Criminal Defense Quotes

My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

[I have ] two boys. One, Nicholas, is a criminal defense attorney in Phoenix in which he - gets into - a lot of very controversial cases. He has sued Sheriff Arpaio, the famous sheriff who keeps people in tents, gives them green bologna and the like. My other son Tom is with Williams & Connolly in Washington, where he does intellectual property defamation cases.

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person - few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.

Now I am practicing as well as a criminal defense lawyer in handling appeals. The court of appeals appointed me to handle cases and although that's not trial work and I don't have to go to court, it kind of satisfies the need I have to practice still and I have transitioned into readiness not to be in trial anymore. It took a little while for me to get used to not doing it and I did miss it for a few years, but eventually I transferred into another life.

I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.

One of the people that wrote a forward to my book is Gerry Spence, whom I admire. Gerry is a friend of mine, and Gerry's perhaps the leading criminal defense attorney in the country.