Archive for the ‘lawyers’ Category

Marketing to Bikers

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

I follow Susan Carter Liebel on Twitter. She’s the creator of Solo Practice University, a website that’s supposed to be “the #1 web-based educational and professional networking community for solo lawyers and law students.”

Yesterday, I noticed she put up the following with a link: “Adam Gee teaches you How To Market To Bikers in his newest class.” Intrigued, I clicked the link. I couldn’t find anything about the content of the course though, so I went to Adam Gee’s page at SPU. There, I saw the following under his syllabus:

Marketing to Bikers: Developing a Motorcycle Practice
* Indirect Marketing Techniques
* Direct Marketing Techniques
* Blogs, social media and books

I think SPU is a great idea, and Adam Gee may be a hell of a lawyer. For all I know, he may even have some serious biker cred. However, what Susan Carter Liebel wrote, along with that little portion of the syllabus on Adam Gee’s page, worried me a little bit.

I’m a biker. I ride ten to twenty thousand miles each year, and I’m very active in a variety of bikers’ groups. I volunteered for MROs and went to swap meets before I started law school. Brown & Little, P.L.C., wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye. My friends are bikers, so I often get to see lawyer advertising not from the perspective of another lawyer, but from the perspective of the target demographic. It isn’t pretty.

Lawyers saturate the biker market. Most lawyer advertising aimed at bikers is not well done. I cringe every time I see a pamphlet showing a couple of guys with neatly-trimmed goatees wearing neatly-pressed leathers as they lean on their spotless, stock Softails. Do they really think they can just add some flames and an angry eagle to their ad and they’ll be ready to take the motorcycle community by storm? Never mind, I know the answer.

Lawyers also start special wings of their firms claiming to offer bikers free breakdown assistance or legal advice regarding discrimination. They give out special cards for bikers to carry in their wallets in case something happens. When there’s discrimination or a stranded biker, you can usually hear the crickets chirping on the phone line. When a biker gets seriously injured by another motorist, however, the lawyers pounce. Good thing the biker joined their card-club; those pesky ethics rules about solicitation are normally a drag. Do lawyers actually think bikers can’t tell the difference between a gimmick and someone who genuinely wants to help? Never mind, I know the answer.

Attorneys finagle their way into every event bikers attend and every product bikers buy. They’re like vultures. They see the promise of riches and throw money at bikers, but most bikers see through their crappy advertising. Bikers know who the outsiders are, and they generally aren’t swayed by a back page ad. Weekend warriors and people who aren’t in a club or an MRO may not notice the lack of authenticity, so the poser biker’s lawyer will probably find himself sitting across a desk from a poser biker in an initial consultation, each pretending they’re the genuine article. I guess that’s okay, but it’s too bad lawyers have to insult the intelligence of a group of good people with ridiculous advertising in order to find a playmate for a session of biker make-believe.

Whether you believe me or not, I’m not complaining about this because bikers are my market. Sure, my firm does market to bikers, but it’s mostly just to the extent necessary to help good causes that need sponsors. We also do get clients from our involvement, but there’s one big difference between that and the way most lawyers market to groups like bikers.

I get biker clients the way I get clients from my family and friends. It isn’t based on some slick ad or some sham club I’ve convinced people to join. When a friend who happens to be a biker knows someone in need of a criminal defense lawyer, they refer that person to me because they know and trust me. Lawyer advertising in the biker market doesn’t take away my slice of the biker pie any more than another lawyer advertising in my mom’s Christmas letter would convince my brother to send a DUI referral elsewhere.

Lawyers study their markets as if the people who compose them are animals. They infiltrate organizations to take their targets’ hard-earned money. Their goal, because of the very nature what they’re doing, is to take more than they give. They aren’t in it to make friends or help a cause at all. And we wonder why we’re hated?

I understand that’s how marketing in general may work for a lot of lawyers, but I wish we had a little more self-respect. This is supposed to be a profession, isn’t it? Lawyers can get some of the low-hanging fruit by exploiting a group of people, but that doesn’t mean they should. It’s embarrassing. Are attorneys so greedy, stupid, and helpless that they need to pay someone else to study insular groups of people and teach them how to make friends with and influence those people? Never mind, I know the answer.

I hope SPU isn’t wasting its time sending freshly-minted solos into meetings to peddle their new biker helpline or hand out pamphlets with lots of flames and skulls, but I honestly have no idea what SPU intends to teach about bikers. If it’s something to make lawyers more effective at handling motorcycle-related cases, more power to SPU. If it’s a superficial study of what most bikers like (hint: a good time, and boobs) and don’t like (hint: authority) intended to show money-grubbing lawyers how to make friends and persuade bikers to hire them, I’ll be disappointed. Please, SPU. Do it right. The biker world doesn’t need any more law firms with mascots.

The only consolation for me in all of this is the fact that attorneys, probably far more so than bikers, are studied as a group and targeted by marketers. What I view as exploitation by us may be more likely to end up being exploitation of us. Most biker marketing isn’t going to send a single biker to a shady lawyer hoping to score a quick buck from a new group of suckers, but the same doesn’t seem to be true of marketing to lawyers. Lawyers looking to exploit bikers are probably going to find themselves getting a dose of their own medicine, medicine that actually seems to work on them. Attorneys will buy anything. That must be why many lawyers think they can get clients with half-baked ideas.

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Posted in Bikers' Rights, Clients, Marketing, lawyers | 15 Comments »

Gotcha!

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

When I was in law school, I was fortunate to attend many hours of public defender training. I can still clearly remember the cross-examination teacher describing his technique for impeaching a witness. He recommended something called “the 3 Cs.” The 3 Cs stood for “commit,” “credit,” and “confront.” I don’t know if it’s his thing or something widely known to trial lawyers, but it’s a pretty solid, general approach to impeachment.

Let’s say you have an officer who’s saying something highly incriminating, something that he didn’t put in his police report. You want to impeach him with that omission. Using the 3 Cs technique the teacher recommended, you’d first commit the officer to his current statement. Make sure the judge or jury understands exactly what he’s saying. Second, you’d credit his police report. Make sure the judge or jury realizes that, if what he’s saying had actually happened, it would’ve ended up in the report. Third, you’d confront the officer with the fact he omitted that essential information from his report.

The last C is the “gotcha” moment. Hand the officer the report and ask him to find the part where he says what he’s now saying. He won’t find it because it isn’t there, and he’ll look bad in the process. Gotcha!

I recently saw the 3 Cs in action. The officer testified that he was the one who found contraband in the car, and the defense lawyer immediately (and very obviously) committed the officer to that statement. “So your testimony today is that you were the person who found the contraband in my client’s car?” “Yes,” the officer replied.

Committed! One C down, two to go. Everyone in the room knew what the defense lawyer was going to do.

The defense lawyer then proceeded to do a great job of crediting the officer’s report. He established that the officer had training on how to write a good report. He’d written hundreds. He was detail-oriented. He prided himself on being thorough. The officer knew the prosecutor relied on the report for charging. He knew the defense lawyer relied on the report in preparing his case. The crediting went on and on.

By the end, the defense lawyer had credited the report as being the be-all, end-all of relevant information in the case. Crediting is always the longest part of impeaching with the 3 Cs, and this time it took forever. I couldn’t wait to see that “gotcha” moment.

The defense lawyer strutted up to the stand, gave the officer the report, and asked him, “can you please show me where in your report you mention that that you were the person who found the contraband in my client’s car?” The room was filled with tension as the officer carefully looked through his report. Everyone waited on the edge of the seat for that moment where the impeachment finally came together, then…

“Page 4, paragraph 2, second sentence,” the officer explained.

The defense lawyer, promptly and with great authority, proceeded to end his cross-examination with flair, proudly declaring “I have no further questions your honor!” as if he’d not just had his ass handed to him.

It was a spectacular facepalm moment. It was riotously funny (except for the defense lawyer and his client, of course) and probably the best “gotcha” moment I’ve ever seen in court. It was just reversed.

Turns out the 3 Cs aren’t so helpful when you haven’t read the police report.

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Posted in Trial, lawyers | 3 Comments »

Priorities

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

When Nick Martin at Heat City put up a link to this on Twitter, I started thinking.

Nobody’s going to feel too sorry for lawyers making $250 an hour. If they work 40 hours a week at that rate for a year, they’ll be earning roughly ten times the median household income in the United States. It’s nothing like $450 an hour, where they’d be pushing a million in fees each year working less than I do, but it isn’t bad.

In all fairness, I imagine it’s larger firms doing all the work, so nobody in particular gets all that money. Take out a chunk for a top-floor office with lots of marble, throw in a few expensive associates who don’t contribute anything valuable to the representation, and maybe you need that $450 an hour to make sure the partners don’t default on their Porsche payments. Some firms may be worried.

I’m digging deep, but I’m not finding any sympathy. I’ll tell you why.

Take a look at this, Maricopa County’s contract for indigent defense representation. Scroll to page 18, and you’ll see that the county pay $125 an hour for lead counsel in a capital case and $95 an hour for co-counsel.

When the government wants to murder someone, the county is now willing to shell out exactly half of what it’s willing to shell out to defend itself against a civil suit. Before the new cap, the government thought the cost of trying to save a human life from the state murder machine should be less than a third as much as the cost of defending the bad decisions of Sheriff Joe and Andrew Thomas.

The government has made its priorities clear. Protecting its money is more important than protecting the lives of the legally innocent.

I’m disgusted, but I’m not surprised.

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Posted in lawyers | No Comments »

A Lie or Just Misleading?

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

In previous posts, I complained about having to trust prosecutors to set up victim interviews. In case you don’t feel like clicking on the links, I’ll summarize: in Arizona, defense attorneys have to ask the prosecutor to ask the victim if he or she wants to talk to them. As I discussed in those posts, there are a lot of problems with that. I recently encountered a situation that highlighted one big problem.

The victim in one of my domestic violence cases has recanted. She is very eager to tell everyone, myself included, that she lied about what happened and wants the prosecutor to dismiss the charges. I know for a fact she told the prosecutor she wanted absolutely nothing to do with the case and was not willing to participate in any way. The letter I sent to the prosecutor reminding him of his obligations under Brady and Kyles demanded, among many other things, interviews with all of the prosecution’s witnesses. The victim, of course, is one of them.

Keeping in mind the fact I know the victim told the prosecution she would not cooperate with them or participate in the case because she wanted the charges dropped, consider the following sentence:

Note; [the victim] wishes not to be interviewed.

That appeared in the prosecutor’s written response to my letter. I think it’s seriously misleading, if not an outright lie. Your thoughts?

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Posted in Prosecutors, Victim's Rights, lawyers | 3 Comments »

Trial Reflections

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

I spent last week in trial. My client was charged with one count of aggravated assault. If he had been convicted and the state proved his priors and its allegation that he was on probation, he faced ten to fifteen years. The theory of the state’s case was that my client kicked his live-in girlfriend in the face five or six times, causing her “temporary but substantial disfigurement.” The jury acquitted my client after a four-day trial and an hour of deliberation. Like any trial, it was an interesting experience. A few things stood out though.

I only had the case for about ninety days, and I was the client’s fifth or sixth lawyer, depending on whether you count his third (and last) public defender. I know his first two public defenders pretty well, and I could tell from the file that they really worked his case. They are great lawyers, and he was lucky to have them. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree. He filed some documents with the court saying not-so-nice things about the public defender’s office and his first lawyer in particular.

My client’s friend only brought him one shirt for trial, and I didn’t find that out until the second day of trial. My office is an hour from court. My house is even farther. Knowing the public defender had trial clothes for defendants, I asked if I could borrow a shirt. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but I did. I’ve had appointed clients complain about me being a “public pretender” in letters and pro per pleadings, and I’ve never taken it personally. People tend to undervalue what they don’t pay for themselves. I’d have given any of them a shirt. Not doing that just inconveniences their next attorney.

Well, the public defender felt differently. The receptionist was okay with me perusing their wardrobe, but the public defender herself came up and asked me who was going to get the clothes. Not just a public defender, but the public defender, the county official in charge of the office. She told me she would not let my client wear one of her office’s shirts because he “dissed” one of her lawyers. I got to spend a morning recess shopping for my client.

I’d consider the public defender who got the brunt of my client’s ire a friend. We’ve even discussed the case over beers. He later told me he would have gotten me a shirt if I’d asked him. Does anyone think I was wrong asking his office for a shirt? Does anyone think the public defender was right refusing to give me one?

Another thing that stood out was my conversation with jurors after trial. Win or lose, I haven’t had much luck with jurors wanting to talk after trial. These jurors were different, and what they told me increased my faith in juries.

All of the jurors said the case came down to reasonable doubt. They doubted the victim’s story, they doubted the physical evidence in the case, and they doubted the police investigation. It made me feel good that they actually thought about the burden of proof and the fact the state had to prove my client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. After a 2009 with nonsensical and even internally inconsistent verdicts for and against me, it made me happy to hear from smart jurors who clearly took their duties seriously.

Finally, the trial made me think about risk tolerance. On the first day of trial, the prosecutor offered my client a plea to time served. My client could have walked out of jail that day, but he rejected the offer. He spent three extra days in custody during trial and risked spending a decade or more in prison. The gamble paid off for him in the end, but it wasn’t always clear it would. The victim recanted prior to trial, but she eventually recanted her recantation. Over a plethora of objections, the prosecutor even admitted into evidence a letter from my client telling her what to say. Some of the time, my case looked downright ugly.

I can honestly say I would have taken the plea. Innocent or not, I would’ve done it. No doubt about it. I don’t mind risk, but in my client’s situation, it would’ve been too much. I firmly believe there is no such thing as a guaranteed winner at trial. Should I trust the system more? Would any of you have done what my client did?

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Posted in Clients, Trial, lawyers, public defenders | 7 Comments »

Missing the Point

Friday, October 30th, 2009

You can imagine my surprise yesterday when this ten-day-old post suddenly lit up with new comments. They read like typical troll comments, but they were from lawyers. Local lawyers, in fact, and ones who seem to have quite a bit of experience. I believe I have multiple mutual friends with at least one of them, though I doubt he realizes that. I have no clue what possessed all of them to comment at once.

Like typical troll comments, they made ad hominem attacks. One writer accused me of presuming my clients guilty, another accused me of going off “half-cocked” without knowing my facts, and yet another seems to think I merely hold myself out as someone who practices criminal defense and accused me of throwing gossip into the potential jury pool. They asked condescending (and obvious) questions, like whether I’d read the DR (police report) and if I was joking by “speculating based on facts presented by the news media.” One commenter even seemed to suggest the criminal defense bar wasn’t talking about this. That’s bizarre, as I haven’t made it from a metal detector to a courtroom in Maricopa County Superior Court for the past few weeks without overhearing some attorney mention it.

The comments missed the point of the post entirely. They read it as commentary about David DeCosta’s guilt rather than commentary about a hypothetical situation I find fascinating. They must have missed it when I said that he “apparently” tried to sneak in drugs, that “my guess” is that the client just happened to get two lawyers who gave in to pressure, that “my hypothetical is far-fetched, to say the least,” and that “I’m sure I’ll never know” how much of a role the client played in what happened with those lawyers.

The second comment from Pamela Nicholson, a Phoenix lawyer with ton of experience and a good reputation, is the most interesting. She insisted that “this is not a ‘fascinating’ exchange among defense lawyers . . . this is a very serious discussion about what a criminal defense lawyer does, and does not, do.” It may be that kind of discussion now, but that has nothing to do with the original post.

If David DeCosta gets acquitted or the case gets dismissed, I’ll probably write about it. It’ll have no bearing on what I discussed in that previous post though. I hypothesized about what I thought was a fascinating situation. If the situation turns out to be different, my thoughts on a hypothetical relating to that situation as it appeared at the time will not have changed. Some commentators seemed to get the point and contributed something productive to the discussion.

I don’t just re-post news stories. I also don’t break news stories. I blog about things that interest me and that I think will interest my readers. My goal is always value added blogging. The blogs I read, the ones that made me start blogging, are not ones that merely recite the facts of news stories. They discuss ideas, the implications of the current events or personal and professional experiences.

I’m grateful for those troll-like comments because they made me think. As a defense lawyer and a blogger, am I really obligated to refrain from discussing the implications of the alleged facts of any criminal news story until the defendant is convicted? Would I have been wrong blogging about Bernie Madoff before he was convicted? Can I ethically blog about Allen Stanford? Will my credibility as a defense lawyer be destroyed if I put up a post on Rod Blagojevich tomorrow? The answer is obvious.

It certainly wasn’t my best post. I could have worded it better, and the same is true of my comments. However, I doubt there’s any way I could have expressed my ideas without angering those commentators. I could have filled the post with “allegedly,” “supposedly,” and “according to the news,” which I basically did, and they still would have been upset. It hit too close to home, and the tone of the comments reveals that. I imagine a police officer blogger in Chicago or Atlanta would get a similar response posting commentary related to this or this, respectively.

I am amused by the sudden, massive response I got. I hope this post gets the same response, and not just because the previous response appears to have resulted in a massive increase in my website traffic and search engine relevance. It’s interesting to see how fellow members of the criminal defense bar reacted to commentary related to one of their own. I wish they’d have discussed it in a friendlier manner, and I’ve probably succeeded in pissing off three of my colleagues, but I guess that’s the risk of publishing my thoughts: people will miss the point.

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Posted in Professionalism, lawyers | 18 Comments »

Another One Bites The Dust (Updated)

Monday, October 19th, 2009

*** I wrote this post after reading about the case in the news and hearing courthouse gossip about what happened to David DeCosta. The police reports reveal a very different set of facts, which I discuss here. ***

About a year ago, a defense attorney named Jason Keller got busted smuggling heroin to inmates. The Maricopa County criminal defense bar was abuzz with talk of his supposed meth addiction and involvement with the Mexican Mafia. At the time, he represented a client named Jesse Alejandro in a murder conspiracy case. His client became his co-defendant.

A few weeks ago, another defense attorney, David DeCosta, got busted for doing more or less the same thing. Apparently, he was trying to sneak drugs to a client in court. The Maricopa County criminal defense bar has been abuzz with talk of him getting blow jobs from that client’s girlfriend. The client? Believe it or not, Jesse Alejandro.

I was pretty surprised to hear that another local criminal defense attorney decided to sacrifice his career and reputation doing something monumentally idiotic, but I was stunned to find out the same client linked them together. What is this guy doing to his defense lawyers? Is it his personality? Are his girlfriend’s “skills” really that amazing? All joking aside, I wonder how one person can get two established defense lawyers to give up everything committing a crime that’s virtually guaranteed to get noticed.

I’ve spoken with a number of defense attorneys about this, and we’ve all wondered the same thing: what happens in a client meeting with Jesse Alejandro?

Imagine you’re a defense attorney who just got appointed to a new case. You go through the security theater of one of the Maricopa County’s many jails to meet with your new client, then grab a seat in an interview room. The client approaches, sits down, and slides a photo of someone you love across the table. He tells you where the person lives and works. He knows the person’s social security number and date of birth. He tells you he’s going to have that person killed if you don’t do him a favor.

Anyone can say they’d do the right thing and report it to authorities right away, but things like that are always easier said than done. What would you do in that situation? What would the state of your personal and professional life have to be to make you give in? Can you really say you’d never do what he asked?

My guess is that Jesse Alejandro just happened to get appointed two lawyers who were desperate enough to break the law to get something he could provide them. In one case, it was drugs. In the other, it was oral sex. Lawyers are people too, and they probably had personal things going on that placed them in a vulnerable position. I’m guessing my hypothetical is far-fetched, to say the least.

I’m sure I’ll never know how much of a role Jesse Alejandro actually played in what happened with Jason Keller and David DeCosta, but I’m awfully curious.

*** I wrote this post after reading about the case in the news and hearing courthouse gossip about what happened to David DeCosta. The police reports reveal a very different set of facts, which I discuss here. ***

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Posted in Clients, News, jail, lawyers | 15 Comments »

I Probably Take Myself Too Seriously

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

In one court, I regularly run into a lawyer who amuses me to no end. He’s a big, boisterous guy with thick gray hair and a deep, booming voice. His general demeanor reminds me of the ghost of Christmas present from the Muppet Christmas Carol. He always wears loud ties, most of which I believe feature some minor Disney character, and he only partially tucks his baggy dress shirts into what I suspect to be a pair of Dickies work pants. It isn’t uncommon for him to wear a jean shirt to court, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear a belt.

None of that really sets him apart from a lot of other lawyers though. What really separates him from the rest is his “PDA.” It’s a stack of note cards. To be more specific, it’s a mismatched stack of a half dozen, slightly discolored, dog-eared, 5×8″ ruled white index cards which he stores in his breast pocket.

A little while ago, I sat next to him and struck up a conversation. We talked about typical court stuff, like how the judge yells at defense attorneys if they’re five minutes late but always starts his 8:30 a.m. docket at 9:15 a.m. It was a normal lawyer-to-lawyer chat, but during a lull, he said “oops, I better check my PDA to make sure I’m supposed to be here” and pulled out his index cards. He thumbed through a few cards and said “yep, looks like I was right.” I was proud of myself for suppressing a laugh. He really called it his “PDA.” I swear.

Perhaps even more humorous is the fact his “PDA” isn’t just his calendar. It seems to replace his court files altogether. He doesn’t take anything else into court. I’ve never seen him with a briefcase. I spotted him carrying a copy of a pre-sentence report once, but I’m fairly certain he quickly transcribed its contents onto an index card and disposed of it.

Before he calls his cases in court, he pulls out his “PDA” and holds it in both hands. As the judge stares him down, waiting for him to say something, he holds the stack of cards a fraction of an inch from his nose and reads the case number off of it. Apparently, everything he needs to a know about his cases is on those cards. If he needs to take note of something, I’m pretty sure he writes it down on his “PDA” with one of those short pencils people use for mini-golf.

I enjoy talking to him. I also enjoy seeing him in court, for obvious reasons. He seems like a smart guy, and he’s extremely friendly. Unfortunately, every time I stand next to him wearing a dark, conservative suit and holding my dark, conservative briefcase, I start to think I take myself too seriously. I probably do.

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Posted in Practice in General, lawyers | 2 Comments »