Solicitors are as bad as their clients?

737max

Whatever about everyone deserving a defence do those in the profession find that sometimes the above cliche is true and that you'd try to avoid certain learned Colleagues due to the type of people they are and the lengths they go to/ their eagerness to defend their client who is filth personified by fair means or foul?
This isn't necessarily limited to those in the profession who represent the jersey and tracksuit wearing clientele but to those higher up the food chain.

I'm more interested in the behaviour and feelings of the others in this career who find themselves having to interact with these Colleagues at close quarters.

cml387

Are you looking to have your prejudices confirmed?

As I (possibly imperfectly) understand it, as you point out everyone is entitled to a defence.There may be some who defend the same clientele time after time but that is possibly because the gangsters have the money to afford the best criminal lawyers. That they are the best means they work hard at their job and achieve the best possible outcome for their client.

Marcusm

Solicitors are not "learned"; that is reserved for their colleagues in the senior branch of the legal profession.

737max

Why do you go to the effort of responding while avoiding the question?

Following on from this question do defendants weed out the solicitors or barristers who themselves believe they will give their client a best defence but aren't morally flexible enough to actually do what needs to be done?

737max

Marcusm wrote: »

Solicitors are not "learned"; that is reserved for their colleagues in the senior branch of the legal profession.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/my-learned-friend

hullaballoo

737max wrote: »

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/my-learned-friend

In Ireland, the term is specifically reserved for members of the inner bar.

We'll leave it there.

Markcheese

solicitors are human, so like the rest of us there'll be the good ,the bad and the ugly.. most people have heard horror stories of certain individuals ,that doesnt mean all solicitors are loopers or crooks ...
It does mean that their proffessional society should be on top of its game ,to keep public trust especially as they're effectively self regulating...

737max

hullaballoo wrote: »

In Ireland, the term is specifically reserved for members of the inner bar.

We'll leave it there.

No, SC for the Defence may make the skin of the opposing SC crawl or even some of his own team?

jimmycrackcorm

Solicitors are no better nor no worse than any other professional person that tries to do their job to the best of their ability. Would you expect a doctor to not try his or her best to save the life of a badly injured drunk driver for example?

737max

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Solicitors are no better nor no worse than any other professional person that tries to do their job to the best of their ability. Would you expect a doctor to not try his or her best to save the life of a badly injured drunk driver for example?

a doctor may try, a surgeon may try and those with exceptional dexterity may succeed to cure/heal more often.
a defence solicitor with a cursed conscience/morals who can't do what needs to be done e.g. to bring in to doubt the good character or honest testimony of the victim won't win as many cases.

MarkAnthony

The system would fail to function unless serial pedophile rapist murderer could rely upon their legal for a proper, and I use that word very deliberately, defence. There are a few people who even at undergraduate level may decide that criminal defence is not for them. The ones that do and progress that owe the highest duty to do it properly.

It should also be noted, solicitors = client, barristers also have a duty to the court. A barrister will work on the instruction of the solicitor. The solicitor can not lie. Now do solicitors walk out the office and offer the client a cup of tea and ask them to consider what they were about to say? Possibly, possibly not.

MarkAnthony

737max wrote: »

a defence solicitor with a cursed conscience/morals who can't do what needs to be done e.g. to bring in to doubt the good character or honest testimony of the victim won't win as many cases.

That's the job of defence counsel. It's how the adversarial system works. You'd want nothing less if you had a litany of people getting up and falsely accusing you. Given you're a joe soap (I assume) it's people like yourself making the ultimate decision, you tell me - are the odds in the favour of the accused?

737max

MarkAnthony wrote: »

That's the job of defence counsel. It's how the adversarial system works. You'd want nothing less if you had a litany of people getting up and falsely accusing you.

and how do the rest of the people in the industry interact with these type people. It must be a struggle to be civil especially if you have developed a relationship over the period of time it takes to get to court with your client who was a victim of the accused where you see every time you meet them the damage that has been done to the victim.

johnnyskeleton

Do you mean are lawyers as bad as murderers and rapists? Certainly not.

But if their clients broke a red light or didnt pay their tv licence then maybe.

MarkAnthony

737max wrote: »

and how do the rest of the people in the industry interact with these type people. It must be a struggle to be civil especially if you have developed a relationship over the period of time it takes to get to court with your client who was a victim of the accused where you see every time you meet them the damage that has been done to the victim.

I'm not a solicitor or barrister although I've done some time as paralegal and 'caseworker'. My impression is you'd not last very long if you couldn;t meet your ethical obligations to defend your client. I've been frequently told one of the worst insults that can be leveled against a barrister is t be 'a bad colleague'. There are plenty of ****, arseholes, and frankly cnuts that get on just fine - just do the job properly and competently.

I've never met a barrister who has any animosity to either side, I obviously don't know every barrister doing criminal work.

I should admit my bias though, all of my limited experience is on the defence side.

MarkAnthony

OP a thought occurs to me, have you watched 'Making a Murder'? It's a very good introduction to how badly the odds are stacked against an accused and some of the things that can and do happen. I'd venture the yanks are a particularly bad example of how the adversarial system should work and frankly, I believe, Ireland is a particularly good one - in the main - but's it's pretty gripping stuff if you have an interest in the legal process.

737max

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Do you mean are lawyers as bad as murderers and rapists? Certainly not.

I certainly didn't say that so don't try to drag the conversation in that direction.
If you were representing a rape victim or a decent granny and it took 2 years to get to court and you've spent hundreds of hours with the client would you be able to bite your tongue when the defence team of a criminal with a notorious prior history suggests or baldly states that your client is lying.
I don't know I couldn't do it.

MarkAnthony

737max wrote: »

I certainly didn't say that so don't try to drag the conversation in that direction.
If you were representing a rape victim or a decent granny and it took 2 years to get to court and you've spent hundreds of hours with the client would you be able to bite your tongue when the defence team of a criminal with a notorious prior history suggests or baldly states that your client is lying.
I don't know I couldn't do it.

But the defence team have to have (using an Americanism here and showing my complete lack of practical experience) good faith basis for making that claim. A robust cross-examination is one thing. Limbering up and doing the 'Alan Shore point (@2:32)' is another.

Let's say a witness states they saw the accused raping someone, it's incumbent on the defence to question the witness on their sight, obstacles that may have been in the way, the time of day etc. etc. That questioning will be robust and is by far the best way to ferret out people telling porkies. It's hardly a flawless system by any means.

Having worked with people who've had years taken away from them for crimes they didn't commit - all the while the guilty party roaming free probably committing other crimes that would not have been committed - you appreciate there are two sides to this.

737max

Do the professionals who represent the filth of society not frequent this board?
Because somebody is defending them again and again and again.
Is it just one of things we don't speak about in polite society?

MarkAnthony

737max wrote: »

Do the professionals who represent the filth of society not frequent this board?
Because somebody is defending them again and again and again.
Is it just one of things we don't speak about in polite society?

I thought a discussion was happening.

I also thought there was a (semi) opened minded audience, perhaps I'm mistaken.

And yes the same firms and barristers will be defending the repeat customers - what's the alternative, well apart from a prison system that's meant to do what it's supposed to but ain't nobody gonna pay for that.

Pat Mustard

737max wrote: »

a doctor may try, a surgeon may try and those with exceptional dexterity may succeed to cure/heal more often.
a defence solicitor with a cursed conscience/morals who can't do what needs to be done e.g. to bring in to doubt the good character or honest testimony of the victim won't win as many cases.

This hand wringing doesn't feature.

It's a job and people get on with it.

Somebody who is prevented from doing their job competently due to excessive squeamishness should consider doing something else for a living.

737max

Gardai suffer burnout.
A+E suffer burnout.
Prison Officers suffer burnout.
Trauma Councillors suffer burnout.
Do legal professionals suffer burnout and retreat in to areas like conveyancing or?

I'm working on the assumption that the majority of legal professionals are living breathing normal people. How do they deal with the minority whose goal in life is to make sure they clients will never be answerable for the misery they inflict upon others?
logging off now. things to do.

737max

737max wrote: »

How do they deal with the minority whose goal in life is to make sure they clients will never be answerable for the misery they inflict upon others?

You are working off a spectacularly flawed set of assumptions. The role played by defence counsel and solicitors is fundamentally good for society. You see the accused as being criminals. They don't defend criminals, they defend accused persons. If a jury or a judge finds them not guilty of an offence then so be it. If the accused is found guilty then so be it. The ends, to a certain extent, are secondary to the process in many ways. It is vital that evidence be tested, witnesses be examined and formalities be followed to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned.

That's the fundamental problem with your position; you see the job of the defence as trying to somehow hoodwink the system into keeping guilty people out of prison but it's not - it's to keep innocent people out of prison.

Every single law student in the common law world learns one line regarding criminal law by heart: it is better that ten guilty men go free than a single innocent should suffer. You ask how they live with themselves? They do it by knowing they fulfil an absolutely vital role in society designed to protect the innocent individual from the overwhelming power and resources of the State.

Marcusm

737max wrote: »

Do the professionals who represent the filth of society not frequent this board?
Because somebody is defending them again and again and again.
Is it just one of things we don't speak about in polite society?

I have to say I am lost; who do you want to determine who should and should not benefit from effective legal representation? Theoretically at least, barristers operate on the cab rank principle that they must accept instructions from any client within their practice areas provided they have the time to effectively represent them. As regards solicitors, it is necessarily the case that any solicitor with a criminal law practice will have to represent both guilty and innocent persons. How could it be otherwise?

Personally, I have little expectation that there is any collusion or complicity by a significant number of legal professionals in criminal matters.

I would more likely reserve my veiled contempt for those who fail to fully consider money laundering and similar issues when undertaking civil and commercial work for dubious persons.

737max

Deleted User wrote: »

You are working off a spectacularly flawed set of assumptions. The role played by defence counsel and solicitors is fundamentally good for society. You see the accused as being criminals. They don't defend criminals, they defend accused persons. If a jury or a judge finds them not guilty of an offence then so be it. If the accused is found guilty then so be it. The ends, to a certain extent, are secondary to the process in many ways. It is vital that evidence be tested, witnesses be examined and formalities be followed to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned.

That's the fundamental problem with your position; you see the job of the defence as trying to somehow hoodwink the system into keeping guilty people out of prison but it's not - it's to keep innocent people out of prison.

Every single law student in the common law world learns one line regarding criminal law by heart: it is better that ten guilty men go free than a single innocent should suffer. You ask how they live with themselves? They do it by knowing they fulfil an absolutely vital role in society designed to protect the innocent individual from the overwhelming power and resources of the State.

I direct you back to the first post because you'd like to forget it and have them dismiss me as being uninformed.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=100060092&postcount=1

Legal professionals working in and around the Courts over a long period of time and after the Judge has made his rulings in individual cases see the same Colleagues protecting the same Clients again and again and again with remarkable tenacity despite how heinous the typical crimes with which their Clients are repeatedly charged were. How do those professionals remain civil when dealing with such people knowing how they earn a living? If it is such an admirable activity to be involved in then why isn't everyone lining up for a piece of the pie.
Others in the thread have said it is perfectly ethical to defend clients. It obviously pays. Can you see the conflicting positions there?

MarkAnthony

LOL - it pays ****e. If you take nothing else away from this thread please take that away. The split legal aid fee in the DC is (or was) €125 for a first appearance and €25 IIRC after that. Junior barristers might get one or two appearances a day most of them follow ups! That's 3 years minimum at undergraduate, 1-2 years at the inns @ 13K, a year to two years unpaid work to earn less than the dole.

Most of us are queuing up to do it (the ones that are) becuase it's interesting work or because it's the only work!

Granted it gets better but it's still no picnic compared to what a Doctor or even a good Sparky earns after 5-10 years.

Edit: Also repeat offenders are low level petty crime, usually drug related which is a complete political invention of the last 100 years. There are very, very few repeat rapists and fewer repeat murders in the state.

Pro Hoc Vice

737max wrote: »

Do the professionals who represent the filth of society not frequent this board?
Because somebody is defending them again and again and again.
Is it just one of things we don't speak about in polite society?

You do understand that somewhere in the region of 95% of criminal cases end in a plea of guilty!

Pro Hoc Vice

737max wrote: »

I direct you back to the first post because you'd like to forget it and have them dismiss me as being uninformed.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=100060092&postcount=1

Legal professionals working in and around the Courts over a long period of time and after the Judge has made his rulings in individual cases see the same Colleagues protecting the same Clients again and again and again with remarkable tenacity despite how heinous the typical crimes with which their Clients are repeatedly charged were. How do those professionals remain civil when dealing with such people knowing how they earn a living? If it is such an admirable activity to be involved in then why isn't everyone lining up for a piece of the pie.
Others in the thread have said it is perfectly ethical to defend clients. It obviously pays. Can you see the conflicting positions there?

Can I ask have you ever visited a District or Curcuit Court for a criminal list and watched what actually happens.

MarkAnthony

Pro Hoc Vice wrote: »

You do understand that somewhere in the region of 95% of criminal cases end in a plea of guilty!

To be fair, as much as it's beginning to pain me, they're still represented by you bloody scum bags lawyers! :pac:

737max

737max wrote: »

Can you see the conflicting positions there?

There's no conflict in something being socially beneficial and being personally profitable. That being said it is laughable to suggest criminal law is profitable for the overwhelming majority of lawyers.

And I don't dismiss you for being uninformed. I disagree with you because you're wrong in your assumptions that betray an obvious prejudice. Unless someone came on here and said "yeah we all hate those criminal defence bastards" you would disagree with all the posts here it seems. I'd happily be proven wrong.

NUTLEY BOY

I have seen a few rampant consequentialists on the civil side who have represented unmitigated chancers and knowingly presented equally unmeritorious cases.

In anticipation of the PC challenge as to who decided that the cases were unmeritorious the answer is the trial judges and or the juries

One of this type with whom I have had dealings approaches litigation on the same principle as terrorists i.e. keep it up for long enough and you will get lucky sometimes and get caught out at other times.

This type of behaviour should not be confused with a lawyer who uses every legitimate method to secure the best result for his client. You might get the odd case where the boundary of evidentiary propriety gets slightly stretched. Of course, I must denounce such chicanery but say that you could almost admire it if it is well or artfully done.

If you are on the wrong end of a criminal indictment I suspect that you would have no qualms of conscience about the methodologies used on your behalf to ensure your extraction acquittal.

So, to answer the question, lawyers can be as naughty as their clients..

Mr. Incognito

I work in litigation.

I can tell you that my job is to achieve my clients aims to the best of my ability.

This is advising them on the strength of their case legally should it be litigated, the chances of success, the inherent risks and the considerations that a judge will take account of.

Sometimes, If both parties are very agressive or entrenched my job can be to mediate between the parties to resolve a dispute. I find that solicitors who take the agressive approach of their client and make it their own are not advocating for their clients best interstes but are having a row for the sake of it. I tend to avoid such colleagues.

Most colleagues however are quite experienced, pragmatic persons and we can resolve the dispute objectively, impartially and without the influx of emotion which frankly is what we are paid to do. There's no point having a dog and barking yourself.

With regard to Ethics, we are held to the highest ethical standards and solicitors are regularly struck off for not complying with undertakings etc

I don't work in Criminal personally but I'd adopt the same approach. People have a right to legal representation and a good name and above all the presumption of innocence despite what the red tops and gutter press rabble might think.

mrs vimes

737max wrote: »

and how do the rest of the people in the industry interact with these type people. It must be a struggle to be civil especially if you have developed a relationship over the period of time it takes to get to court with your client who was a victim of the accused where you see every time you meet them the damage that has been done to the victim.

For better or for worse, victims of rape or assault or burglary etc do not generally have legal representation in the criminal case. The victim is not the client of the prosecuting legal team, the state is.

NUTLEY BOY

mrs vimes wrote: »

For better or for worse, victims of rape or assault or burglary etc do not generally have legal representation in the criminal case. The victim is not the client of the prosecuting legal team, the state is.

Indeed. Where they give evidence the victim is simply a prosecution witness.