>on the other hand, despite well-known problems associated with public
>defenders, studies indicate that when they go to trial they are about as
>likely to win a case and are as disposed to make motions and raise
>challenges to prospective jurors as are their generally more experienced
>counterparts in the d.a.'s office... mh
>
alas, as a PD I knew said once, "I went into this with ideals. I grow up poor and Latino in TX. I know that poor people need a good defense. But what has happened? I got strapped witha bunch of DUIs and drug cases that should probably not even be in the criminal system but in the mental health system. And, after awhile, it wears you down. You start to believe that these are poor people and, as such, they've done something wrong anyway. You know they've probably got something else to hide. After all, they're poor. So, you encourage them to plead or you secretly thing they should: because they're poor and being poor means you're likely to be a lawbreaker."
he said he knew that was wrong but that's how, in just a few short years, he'd come to see the system
We shouldn't be surprised: anyone who goes into social service work or teaching hoping to 'do good' comes up against institutional imperatives that turn you into someone who dislikes your clients.
I was, btw, privy to what my civil case attorney had to say about me when he didn't think I was on the phone. The other attorney who made the call to him was a friend of a friend who was trying to help us get information from this guy. He put me on conference call without letting me know that's what he was doing. I listened. It wasn't pretty.
He and another attorney both told me to watch out or I'd get screwed over because that is far too often what attorneys do. I'm sorry that you don't want to hear this justin, but if other very important, published, important attorneys (and this guy is one of the better IP lawyers around) tell me this, then I have to also believe them. Just like I know there are plenty of good scholars, I also know the system produces plenty of shitty ones.
You're going to have to learn to live with that fact and stop getting a chapped ass over this stuff. My son and his girlfriend work for a big law firm. These people do not like their clients. They often think their clients are shit. They really only care about the money. They'll put on a big show and even come to believe it, but it the end it's about money.
My son's girlfriend is a family member -- the niece of the guy who owns the firm. They are nice people. They are still all about money. The uncle donates his time and money feeding the poor. They don't live high and mighty. They shop at Target. it is still all a cash transaction and treated as such. it doesn't meant they don't work hard. it doesn't mean they don't care about their clients AND AT THE SAME TIME think their clients are lying,thieving shits. It doesn't mean that they aren't outraged at hospital and insurance company abuses if AT THE SAME TIME they see some of their clients as money-grubbing sickos even when they know that their mental illnesses were often caused by the hospital they're suing.
the money interst is real, Justin, and it directs the practices of the firm and it shapes the behavior of individuals. if other people can subject their own disciplines to such critique, you'll need to learn to do the same to the law without taking it personally.
I don't take the way I've been treated by attorneys and assume that lawyers on this list are that way. i don't see those attorneys as necessarily bad people. It can be explained by social structural factors that turn people into moral cretins march, march, marching to the beat of the capitalist juggernaut and then throwing themselves beneath it when it rolls by.
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org