tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post2913466967278526078..comments2024-03-15T04:02:42.341-04:00Comments on CrimLaw: The Young Criminal Lawyer: What Path to Take?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-72802389545500215592009-01-19T11:49:00.000-05:002009-01-19T11:49:00.000-05:00Great post! I started out as a Prosecutor (and wa...Great post! I started out as a Prosecutor (and was for over four years) and have been on the defense side for 3 years. I love the defense side of things. Seeing both sides of the law - is extremely helpful and makes me a better lawyer. <BR/>I totally agree that you should try out both sides before settling on one, it gives you perspective on the system, and on what the 'other side' is thinking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-87281297359548229862009-01-19T10:33:00.000-05:002009-01-19T10:33:00.000-05:00I couldn't be a prosecutor because some "laws" are...I couldn't be a prosecutor because some "laws" are patently unjust. Putting people in jail for possessing marijuana or playing poker is itself an immoral and criminal act. The fact that a legislature says otherwise doesn't change what is right and what is wrong. A judge or a prosecutor or a police office cannot evade responsibility for the wrong that they do by saying they are "just doing their jobs." The Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials said the same thing.John Kindleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13897832130417651667noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-52998825374274083502009-01-14T05:39:00.000-05:002009-01-14T05:39:00.000-05:00Let me try to give ya'll a direct link to Edintall...Let me try to give ya'll <A HREF="http://letthemcomeforthandbeheard.blogspot.com/" REL="nofollow">a direct link to Edintally's blog.</A>Ken Lammershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15646250142814585354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-6684924400610602062009-01-14T00:12:00.000-05:002009-01-14T00:12:00.000-05:00My response was too long for a comment and gave me...My response was too long for a comment and gave me a reason to resurrect my own blog. Still a noob at this stuff so not sure how to do that link thing.<BR/><BR/>http://letthemcomeforthandbeheard.blogspot.com/1111https://www.blogger.com/profile/00751266629907024072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-43556177464136664812009-01-13T11:34:00.000-05:002009-01-13T11:34:00.000-05:00In 8 years, when I can retire, much as the big buc...In 8 years, when I can retire, much as the big bucks of private defense work beckons, I think I'm chucking law, which has gotten to be such a game in the worst sense of the word, and go drive a train... or teach at my kid's High School... or some other productive venture.<BR/><BR/>Sometimes I just get plain sick of the mastubatory self-adulation of the legal "profession," you know, how we "change the world" and "defend the consitution" and such rubbish... as if non-lawyer citizens couldn't possibly figure out how to rule themselves without lawyers.<BR/><BR/>Just venting, that's all...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-9738902880309461282009-01-12T18:12:00.000-05:002009-01-12T18:12:00.000-05:00As a currently employed PD, as much as I appreciat...As a currently employed PD, as much as I appreciate what you are saying with walking a mile in the otherside's shoes. I just can't put people in jail. People do need to go. I just can't be the one that puts them there. So I think I am okay with just staying on the side that I am on.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-60861828958819756032009-01-12T16:10:00.000-05:002009-01-12T16:10:00.000-05:00I've worked as the writing clerk for a circuit jud...I've worked as the writing clerk for a circuit judge (and former prosecutor) in the criminal division (with the mandate to write appeal-proof orders), to being a public defender for many years. There may come a time in the medium-term future when I will be a prosecutor. Becoming a prosecutor would be an appropriate professional development in my particular legal field. I know many former public defenders who have done precisely that.<BR/><BR/>I've found that defense work is stressful enough to make it worse by ascribing every simplistic evil imaginable to opposing counsel. They have families, kids, outside lives (such as they are) as I do; they've got a job to do - just like I do - that I further appreciate as an ordinary fellow citizen when I'm away from my own job. Life is just too short to ascribe such black-and-white "evility" to my fellow attorneys across the table.Bob Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02713028248353536974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-47314355945251083182009-01-12T10:51:00.000-05:002009-01-12T10:51:00.000-05:00Actually, the defense attorney has dual allegiance...Actually, the defense attorney has dual allegiances to the system and the client and, short of fraud on the court, the allegiance to the client is part of the system. I've no issue with that. In fact, its people having an issue with that which I think this would mitigate (as well as issues of the same sort in the opposite direction).Ken Lammershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15646250142814585354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4098620.post-40430243656487440242009-01-12T09:58:00.000-05:002009-01-12T09:58:00.000-05:00Interesting notion, but I know a (if not the) defe...Interesting notion, but I know a (if not the) defense attorney's answer, which would go something like, <I>a defense attorney's allegiance is not to the system, but to the client</I>. <BR/><BR/>Since I'm not an attorney, I do get to give the potential defendant's (aren't we all?) answer: if I'm charged with a crime, I want a lawyer, I want somebody whose focus is in getting the best result for me (ideally: me walking away, free and clear, with my accusers lamenting their mothers' poor contraceptive choices), not on the health of the whole system.<BR/><BR/>YMMV, of course. But it probably wouldn't.Joel Rosenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14745514449389969195noreply@blogger.com