The Criminal Lawyer

The law is an amazing profession, but it’s not for everyone.  In fact, it’s not for the vast majority of people.  And when it’s not a good fit, the downside is awful.  Mismatched lawyers are miserable.  Their lives can really suck.  They may be very good at what they do, but it’s not particularly fulfilling.  Or it’s too time-consuming, preventing them from doing the other stuff that would be fulfilling.  Maybe they can’t stand dealing with other lawyers.  And if they’re not very good at what they do, their clients can suffer far far worse.

But for those who belong here, the law is a wonderful place to be.  It challenges the intellect, inspires ideas, and gives you a chance to really make a difference.  And that is huge.  It doesn’t matter what kind of law you practice; you’re dealing with real people, with real lives, and you’re helping them with a real need.  A life in the law is deeply fulfilling, and a life well spent.

Unfortunately, most mismatched lawyers don’t figure it out (if ever) until far too late, when they’re already practicing.  Some cut their losses and start a new career.  But most don’t.  Maybe they’re in a large law firm and just hate it, but can’t leave the paycheck.  Maybe they feel they’ve invested too much of their lives in law school and advancing through the profession, and so are unwilling to chuck it all and start over doing something else.  Maybe they sincerely can’t think of anything else to do.  And they wind up getting more and more miserable.  It’s no wonder that alcoholism, depression and divorce are rampant among lawyers.

The best time to figure it out, of course, is before going to law school.  Some people wisely drop out (or, thankfully, wash out), but that’s rare.  No, once a mismatched lawyer is admitted to law school, the odds are they’re going to stick it out and become a sinkhole of misery.  Far better to have turned away and pursued a more fulfilling life before ever going to law school in the first place.

But how can you tell if the law’s going to be a good fit for you?  It’s tough, if you haven’t tried it out first.  Whether you’d be happy or not is all hypothetical until you start working.

Fortunately, you know yourself pretty well.  Nothing hypothetical there.  If you’re honest with yourself, you know what traits you have and don’t have.

And fortunately, we’ve known plenty of other happy lawyers, and had the chance to observe what traits we all seem to share.

So if you’re wondering whether you ought to go to law school, you might want to ask yourself a few very simple questions:

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1.  Do you want to be a lawyer?

If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t go to law school.  Sure, lots of people say it prepares you for other kinds of work, and trains your brain to do marvelous things.  But if that’s all you want out of it, go take some continuing ed courses in History, Philosophy and Economics.  A rigorous study of History will give you the same issue-spotting, researching and detail-checking that you’d get from law school — probably better.  Philosophy will certainly give you a better grounding in logic, analysis, and reasoned argument.  And Economics, along with the other two, will give you enough grounding in how people actually work, and why they do what they do.  There is nothing else that law school teaches if you’re not planning to be a lawyer.

Law school serves a single function: it is a (more…)

As our first bureau chief, a wise and gifted man, would often say to us:

“Oy.”

Last Friday, we blogged about how this Rakofsky fellow had done something very foolish.  After being reported to have done some pretty bad lawyering, and being roundly disparaged by the blawgosphere as a result, he made things worse by shining a spotlight on it all and filing a lawsuit against everyone who’d written about him.  This included the American Bar Association, the Washington Post, and most of the better blawgers out there.  We pointed out how very foolish this was indeed.  And (with tongue firmly planted in cheek), we bemoaned the fact that we’d missed the opportunity to have commented on his behavior the first time, and were so excluded from the honor roll named in his (very badly drafted) complaint.  He could have let it all blow over, worked to rebuild his reputation, and maybe even have been forgiven for a newbie screwup.  But he’d made it worse, screwing up even more.

Well, he’s screwed up again.

He and his lawyer Richard Borzouye (apparently a former member of Rakofsky’s own firm in… Connecticut? Really?) must have worked all weekend long.  Because today, Tuesday, they served an amended complaint on the original 74 defendants… plus six or seven more.  Including us!  Apparently, if you commented on the original foolish complaint, you got added to the new one.

The allegations against us in particular are just dumb.  A pithy commenter online summarized the allegations as that we “have brought the legal profession into disrepute by making fun of” Rakofsky and Borzouye.  There’s more to it than that, however.  According to the amended complaint, our Friday post was written “with malice and hate, in a grossly irresponsible manner,” and made us “actors in the intentional infliction of emotional distress.”  You can’t make this stuff up.  We tried to read the relevant paragraphs out loud to a paralegal, but were laughing too hard.

We couldn’t help but be reminded of this old sketch (which also used to have us in stitches way back in our misspent youth):

“The moon mocks me…” Cracked us up every time.

Anyway, if they thought our Friday post was mocking enough to warrant an amended complaint, we’re sure they’ll think the same about this one.  (And all the other commentary that’s been posted by others today, as well.) So that’s probably going to lead to yet another amended complaint.  And more apparent mockery.  And more complaints.  And so on.  And so on.

Their process server will be pleased.

You’ve probably heard, by now, of this Joseph Rakofsky kid.  You know the one — the newly-licensed lawyer who took on a murder trial without any trial experience, who is alleged to have told his investigator to “trick” an eyewitness into denying having seen anything, and whose performance was so bad that the judge had to declare a mistrial.  You know the one — the guy who, after causing that mistrial and getting reprimanded by the judge, went online and bragged about the mistrial like it was some kind of success.  You know the one — the one who quickly became a laughingstock, as soon as the story got picked up by the ABA Journal, the Washington Post, and half the blawgosphere.

Well, you’d think he’d have wised up.  You know, let it all blow over.  Take the time to rebuild his reputation with hard work and diligence.  Memories are short.  Old news gets buried even on the seemingly permanent internet.  It was already happening — it’s only been a month or so since the brouhaha, and he’d already dropped off the radar.  It could have all been forgotten — even perhaps forgiven, if he’d manned up, admitted his error, and moved on.

But no.

Instead of doing the smart thing, this Rakofsky kid demonstrated once again some amazingly poor judgment, and filed a lawsuit.  Against the ABA Journal, the Washington Post, and half the blawgosphere.  In other words, everyone who covered or commented on his doings.

Brilliant.

So now, everyone who’s already demonstrated a willingness to write about his conduct, now has yet another thing to write about.  And you’d better believe they’re gonna.  We expect to be sipping our coffee in the morning and chuckling ruefully at responses by some of the numerous defendants.  As they’re some of the most heavily-read blawgs out there, we expect that by this time tomorrow, the name “Rakofsky” will have attained the same tragic/comedic status as “Santorum.”  Yet another shining example of the Streisand Effect.  Well done.

And of course we’re nowhere to be seen on the complaint.  Lucky us, we were on trial and not posting too much, and it blew over pretty fast.  But now being on that complaint is going to be something of a badge of pride.  And we’re not there.  Dammit.  Maybe he’ll amend his complaint to include us now, or maybe one of the defendants can do one of those… uh, civil procedure thingies… where you bring someone else into a case?  Whatever.

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For those who want to read the complaint (and we can’t advise it — it’s so badly written it’s actually painful to read) you can find it on Scribd here, under the delightful title “Rakofsky v Internet.”  Sure to become an instant classic, never to be forgotten.

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UPDATE: It seems there already is a badge of honor, compliments of Amy Derby.  Link.

We have some strong feelings on the nature of the law as a profession.  And by “profession,” we don’t mean the colloquial usage of “job description.”  We’re talking about the concept of a calling — a calling to the service of others where one’s own personal interest must be secondary to the interest of those served.  A true professional is not one who does his job well, but one who truly acts first and foremost for those he serves.  There are only three true professions: the clergy, medicine, and the law.  It not much of an exaggeration to think of it as a sacred calling.

Here at the Criminal Lawyer, we haven’t been too shy about saying that if you’re in the law for the money, then you don’t belong here.  There’s nothing wrong with making money as a lawyer.  There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money as a lawyer.  But if the money is the reason why you go to the office, then you do not belong in our profession.  And we’d both be happier if you left.  (And if you’re a law student thinking of joining our profession in order to get a nice income, you doubly don’t belong here.  Because on top of having the wrong reasons, you also seem to lack the basic research skills to realize that most lawyers aren’t exactly making a killing.)

We’re not going to rehash all our thoughts here.  Feel free to scan our archives for the tags “legal profession” or some such, if you’re really interested.  But we took a moment during a break from trial this afternoon to skim Scott Greenfield’s blog, and he had a great post today coming at this issue from a different angle.  So here’s a paragraph which we are offering for its truth:

The underlying problem, which cash-obsessed lawyers fail to recognize, is that they never should have been lawyers at all.  It’s hard to practice law.  Being a professional requires sacrifice, dedication to someone other than yourself.  it’s fine that some people don’t have a feel for such things, but then they have no business being lawyers.  Let the brain drain happen, and let’s rid the ranks of the legal profession of those who elevate profit over dedication to their clients.  They never should have been lawyers to begin with, and their loss is not only a non-problem, but a benefit to those who remain.

And you can read the rest of it here.

We wrote recently on our distaste for those on the defense side who persist in playing games.  It should go without saying that it is far worse for the prosecution to play games.  And yet it happens all the time.

Ideally, when the prosecution has done its job right, it’s going to be holding all the cards.  If those cards are good, there’s little reason not to show them early and convince the defense to fold.  It saves everyone the expense and burden of litigating and trying a case that ought to just plead out.

And if those cards aren’t so good, then fairness requires that they still be shown.  Simple due process requires that a criminal defendant — someone whose life, liberty, reputation and property the government intends to destroy — be told when the government has evidence that might help him defend himself.  If such evidence is in the government’s possession, it’s not realistic to believe that the defense would ever discover that evidence.  Law enforcement is rarely willing to share information with the defense.  And even with evidence from other sources, the defense never has anywhere near the resources and ability of the government to discover that evidence.  Anyone who thinks the two sides are fairly matched in this regard either has no experience, or no active brain cells.

So that’s why we have the Brady rule.  Prosecutors are supposed to give the defense any evidence possessed by the government that might help the defense at trial or at sentencing.  It’s a great rule, but the problem is that prosecutors often have a hard time following it.  And they get away with it plenty, because it’s not like the defense was ever going to learn of the existence of that evidence.  And they have absolute immunity from civil suit for their Brady violations.

What happens often enough, unfortunately, is that prosecutors try to game the rule.  Any (more…)

We’ll admit to a guilty pleasure.  Sometimes we surf over to Avvo and check out the questions people are asking criminal lawyers here in NY, and the answers various lawyers are providing.  It can be cringe-worthy, but once in a while it can be instructive.

We cringe when people ask for actual legal advice.  We cringe harder when lawyers venture to offer it.  We cringe the most when someone basically admits to a crime in posing their question, for all the internet to see.

We like it, though, when someone is looking for basic information, and they’re asking about something we haven’t come across in our own practice.  That happens often enough to keep us surfing back at least once a week.  There’s always room to learn, even if we’re only learning that we’re ignorant of something.  (And there are certainly areas of criminal defense where our ignorance is complete.)

Many of the questions, however, are just wasting space by asking the same thing that’s been asked over and over again.  The place really needs to put up a FAQ section.  Stuff like no, New York law does not provide for the expungement of criminal records.  Yes, having sex with someone under 17 is against the law.  No, there is no such thing as expungement here.  Yes, you do have to go to court.  No, we still don’t do expungement.  Yes, it would be a good idea to get a lawyer.  You’re not getting your record expunged.  And other things like that.

And far too many of the answers are just as much of a waste of space.  When the answer is obviously “go get a lawyer, your question cannot be answered here,” some lawyers will go ahead and offer some fluff instead about what law seems to apply, or just make a sales pitch.  Sometimes, though, there’s nothing more you can say beyond “go get a lawyer.”

We don’t answer many questions ourselves.  It’s usually not worth our time, frankly, and nothing could induce us to give actual legal advice to someone based on an incomplete query over a public forum.  But now and then we’ll see a question that (1) seeks basic information, rather than legal advice, (2) has been sitting unanswered for a while, and (3) we actually can provide a useful response.  That’s becoming rarer and rarer these days, however.  Mostly because there are fewer and fewer questions remaining unanswered.  Which is a good thing, all in all.

One thing that really bugs the crap out of us, however, is how Avvo sells this whole question thing as (more…)

In today’s environment, where law schools are churning out way more lawyers than the market really wants, plenty of law students and recent grads are wondering if it’s really worth it.

We’re asked this question, in various forms, all the time.  And we see it asked every day on various internet fora.

Our answer is always a resounding YES! …if you’re going into law for the right reasons.  It’s worth it.  Oh yes, it surely is worth it.

Now, if you’re going into law just for a nice paycheck and some prestige, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.  And it’s probably not worth it unless you’re so smart and accomplished that you can be hired by a big firm (and yet not quite bright enough to figure out that, except for a few awesome firms, doing so is essentially trading your life for a living, and putting off any further accomplishments for the next several years).  If you’re not already a superstar at what you’ve been doing with your life thus far, odds are you’re not going to morph into one during law school.

And if you’re doing it because you can’t think of anything else to do, it’s so obvious that you’re doing it for the wrong reasons that it’s a waste of space to even explain it here.

So what are the right reasons?

It’s going to be different for each person, because the right reasons are always personal.  It’s something about you, who you are, what purpose you want your life to have.  But if you’re doing it for the right reasons, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.  You don’t have to graduate in the top third of your class at a top-tier school.  All you need to do is bust your ass in school to master the material and learn how to think like a lawyer, then bust your ass once you’ve got that JD and make sure you goddamn well fulfill your purpose.

Again, the reasons are going to be different for each person.  We can’t describe what the right reasons for you might be.  But we can tell you what our reasons were.  Maybe that will help illustrate what we’re talking about.

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Why did we go to law school?

Two words: Frank Johnson.

Most of you have never heard of the guy.  He’s not in the (more…)

The Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law has released a troubling study of prosecutorial misconduct in California.  The report, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009,” opens by pointing out that of course the majority of prosecutors behave ethically, but then it dives right into more than a hundred pages of statistics and analysis of a systemic and system-wide crisis, and the ineffectual attempts to deal with it.  (For those in a hurry, the 8-page executive summary is here.)

The period of this study coincides with our own career — we got our JD in ’97, and spent the next several years prosecuting before joining the side of the angels.  We were intrigued to see if the results of the California study meshed with our experiences in New York.  (The overwhelming majority of our colleagues at the Manhattan DA’s office were extremely ethical and took such things seriously, but we did have occasion to note and object to certain practices.  On the defense side, dealing with all kinds of state and federal offices, we’ve seen more sloppiness and lack of judgment than actual misconduct, though again there has been the occasional bad act.)

The study reviewed a sample of 4,000 cases during that 12-year span, where an appellate court was asked to make a finding of prosecutorial misconduct — the most in-depth such study anywhere, ever — and found 707 where a court decided there really had been misconduct.  As the summary puts it, that’s about a case a week.  When you consider the simple fact that only the rarest case of prosecutorial misconduct gets appealed — only about 3% of cases even go to trial — plus the fact that a great deal of such misconduct can never be discovered by the defense (such as Brady violations), the true quantity of misconduct must necessarily be a dramatic multiple of the study data.

Most of the prosecutors who commit misconduct, the study found, do so repeatedly.  Why?  Because they get away with it.  They almost never get caught.  And when they do get caught, there aren’t any personal repercussions.  Disciplinary action is so rare as to be practically unheard of.  And civil liability isn’t going to happen, because they have absolute immunity for their official conduct.

The study concludes that “the scope and persistence of the problem is alarming.  Reform is critical.”  It’s not a problem just of a few rogue prosecutors.  It’s a problem of the judges who don’t deal with it, a system that doesn’t deter it, offices that don’t stop it.  It’s the problem of the good prosecutors, whose authority and trust suffer by association.  It’s the problem of the innocent, who find themselves convicted time and again because the prosecutor sought a victory rather than justice.  It’s the problem of the guilty, who are denied their rights to due process and constitutional protections.  And it’s the problem of the criminal justice system, which relies entirely on prosecutors doing their job right in order for the system to function at all.

What reforms do they suggest?  Revised ethical rules, for one, to bring them more in line with the ABA’s model rules.  Some actual disciplinary action by the state bar, when the rules are broken.  Replacing absolute immunity with immunity only for official conduct that wasn’t misconduct.  Better reporting of misconduct findings, including the prosecutor’s name and the kind of violation.  Better ethical training for prosecutors, and internal procedures for preventing and dealing with misconduct.  It’s all pretty much common-sense stuff, already in practice in plenty of states.

It’s a shocking report.  The players in California’s criminal justice system need to get their act together, and fast.  This is a wakeup call — let’s hope they heard it.

Every defense attorney has their own favorite metaphor for what we do.  Some talk of it like a street fight, envisioning a slugfest with the cops or the court or DA (or all three).  Others speak as if it’s a poker game (with the other side usually holding all the aces).  Occasionally, we even hear chess analogies.  Well, for whatever reason, we tend to think in fencing terms.

On the one hand, this makes little sense, as we haven’t fenced much since our kids started coming along.  (Literally.  Our wife went into labor with the first one right in the middle of us getting trounced by some French guy in an épée tournament.)  But on the other hand, we do find the analogy extremely useful.

Like fencing, much of what we do is reactive.  There’s something they teach fencers called the “tactical wheel” which starts off with a simple attack, which gets countered by a parry and riposte, which gets countered by a feint, which gets countered by a counterattack into the feint, and so on until you’re reacting with a simple attack.  You’re always reacting to what your opponent did, and trying to use your reaction to score off him instead.  That’s pretty much what we do.

Note that each reaction is not merely a defensive parry.  If all you’re doing is deflecting attacks, you can never win.  Eventually, one of them’s going to get through.  Every defensive action is an attack of some sort.  You win by taking the game to the other guy.  You go on the offense.  Make the other side react to you.  The best defense, as always, is a good offense.

And as in fencing, you pretty much have to take your opponent as you find him.  Different tactics are going to work with different situations.  It’s nice to know what works when.

That whole “tactical wheel” thing only really works, of course, if both you and your opponent are of intermediate skill.  A novice doesn’t always do the smart thing, which throws such rote tactics into disarray.  An expert, with a zen-like empty mind, is not hindered by the rule of thumb, and is free to react to this particular action in the most effective way.  Still, there is something to be said for a rule of thumb.  When all else fails, you have something to fall back on, which at the very least assures you of a solid, workmanlike job.  It may not be elegant, but the odds are safe.  And with the vast majority of opponents, it’s going to be all you need.

So what would such a tactical wheel look like for criminal defense?

It’s not going to be as (more…)

For a while there, it seemed like not a day went by without us reading of some firm or other laying off a mess of lawyers.  Things have changed.  Now, it seems as if not a day goes by without us reading of some law student getting upset at the dearth of law jobs out there.  It was bad enough hearing about the lawyers losing their jobs, but the students’ complaints are somehow more upsetting.  And not for the reasons they probably think.

Reading about the firm layoffs, day after day and month after month, evoked some real sympathy for our (mostly) transactional colleagues whose niche was no longer in so much demand.  But it wasn’t all that distressing.  The positions being eliminated had been created to satisfy the needs of a ballooning financial industry, and when the balloon popped, the elimination of those jobs was a rational correction.  Not pleasant, but not distressing.

What is distressing is reading the law students’ lament that there are no jobs waiting for them, that the jobs out there don’t pay enough, that they got saddled with all this debt with no way to pay it off, that the lives of young lawyers are miserable, and somebody (besides the students themselves, of course) must be to blame.  It’s upsetting — not to hear how bad they have it — but to think that so many of these people are getting ready to enter our profession.

To put it bluntly: they are not wanted here.  It only takes a moment’s thought to realize that, if they were wanted, then there would be a place for them.  But the ones complaining loudest seem to be the one who did the least research before deciding on law school, so perhaps they haven’t done this bit of thinking either.

They are not wanted here, because there is no (more…)

Let’s wind up this content-free week with a poll.

Criminal defense attorneys are often asked how they can stand to defend people they know to be guilty.  But to see just how off-target that question is, go and ask them what they believe to be the most difficult case to defend.  Most tend to say their hardest cases are ones where they believe their client to be innocent.  Why?  Because now the stakes are higher.  If the client’s guilty and they lose — even after trying their best and giving it their all — the result is that they made sure the system worked right, and their client was justly convicted.  But if the client is innocent and they lose, then their failure means someone who doesn’t deserve it now has to go to prison.

We’re not sure why this somehow means the case is more difficult, though.  More soul-wracking, certainly.  But it doesn’t make the case harder to win.  It strikes us that those who answer this way are conflating their personal emotional challenges with their actual lawyering challenges.  While one may affect the other, they’re not the same thing.

So let’s ask our readers:  Leaving aside cases where you believe your client to be innocent, and other cases which may be emotionally harder to deal with — what kinds of cases do you find to be the most difficult to fight?  Wiretap cases?  Cases with DNA evidence?  Confessions?  Press cases?  Murders?  Financial crimes?  Something completely different?

Post your answers in the comments.  This could be very interesting.

Odds are, if you’re reading this, you’ve lived an admirable life.  You applied yourself in school, got a good job, and worked hard to be a valuable member of your community.  Through your own efforts, you’ve probably earned a position of respect and responsibility.  Maybe you run your own shop, or you’re a partner in a firm, or you’re a military officer.  Your ethics are beyond reproach.  You’re raising your kids to be loyal, kind and brave.  You, dear reader, are doing everything right.

And you, dear reader, can very easily find yourself in the defendant’s seat.  In the crosshairs of a federal or state prosecution.  Facing serious prison time.

For what?  For nothing, that’s what.  You yourself may have done nothing wrong, but our criminal law has devolved so far, so fast, that you can find yourself being prosecuted anyway.

The worst effects can be seen in federal law.  As the regulatory state has expanded, as the “nanny state” has expanded, as the role of the federal government has expanded, the nature of federal criminal law has changed dramatically.  Stuff that nobody in their right mind would consider “criminal” has nevertheless been made into a federal crime, not just by congressional statute, but by regulatory fiat.

Regulatory crimes are the worst, because agency regulations are never (more…)

Another good post by Mark Bennett today over at his blog “Defending People,” entitled “Today Only?”  He recounts the plea-bargaining tactic some prosecutors use, attempting to force a plea by saying the offer is only good that one day, and won’t be offered again.

Did the words mean what they purported to, or was this just part of the ritual?  Put in practical terms, what does the criminal defense lawyer tell his client when the client asks if he can have some time to think about the plea offer?

Chances are good that the same factors that led the prosecutor to make the offer today will still exist when the case comes back to court….  There might be a reason that making the same offer at the next setting would interfere with these goals (chief isn’t here today, will be then and will nix the deal; case at a point where ADA has to get it pled or do some actual work).  If so, the prosecutor will generally identify the reason; the defense lawyer then has to decide whether the prosecutor’s assessment is correct, or whether the plea offer is likely to remain the same (or, as usually happens, get better).  Without a plausible reason for the offer to get worse, though, “today only” in the courtroom means what it means in the bazaar: it’s part of the ritual.

Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield added that

Negotiating pleas isn’t for the squeamish, and if someone can bulldoze you into a plea by using the “today only” ploy, chances are you don’t have the guts for this work.  On the other hand, know your adversary, including the judge.  With some people, “today only” means exactly that, and they will cut off their nose to spite their face just to keep their word.

It’s not a job for the gutless, but better to know up front whether the person making the pitch is going to live with the consequences.  If you don’t know, it will be your client living with the consequences, whether they want to or not.

In my* experience, a “today only” ultimatum is a sign of either resignation or desperation.  It’s made in the hope that it will be taken, and the case will go away.  Maybe the prosecutor is just sick of it and doesn’t want to spend more time on it, or maybe the prosecutor is afraid of having to go to trial on it.  It’s rarely made out of sheer altruism.

The kind of prosecutor who would make a “today only” offer is usually the kind who will drop down from the offer again later on.  Backsliding is a real possibility next time, the time after that, and on the eve of (more…)

Everyone knows that the indigent defense system in this country is broken.  The courts have mandated that every jurisdiction has to pay for indigent criminal defendants to get a lawyer.  It is required.  The vast majority of criminal defendants are indigent (or have no legitimate source of income, and so can pass for indigent).  So the taxpayer winds up paying for the lawyer for most criminal defendants.  This results public defender agencies that are understaffed, underpaid and overworked.  Or assigned counsel plans, where private attorneys are assigned to indigent defendants, and get paid a pittance.

Sadly, a lot of indigent defenders are either inexperienced or not very good at it.  Both kinds of indigent practice do attract fantastic lawyers who aren’t in it for the money, but they’re in the minority.  Indigent practice also attracts lawyers just starting out, who are willing to forgo a bigger paycheck for more experience.  And both kinds of practice attract lawyers for whom this is really their only way to make a living — for whatever reason, they don’t compete in the market for paying clients.

Also, indigent defenders tend to be insanely overworked.  Those who rely on assigned-counsel work for their pay often must take on an overload of cases just to make ends meet.  And those working full-time for a public defender’s outfit have an overload of cases whether they want one or not.  This has a predictable effect on the quality of their work, their ability to deal with (or recognize) non-routine cases, their resources to investigate and prepare, and pretty much everything else.

Furthermore, neither approach gives the defendants themselves any say in who gets assigned to represent them.  If they don’t get along, or there’s someone else who could have done a better job, then too bad.

There’s no economic pressure for indigent lawyers to do better.  If they do better or worse, they still get paid the same.  They’re still getting that next indigent client, whether they want one or not.

Finally, even with the abysmal pay, the cost to municipalities and states is still enormous.  There’s a lot of this kind of work to be done, and those nickels and dimes add up fast.

What to do about it?

Well, over at the Cato Institute (we’re big fans of Cato), professors Stephen J. Schulhofer and David Friedman have published a paper called “Reforming Indigent Defense: How Free Market Principles Can Help to Fix a Broken System.”  Go ahead and read it; we’ll wait.

For the TL;DR crowd, Profs. Schulhofer & Friedman propose that all present forms of indigent defense be abolished.  Get rid of public defenders and assigned counsel and all permutations thereof.  In their place, simply give defendants vouchers that they can use to pay the defense attorney of their choice.

Brilliant, no?  Defendants can choose whomever they wish to defend them.  Market forces will drive out the crappy lawyers currently impeding justice for the impoverished.  There will be no more of the crushing caseloads that practically guarantee malpractice.  Fewer innocents will be wrongly convicted, because they’ll have more experienced and talented representation, and there will be more resources and time available for rooting it out.  It’s a winner for everyone!

Well… about that… (more…)

When we left the Manhattan DA’s office some years ago, we firmly believed that prosecutorial misconduct was as rare as it was despicable.  We can’t think of a single one of our colleagues for whom it would have even occurred to cut corners, and it certainly would not have been tolerated by the bosses.  Everyone was just… decent.  The culture wasn’t so much a dogfight as a collegial, practically patrician, management of cases.  Admittedly, we didn’t have much contact with prosecutors from other offices, but surely they couldn’t have been that different.  We all had the same job, to seek justice rather than mere convictions.  And as for federal prosecutors… well, they were just like us, right?  If anything, their culture was even more collegial, and even less likely to result in (ick) prosecutorial misconduct.

As any reader of this blog can tell, we’ve been disillusioned by the reality that prosecutorial misconduct is not only more common than we would have believed, but that it is committed with disturbing frequency by federal prosecutors.  A couple of years ago, we were disquieted by what was going on in the Ted Stevens fiasco.  A year and a half ago, we saw that Judge Posner had to direct an acquittal in a case where the feds made fraudulent misrepresentations, and we wrote that we hoped this wasn’t becoming a trend.  A couple more instances later, we were asking what the heck was going on.  The pattern has only continued since then.  (Here’s a roundup link to our posts tagged for “prosecutorial misconduct.”)

So this morning we were sadly not surprised to read (in USA Today, of all places) a lengthy discussion of the growing problem of prosecutorial misconduct by federal prosecutors.  You can read the whole thing here.

What’s going on?  The article posits that (more…)