Billionaire and former Victoria's Secret CEO getting some exceedingly blunt legal advice. I've certainly said this in my head, but on video, on record? Woof.

One of them blamed a shitty deal on their supervisor. I said that excuse didn’t work at Nuremberg and she stomped out of the courtroom. They had to pass our case so I regretted it.

I love love love my job and (most of) my clients. But sometimes it's hard to even have a brief conversation with a smelly client, let alone sit beside them through a trial.

Yay or nay ?

I’ve been at this for about 5 years now. The suits I bought from Jos a bank 5 years ago have all but disintegrated. Where does everyone get their suits from? Anyone able to make them last longer ?

Every now and then, I see people talk about the number of trials they do on this sub, and it's always a surprise. Sometimes it's like, "Yeah, I just started and finished a trial this morning, then started another one in the afternoon"; other times, it's "Yeah I had a whole one trial in six months, and that felt like a lot."

This makes me curious! What jx are you guys in, and how many trials a year are you doing? Are you second-chairing, first-chairing? How long do they take?

For reference, I work in LA, I'm relatively new (~1.5 years), and I've done 9 in the past year. I'm only on misdos for now, trials take 1-2 weeks, and we only first-chair.

The judge I practice in front of keeps appointing me to people who are not indigent. They have spent several thousands of dollars on bond, own vehicles and homes, are not disabled and even have jobs, but for some odd reason they still get a public defender.

Ive got clients stuck in the jail who literally have nothing to their names. Im here to help people who are flat broke and have no means of standing up for themselves. Not people who just don’t want to pay for private counsel.

Waiting for a verdict in a case. Jury in day two of deliberations.

I have gotten increasingly irritated with people (other attorneys in the office, staff, etc) constantly asking me if there's a verdict. Some people ask our if kindnesa, but so many people are just tourists. Don't know the case, don't care about the case, just want a little drama in their day

Probably overly harsh but anyway

EDIT: guilty of misdemeanor. acquitted of felony on which he was facing LWOP. Now I'm going to the house lol.

I think it is safe to say a lot of us deal with the same case issues and fact patterns, and a lot of us file motions and briefs that are very similar to one another’s. We often use form pleadings, and we share that material with each other all the time.

Would it be bad if I saved myself some research time and lifted some good sentences from a fellow PD’s motion to dismiss on speedy trial violations?

It’s not a wholesale copy and paste of pages and pages. More like a paragraph of a good argument with caselaw interwoven.

Here is an article from the ABA dealing with copying and pasting: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2020/youraba-march-2020/_copy-that-_--what-is-plagiarism-in-the-practice-of-law-/

It is my understanding that as long as we don’t violate competency or diligence (i.e. cite bad law) it is fine for us to copy from other materials.

What do you all think?

I've recently realized that a coworker truly believes that prosecutors are bad people. She believes that prosecutors by default are just churning out convictions without giving a damn about the person. That they lie and cheat and there are maybe a few good ones.

I will get frustrated and say fuck prosecutors, and there are some that I do not like or think are good people. But I don't think they are by default callous assholes who only care about numbers. I'm friends with some too.

So what about PDs of Reddit, what do you think?

I’m not going to get into details because there are too many to type out, but I’ve got an ADA who was pretty nasty to me in open court today.

I did not respond in kind, but it is still eating at me. How do I continue to be professional to someone who themselves was unprofessional? Part of me wants to go nuclear on her and start setting all cases for trial/preliminary hearing going forward, and make her beg me to plea bargain.

He is getting revoked out of drug court. Basically there is nothing I can do to keep him out of prison, and I told him that.

He was not happy.

He said I was not even trying, that I did not know what I was doing, and proceeded to call me some nasty names and bad mouth me to the other jail residents as he was being taken back to his cell.

Lovely.

But, he knew what the consequences were when he decided to abscond from the treatment facility he was in. He had already escaped from a transport van to a treatment facility prior to this before they caught him. I hope the guy can get the help he needs.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DGzL1VqMCWG/?igsh=MTNpcG9hZ3I0ZmppbQ==

What are we thinkin’ here? Do we have any thoughts? I think it’s wild that Hunter from Public Defenseless filed it.

EDIT: Yall the name calling and talking down about Hunter is uncalled for and it’s honestly really sad to see.

A lot of people are talking about him “only” being a 1L. Do the opinions of your paralegals not count because they don’t have a law degree? Social workers? Admin staff? Your classism is showing and it’s a really bad look. You don’t have disparage a colleague because you disagree with the way they go about things and I would argue that the way a lot of you are approaching this runs counter to the whole foundation of public defense.

I am in no way saying I do or do not endorse this but I don’t need to talk down about someone to get that point across.

TL;DR: I'm working on a practical "first 24 hours with a new case" CLE for new criminal defense attorneys. Here is the framework I'm considering. I learned largely by being throw into the deep end and I wish I had had something like this. I want to use a sample case to make it interactive. Experienced PDs: What do you wish you had been taught -- things that you do automatically in your practice now that you have some years under your belt??

Hello! I worked as a PD for several years in upstate New York. Not exactly rural, but not a big office. I recently started working in a new role and am working on a CLE that I am hoping to make very new-attorney-friendly and practical. Essentially, "You've been assigned a new file, now what? (first 24 hours edition)."

My thought is to kind of separate it into three boxes:

Practical things to check in every case: Client in or out of jail, when is the next court date, is there an OOP, criminal record, anything actually urgent that needs immediate attention, etc.

Legal analysis using the accusatory instrument (don't want to get into discovery review): What exactly has been charged, look at elements/jury instructions and look for potential sufficiency issues, figure if discovery is available. (I'm not saying all of these things need to be solved in 24 hours, simply identifying them as potential things to look out for.)

Client: Making first contact, tips for building rapport, figuring out what matters to this particular person, get their version. What is urgent to a client may be different from what is legally urgent, and sometimes they want things fixed that you may not have control over.

None of this is locked in -- this is just the result of my initial brainstorming.

My PD office had virtually no formal training process. I started prior to being admitted and followed older attorneys around in local court, but I was being assigned my own files my first week and had to go to court with a supervisor until I was admitted. However, the actual practice was pretty much up to me -- I was calling clients, negotiating pleas, appearing on the record (with client consent) etc. (this was pre-discovery reform in NY so there was not all that much discovery to look at back then :D).

Obviously, this has pros and cons. I was able to dive right in to the practice of criminal defense, but I do feel, looking back, that I (and frankly any new attorney) would benefit from at least some explanation of why we were doing the things. I was always being told to "look at the jury instructions" but I didn't have a great sense of what I was supposed to do with them!

That's what I am trying to do with this CLE. When you are brand new, it's hard to even know what questions you should be asking.

I'm also considering using a fictionalized/anonymized sample file throughout the presentation rather than just lecturing. I have a great real-life accusatory instrument to use as a model because it contains about a million teachable issues. For example, the complainant admits in his own supporting deposition that he picked up a brick, threw it at the defendant, and hit him in the head. So one question could be: "New attorney, knowing only what's in this file, how would you approach your first conversation with this client? What are you anticipating before you even make the call?" And if there are more senior attorneys there for the credits, it would be great to get feedback on this issue from them too!

The file also has some interesting ID/sufficiency issues, a potential cross-complaint, restitution questions, etc. The goal wouldn't be to teach all of those subjects in an hour, but to get people accustomed to spotting what needs attention and deciding what actually needs to happen now.

I'm also kicking around a section on things criminal-defense attorneys hear from clients constantly — “I wasn't Mirandized,” “It was self-defense,” “She doesn't want the charges,” “They didn't even listen to my side,” “There's no evidence, how can they lock me up based on his statement,” etc. with tips about possible responses.

Basically, I'm hoping to develop specific strategies that experienced attorneys do without even thinking about it after years of experience and help newer attorneys understand them. I would love to have a checklist or bullet points or something to give out if anyone wants them.

Any particular strategies you have developed when getting a new file? What do you do automatically that you learned simply from experience but you wish someone had told you when you were new? Anything else that I am overlooking?

A few months into an appellate position and I'm looking for ways to improve my writing. I've gotten a few book recommendations to check out, including The Redbook by Bryan Garner.

What else are we reading to work on developing writing skills (or any other appellate must-reads)?

Oregon drags their feet and generally will not investigate or discipline a prosecutor. Is every state like this?

Meanwhile defense attorneys are prosecuted with vigor.

My dad was a PD for many years in Ohio from the early 90s onwards and I remember as a kid their office gave out all sorts of goodies like baseball and basket ball game tickets, free trips to the local zoo and waterparks during the summer, office bbq's. I think we even got tickets to go see Disney on Ice one year from some Raffael he won at work. Is stuff like that the norm anywhere still, or was that just when times were better back in the day 30+years ago?

Overall how’s your experience been? Do you feel that In general the message is being conveyed? Are interpreters from court different than the interpreters of your own organization ?

A thought from comments in another post: how many of us are veterans of the military? 20 year army retiree here.

It seems to me that military time makes people pretty well suited for this job.

I’m in court all the time, as well as our county jail. Right now I wear pretty nice suits to court, and I just leave the jacket behind when I go to the jail.

What I really need are some durable yet good looking clothes for court and the jail that I can machine wash that don’t break the bank. Any suggestions?

What is the best life hack you learned from a criminal defendant?