Reply to Why not go out and start your own law firm?

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Why not go out and start your own law firm? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A law school graduate who can't get a job and has never practiced criminal law is not qualified to represent criminal defendants. [b]The crisis in criminal defense stems from Defendants who can only afford shitty lawyers or a severely overworked public defender[/b]. Adding a bunch of unqualified criminal defense lawyers who are only doing criminal defense because they couldn't get any other job is not going to help. [/quote]

+1.  There is a crisis because many criminal defendant are unable to afford a lawyer and the public defender systems is overburdened and [b]underfunded[/b].[/quote]

It's hard for a law school grad to even apply for one of these public defender positions. [/quote]

My mentor and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. The Sixth Amendment simply guarantees a right to counsel. But only criminals benefit if that "right" turns into defense attorneys who litigate aggressively for their guilty clients. People lose confidence in law enforcement, and in courts as civil disputes wait for criminal backlogs to be cleared. Yet overworked defenders and lousy attorneys don't know how to put together a quick plea.

We decided that the prosecution needs to step in and decouple regular criminal defense from the Innocence Project and the Barry Schecks. DOJ could take some of the asset forfeiture money and form "plea squads" in every state in the nation. Take jobless attorneys and pay each a retainer of say $10k per annum. The attorneys need to attend a weeklong seminar at the Law Enforcement Training Center in Charleston on how to write up pleas quickly. Then get $500 a pop for each plea, with a bonus for ones that meet a standard for speed to resolution.

Now you need judges to appoint the plea squad to cases, but they'll do so because their productivity metrics will jump. The competition will also force the public defender cartel to put up or shut up. Finally, the criminals will get certainty in their future, and can start earlier on turning their lives around.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics