Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of blawging.

I'll tell you a story about a conversation I had with an elder stateman of the New York criminal defense bar, affectionately known as "Don't Worry Murray."

We spoke about what happened to all the good drug clients; the ones who viewed legal fees as a cost of doing business and were willing to pay the fee for top representation. Murray, who has represented some huge clients but has never let a fee walk out his door, told me that I priced myself out of the current market.

The good clients are gone, he told me. If they didn't go down to some rat, they left the business while they could. The kids who remain aren't businessmen, just flashes in the pan.

So when they get busted, the only things of value they have are a big diamond and platinum necklace and an Escalade. They spent the rest on fast women and their mommies.

A drug dealer once said to me when I told him it was time to pay the trial fee, "Greenfield, all you care about it money." I responded,"And you sell heroin to children because you're a great humanitarian?"

Criminal defense is a very different practice from all other areas of law. We draw a very different clientele. At the moment, I find it's largely cost driven, because of a lack of faith in the ability to win. This, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophesy, since the refusal to pay for competent representation is the cause of much of the failure.

The fact that so many criminal defense lawyers, particularly the young ones, will take on cases for peanuts and then promptly lose them, is a serious problem. When and how clients will come to recognize the flaw in cost-driven representation is a real problem. Hopefully, as more clients become computer literate and come to realize that losing their case is not a foregone conclusion, they will decide to take the competence rather than cost.

SHG
Scott Greenfield | Homepage | 06.25.07 - 7:41 am | #