormones kick in is the desire to be paternal toward one’s clients.  What one sees with great frequency in criminal defense are clients who, at minimum, need a damn good talking to.  Often, they need a spanking.

They may have gotten some decent beatings in their life, but never a spanking.

Much of what walks through our door is swagger and stupidity, a toxic combination. No one ever taught them responsibility or humility.  They never learned the basic lessons of life that comprise the building blocks of a successful, happy life. Instead, they were neglected and learned on the street to indulge the devil whispering in their ear.  Many never knew their fathers.  Some knew them only too well.

In more instances than I can count, I’ve tried to play father to young men and women who sat in front of me.  I had the basic tools, a grey beard and eyes old enough to count while still strong enough to stare them down.  The lessons I tried to impart were pretty basic, as that was really all I could do given that I was just the lawyer.  Be responsible. Actions have consequences. Man up.

But I wasn’t their father.  The deal with parenting is that it’s a two way street, where there is a devotion toward your child and a devotion in return.  My children don’t listen to me because I’m right, or because I know better (an issue that’s challenged every second of every day). The ultimately listen because I’m their father. In their hearts, they know that that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.  I would take a bullet for them. That carries some weight.

My time with clients is brief. While cases may go one for a few years, it’s nothing like a lifetime, and it’s not a daily dose of parenting where every evening we sit down to eat and annoy them by asking what they did that day.  Even the few basics can’t be taught that quickly.

Over the years, a surprising number of clients have asked me to care about them as if they were my own.  I cringe every time someone says this to me.  It rarely works out well.  While I can be retained as a lawyer, I cannot be hired as a father.  For one thing, they need me to be their lawyer first, detached and unemotional as I do the nasty work of defending them.  For another thing, the relationship of father and child is a two way street. They seek devotion, but don’t give it.  I don’t blame them for this, but it’s a critical aspect of the relationship that, when missing, renders the effort a waste.

With my children, I may explain things in a way that’s intended to provide template to guide them in their own life and choices, a way for them to learn how to live their lives going forward as well as make the decision before them at the moment.  My children tolerate my explanations until they get bored and start drifting off.  When their eyes glaze over and their jaw goes slack, I eventually come to the realization that my explanation has run its course. That’s when I tell them to just do it my way or else. Sometimes that works because they need something from me and realize that they won’t get it if they don’t succumb to the strength of my logic or my willingness to finance their choice.

It doesn’t work with clients, however.  And if it did, I wouldn’t use it anyway.  They need to own their choices, which is part of the reason they find themselves in my office in the first place.

They may need a father desperately, and I am happy to offer some fatherly advice.  But I can never do the job, and the truth is that they really don’t want me to.

It’s sad to realize that a surprising number of criminal defendants might have avoided some of their worse choices if they had better (or any) guidance growing up.  There are some bad dudes, but most are pretty normal people, with both better and worse angels within them.  To outsiders, they are one dimensional, all good or bad based on one thing they’ve done, the crime with which they’re charged.  Even a young man who has engaged in a life of crime has aspects of his nature that reflect his humanity.  He may sell drugs to kids, but will save a kitten from a tree. 

If their father had done his job, they might have gone on to college and become an engineer.  Or maybe just gotten a solid job with dreams of a family of their own one day, where they would sit down for dinner every night with their own kids so they could annoy them with questions like I annoy mine.  But for whatever reason, often because daddy was in prison, they had no one to guide them. They never knew what it was like to have a father who was devoted to them.  Their father might take a bullet, but not for them.

To the fathers who did their job, happy fathers day.  To those men and women who need a father, I wish I could have done more for you, but I’m just your lawyer.