It is time that we – criminal defense lawyers – shed our aversion to anything that resembles a loss in our marketing materials. The information that I see on Google + and FaceBook is, for the most part, useless generic definitions about the criminal justice process and a bunch of overstated results from a lot of lawyers that I know do not actually try cases. The one thing that is noticeably absent from my FaceBook or Google + feed is any semblance of a loss. That is truly unfortunate. I lose a lot of cases. I have a ton of motions that are denied. I have lost a lot of bench and jury trials. Every single one of those losses benefits future clients, and I believe that the losses actually benefit me as a lawyer more than the wins. Further, and perhaps most importantly, our failure to embrace our losses/failures is having a horrible impact on our profession, client expectations, and public perception of criminal defense lawyers. Contingency fees in criminal cases are prohibited, but make no bones about it: when a client hears that a particular lawyer “only wins,” the uncertainties inherent in defending a criminal case are distorted. We have come to accept these marketing efforts primarily because “everybody is doing it.” The inclusion of a single paragraph in your retainer agreement does not overcome all of the marketing materials that suggest “All I do is win, win, win no matter what.” (youtube/watch?v=GGXzlRoNtHU) Why don’t we simply embrace the realities of our work? If you actually defend criminal cases (challenge the admissibility of evidence at motions and the sufficiency of the state’s evidence at trial), you often lose, and through that trial-and-error process, you gain vast amounts of information and experience that drafting another Google + post about arraignments will never give you. So, here’s to hoping for a little more candor in 2015. Cheers.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 03:00:24 +0000
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