This was sent to me and I found it very entertaining....



Some Advice From Your Public Defender

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Date: 2009-04-26, 7:43AM PDT







First, let me say I love my job and it is a privilege to work for my clients. I wish I could do more for them. That being said, there are a few things that need to be discussed.

You have the right to remain silent. So SHUT THE FUCK UP. Those cops are completely serious when they say your statements can and will be used against you. There’s just no need to babble on like it’s a drink and dial session. They are just pretending to like you and be interested in you.

When you come to court, consider your dress. If you’re charged with a DUI, don’t wear a Budweiser shirt. If you have some miscellaneous drug charge, think twice about clothing with a marijuana leaf on it or a t-shirt with the “UniBonger” on it. Long sleeves are very nice for covering tattoos and track marks. Try not to be visibly drunk when you show up.

Consider bathing and brushing your teeth. This is just as a courtesy to me who has to stand by you in court. Smoking 5 generic cigarettes to cover up your bad breath is not the same as brushing. Try not to cough and spit on my while you speak and further transmit your strep, flu, and hepatitis A through Z.

I’m a lawyer, not your fairy godmother. I probably won’t find a loophole or technicality for you, so don’t be pissed off. I didn’t beat up your girlfriend, steal that car, rob that liquor store, sell that crystal meth, or rape that 13 year old. By the time we meet, much of your fate has been sealed, so don’t be too surprised by your limited options and that I’m the one telling you about them.

Don’t think you’ll improve my interest in your case by yelling at me, telling me I’m not doing anything for you, calling me a public pretender or complaining to my supervisor. This does not inspire me, it makes me hate you and want to work with you even less.

It does not help if you leave me nine messages in 17 minutes. Especially if you leave them all on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. This just makes me want to stab you in the eye when we finally meet.

For the guys: Don’t think I’m amused when you flirt or offer to “do me.” You can’t successfully rob a convenience store, forge a signature, pawn stolen merchandise, get through a day without drinking, control your temper, or talk your way out of a routine traffic stop. I figure your performance in other areas is just as spectacular, and the thought of your shriveled unwashed body near me makes me want to kill you and then myself.

For the girls: I know your life is rougher than mine and you have no resources. I’m not going to insult you by suggesting you leave your abusive pimp/boyfriend, that you stop taking meth, or that your stop stealing shit. I do wish you’d stop beating the crap out of your kids and leaving your needles out for them to play with because you aren’t allowing them to have a life that is any better than yours.

For the morons: Your second grade teacher was right – neatness counts. Just clean up! When you rob the store, don’t leave your wallet. When you drive into the front of the bank, don’t leave the front license plate. When you rape/assault/rob a woman on the street, don’t leave behind your cell phone. After you abuse your girlfriend, don’t leave a note saying that you’re sorry.

If you are being chased by the cops and you have dope in your pocket – dump it. These cops are not geniuses. They are out of shape and want to go to Krispy Kreme and most of all go home. They will not scour the woods or the streets for your 2 grams of meth. But they will check your pockets, idiot. 2 grams is not worth six months of jail.

Don’t be offended and say you were harassed because the security was following you all over the store. Girl, you were wearing an electronic ankle bracelet with your mini skirt. And you were stealing. That’s not harassment, that’s good store security.

And those kids you churn out: how is it possible? You’re out there breeding like feral cats. What exactly is the attraction of having sex with other meth addicts? You are lacking in the most basic aspects of hygiene, deathly pale, greasy, grey-toothed, twitchy and covered with open sores. How can you be having sex? You make my baby-whoring crack head clients look positively radiant by comparison.

"I didn't put it all the way in." Not a defense.

"All the money is gone now." Not a defense

"The bitch deserved it." Not a defense.

"But that dope was so stepped on, I barely got high." Not a defense.

"She didn't look thirteen." Possibly a defense; it depends.

"She didn't look six." Never a defense, you just need to die.

For those rare clients that say thank-you, leave a voice mail, send a card or flowers, you are very welcome. I keep them all, and they keep me going more than my pitiful COLA increase.

For the idiots who ask me how I sleep at night: I sleep just fine, thank you. There's nothing wrong with any of my clients that could not have been fixed with money or the presence of at least one caring adult in their lives. But that window has closed, and that loss diminishes us all.

PURE FUCKING TRUTH.


Those of you who knew me closely when I was working that job have heard me comment on almost every point she made.  Even in private practice alot of it is still true.

By the way I missed 3 calls from a single client while in the shower this morning.  That would be a FIFTEEN MINUTE shower.  When I called back to see what the fucking emergency was, the response was "I just wanted to check if you've heard anything on my case..."  This is why my phone bill says I spend almost five hours a month just checking my voicemail.  I broke 2,500 total minutes two months ago.

One of the changes I'm going to make to my law practice in the next month is to create an intake sheet that every client will sign before I take their case.  Among other things it will give my clients 5 phone calls a month gratis, and after that a flat fee will apply to each call.  At my sole discretion I can waive the fee, depending on the case.  If clients don't like it, they are free to not sign my intake sheet and go find someone else.

Google video "Talking to the Police" or "Professor James Duane" for a pretty good 5th amendment rant/lecture. Make sure to watch the longest video (1 hour?) to get the officer at the end. Listen for the words "real world" and "suspect" when he talks for some insight on the mentality of those doing the questioning.

I'm sure some here have seen it .

Every attorney I ever dealt with charged 15 minute blocks for their time including all telephone calls. While I was going through my divorce, my wife's mother would call my attorney once a day just to run up my fees.

Then the stupid b!tch could not understand why I went overseas and invoked the Sailers & Soldeirs Relief Act.

^And your lawyer allowed that?  Why didn't he bill the mother?

lunyou

She did not hire him, I did.

I guess I am not versed in the way of lawyers and such.  It just seems that you should have been able to limit who could run up a bill in your name.

lunyou

Just make sure you specify that leaving a voice mail counts as a phone call (or at least a half phone call), even if they do not speak with you.

Karl makes a good point bud.

i mean if they dont know that it counts they will fight you on it. but it is a good idea. a very good idea.  you just need a assistant/staff.

i know a Red head that would work for cheap. she all ready does it but i dont know if warnsburg is any closer than K-ville.

Ronald

It takes an attorney's time to listen to a phone call or voice mail. You pay for your attorney's  time PERIOD. I get on -Dukem-'s @ss all the time because he sells himself short. Everyone is entitled to justice under the law. How much justice can you afford?

Time is money.  Every minute spent serving the client's interest is potentially billable, including time spent on the phone, surfing the internet, reading and responding to email, driving time to and from court, etc.  Law firms bill for cost recovery for long distance calls, and every page printed, scanned or copied.  Big law firms spend a lot of money on hardware and software systems to track billable hours and cost recovery.  Large cases may even include cost recovery charges for data storage & backup, like a case that has several terabytes of data on expensive, high performance storage.

My problem is that I work in a rural area which has been hit hard by the economy.  For every 20 phone calls I field, maybe one turns into an actual paying case.  In the past month I have had potential clients tell me two things over the phone that I had never heard before.

1.  I don't have the money to pay you right now so I guess I'll just do the time (drug case).

2.  If you can't guarantee I'll get custody of my kids for my $1500, I'll just wait six more months and do my modification through DFS without a lawyer. (This one might not be all bad, once he royally fucks it up with the Children's Division people he'll probably need a good lawyer to undo all the damage later on)

What I have to tell myself is not that I priced myself too high, but that they simply don't have the funds or the realistic expectations to get the representation I can provide them.  That's it and that's all and there's no crying over whether a guy would rather go to jail than throw down $750.

People in my area are really, really hurting for money.  I've been asked to draft a few "rent to own" agreements on real property (technically it is a rental agreement with option to purchase, there's no such thing as "rent to own" under MO law) because there is housing available but nobody can get a loan approved, so the buyer and seller have to come up with something creative themselves if the buyer is going to have a place to live and the seller is going to get any kind of income from the property.  

One thing that I am going to start doing is taking credit cards.  Alot of the lawyers at the solo and small firm conference will max out two or three credit cards worth of services for their clients, then wait 90 days and file bankruptcy, thus getting the credit card debt discharged.  The lawyer gets paid and the client goes home happy.  Never thought of that before.

I have a good friend who finished his tax/bankruptcy LLM about 6 years ago. He was doing M&A at the time he went back for his LLM and some bankruptcy for a company not a firm. Now he's ass deep in work and has been for a while. His fee also damn near tripled. The guys in the business world, he worked mostly M&A previously, gave him shit for the LLM. Guess they feel silly.

Yeah, I've thought about going back for my LLM a couple of times, I've heard it does pay, but I'm still hoping not to add to my $100,000 of student loans, and I'm still not ready to go back to school.  I was in school from age 5 to age 26, isn't that enough?

You probably don't want to know how many years I have been in school, although a lot was part time.

edit: He was a trust fund baby, he graduated in the black from an ivy league school. It should be noted he did it on his own merit, he's one smart mother...

My parents trusted me to fund myself.  

32 years ago I was born into a family with no money, and I still haven't been able to fix the problem!  

Ah yes, with the added bonus of double billing clients.  Jump on a plane to visit a client (bill for travel) and work on another case on the plane (bill for whatever)  Took them a while to clean that up.

Most big firms try to avoid unethical practices, as the extra money is not worth the damage to your reputation if you get caught at it, and the big clients tend to scrutinize their bills more than the little guys. (this is not to mention that you really don't want to have to open your financial records up to discovery if you get sued for illegal billing practices)  If you charge cost recovery per page scanned, for instance, you can't also charge for the time spent doing the scans, etc.

That's brilliant, at least until the credit card system melts down the way the rest of the financial system did and credit cards become harder to get.  It would certainly worth the 3% kickback fee to the credit card company.

Apparently your problem has been that you only accept real money from your clients.  

Yeah.  Its 2009, so, you know, my mistake.  Good thing the Feds are showing me the way finance REALLY works in the 21st century.

you also need to do ammo and guns also.


Ronald.

My uncle has at least one shotgun he got from a client in a divorce case.  Duke might actually turn the stuff over and make money off of it.  If I ever started taking guns and ammo in lieu of actual payment for my job, I'd go broke because I don't get rid of guns.

Try not to laugh at me for this, but I recently took a set of 17" Rota Slipstream wheels that fit my car in exchange for making an entry of appearance on a case.  It was a matter of "have an attorney by this day or the warrant comes out", and the client has always paid me before.  He made me the offer that not only would he pay my full fee, but I could have the wheels in addition to the fee I quoted him, as a bonus for entering the case before the warrant issued.

I intend to put race rubber on them and use them as dedicated autocross wheels so I don't tear up my street tires on Saturdays next year.  I warned my client that under no circumstances is he to tell others about our arrangement, I don't want to get a reputation as the local jailhouse lawyer that trades for car parts, even if that is what I am.

Why be ashamed of bartering? In a much broader sense (in a black helicopter world ending kind of way) you are better off trading for something of value to you or others than taking the going currency. You never know what niche you might fill by altering the paradigm of a profession. Would you take a 10 acre plot of prime Ozark land in exchange for a defense, or a new 740i for some work? Bartering to fill a need is the last thing I would be ashamed of. Money is money no matter if it is a gold coin, or a two ton Rai some Yapese dude used to pay you, or a set of 20" spinning rims. As long as it is of value to you.

Discretion is the better part of valour.

Make it so.

I was curious about that. But I wasn't gonna argue.